That was hard-earned loot, and it’s unfair to wipe them out for no reason. If it’s a technical glitch, hopefully the developers sort it out and give out some resources in return for the missing in-game items. Outriders, developed by People Can Fly, was released on April 1 with a lot of bugs. One of the many glitches was a nasty hiccup that, under unclear circumstances, wipes out all the loot players have collected. Ouch. Mashable has more details: 

Worse, the issue seems to be most prevalent among players who have reached the latest stages of the game and who, by extension, have spent the most time playing. 

Outriders is an action-RPG that's a bit like Destiny meets Diablo. Which is to say, loot — namely, the weapons and armor you pick up along the way — is central to the DNA of this experience. You're meant to amass large piles of stuff, all color-coded by rarity, and then sort through everything in search of the stats and capabilities that best suit the character you're playing and the way you've built out their space magic powers.

No one's clear on exactly what causes the "delete your whole inventory" glitch. It may or may not be tied to the online matchmaking that occurs when you try to play with other people online. That's how it came for me. 

Image via Mashable

You may be surprised to learn that the Florida State Fair will be held in Tampa from April 22-May 2. That's two months later than normal, due to the pandemic. But the pandemic is not over, hence the surprise. At any rate, fair vendors are going the extra mile with their gastronomic experiments -meaning fair food. New dishes that will be offered this year include:

Pickle Pizza
Flaming Hot Cheetos Funnel Cake
Peanut Butter and Spicy Jelly Tater Tots
Buffalo Chicken Sundae
Gelato Nachos
Deep Fried Caramel Apple Sundae
The Pig Rig

While a couple of these foods are perfectly normal yet deceptive (for example, the Buffalo Chicken Sundae contains no ice cream), others actually combine flavors in such a weird way that eating one will have to be the result of a dare. Read a description of each of these new fair foods at the Tampa Bay Times. -via Fark

(Image credit: Florida State Fair)

Fionnán O'Connor is a respected historian of Irish whiskey. He has not only consumed a lot of it, but has carefully studied its production over the centuries. For this doctoral program at Technological University Dublin, he has revived many old whiskeys from "mashbills", which are lists of ingredients that distillers used. Irish Central quotes him about the project:

"We’re talking to ghosts by distilling these mashbills again," O'Connor said. 

"The mashbills chosen are creating a map, a language about how all these things might have worked," he said. 

"The bulk of these mashbills haven’t been tasted in over 70 years and the earliest ones I’ve found come from the early 1800s.

"It would be a shame if all that history and those flavors were lost. This project has been about making up for lost time." 

-via Atlas Obscura | Image: Boann Distillery

You might be surprised to learn how often flights are delayed because of bees. Ben Shertzer is the wildlife administrator at Pittsburgh International Airport. In 2012, had to call in master beekeeper Steve Repasky to deal with swarms of honeybees that had attached themselves to planes. Since then, Shertzer has learned a lot about bees from Repasky, and how to keep them off the aircraft.

Shertzer and Repasky approached airport management about placing hives on the property in 2013, but were told the project didn’t fit the airport’s vision. It wasn’t until Christina Cassotis came on board as CEO in 2015 that things turned around. Turns out, Cassotis’ grandfather was a beekeeper. The airport currently has 110 colonies—almost four million honeybees—spread out over 8,000 acres.

The program benefits the airport as well as the honeybees. “Swarming is reproductive behavior,” says Repasky. “In the spring, a healthy colony will split in half, and will take off in a swarm to locate a new home, traveling upwards of a mile or more. While they’re searching, they’ll stop to rest on the first solid object they can find, whether it’s the wing of an aircraft, a runway taxi light, or a luggage cart.” To combat this behavior, Shertzer and Repasky have placed 15 “swarm traps” around the perimeter of the airfield offering the bees alternative landing spots. It’s worked: Whereas the airport used to have 15 or more swarms a year interrupting air operations, in the past year they’ve had just three.

The program has other benefits besides keeping planes bee-free, and has spread to other airports. Read about the bee-havior that makes it worthwhile to keep beehives at airports at Air & Space magazine.

(Image credit: Steve Repasky/Pittsburgh International Airport)

Studies into art preferences reveal that the artwork people are attracted to can give insight into our personality. A person’s interest in art is strongly correlated to certain personality traits more than to social class, age, or gender. Widely accepted personality theory the Big Five comprises personality traits that hail from art preference research, as Discover magazine details: 

The model asserts that each personality is comprised of a combination of five core traits: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism (known by the acronym OCEAN). Rather than lumping a person into binary categories like introvert or extrovert, the Big Five Model asserts that each trait is a spectrum, and everyone lies somewhere between the two extremes.

