The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden in Germany revealed the results of their restoration of a Johannes Vermeer artwork, and there was a hidden detail in the painting all along! The museum took two and a half years to restore Vermeer’s Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window. Thanks to a research project in 2017, it was revealed that the blank wall in the painting was not done by Vermeer. Instead, the overpainting was completed several decades after the canvas was finished. This conclusion motivated art historians to uncover what was covered up: 

Once the work was completed in early 2021, art historians could gain a new appreciation for the painting. “With the recovery of Cupid in the background, the actual intention of the Delft painter becomes recognizable,” states Stephan Koja, director of the Old Masters Picture Gallery. “Beyond the ostensibly amorous context, it is about a fundamental statement about the nature of true love. So before what we looked at was only rudimentary. Now we understand it as a key image in his oeuvre.” In fact, as Koja points out, Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window stands at the beginning of a series of painting in which Vermeer shows a woman in a quiet, reflective moment.

Now, thanks to the restoration, art lovers around the world will be able to enjoy the artwork as Vermeer intended. To celebrate the finished restoration, the painting has been placed at the centerpiece of a new exhibition at the museum. Johannes Vermeer. On pausing will run from September 10, 2021 to January 2, 2022 and will include nine other paintings by Vermeer closely related to the restored artwork.

Image credit: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden / Wolfgang Kreische

Meet the WaterPod, a sustainable floating pod that converts seawater into drinking water. Designed by Bennie Beh Hue May, Yap Chun Yoon, and Loo Xin Yang, the contraption can generate drinkable water through a natural desalination process. The team of designers was recognized by The James Dyson Award for their conceptual design. Here’s how the pod would operate: 

WaterPod operates as a self-cleaning solar desalination system that absorbs seawater via underwater wicks, inspired by mangrove trees, which then passes through a condensation and evaporation process to remove the salt particles from the seawater. Just like mangrove trees, WaterPod’s underwater wicks fill the pod with seawater until its water levels reach the pod’s black fabric dome. Inside the dome, seawater undergoes evaporation as water vapors gradually flow from the transparent covering and collect in WaterPod’s storage compartment. Then, users can pump drinking water from the storage compartment’s recess. While the desalination process takes place, the WaterPod remains floating atop the water in a similar fashion to a conventional buoy. WaterPod’s top lid is filled with expanded polyurethane foam for thermal insulation and flotation enhancement while a cement base offers buoyancy stability.

Image credit: via Yanko Design

Enjoy the Eurythmics hit played by various gadgets and appliances, such as a toaster, printer, electric toothbrushes, and calculators. The steam iron adds both a good hiss and visual effects, but it's the googly eyes that really make the video special. Another cool video from the Device Orchestra. -via reddit

We've been adding more neat posts over at our new sites as we build 'em up. Because we can't post every single one of them here on Neatorama, how about a recap?

Don't miss these science and tech posts over at Pictojam:

• Slow but Deadly: Tortoise Hunts and Eats Baby Bird
• Female Macaque at the Japanese Nature Reserve Became the First Alpha Female in 70 Years
• Brain Organoids Spontaneously Generate Eye Structures That Respond To Light

Architecture and home design posts over at Homes & Hues (eye candy!):

• Rollable OLED TV by LG
• The Bee Bole Wall: Hardscape with a Historical Purpose
• Dinos Dining Table is Inviting for Cats

Cute animal and pet posts over at Supa Fluffy:

• A Truly Emotional Duet with a Bird
• Watch This Bear Comically Slip Down a Waterfall Trying to Catch a Fish
• The Time Idaho Dealt With Its Surplus Of Beavers By Parachuting Them Into Its Backcountry

Pop culture posts over at Pop Culturista:

• Spider-Man: No Way Home Trailer Recreated with Clips from the 90s Cartoon Clips from Spider-Man Animated Series
• How Tom Cruise Prepared for the Biggest Stunt in Movie History
• Venom Sculpted Out of a Watermelon by Italian Artist Valeriano Fatica

Video Game posts over at Infinite 1UP:

• 8 Bit Trip 2 by Rymdreglage: LEGO Stop-Motion Animation Music Video 9 Years in the Making
• Meet the Playdate: A Monochrome Video Game Console With a Crank
• Making Music with Math and Joycons!

And lastly, some funny pics and awesome video clips over at Laughosaurus:

• Manhole Exploded with a Fireball After a Lightning Strike
• 'Star Bored' by Lim Heng Swee - When Star Wars Characters Said "Nope, Not Today" to the Force
• The Traveler: Hyper-Realistic Sculpture of a Weary Traveler at a Florida Airport

Please check 'em out and tell your friends about 'em! We appreciate it!

Wasps, which include yellowjackets and hornets, are annoying any time you disturb them or threaten their nests. But in the late summer, they are more likely to approach your picnic or backyard barbecue for no discernible reason and ruin a good time. Just a few weeks before, they left you alone. To understand why, you have to know something about a wasp's life cycle and habits.   

