At some point imitation pieces were sure to appear. This doesn’t come as a surprise. With Crocs rising to be the new trendy shoe, copycat versions of the rubber shoes are now all over the market. The company, of course, filed a 175-page complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission to fight against the fakes, as Input magazine details: 

Although Crocs have been around for years, the shoe’s recent popularity explains why other brands might be seeking to make a profit off the chunky silhouette. Collaborations with Post Malone, Bad Bunny, Justin Bieber, Diplo, and even Balenciaga have marketed the rubber clogs to nearly every consumer available — and have done so successfully, selling out drops in minutes and leading Crocs’ share price to an all-time high. According to TFL, the hype surrounding Croc’s offerings is so great that the brand alleges that “the Classic Clog garnered nearly 25 billion observed media impressions in 2020, alone.” Now is the perfect time to cash in on the growing demand for the clog, if court cases allow.

[...]

As a result, Crocs claims its shoes, including its “CROCS” word mark, “the three-dimensional configuration of the outside of an upper of a shoe, the textured strip on the heel of the shoe, [and] the decorative band along the length of the heel strap,” are all distinctive enough to be recognized as belonging to the brand, TFL writes. And in a not so humble note, Crocs also claims that there are already an “infinite number” of footwear styles similar to its rubber clogs — so much so that the copycat market “requires constant attention,” and as a result, “each year, customs and other enforcement officials around the world seize hundreds of thousands of shoes that improperly bear” Croc’s trademarks.

Image courtesy of Crocs 

Meet Marty and Doc, the main characters of the Back to the Future franchise, reimagined as rubber duckie figures by Numskull Designs. The TUBBZ duck collectibles have four figures: Marty with a video camera and the other in his radiation suit. The other two are Doc figures, one with his brain wave analyzer, and the other with the remote control.

Fingers crossed they continue the series with Back to the Future II characters as well.

Cute!

(Image Credit: UCS LLC/ Numskull/ Technabob)

Researchers from the University of Cambridge have created a material that could be an alternative to single-use plastics that are used in today’s households. The material, a polymer film, mimics the properties of spider silk, one of the strongest materials in nature.

The material was created using a new approach for assembling plant proteins into materials which mimic silk on a molecular level. The energy-efficient method, which uses sustainable ingredients, results in a plastic-like free-standing film, which can be made at industrial scale. Non-fading 'structural' colour can be added to the polymer, and it can also be used to make water-resistant coatings.

The material is home compostable, whereas other types of bioplastics require industrial composting facilities to degrade. In addition, the Cambridge-developed material requires no chemical modifications to its natural building blocks, so that it can safely degrade in most natural environments.

The new product will be commercialised by Xampla, a University of Cambridge spin-out company developing replacements for single-use plastic and microplastics. The company will introduce a range of single-use sachets and capsules later this year, which can replace the plastic used in everyday products like dishwasher tablets and laundry detergent capsules. The results are reported in the journal Nature Communications.

This is a great scientific achievement, but I hope that its price will be reasonable when it is finally released in the market.

More details about the research over at EurekAlert.

(Image Credit: Xampla/ EurekAlert)

What is this spirit which appears in the fog? Is it approaching you? No, it's just an unusual meteorological phenomenon called a Brocken Spectre. Les Crowley explains at Atmosphere Optics that the image is the viewer's own shadow cast on the mist:

The Brocken Spectre appears when a low sun is behind a climber who is looking downwards into mist from a ridge or peak. The "spectre" is the shadowy figure - the glow and rings are of course a glory centered directly opposite the sun at the antisolar point. But how is the ghostly figure produced? It is no more than the shadow of the climber projected forward through the mist. All shadows converge towards the antisolar point where the glory also shines. The sometimes odd triangular shape is a perspective effect. The Brocken Spectre is a similar effect to anti-crepuscular rays and cloud shadows.

-via Super Punch | Photo: P. Leedell

While you're not likely to study the history of toilets in school, the story of what we don't normally talk about logically follows what we already know about historical eras. Public sanitation systems were sophisticated (if weird) during the Roman Empire, but were lost during the Dark Ages. Later developments led to better hygiene, but only for communities that could afford it, leading to global inequalities that continue today. By the way, this TED-Ed video shows cartoon defecation, in case that bothers you.