Each of these Big Five traits is informed by a host of facets that further describe someone’s personality. For instance, those who exhibit a high level of openness tend to be curious, independent, and imaginative, while those who are more conscientious are often organized, thoughtful and goal-oriented. In addition to art preferences, the Big Five Model is used to predict other human behaviors, like health consciousness, marital satisfaction and job performance.

Not only do personality traits predict whether you might like art in general, but they can also predict the style of artwork you're attracted to. A study in 1973 found that complexity in art was the primary distinction in how different personalities choose their favorite artwork: open personalities are partial to more complex paintings while conservative personalities like more straightforward, traditional pieces.

Image via Discover Magazine 

Arnold Shortman in "Hey Arnold!" (1996). pic.twitter.com/6AgT9oHu3Z

— Found a good outfit. (@foundgoodoutfit) December 31, 2020

The Twitter account called Found a good outfit. is run by comedian Brady O'Callahan. Each Tweet is an instruction on how you can dress like a character from movies, TV, comics, video games, etc. etc. with clothing found on the internet.

Daffy Duck in "Duck Amuck" (1953). pic.twitter.com/9mszybmIL1

— Found a good outfit. (@foundgoodoutfit) March 9, 2021

It's not meant to be an exact recreation of a look, like cosplay, but more like a way to evoke recognition. In other words, if you dress this way, people will be reminded of that character. And it's not all characters- some of the fashion tips are for ways to recreate a consumer product or a logo.

24 Caplets Box in Imodium A-D (date unknown). pic.twitter.com/uDhWo11fMV

— Found a good outfit. (@foundgoodoutfit) March 19, 2021

There are a ton of these at the Twitter account, some funnier than others. And for some reason, "apron" always get translated as "handbag." -via Metafilter 

As they do every year, Screen Junkies takes a closer look at the movies nominated for the Best Picture award in an Honest Trailer. In a normal year, this would bring a smile of recognition for the movies you saw recently. This year, it may be an introduction to a bunch of films you've never heard of, since theaters have been closed most of the year. As strange as it seems, being nominated for an Oscar may be the only real promotion these movies will get. The Academy Awards will be televised on April 25.

It’s as if these artworks came straight from a fantasy novel (like the golden egg used in the Triwizard Tournament from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire). Australian artist Ben of Ben's Worx creates handmade wood and resin sculptures to hold magnificent and highly-detailed mountainscapes and galaxies within them. My Modern Met has more details: 

Ben starts with dried pieces of burl wood that act as the eggs’ base. The natural contours of the timber look like rocky terrains already, but their surfaces are brought to life with colorful layers of metallic ink and glitter. Next, Ben places the wooden pieces into plastic cups and covers them with clear resin. Once cast and dry, he cuts away the plastic and begins forming the perfect egg shape using a lathe.

When complete, each handmade dragon egg sculpture looks like a prop from a fantasy film. Some pieces even feature tiny trees, flowers, and other elements within the resin, making them appear as if they’re their own little ecosystem. It’s easy to imagine miniature alien life living in the glittering terrain.

Image via My Modern Met 

Russian inventor Eduard Luzyanin took a 150cc scooter engine and tracks from a snowmobile to invent the Hamster. Three pairs of shock absorbers help ease the ride, although steering it is hard: all the rider can do is lean into turns to shift directions. But it can move as quickly as 27 MPH.

Luzyanin has equipped his ultimate commuter vehicle for hard conditions. There's a gas can mounted on the back, as well as survival tools and 49 feet of rope. I can't wait for this to hit the American market!

-via Core 77

By some definitions, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is the movie with the longest theatrical run ever. It has been shown in theaters at least once a week for more than 45 years! But wait- theaters were closed for the majority of 2020. How can a movie continue a run when theaters are closed?   

Some things are constants in a chaotic world: Death, taxes and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” which has played at Portland’s Clinton Street Theater every Saturday night for 43 years.

So, on March 15, 2020, when the theater was forced to close due to coronavirus restrictions, one man was determined not to break the streak.

For the next 54 Saturdays, Nathan Williams came to an empty theater to screen the film, sometimes with a friend, sometimes by himself.

While this may sound sad, there are worse ways to spend Saturday nights alone during a pandemic. On April 3, the theater welcomed back a limited audience for the usual Saturday night screening. Read how Rocky Horror became such a tradition at the Clinton Street Theater that even quarantine couldn't stop it at The Oregonian. -via Boing Boing

PS: The Clinton Street Theater also spent 2020 using their marquee for fun and awareness. See more of these at Instagram.