To that hard-working mid-summer wasp, your prosecco luncheons and BBQ beers were a bore, because what she was after was protein. She is a hunter, a worker. In mid-summer, her purpose is to provide her baby siblings with protein. She is a sterile cog in a big superorganismal machine, driven by evolution to pass on her genes by raising siblings. Usually, the protein she hunts is other insects (garden caterpillars or flies). She brings prey to the colony where there are thousands of baby siblings to feed.

She might chew the prey up a little (and perhaps ingest some too) before feeding it directly to a larva, but the bulk of the protein goes to the babies. In return for her hard work, the larva will give her a carbohydrate-rich sugary secretion. This is thought to be the main mode of nutrition for adult worker wasps. Each colony will produce several thousand worker wasps and they are kept very busy for much of the summer feeding these brood; with the drive of a drug addict, they are hooked on the sugary secretions from the lips of their baby siblings.

Then as time passes, those larva turn into pupa, and no longer need to be fed as they turn into adult wasps. As the number of larvae dwindle, the adults look elsewhere for their sugar fix- like your flower garden or the beer that you may be holding. Read more about the cycle of life in a wasp's nest over the summer months at The Conversation.  -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Jerzy Strzelecki)

In 1916, the New York City borough of Queens consolidated all its mounted police into one precinct in Richmond Hill. That meant they needed a much larger stable, for up to 70 horses. One was located and rented from a dairy company. But a large stable with horses, hay, and horse feed soon became infested with rats and mice. The police needed a cat to keep the vermin under control.

Tramp, described as a big-headed, earnest-faced, blue-eyed cat, limped into the station house on Church Street in 1919. (By this time, the precinct was known as the 118th Precinct.) The poor cat was limping because his front paw had been badly crushed in an auto accident. Somehow, he knew he could help at the building with the green lights out front.

Detective Sergeant Albert Hill bandaged the cat’s limb and placed him on a little cot in the reserve room. Tramp reportedly purred, meowed, wagged his fuzzy tail, and threw grateful glances toward his cat-man hero.

While Tramp was bed-ridden, the officers couldn’t do enough to help him. They brought him food and pet him every day. Then they officially admitted him to their ranks–even going as far as giving him a collar that stated, “P.D. 118 Prct.”

On recovery, Tramp became a dedicated and hard-working officer. He also became somewhat of a star among local journalists, who lauded his talents and made up fanciful stories of his ambitions. Read about Tramp, the police cat of Queens at The Hatching Cat.  -via Strange Company

Due to covid lockdown, Australian farmer Ben Jackson couldn't attend the funeral of his aunt, who died after a two-year battle with cancer. So he created this touching tribute: a giant 'sheep art' shaped like a heart!

Supa Fluffy, our new cute animals and pet site, has the drone videography: Australian Farmer Pays Tribute to his Late Aunt Through Heart-Shaped 'Sheep Art'

What's better than watching our new robot overlord from Boston Dynamics performing intricate parkour maneuvers? How about watching them flub the jump?

Watch as Boston Dynamic's Atlas robots crash and crash again over at Pictojam, before they finally managed to do a perfect run!

Art Nouveau is a whimsical, elaborate style in architecture. Structures designed in the style of Art Nouveau often look more like a sculpture in a museum rather than an actual building. Designers using this style consider the windows, textiles, murals, sculpture, furniture, and artwork as part of one composition. My Modern Met created an infographic that shows different structures that can be classified as Art Nouveau. If you have no idea what Art Nouveau architecture looks like, check the infographic here! 

Image credit: Theodor Vasile

I know that these photos look like the next meme craze to go viral on the Internet, but cats are cute. Giant cats? Also cute! Frandsita Muafidin reimagines a world with giant cats, which is reflected in his works posted online. Muafidin Photoshops cats into feline titans, placing them into real-life images of different locations around the globe. Check more of his works on his Instagram! 

Image credit: Frandsita Muafidin

I want this guy’s collection. Imagine the time, effort, and money to collect all of those games! Antonio Romero is now the holder of the Guinness World Record for the largest video game collection in the world. The Texas resident has a total number of 20,139 games and over 100 systems (both regular and collector’s editions): 

It took the folks at Guinness a whopping eight days just to count them all, which sounds ridiculous until you see it for yourself. What first appears to be one impressive game room keeps extending further and further, filling room after room from floor to ceiling—a true nerd paradise . . . “Nerd-vana,” if you will.

In the end, we’re not quite sure if Antonio deserves admiration or psychiatric help, but we’re totally jealous either way.

Image credit: Guinness World Records

They don’t kidnap human babies, don’t worry. However, naked mole rats apparently kidnap each other’s babies and turn them into slaves. These mammals have massive colonies with over 300 workers-- that’s a lot! These animals, like ant or bee colonies, have one queen that is the only one who reproduces. The colony’s workers are actually made up of stolen babies: 

In the early 1990s researchers caught and released naked mole rats to track them for a long-term field study in Kenya. They found 26 colonies expanded their burrows into neighboring colonies. Individuals from 13 of the invaded colonies were never seen again.

