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

The divisive flavor is a frozen blend of raw herring, onion, sugar, and cream. https://t.co/cBtjP5UFma

— Atlas Obscura (@atlasobscura) June 14, 2021

Are you travelling to the Netherlands? If so, you may wish to try this Dutch specialty: ice cream flavored with raw herring. Inventor Robin Alting admits that some of his countrymen are hesitant to eat it. That may be a result of the ingredients, which Atlas Obscura lists:

The divisive flavor is a frozen blend of raw herring, onion, sugar, and cream. It’s been described as having the texture of traditional ice cream but the strong taste and smell of herring.

The myth of Atlantis may have arisen from the many real-life cases of cities that sunk into the water. There are quite a few reasons for this happening- earthquakes, tsunamis, changing ocean levels, and even deliberate acts such as dam building and dyke busting. Archaeological evidence shows us underwater places around the world where people once thrived, such as Atlit Yam in Israel, which sank around 6300 BC.

This Neolithic village lies 26 to 39 feet (8 to 12 m) beneath the Mediterranean Sea, hidden for over 8,000 years until marine archaeologist Ehud Galili discovered it while surveying the sand for shipwrecks in 1984, New Scientist reported. It is now considered one of the oldest submerged settlements ever discovered. Careful excavations have revealed rectangular houses with hearths and the remains of a dry-stone well. One of the most interesting finds was a megalith structure — similar to Stonehenge — built around a spring, made of seven huge stones weighing around 1,300 pounds (600 kilograms) each; burial sites and human remains have also been unearthed. One study suggests that a tsunami is likely to blame for the abandonment of the settlement, Live Science previously reported.

Read about eight sunken cities and what caused their demise at LiveScience. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Hanay)

Benjamin Franklin once said that wine is "a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy." We can surely say the same about crocs, all the more so now that they are elevated on stiletto heels.

Or, perhaps, we should instead thank the Parisian fashion house Balenciaga, which has brought these shoes into existence. Complex reports that these wonders, as well as knee-high crocs, will be available in Balenciaga's 2022 Spring line of fashions. Personally, though, I'm holding out for thigh-high crocs.

-via The Mary Sue | Photo: Balenciaga

Now that you've been vaccinated, you might be looking forward to traveling. If you want to start small and avoid crowds, how about a day trip to your nearest ghost town? These are towns that once thrived, but where abandoned for any of a dozen reasons. However, if the towns were built well enough to last a while, preservationists eventually discovered and protected them. Now they are windows into the past, full of life and history if you are willing to go there and learn about them. Atlas Obscura has links to 22 of these ghost towns and what you need to know before visiting them. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: Drown Soda)

If you have a copy of the 1997 game Goldeneye 007 for the N64, rejoice now because you could sell that game for almost $15,000!  If you’re interested in selling it, of course. A copy of the game was sold in 2020 for a whopping $14,999, as Fatherly details: 

According to the data collected, a copy of Goldeneye 007 for N64, first released in 1997, sold in 2020 for $14,999. “If you somehow resisted unpackaging the cartridge it took you half a year to save for in 1993, now could be the time to act,” the site reports. “The biggest sale on Mavin was for Goldeneye 007 for Nintendo 64. It sold in the fall of 2020 for a dollar under $15k.”

Goldeneye 007 was the only toy in the top 10 priciest ’90s toys that wasn’t a Beanie Baby and by far the video game that is worth the most. The second priciest N64 game was the 1999 N64 version of Super Smash Bros, which sold for $ 9,976, and Yoshi’s Story, released in 1998, sold for $5,500.

Overall, the Beanie Babies line is where most of the money can be found in old toys we used to play with. Some people spend money on the old-school Furbies and American Girl dolls, too.

Image credit: Alexander Jawfox

This past week, investigators announced they had cracked what is believed to be the oldest case solved with DNA and forensic genealogy -- dating to 1956. https://t.co/sIvOczsSjl

— NPR (@NPR) June 13, 2021

In 1956, the bodies of 18-year-old Lloyd Duane Bogle and his girlfriend, 16-year-old Patricia Kalitzke, were found in the mountains near Great Falls, Montana. They had both been shot in the back of the head, and Kalitzke had been raped. Investigators did their best, but no perpetrator was found, and the case remained open for more than 60 years. Forensic science has come a long way since 1956, and such a murder today would rely heavily on DNA evidence. Kalitzke's vaginal swab stayed in the evidence file, but virtually no one had a DNA profile at the time, and all these years later anyone evolved in the case was liable to be dead. Could they solve this crime using DNA?  

With the help of partnering labs, forensic genealogists are able to use preserved samples to create a DNA profile of the culprit and then use that profile to search public databases for any potential matches. In most cases, those profiles can end up linking to distant relatives of the culprit — say, a second or third cousin. By searching public records (such as death certificates and newspaper clippings), forensic genealogists are then able to construct a family tree that can point them right to the suspect, even if that suspect has never provided their DNA to any public database.

In this case, "Our genealogists, what they're going to do is independently build a family tree from this cousin's profile," Andrew Singer, an executive with Bode Technology, told NPR. He called it "a reverse family tree. ... We're essentially going backwards. We're starting with a distant relative and trying to work back toward our unknown sample."

Read where that search went and how the case became the oldest ever solved by DNA at NPR. -via Damn Interesting