Samsung’s Galaxy S21 Ultra has been getting a lot of attention for its very detailed moon photos thanks to its 100x ‘space zoom’ feature. While some are impressed, some are also skeptical as to the authenticity of the photos taken with the phone. Comparing the phone’s performance with the iPhone 12 Pro Max, the Galaxy S21 Ultra got the details of the moon’s surface, while the iPhone produced a blown-out orb. The stark difference in quality makes people question the authenticity of the photos taken with the Samsung model. Input magazine’s Raymond Wong investigates whether or not Samsung was faking the 100x Moon photos from the S21 Ultra.
An Aztec sculpture depicting a golden eagle has been discovered in Mexico. The 600-year-old sculpture, which measures 41.7 inches by 27.6 inches (106 by 70 centimeters), was carved into the floor of a structure at the foot of Templo Mayor, the temple that was built at the heart of Tenochtitlán, as Live Science detailed:
Artists created the bas-relief — a type of sculpture with raised images carved out of a stone background — in the mid-15th century during the reign of Moctezuma I.
Archaeologists from INAH discovered the carving in February 2020 as a part of the ninth season of the Templo Mayor Project, an ongoing excavation of the sacred site.
"It is a very beautiful piece that shows the great secrets that the Templo Mayor of Mexico Tenochtitlán has yet to reveal to us," Alejandra Frausto Guerrero, Mexico's secretary of culture, said in a statement. "Thanks to their [the archaeologists'] effort and dedication, we can continue to recover our history and our memory."
Sienna is 18 years old. That's very elderly for a dog. She's blind, but still eager to move around. How did owner Chad Lalande prevent Sienna from bumping her head into things? He designed and 3D printed this hoop.
Yes, there are headhoops for blind dogs on the market. But they're far too big for the little Pomeranian and Sienna is intolerant of anything that mounts on her head. So Lalande designed one that fits Sienna's little size and rests on a harness. Gizmodo reports:
In his design, your pet’s head goes through the center hoop, which is surrounded by a larger hoop held in place by an arm that goes over the top. The rest of the device fits over the back of your pet and has three slots to slide harness straps through to attach it.
Sienna mostly approves, too:
The finished product successfully protects her from bumping into things while still allowing her to prance about as she pleases. The only downside is that it works a little too well—she can’t get to her food or water bowl with the safety hoop on, so it needs to be periodically taken off throughout the day, Lalande said. Oh, and the jury is still out as far as Sienna herself is concerned.
“Sienna is still getting used to wearing it, but she complains less about it now,” Lalande said. “She’s 18 years old so she may not be around much longer, but if I can make her more comfortable in the time she has, all the better.”
Almost all the US presidents had pets in the White House of one kind or another. As you might expect, dogs and cats are the most common, but over the years, presidential pets have included cows, horses, goats, pigs, sheep, rabbits, bears, a hippo, a hyena, a raccoon, all kinds of birds from a macaw to a mockingbird, mice, and silkworms. At least two presidents had pet opossums.
No pet in presidential history embodies America in all its disgusting glory quite like Billy Possum, Herbert Hoover’s possum. A few years before Hoover’s arrival in D.C., pet superfan Grace Coolidge saved a raccoon on its way to the Thanksgiving table, named it Rebecca, and built it a treehouse, where it happily lived out the Coolidge administration. When the Coolidges left the White House, so did their pet racoon, leaving an empty racoon-sized treehouse on the White House lawn.
Enter Billy Possum. In some accounts, he was caught by White House staff on the grounds and then deliberately allowed to live in Rebecca’s treehouse; in others, he just asserted squatter’s rights, possum style.
But even the more mundane pets had their days.
George Washington had several dogs with memorable names—Sweetlips, Drunkard, Tippler, and Tipsy, to name a few—but only one dog who stole an entire ham, making Vulcan the obvious leader of the pack. An account of Vulcan’s heist is found in the memoirs of George Washington’s son George Washington Parke Custis.