The answer is surprisingly simple: it’s because a cicada thinks that people strongly resemble trees. What’s with trees anyway? Cicadas land on them to mate, lay eggs, and do other life-related tasks. Since cicadas prefer to perch on trees, they tend to go right towards any dark upright object - or in this case - a person. Mashable has more details: 

That's why if you're standing on a flat runway, like President Biden, a cicada may be keen to find you. "You might be the tallest structure out there," mused Day.

The sheer number of cicadas that emerge over a short time in spring also likely plays a role in the cicada landings, noted George Hamilton, the chair of the Department of Entomology at Rutgers University. With potentially millions of bugs around, a structure-seeking insect is more likely to find you.

Cicadas are indeed cacophonous as males vigorously vibrate their abdomens to attract mates. But they are no threat to people. And the cicadas' short-lived emergence is a great boon to wildlife.

Image credit: Jason Weingardt

While birds don’t have enough brainpower to match our own, did you know that certain birds can understand abstract concepts too? In a study published in The Journal of Neuroscience, a team of researchers studied two male carrion crows (Corvus corone), and proved that crows can understand the concept of zero: 

The crows were trained to peck at the screen or move their heads if the two images matched one another, and to remain still if they did not match.

The greater the difference between the two sets of dots, the more accurately the birds responded; in other words, the birds mixed up closer quantities, such as two and three, more often than more divergent quantities, such as one and four. This phenomenon is known as the "numerical distance effect," which can also be observed in monkeys and humans during similar tests, Nieder told Live Science.

In the more recent study, which included a blank screen, "what we found is that the crows, after this training, could discriminate zero from the other countable numerosities," Nieder said. However, importantly, the birds still demonstrated the numerical distance effect in trials that included the empty screen.

Image credit: Andreas Nieder

Meet the ‘King’ cello, the oldest known cello in existence. The instrument was created by Andrea Amati in the mid-1500s for the court of King Charles IX of France. The violin was part of a set of stringed instruments painted in the style of Limoges porcelain. In addition, it also one of the few Amati instruments in existence: 

The instrument remained in the French court until the French Revolution, after which the basso fell out of favor and the “King” was “drastically reduced in size” through an alteration process that “stood at the forefront of musical instrument development during the last quarter of the 18th century and throughout the 19th,” a way transform obsolete forms into those more suitable for contemporary music. “By 1801,” Zeller writes, “the date that the ‘King’ might have been reduced, large-format bassos were obsolete, discarded in favour of the smaller-bodied cellos.”

Image courtesy of National Music Museum

For now of course, it’s just a concept. Norway’s Wind Catching Systems has proposed a floating power grid composed of more than 100 small wind turbines. The company claims that this conceptual power source could produce enough energy for 80,000 European homes. This new wind farm would stand at more than 1,000 feet tall, atop platforms that are anchored to the ocean floor: 

A common complaint about wind farms is the space they take up, but Wind Catching Systems' grid scales thins down with its compact design. The small size of the individual turbines makes installation and maintenance easy, with no specialty vessels or cranes necessary. With an estimated shelf life of 50 years, they are also designed to be scalable.

image credit: Wind Catching Systems

We can all agree that cannibalism is horrible, but circumstances distinguish desperation from evil. It's one thing to eat a dead body because there's nothing else to sustain life, but quite another thing to murder someone ...and then eat them. History is full of both kinds of cannibalism, like the survivors of the French frigate Méduse.

In early 1816, after the Napoleonic Wars gave France control of Senegal, the Méduse sailed south to Africa to take the reins of its new territory. But tragedy struck. Fifty miles offshore, the ship ran aground. It quickly dawned on the ship’s 400 passengers and crew that there weren’t enough lifeboats to save everybody.

Instead, those who couldn’t fit into the lifeboats—147 passengers in total—huddled onto a makeshift raft. (Some passengers, meanwhile, opted to stay behind with the frigate.) Initially, the raft was towed by the remaining lifeboats … until someone made the fateful decision to cut the ropes. For 13 days, the raft drifted aimlessly. People died—from murder, from being washed (and tossed) overboard, from starvation. Eventually, the survivors turned to cannibalism (and drank their own urine). By the time the raft was discovered, only 15 people were still alive. The tragedy would later inspire one of the biggest paintings of the 19th century, the 16-by-23-foot The Raft of The Medusa.

