If it was just a random reference, for example, a name mentioned on a math problem, it’s probably not that surprising. Teachers often put cultural references in their questions by using names of celebrities or fictional characters in their problems. However, when Hatsune Miku, the popular digitally-created musician, appeared in Ireland’s exam for students graduating from high school, it was less of a casual reference and more of a full-on exam question about the vocaloid herself: 

As first pointed out by a thread on ResetEra, the English section of Ireland’s 2021 Leaving Certificate Examination includes two sections on Hatsune Miku. The first tests participants’ comprehension by having them read a short essay on the blue-haired vocaloid’s fame and then answer questions about the text, including, “Would you prefer to attend a concert that featured a real-life performer, like Lady Gaga, or a virtual performer, like Hatsune Miku?”

The exam later tasks students with writing a composition based on a variety of topics, each of which call back to previous parts of the test. The prompt referring to Hatsune Miku basically amounts to fanfiction, asking participants to compose a story about the artificial singer breaking free from her digital confines and escaping into the real world. After seeing how some folks react to Hatsune Miku online, I probably would have included some restrictions on explicit content here if I were the one putting these tests together for the Irish government, but alas. 

Image courtesy of Crypton Future Media, Inc. via Miku Expo  

Imagine the hours the artist spent in carving or cutting out the small details for this intricately-detailed octopus paper art! Japanese artist Masayo Fukuda has been practicing the traditional art of paper cutting, also known as Kirie for 25 years. The art form involves cutting detailed pieces from a single sheet of white paper and contrasting it against a black background: 

At first glance, the beautiful artwork looks as though it was rendered using fine-tipped pens, but Fukuda carefully cut every detail from one sheet of paper. The elaborate depiction details the majestic sea animal’s rounded body, bulging eyes, and 8 long arms. Various textured sections look like pieces of delicate patterned lace, such arm suckers that resemble ornamental doilies and decorative swirling patterns on the head. The mesmerizing artwork celebrates the beauty of the fascinating species, who are known to change their skin color and texture within seconds to match their surroundings.

You can see Fukuda’s stunning Kirie designs up-close at Miraie Gallery in Osaka from April 24 through April 30, 2019. If you can’t make it to Japan, you can check out more of the artist’s impressive creations on Instagram.

Image credit: Masayo Fukuda  

The China National Space Administration successfully landed a rover on Mars on May 14. Now we have a selfie that shows just how cute the Zhurong Mars rover is! The rover's landing platform is seen to the right.  

The rover took this selfie by dropping a camera attached to its belly about 10 meters (32 feet) away from the landing platform, then positioning itself next to the landing platform, Chinese space officials said. The camera wirelessly transmitted the picture to the rover, which then sent it to Earth via the Tianwen-1 orbiter.

The rover is expected to monitor Mars weather, analyze surface material, and look for evidence of water over the next 90 days. The Tianwen-1 orbiter is designed to orbit above for a couple of years. Read more about the Chinese rover at LiveScience.  -via Metafilter

(Image credit: CNSA/Zhurong Mars rover)

As much as I would like to say that this is kinda sus, it’s a legit transaction on eBay. What’s special about this nugget is that not only is it from the newly-released McDonald’s collaboration, the BTS Meal, it’s also shaped like the avatars in Among Us. Esquire states that people are selling their Among Us nuggets from $9,000 to $30,000: 

Of course, the only listings reaching tens and thousands of dollars are Chicken McNuggets. Not just any old piece of nuggets... Among Us-shaped ones from the BTS Meal. There are currently three BTS Meal Chicken McNuggets up on eBay selling for $9,000, $20,000, and $30,000. But, the bids are climbing fast.

Not to worry, though. If you have a spare couple of millions lying around, you can bid until Friday for the most expensive one of the bunch which, in our opinion, looks best like an Among Us character.

The highest eBay posting reads: "Authentic Among us shaped Chicken McNugget that originated from a BTS Combo meal. McDonald’s Among us shaped chicken nugget. Condition is "Used". Shipped with USPS First Class."

