She's upset that these guys were following her and trying to get her attention. They just wanted to alert her of the gas hose she's dragging. Real or staged? Yeah, getting this embarrassment on video seems too good to be true, but it's also behavior that doesn't seem too out of the ordinary to have happened somewhere. It reminds me of the movie Trains, Planes, and Automobiles, when a car tried to flag down our heroes going the wrong way on the highway. -via Digg

The Toronto museum has acquired a sculpture made from 100,000 pieces of Lego. Hopefully it doesn’t get accidentally dropped, because imagine rebuilding the sculpture, let alone picking up the scattered Lego pieces! The huge sculpture was created by Ghanian-Canadian artist Ekow Nimako, who envisioned the ancient trading an ancient trading town in Mauritania one thousand years in the future: 

Kumbi Saleh was the centre of the trans-Saharan trade route at the height of the Ghana Empire, boosting cultural diffusion between Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Europe.

The work was the centrepiece of Nimako’s 2019 solo exhibition Building Black: Civilisations at the museum. It was commissioned as a response to the museum’s concurrent archaeological show Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time, which explored ancient trades routes in the Sahara and their cross-cultural impact, including their role in the spread of Islam.

The acquisition “enhances the museum’s ability to tell global stories about the contributions of Muslim civilisations across time”, says the museum's curator, Michael Chagnon. And it boosts the institution’s other efforts to spotlight Islamic studies, like a newly launched podcast series exploring Muslim arts and culture.

“His being a Toronto-based artist was also critical to our decision,” Chagnon says. “The museum is a cultural hub for our neighbourhood and part of our work—and part of any museum’s work—must be to support local artists.”

Image via The Art Newspaper 

A fragment of bone found in a southeastern Alaskan cave believed to be from a large mammal has been debunked. With new DNA evidence, the bone shard was given a new identity. The fragment, also known as PP-00128, did not belong to a bear but to a 10,150-year old ancient dog: 

“Ten or twenty years ago, we would have looked through a pile of bone fragments and not seen this,” says Durham University archaeologist Angela Perri, who was not involved in the new study. “This is a nice example of what can be done with some of these advanced methods,” she adds, noting that mass screening of archaeological material can turn up new clues that might otherwise be missed. Advances in how ancient DNA is extracted, corrected for any modern contaminants and sequenced have allowed researchers to quickly assess the genetics of organisms much faster than ever before, building a growing database that can be used to detect broader patterns. The more ancient DNA that’s recovered, analyzed and placed in the database, the bigger the sample researchers have to work from when trying to understand how organisms—be it dogs or humans— relate to each other.

Image via The Smithsonian

In an effort to reduce the large amounts of leftover materials (which usually end up as waste) produced by the laser-cutting process in the industry, researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) have developed a new tool called Fabricaide. The tool could help designers save time and resources on their projects.

"By giving feedback on the feasibility of a design as it's being created, Fabricaide allows users to better plan their designs in the context of available materials," says Ph.D. student Ticha Sethapakdi, who led the development of the system alongside MIT Professor Stefanie Mueller, undergraduate Adrian Reginald Chua Sy, and Carnegie Mellon University Ph.D. student Daniel Anderson.

Fabricaide has a workflow that the team says significantly shortens the feedback loop between design and fabrication. The tool keeps an archive of what the user has done, tracking how much of each material they have left. It also allows the user to assign multiple materials to different parts of the design to be cut, which simplifies the process so that it's less of a headache for multi-material designs.

Learn more about this tool over at TechXplore.

Cool!

(Image Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology/ TechXplore)

The Nintendo GameCube is something I’m not really familiar with, a console that I usually forget when someone asks me to list the Nintendo consoles I know in chronological order. I didn’t grow up with any console except for my current Nintendo Switch, but some consider the old game console to be ‘the middle child in every aspect it could’ve been.’ The GameCube was actually more powerful than Sony’s PS2, and most of its good features were underappreciated. SVG features some of the better games that make playing the console worthwhile. If you’re like me, curious to know about the games that the console featured, check their full list here. What’s your favorite GameCube game? 

Image via SVG 

If you don’t have the older consoles but would like to play some of the games made for those game consoles, surely you’ve heard of emulation! Emulators are available on Android (sadly not on iPhones), and could run NES, SNES, or Nintendo DS games. It’s easy to find the right emulator just by searching the Play Store. But how do you download the games you’d play on your emulator of choice? Android Center has got you covered! Check their full guide to Android emulation here. 