Read that story, and those of six other incidents of cannibalism at Mental Floss.

The Video Game History Foundation has finished its restoration of a single Nintendo-related, 3.5-inch floppy disk. This small storage device is an Earthbound disk, discovered by original Earthbound translator Marcus Lindblom in 2018. Lindblom donated the disk for preservation to the institution, and they were able to recover a single file: 

Longtime Mother/Earthbound series expert Clyde "Tomato" Mandelin, who famously co-translated Mother 3 as a free, fan-made patch for its Japan-only version, partnered with VGHF to parse the discoveries. His very long report on the findings is mostly wonky stuff for people who know the series like the back of their hand as opposed to a laundry list of shocking revelations.

Still, the findings include breadcrumbs to help fans understand how this text-heavy game was made and released, along with enough code-related discoveries to allow ROM hackers to recreate some of the unfinished scenes mentioned in the disk's code and notes. (The disk doesn't contain art, sprites, or textures, but the script contents are dense enough for VGHF's ROM hackers to work with.)

Image credit: Video Game History Foundation

Yes, it’s explorable. In a stunning display of talent and artistry, Ernesto Neto has created a new fiber-based installation. Housed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the artwork, called “SunForceOceanLife,” is a hand-crocheted, walkable maze that stretches 79 feet across the gallery and spirals 12 feet in the air:

Plastic balls also fill the pathway and shift underfoot, which forces those passing through the suspended structure to intentionally maintain their balance. Neto explains:

It directly engages the body as does a joyful dance or meditation, inviting us to relax, breathe, and uncouple our body from our conscious mind. The sensation of floating, the body cradled by the crocheted fruits of our labor, brings to mind a hammock: the quintessential indigenous invention that uplifts us and connects us to the wisdom and traditions of our ancestors.

“SunForceOceanLife” is on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston through September 26, 2021. You can see more of Neto’s interactive, site-specific projects at Galerie Max Hetzler.

Image credit: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston via Colossal 

Researchers have successfully created a self-healing concrete that can repair its own cracks! The concept behind the self-healing concrete is that an intervention needs to be staged before water gets in tiny cracks and causes the rupture to spread. The special concrete makes use of an enzyme found in human blood, as New Atlas details: 

The team put the CA enzyme to use by adding it to concrete powder before the material is mixed and poured. When a small crack forms in the concrete, the enzyme interacts with CO2 in the air to produce calcium carbonate crystals, which mimic the characteristics of concrete and promptly fill in the crack.

Through their testing, the scientists demonstrated their doped concrete can repair its own millimeter-scale cracks within 24 hours. The team says this is a marked improvement on some previous technologies that have used bacteria to self-heal, which are more expensive and can take up to a month to heal even far smaller cracks.

While the amount of CO2 the concrete gobbles up is likely to be negligible in the grand scheme of things, the real environmental potential of the material lies in its potential longevity. Rahbar predicts that this type of self-healing technology could extend the life of a structure from 20 years to 80 years, which reduces the need to produce replacement concrete in what is a notoriously carbon-intensive process.

“Healing traditional concrete that’s already in use is critically beneficial, too, and will help reduce the need to produce and ship additional concrete, which has a huge environmental impact,” says Rahbar.

Image credit: Worcester Polytechnic Institute

We know that an asteroid hit the earth about 66 million years ago and caused the dinosaurs to die out. But what was it like in the moment? What were the immediate effects? And how did an impact in one place cause death and destruction globally? Kurzgesagt tells us all about it as if it were a dramatic campfire story.

Don't be daunted by the video length- the actual story is less than ten minutes.

I AM PISSING MYSELF OVER THIS VIDEO HELP SHSJSBSJSBA pic.twitter.com/bIrutKEPlD

— 💘Cherri🌷 (@cherriimiu) June 9, 2021

This video of unknown origin (most likely hidden to protect the horses from public shaming) shows two horses, Domino and Pie, on their way to dinner. Their path is blocked by a ferocious rabbit. The horses, prudently heeding the warning of Tim the Enchanter, are keeping their distance.

-via Super Punch