According to the listing, the item will also be frozen and air sealed in order to ensure freshness. Sounds like the seller knows a thing or two about selling rare and potentially collectible food items. A very serious question: Does it come with the Ikea baggie?

image credit: eBay 

Malcolm-Jamal Warner has been jammin' on the one since Aug. 18, 1970. Today, the 'Cosby Show' star is 18,530 days old, making him the same age as Wilford Brimley on the day 'Cocoon' was released. Congrats @MalcolmJamalWar! You've reached the Brimley/Cocoon Line. pic.twitter.com/xfNPoSqUA7

— Brimley/Cocoon Line (@BrimleyLine) May 12, 2021

You might recall the 1985 film Cocoon as a rare science fiction movie about elderly people in a retirement home. One of the stars, Wilford Brimley, was only 49 years old when he got the part! When Cocoon was released on June 21, 1985, he was a mere 50 years, 9 months, and 3 days old (he died last year at the age of 85). To highlight the age anomaly of Brimley's Cocoon casting, the Brimley/Cocoon Line Twitter account was launched. The feed marks the day that celebrities reach the same age that Wilford Brimley was when Cocoon was released.

But why should celebrities have all the fun? Lindsey Smith, inspired by the Twitter feed, has posted an online calculator so that you can figure when you will cross the Brimley/Cocoon Line. I tried it, but got too tired clicking back to my birth year. Besides, I crossed that line long ago. -via Laughing Squid

A few months ago, celebrity librarian Jessamyn West had an inspired idea to promote public library use: advertise for them on the side of race cars. She did some research and found that such advertising, at least on a local level, is quite affordable. Now her library promotion is written on the back quarters of two racing Honda Civics driven by Andrea St. Amour.

Photo: Chambers Racing

Advice about sex has been around forever, some for better and some for worse. In the Victorian age (1837-1901), publicly available advice on sex was often wound up with the ideas of sin and public decency and control of one's animal nature. A list of 11 bits of Victorian advice on sex starts with these gems:

1. Be aware that sex makes you stupid.

Knowledge workers of the world be warned: “The accumulated evidence of the world goes to show that celibacy is a most favorable state for severe mental labor,” according to Eliza Bisbee Duffey.

Though radically progressive on many matters, Duffey held to the ancient notion that sex wasted the body’s vital spirits. She therefore recommended abstinence, by which “the forces of the body are conserved, and are concentrated, and that goes to brain-power which would otherwise be exhausted in sexual union.”

2. Too much hair makes you horny.

Large buns coiled atop the head were all the rage in the 1880s, much to the chagrin of Dr. John Cowan. “This great pressure of hair on the small brain produces great heat in the part,” he warned, increasing blood flow to the brain’s sex center and causing “a chronic desire for its sexual exercise.”

As you may guess, sex within marriage was okay, as long as one didn't engage in it too much. Read the rest of the list of Victorian sex tips at Mental Floss.

Is this the modern adaptation of the bible story of Jonah and the whale? US lobsterman Michael Packard was diving when he was swallowed by a humpback whale in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Luckily, the marine giant spat him out after 30-40 seconds, which only left him with a dislocated knee, and a hell of an unique story to tell: 

Despite his wife's pleas to get another job, he has no plans of giving up a 40-year career diving off Cape Cod.

Humpback whales can grow to as long as 50ft (15m) and weigh about 36 tons. According to the World Wildlife Fund, their global population is about 60,000.

Mr Packard, 56, told the Cape Cod Times he and his crewmate took their boat, the Ja'n J, off Herring Cove on Friday morning where conditions were excellent, with water visibility at about 20ft.

He told WBZ-TV News that after jumping off the vessel in scuba gear into the water, he "felt this huge bump and everything went dark".

He thought he had been attacked by one of the great white sharks that swim in the area, "and then I felt around and I realised there was no teeth".

"And then I realised: 'Oh my God, I'm in a whale's mouth and he's trying to swallow me. This is it, I'm going die'."

Mr Packard says he thought about his wife and two boys, aged 12 and 15.

"Then all of a sudden he went up to the surface and just erupted and started shaking his head.

"I just got thrown in the air and landed in the water. I was free and I just floated there. I couldn't believe… I'm here to tell it."

Image credit: Cameron Venti

Traditional forms of medicine attribute special powers to rhinoceros horns, which is why that animal is hunted by poachers. A rhino horn is worth a lot of money on the black market, so poachers are highly motivated to kill rhinoceroses and remove their horns.

The Rhisotope Project is an innovative effort by conservationists to right back. Scientists propose to inject radioactive isotopes inside the horns of living rhinoceroses, thus making the horns trackable if removed and smuggled. Hack A Day explains:

The radiation from these would not be enough to cause any harm to the animal. But smuggling the horn through illicit channels becomes immensely more difficult as the tell-tale radioactive signature would be hard to hide.

Presumably the radioisotope that would be picked would be a Gamma or Beta emitter, as these are significantly harder to block than Alpha (large helium atoms) radiation. This radiation would make the horn, and any shipping container it would be placed into, light up light a Christmas tree on any of the radiation detectors used at borders and ports around the world.