Douglas Hughes built a kinetic sculpture of the TV game show Jeopardy! featuring the late host Alex Trebek. Three notable contestants work their buttons while Trebek moves around reading the questions. Add a little audio track from a real Jeopardy! game, and the whole thing comes to life. You can read the specifications of the build at BrickNerd. -via Boing Boing
Each language has its own grammar rules, which means that you cannot translate word-by-word and get anything that makes sense. It's the same with food, as every culture has its own unwritten rules that are easy to learn as you grow up with them, but difficult to understand in a cuisine that's new to you.
Yes, much like language, cuisine obeys grammatical rules that vary from country to country, and academics have documented and studied them. They dictate whether food is eaten sitting or standing; on the floor or at a table; with a fork or chopsticks or with fingers. Like sentence structure, explains Ken Albala, Professor of History at the University of the Pacific, a cuisine’s grammar can be reflected in the order in which it is served, and a grammar can dictate which foods can (or cannot) be paired, like cheese on fish, or barbecue sauce on ice cream.
The classic example is spaghetti and meatballs. In traditional Italian cuisine, the pasta is served first and the meat later, yet Americans put meatballs or meat sauce right on top of their pasta. However, as people and their cuisines move around the world, these rules are broken, either as a misunderstanding or an adaptation to local expectations. Sometimes they lead to arguments, but just as often they lead to delightful new meals. Read about food grammar at Atlas Obscura.
What does “working at home” mean for a house cat? An invasion of space, for one thing. That computer-generated voice usually drives me away from a video, but this time it stands in for the cat’s voice, and the cat really has some good things to say. Or at least funny things.
“I’m not sure what I did to deserve having my life ruined. I’ve been a perfectly adequate cat for most of my life.”
Russian matryoshka dolls fit inside one another. You might be surprised to learn they aren’t all that ancient- the first set was made in 1892. But how many dolls can you fit inside other dolls? The answer at this point is 51. Youlia Bereznitskaia holds the world record for her hand-painted set of Russian nesting dolls, shown above. The largest is one foot, 9.25 inches (53.97 cm) and the smallest is 0.125 inches (0.31 cm) tall. When I first learned that, I wondered why Bereznitskaia didn’t keep building them larger or smaller after gaining the world record in 2003, but there are more than 60 dolls in this picture, so maybe she did. -via TYWKIWDBI
Enjoying live music is rare or nonexistent these days, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. This new startup, called the Vertical Theater Group, hopes to let people experience live performances, and save the industry behind it as well. The company aims to launch touring performances by bringing a pop-up, prefabricated theater, which mandates social distancing by design:
The building itself is designed by Stufish Entertainment Architects, which has crafted tour stages for everyone from Monty Python to Beyoncé. Its core premise is to turn nearly every seat into a private balcony, squeezing groups of 4 to 12 people into each pod, adding up to a max capacity of 2,400. The floor level could be seated with six feet of social distance, or packed tighter if and when a pandemic isn’t our chief concern. The structure is made to adapt to acceptable densities over time.
Meanwhile, fresh air constantly flows in through its open-walled design (the structure can be wrapped during winter, but it’s more of a three-seasons design at heart), and a simple roof protects from rain. None of these eliminate the risk of contracting COVID-19, of course.
Hopefully the world doesn’t burn before the house finally gives up, right? The family home was a collaboration between Walton Architecture + Engineering, Crestwood Construction and interior designer Denise Kuriger. Located in Truckee, Nevada, the house is quite big, to say the least, with a large floor plan, from cozy window nooks to several outdoor areas:
The large floor-to-ceiling windows create a strong connection between the interior and the surroundings, allowing natural light to fill every single room. The entrance is marked by a wooden pivot door and reveals an open and airy social area with lots of comfortable seating, a big dining table and a stylish kitchen.