Image via Android Central

Jamie Hill spotted a northern cardinal that was bright red on the right side, and brownish white on the left side. The Pennsylvania resident spotted the rare bilateral gynandromorph, a bird divided right down the middle, half male and half female,” behind a residence in Warren County, Pennsylvania: 

He'd been alerted to it by a friend of the homeowner, who wanted to remain anonymous, and Hill didn't want to reveal the exact location.

He said the rare cardinal "behaved totally normal." But, in theory, he said that it could mate with either a female or male cardinal, depending on which of its hormones were active during mating season.

A similar bird recorded by an Erie couple was featured in a National Geographic article in January 2019. That bird, which was red on one side and brown on the other, was spotted and photographed by Jeffrey and Shirley Caldwell.

Image via USA Today 

At the turn of the 20th century, Thomas Edison experimented with an electric car. It was not the first electric car, but Edison's battery was different. This battery had its drawbacks, one which may turn out to be a benefit 120 years later.

Edison had outfitted his car with a new type of battery that he hoped would soon be powering vehicles throughout the country: a nickel-iron battery. Building on the work of the Swedish inventor Ernst Waldemar Jungner, who first patented a nickel-iron battery in 1899, Edison sought to refine the battery for use in automobiles.

Edison claimed the nickel-iron battery was incredibly resilient, and could be charged twice as fast as lead-acid batteries. He even had a deal in place with Ford Motors to produce this purportedly more efficient electric vehicle.

But the nickel-iron battery did have some kinks to work out. It was larger than the more widely used lead-acid batteries, and more expensive. Also, when it was being charged, it would release hydrogen, which was considered a nuisance and could be dangerous.

In the 21st century, you've heard about the possibilities of hydrogen power. The problem is that it's difficult to produce hydrogen. A research team from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands are revisiting Edison's nickel-iron battery to assess its function in both power storage and hydrogen production, and the results so far look pretty good. They named their version of the battery the "battolyser," a gadget that Batman would be proud to use. Read about the potential of the battolyser at BBC Future. -via Damn Interesting

Matt McCarthy describes his own cats as sweet and cuddly creatures, but on the day when he saw his cats play with a bug that entered his home, McCarthy remembered something about cats: they are apex predators. A thought then crossed his mind: “How would cats react to me and my wife if we were that small?” This resulted in the creation of these photos which depict giant cats in various cities.

See the photos over at Sad and Useless.

Would you be scared if a giant cat suddenly appeared in your city?

(Image Credit: Sad and Useless)

You might have never heard of the Great Smog of 1952, or you may have been introduced to it by an episode of The Crown on Netflix, like I was. While London is notoriously foggy, it was infinitely worse than usual on December 5, 1952, when a combination of fog and air pollution reduced visibility to only a few feet.     

The smog smothered the city for five days. Transportation came to a virtual standstill. Flights were grounded and trains cancelled. Only the Underground was running. Ambulance services were affected, leaving people to find their own way to hospitals. The fog even seeped indoors though windows and doors. Plays and concerts were cancelled because the audience were unable to see the stage.

Remarkably, there was no panic as Londoners were accustomed to fog. But the death toll increased. Most of the victims were the very young and the elderly with pre-existing respiratory problems. Estimates of how many people died during that period vary from 6,000 to as high as 12,000.

The smog was produced by a combination of weather, geography, and several sources of air pollution. Read about the factors that produced the smog and what's been done about them at Amusing Planet.

A TikTok video asked people to share the dumbest tattoo they ever got. Leah Holland wins this one, although it was an unfortunate accident of timing.

Leah Holland, 25, had wanted to get this specific tattoo for two years before she finally did it.

"Basically I had a friend that said this quote about me," she told BuzzFeed News. "We were just talking about things that we really admire about the other person, and he said, 'You courageously and radically refuse to wear a mask.'"

She said she's the type of person who thinks it's pointless to pretend you're something you're not, so she liked the quote enough to get it tattooed.

She got it done on March 4, 2020. Two days later, Kentucky announced its first case of COVID-19.