Listen, face masks are essential. It’s important that we make them more breathable and comfortable to wear. Widely-used masks are harder to breathe through, because they are basically a filter strapped in front of your face. Kylie Smith worked behind the scenes to try fix this current issue, teaming up with Rick Smith to create the Exa Mask, a face mask that factored air-flow into its design: 

To achieve this, the Exa Mask uses a 3-part design. The first part is its unique AirFrame – a band that sits around your nose. The AirFrame comes with ear-hoops that secures the apparatus around your ears (like most masks). It features a medical-grade silicone nose-piece that creates a seal around your nose, ensuring the air you breathe through your nostrils doesn’t travel upwards and fog your glasses, or downwards, making your lips and chin feel sweaty. The air only travels forward and backward, through the Exa Mask’s replaceable PFE 97 filters (the second part of its design) These filters are placed at a calculated distance from your nostrils, ensuring the air you breathe is 97% purified. They never touch your nostrils either, making the mask-wearing experience much more comfortable. The Exa Mask’s third part is its snap-on Mask Shield, which covers your nose and mouth, protecting you with an additional layer of security from particles. Inspired by Apple’s simple and sophisticated MagSafe feature, the Exa Mask’s AirFrame comes with magnetic rings that let you snap the fabric shield on in place. The AirFrame gives the fabric shield its structure, so it never presses against your face as you breathe, and the magnetic feature means you can easily replace shields on a whim, periodically changing them when they need to be washed, or when you want to choose a Mask Shield that matches your outfit.

Image via Yanko Design 

A bear wandered into Deedee Mueller's house in the hills of Pasadena, California, Saturday looking thin and hungry, like it had just come out of hibernation. The Muellers weren't home, but their two tiny terriers, Squirt and Mei Mei, were. The family's security cameras tell the story, which has a bit of a surprise ending. -via Digg

Webcams can be so impersonal. Why not make them more realistic? That's what Marc Teyssier, a researcher at Saarland University has done. His Eyecam is a "design fiction prototype" for a new type of webcam and watches you constantly, moving and blinking in realistic fashion. It even even changes expression as it passes judgment upon you. Thus Eyecam is a warning about the future:

Sensing devices are everywhere, up to the point where we become aware of their presence.

-via The Awesomer

Dmanisi, located in Tbilisi, Georgia is a site that helps researchers in understanding a lot of aspects about our past. From using ancient proteins extracted from a rhinoceros tooth found in Dmanisi that let researchers build family trees and determine the relationships between different species, to the site assisting anthropologists in analyzing the brain organization of   the Dmanisi hominins, disproving that many quintessentially human behaviors require big, complex brains, the site is regarded as one of the most important sites in the story of human evolution: 

“The Dmanisi hominins had surprisingly primitive, ape-like brains,” says Ponce de Leon. “However, (they) ventured out of Africa, produced a variety of tools, exploited animal resources, and cared for elderly people. These people with their small, ape-like brains were able to master cognitively demanding tasks. This is really astounding. They provide a completely new perspective on what these behaviors mean in terms of brain evolution.”

In addition to making tools and caregiving—one of the five partial skulls found at the site belonged to an elderly, toothless individual who would have been unable to eat on their own—the Dmanisi hominins, early members of the genus Homo, managed to survive in the middle of what appears to be an extraordinary concentration of big carnivores.

Image via Atlas Obscura 

Intel has released a presentation on its newest tool to combat hate speech. The software, called Bleep, was developed in partnership with Spirit AI. Bleep uses AI to censor hate speech in real time during gameplay. True to its name, the tool ‘bleeps’ out offending language, much to the Internet’s amusement, mostly thanks to how users can toggle on and off specific ‘hate speech categories’, as Polygon details: 

 The screenshot depicts the user settings for the software and shows a sliding scale where people can choose between “none, some, most, or all” of categories of hate speech like “racism and xenophobia” or “misogyny.” There’s also a toggle for the N-word.

“The intent of this has always been to put that that nuanced control in the hands in the users,” Marcus Kennedy, general manager of Intel’s gaming division, told Polygon over video chat. As Kennedy explained it to Polygon, Intel intended for those sliders to give players options, depending on the situation. Certain kinds of shit talk might be acceptable, even playful, when shared between friends, but might not be acceptable when it’s a stranger shouting at you.

Intel also clarified that the technology was not final, and could change between now and release. Still, the idea that people would be OK with some, but not a lot of hate speech came off as absurd to people online. So, as a result, people are now making a ton of memes and jokes that belittle the menu settings. One tweet jokes, “computer, today i feel like being a little bit misogynistic.”

Honestly, it’s certainly a step in the right direction, regardless whether the toggle options are kinda funny. 

image via Twitter