A big pine tree had to be removed from the plot during construction is order for the garage to be built. However, it didn’t go to waste and it was never forgotten. It became a 30′ long picnic table which is now in the backyard, a place for everyone to gather around and enjoy beautiful moments together. Because the house occupies the back corner of the plot, that made it possible to remain very open to the outdoors while also being a private and intimate retreat. This along with the way in which the house is structured turn it into a timeless and ideal family home truly built to last for generations.
The Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, also known as the Sagano Bamboo Forest, is located in Kyoto, Japan. This is Japan’s most famous bamboo forest, and one of the most popular tourist spots in the country. The forest has also been displayed in different merchandise, such as planners, shower curtains, tote bags, maxi dresses, neck gaiters and ruffled bathing suits . But does the actual location hold up to what can be seen in photos? CNBC found out:
Though reviews are positive — the forest gets 4.5 out of five stars on TripAdvisor’s traveler ratings — Arashiyama Bamboo Grove is rarely as quiet as photos suggest.
“Although it was raining and there were a lot of people,” said a recent TripAdvisor review, which added that “the whole experience was very enjoyable.”
Another was more blunt, stating: “Let’s be clear, it’s a nice place. But most of the time, you will not enjoy a peaceful stroll in a bamboo grove, feeling like you traveled the old days of the samurai. Instead, you will be surrounded by Instagram photo-snapping tourists … and most yukata-wearing girls you’ll see will be tourists.”
It’s less of the death of the Internet in general, but the death of the Internet as we know it. States are now weaponizing information to gain advantage against other countries and seed misinformation to disrupt another country’s peace or structure. So what’s the connection with the Internet that we know and love? Well, for starters, these countries will develop standards and technology that will separate their nations from the general or globally-used technology:
This will be more than the different “flavours” of the internet we are already seeing emerge. It will be a fundamental shift in how technology is developed, owned, accessed and leveraged by nation states and companies.
In 2021, new alliances will form around the creation of indigenous and sovereign versions of the technology we use to communicate and manage modern life. We will see standards bodies fragment and supply chains and infrastructure redesigned to align with these new realities.
States will start to take more drastic action to ensure that their supply chains are protected, and that their sovereign “silicon-to-service” technology stacks are insulated from the actions of others and enforce their national values.
The global debate around 5G security has led to a position where we will likely see two independent camps moving forward, ostensibly led by the US and China. They are likely to develop the standard in slightly different ways, driven by national requirements and values. China will accelerate its “Made in China 2025” strategy to ensure it owns and builds critical technologies. As a result, other nations will have to decide which camp better serves their national interest, since the only companies that produce this technology are bound to those countries. This will establish a pattern which will be repeated across other critical technologies.
This dog just saved an infant’s life! Junrell Fuentes Revilla was chased by a dog trying to get his attention while he was riding through the mountains of Cebu in the Philippines. Revilla’s curiosity won over and he followed the dog as it led Revilla to the top of the mountain. It’s a good thing that he followed the dog, or else he would have failed to find an abandoned infant at the dump site on top of the mountain!
Revilla immediately lent his assistance to the newborn and got it to the local police station. From there, the Department of Social Welfare got involved.
The local news story soon spread and caught the attention of Hope For Strays volunteers who were touched by the heroic dog’s actions in saving the abandoned newborn. They sent a group of searchers to the site in order to see if they could find the dog. And they did.
But what they weren’t expecting, was that the dog, named Blacky, wasn’t a stray at all. He actually lived with a family who loved him. Their family even had three other dogs.
The TV doctor answers your questions about covid vaccines until the real world starts to creep in. The parody PSA is only 3.5 minutes long; the rest is outtakes. -via reddit
How about a nice relaxing game? The game called Knots is a series of puzzles in which you are challenged to move tiles around to reveal continuous outlines, revealing loops that can take any shape. As you'd expect, they start out simple and become harder as you go. Level eight presents the above mess that you rearrange by clicking a tile and then its destination to reveal this image.
I don't know how many levels there are, since I haven't made it to the end yet, but there are at least 32, and somewhere along the way, you are confronted with more than one shape of the same color. You can turn the music off with a button in the lower left. -via Metafilter