Holland is not anti-mask, and was so mortified as time went on that she spent most of the summer wearing a cardigan. Read her story at Buzzfeed.

(Image credi: Leah Holland)

The meme that just won't die has gotten the LEGO treatment! LEGO artist Ochre Jelly went ahead and put his toy pixels to work and created sculptures of the Hollywood Housewives, and Smudge the cat.



And then he uses these images to illustrate his own (mostly LEGO-themed) jokes. Click the image to the right to see more.



And since I've discovered Ochre Jelly's Instagram account, you can continue reading to see more of his internet memes in LEGO that you may have missed or haven't seen in a while.

It is often said that our imagination knows no bounds, and time and time again the phrase is proven to be true by artists and inventors alike. Imagination does have no limits, and we only have to open our minds to the countless possibilities.

In this series of photos, visual artist Helga Stentzel shows us that, with just a little imagination and creativity, ordinary household objects could be turned into images of animals and people.

Laughing Squid shares some of her photos. Why don’t you check it out?

(Image Credit: made_by_helga/ Instagram)

The Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts in 1620 and began a settlement called Plymouth. That's where our history classes about the region begin, but what happened before that? New England was home to 69 villages, each with a few thousand residents of the Mashpee Wampanoag people. The spot where the PIlgrams settled was previously a town called Patuxet. Wampanoag historian Steven Peters tells us what happened to Patuxet.

In 1616, we think the village of Patuxet becomes ground zero for what became the Great Dying. There was a plague that ripped through the Wampanoag nation where there are estimates of over 100,000 Wampanoag dying in just three short years. There were accounts of a French fishing ship that had wrecked off the coast of Patuxet, and of some of the fishermen coming into the village exhibiting signs of sickness, with yellowing of the skin and fever, and dying. Shortly after that, the plague just starts to rip right through the Wampanoag nation. Everyone in Patuxet either dies or fled the village, and they never returned. And that’s how the village of Patuxet ends up vacant in 1620 when the Pilgrims arrived. We know that the Pilgrims knew about the Great Dying, and they also must have known that that village of Patuxet was empty when deciding to make that Plymouth Colony.

The Pilgrims survived with the help of the Wampanoag, especially Tisquantum, who spoke English. Read what was going on in Massachusetts before the Pilgrims landed at Atlas Obscura.

Juanita Moody dropped out of college in 1943 to serve in the US Signal Intelligence Service, analyzing coded messages during World War II. She stayed on after the war, rising in the ranks of the SIS despite being both a woman and a civilian, until she was in charge of intercepting data from most of the world. By the 1960s, that included Cuba. The SIS had by then become the NSA, charged with data collection which was then handed over the CIA for analysis. That became an issue when it came to the Soviet buildup of arms in Cuba, as the White House wanted to be kept up-to-date with any new information, and Moody's boss Louis Tordella was wary of skipping over the CIA.

Impressed by her expertise, alarmed by what she had to say, and perhaps concerned that no one was providing the White House with this level of detail about an aggressive military buildup in Cuba, [assistant secretary of defense Edward] Lansdale asked Moody to write up her findings. Along with a few colleagues, she spent the next three days and nights compiling “wheelbarrow loads of material” into what she called “a special little summary for the assistant secretary of defense.” When she was done, Moody urged Tordella to “publish” her report, meaning circulate it among the intelligence agencies, the White House, the State Department and the military. Cautious not to step outside NSA’s prescribed role, Tordella rebuffed her, but he did send it to Lansdale, who sent it to President Kennedy, who returned it with his initials—signaling he’d read it. “I told my troops, ‘Keep this updated,’” Moody said of her report. “‘If you get anything to add to it, do it immediately and tell me.’”

Over the next few months, Moody repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, pleaded with Tordella to release her updated report. By early 1962, she said she was “really getting scared.” The amount of military equipment piling up in Cuba didn’t square with the Soviets’ repeated assertions that it was all “defensive.” Details about Soviet technicians “moving around in Cuba” were especially worrisome, and by this point the NSA likely knew the Soviets had moved surface-to-air missiles (not to be confused with ballistic nuclear missiles) to Cuba as well.  

Moody was determined to rush data to the president, and the CIA was not happy about it. Read the story of Juanita Moody's role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the rest of the NSA career, at Smithsonian magazine.

(Image credit: Department of Defense)