Photo: Rhisotope Project

A couple of years ago, we shared a chart that explained the different vegetables that all come from the plant species Brassica oleracea. The same can be said of the plant's cousin, Brassica rapa, from which we grow turnips, grelos, bok choy, mizuna, and broccoli rabe.  A new study aims to find the geographical origin of B. rapa, which may have been domesticated as long as 6,000 years ago.

The work is a particular achievement when you consider both the diversity and global spread of B. rapa crops, wild relatives, and feral varieties that have escaped farmers’ fields, “taking over the world,” says Alex McAlvay, lead author of the study and a botanist at the New York Botanical Garden. Now, he says, B. rapa, in various forms, “grows from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. They grow in Oceania, they grow from Spain to Japan.

“You can go to San Diego, to the coast, and see wild Brassica rapa,” he adds. “But they’re not truly wild. They’re like the stray dogs that have escaped and formed their own pack in the woods.” B. rapa’s ability to survive as a feral plant worldwide had created a lot of uncertainty about its origins. Botanists often look to wild relatives of crops to help understand where the plants were first domesticated. But B. rapa is everywhere and, before the new research, distinguishing truly wild species from feral escapees was almost impossible.

The upside of B. rapa's ability to adapt to local conditions could make it very useful for communities dealing with the environmental flux of climate change. Read what we know and what we're trying to learn about B. rapa and the foods it provides at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Flickr user el Buho nº30)

The modern concept of Satan is recognizable to all of us, but his few mentions in the Bible aren't where they come from. Much of the devil's iconic characteristics come from later writers and artists. -via Boing Boing

For several weeks, journalists have been trying to convince us to eat bugs. Like those scientists who want us to drink dog urine, news outlets these days abound with articles advocating the consumption of cicadas.

This trend has, apparently, caught on enough that a pizzeria in Dayton, Ohio is offering a pizza topped with cicadas.

Yes, that's what you're looking at. The restaurant Pizza Bandit calls it the Spicy Thai Cicada Pie. CNN reports:

The restaurant did livestream a tasting panel trying out the pizza, which also featured miso hoisin sriracha sauce, mozzarella, provolone, mushrooms, cabbage, green onion, mango, cilantro and a spicy Thai sauce.

"Opinions of the pizza range from absolutely delicious to...well...uh...yeah...," the Facebook post said.

-via Dave Barry | Photos: Pizza Bandit

Oh, that’s just the kid’s name for short, don’t worry. Meet Hypertext Markup Language R. Pascual, a newborn baby from Bulacan, Philippines. According to the baby’s parents, the name was inspired by the father’s web developer job. However, this naming convention is not new for the family, as other members also have unique names such as Sincerely, Macaroni, Spaghetti, and Cheese Pimiento.

(via Rappler) 

Photo courtesy of Sincerely Pascual

Well, this could be handy! It usually takes me a long time to paint my nails. Clockwork has created their self-proclaimed first ever nail painting robot, which can paint nails in just ten minutes. For $8, you can now commission the robot, which is doing manicures in San Francisco to do your nails: 

Right now, the robot doesn’t cut or shape nails, but the website hints those features could be coming soon.

TikTok user Elissa Maercklein posted a video of the robot with the caption “living in the future.”

The company behind the bot says they design robots that “liberate people from everyday mundane tasks.”

Image credit: Clockwork 

A thousand is a lot. How about fifty thousand? That’s a lot of photos right there! Göran Strand captured 50,000 still images of last week’s solar eclipse from his backyard in Sweden. Strand used over 250 gigabytes of images to condense the two-and-a-half hour solar eclipse into just ten seconds! PetaPixel has the details: 

To add to the remarkable achievement of capturing the movement of the eclipse itself, Strand also captured all of the solar prominences. A solar prominence is a large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun’s surface. Strand also shows a close-up of the largest prominence with a scaled earth graphic beside it. With this remarkable graphic, it’s easy to see how roughly one million Earths could fit inside the massive star.

With so many frames captured, Strand told PetaPixel about how he went about editing the solar eclipse timelapse.

“To capture the timelapse, I took a series of 200 frames every 30 seconds for 2.5 hours,” he explains. “From each 200-frame clip, I stacked, aligned, and calibrated the best 50 frames. In total, I ended up with 250 calibrated still images that I then did further processing with. First, I aligned all of the 250 images, sharpened the details, and then extracted the data that showed all the prominences. Then I had my finished images for the timelapse.”

As eclipses and other notable astro events occur rarely, less than ideal weather is always a challenge for those photographers hoping to catch the action.

Image credit : Göran Strand