A year after checking one of these colonies, they found two pups in an invading colony looked to have been from an invaded colony, but the team couldn't be sure it wasn't just a mistake.

"We just didn't have the tools to make sure that I hadn't totally screwed up," evolutionary biologist Stan Braude from Washington University told New Scientist. But genetic analysis of the tissues they collected has now confirmed what they witnessed.

"The pups kidnapped by colony QQ became non-reproductive workers," the team wrote in their paper, "hence their life effort would be categorized as slavery, in the same sense as slave-making ants."

Naked mole rat kidnapping behavior had previously been witnessed in the unnatural conditions of a laboratory, but this is the first time it's been confirmed in the wild.

Image credit: wikimedia commons 

A family went missing after a hike near Yosemite National Park. Jonathan Gerrish, Ellen Chung, their 1-year-old, and their family dog, were all found dead in Sierra National Forest. No signs of trauma, injury, or suicide were found. The circumstances behind their mysterious death is now being linked to a toxic algae bloom: 

At first, officials speculated toxic gases may have been seeping out of an old mine 3 miles away from where the bodies were found and investigated under a hazmat warning, according to the Associated Press. But that warning has now been lifted.

“I don’t believe it’s connected to a mine,” Mariposa County Sheriff Jeremy Briese told the Bee. 

Now, the State Water Resources Control Board is investigating the area for toxic algae blooms and lists the area near where the bodies were found as a place of “caution.”  The Sierra National Forest issued a similar warning on July 13 regarding toxic algae blooms, advising visitors to avoid swimming in some bodies of water within the forest. 

Still, the local Sheriff said there is no definite answer yet, and that the investigation is still ongoing.

Image credit: Cullen Jones

After the fall of the last imperial dynasty in China, the country fell into a decades-long struggle for a cohesive government. While there were many factions involved, those most likely to succeed were the Nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek, and the Communists. Chiang had help in his rise to power from a man named Du Yuesheng, who you've probably never heard of. For decades, any books about Du were banned in China, and even the mention of his name was forbidden.    

Respectable heads of state rarely admit to keeping company with gangsters. But in April 1927, about 15 years after the collapse of the last imperial dynasty, Chiang Kai-shek and China were at a crossroads. Chiang had followed a murky path to leadership of the Chinese Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang. Although the Kuomintang was rivaled by an assortment of warlords who ruled the provinces as their personal fiefdoms, in Chiang’s mind the greatest obstacle between him and control of that vast and war-torn country was a young Communist Party which, he believed, would soon be nothing but lethal trouble.

So generalissimo Chiang turned to Du Yuesheng of the infamous Green Gang of Shanghai, a criminal brotherhood rooted in equal parts menace and murk. Du was the leader of this criminal enterprise, and the bloated, gleaming international city lived and died by his word. It was the power of death which most interested Chiang that spring. He wanted nothing less than complete power over all of China, and to get it, he was willing to trade the lives of thousands and allow the establishment of a vast narcotics empire. Others might have balked at trading the murder of a few thousand political opponents for this goal, but neither Du nor Chiang felt any such hesitation.

The French and American residents of Shanghai factored into the struggle, as the foreigners preferred order instituted by organized crime to the rise of the masses of oppressed workers, for their own survival. Read the story of drug lord Du Yuesheng and his role in the Shanghai massacre in the latest longform article, or listen to it in a podcast, at Damn Interesting.

In junior high and high school, my class studied one Shakespeare play every year. The only one I recall much about was Macbeth, reserved for seniors, because it was so difficult. "Macbeth doth murder sleep," indeed! Macbeth has long been considered the scariest of Shakespeare's plays, as it contains ghosts, witches, murders, curses, blood, and even walking trees. Productions of Macbeth have been littered with so many accidents and fatalities that it is considered a cursed play, and thespians won't even say its name.

But fans of Macbeth often say its freaky qualities are deeper than just the plot devices and characters. For centuries, people been unsettled by the very language of the play.

Actors and critics have long remarked that when you read Macbeth out loud, it feels like your voice and mouth and brain are doing something ever so slightly wrong. There’s something subconsciously off about the sound of the play, and it spooks people. It’s as if Shakespeare somehow wove a tiny bit of creepiness into every single line. The literary scholar George Walton Williams described the “continuous sense of menace” and “horror” that pervades even seemingly innocuous scenes.

Jonathan Hope and Michael Witmore did an analysis of the language used in Macbeth, down to individual words. Which words were used more than in other Shakespeare plays? How were those words used? They came up with the creepiest word in Macbeth, but it's not one you would have guessed. Then they had to explain why its use made the play so unsettling, which you can read at OneZero. -via Metafilter   

(Photo credit: Ungry Young Man)