Core 77 introduces us to the snow roller, an old piece of technology that was used to clear roads before diesel-powered snowplows roamed the streets, hunting for powdery prey. Snow rollers were often weighted with stones to pack down the snow. This particular images dates to 1930 in Maine, so such machines exist within living memory.

A fully-functional one still exists, thanks to the restoration work of craftsmen associated with the Bartlett Historical Society in New Hampshire. You can find process photos and descriptions of this amazing reconstruction here.

There’s nothing as relatable as a Star Wars analogy to explain something totally unrelated. Randall Munroe goes back to the original Star Wars movie (now called A New Hope) to show how the newfangled COVID-19 vaccines work, at xkcd.

The various parts of the analogy are broken down at Explain xkcd. You’ll learn even more in the discussion at Metafilter.

(ImageCredit: Randall Munroe/xkcd/CC BY-NC 2.5)

The game City Guesser has the same premise of GeoGuessr in that you are to guess where in the world you are. But City Guesser gives you clues in the form of video instead of a still picture. I tried the US only version, and was presented with quite a few towns that I’d never been to. The best strategy in that case is to look for clues like street signs, area codes, and native plants. They aren’t all big cities, either. But it’s a lot of fun! It’s not a competitive game, and I don’t think you are judged on how long you let the video play. The answer key tells you how many miles off you are, which is embarrassing when it’s thousands of miles, but if I got within 100 miles, I considered that a win. I did a lot better after I realized the map you use to guess has a zoom feature! Try it out yourself- you may become addicted to City Guesser.

When you feel you’re pretty good at the game, you can step up to versions at the bottom of the main page that limit your movement and your time, or even a multiplayer version.   -via Kottke

JRR Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings was published in the 1950s, which made it the perfect fantasy fodder for young Baby Boomers. Some of them went on to become songwriters and entertainers who used the world of Middle Earth for inspiration. It wasn’t just Led Zeppelin, although a list of 11 songs could be dominated by the group. No, this list only features one song per artist, and for Zep, that one song is “Ramble On.”

   “’T was in the darkest depths of Mordor
    I met a girl so fair
    But Gollum, and the evil one
    Crept up and slipped away with her.”

If Plant’s Middle-earth references in “Ramble On” seem a bit too blatant, he has a ready-made defense: “I just want to hold up my hand and say, ‘OK, I was 21 when I wrote that,’” he told the Santa Barbara Independent in 2013. Plant has also expressed some regret that he didn’t leverage his rocker chops for important causes more often during the band’s heyday. “My peer group were writing substantial pieces of social commentary, and I was willowing along the Welsh borders thinking about Gollum,” he told Planet Rock Magazine in 2019. He still likes “Stairway to Heaven,” though.

The list has songs from Joni Mitchell, Rush, Megadeth, and more, all with music videos. You’ll find it at Mental Floss.

How many pop culture characters can you portray in claymation (stop-motion with clay) if you only have green clay? Filmmaker Trent Shy shows us eight of them. After the short animation, we get a fast-moving version that shows the work he put into it. But what if you only had blue clay? That video was his next project.



There are 14 blue characters! Do you know them all? -via Laughing Squid

#Amsterdam #ijsnietoveralgoed #keizersgracht pic.twitter.com/mhZAuCQ9x6

— Geertje (@ikkomuitdrenthe) February 14, 2021

The Dutch, for whom ice skating is both a tradition and a weapon, know their craft well. This video from Amsterdam shows a man skating over too-thin ice and crashing into the cold water below. He's one of many Dutchmen enjoying perfect urban skating weather right now.

Breaking through the ice is no big deal. I suspect that he actually intended to crash (since he's in a swimsuit) and views crawling out of the wintery waters as, at most, an annoyance rather than a life-threatening emergency. His bow, at the end, shows perfect aplomb.

-via Aaron Starmer

Yes, that's Thanos. His entire head fits neatly on a coffee bean carved by Valeriano Fatica.

Fatica lives in Oratino, a small town in central Italy where he was born and raised. He worked in his family restaurant and began exploring art by carving watermelons for the buffet. This led to a food sculpture career that includes cheese, truffles, fruits, and, recently coffee beans. You'll recognize many characters from Fatica's favorite comic books.

-via Born in Space

This morning, I greeted the dense blanket of snow in Texas with a bike ride. The snow did not make for easy travel. Perhaps this product called reTyre might help. The company of the same name, which is based in Norway, makes snow treads that zip onto bike tires.

You start with a base tire which has half of the zipper. Then you can add one of three different treads for ice, snow, and, I think, mud.

-via Toxel

It's in a bar in Germany, but, having worked a public libraries, I wish that this appliance was more widely available outside of German bars. Andrew Bulkeley, a journalist who has spent a lot of time in Germany, explains that you use a speibecken as a hygienic place to vomit. He learned this while getting drunk at a particular bar in Germany:

“It’s for when you drink too much and you have to puke,” he announced, as if every bar in the world had a Speibecken. The entire bar looked at me with great sympathy, wondering with their eyes if this was the first bar I’d ever been in.

This must happen to every ex-pat every now and then – you stumble into something the natives think is part of the human condition but isn’t. It’s that weird moment where Germany doesn’t know it’s doing something strange and you have to be the one to break the bad news.

The handle on the left side is an excellent feature, given that users may feel unbalanced while using the speibecken.

-via Core 77 | Photo: jingjangjones

Twenty-five years after the release of the classic Nintendo Game Boy games, one user has revealed on Reddit that you can get some free items after a certain event in the games. According to the Reddit user, in order to get the five free Pokeballs from Professor Oak, the player needs to have won the rival fight next to Viridian City, you can’t have the Boulder Badge, and you can’t have any Pokeballs yet. The player needs to not buy or find any Pokeballs: 

What does this mean? Well, as the Reddit user further notes, this means that not only do you have to beat the second Rival fight with just your starter Pokemon (which would require a fair bit of grinding), but you need to do all of this and then think to head back to Pallet Town to talk to Professor Oak. And if you played either game, you'll know there's zero reason to do this. That said, if you do all of this, you will get five free Pokeballs for your troubles.

Image via wikipedia

Even rodents need love. A degu called Greg is still searching for a companion. This small rodent entered the Blue Cross rehoming center in Burford, Oxfordshire, last November together with its fellow Charlie. But because of significant dental issues, the veterinarian had to put Charlie to sleep. Since then, Greg has been alone.

"We’re now hoping to find him a female friend, but he so far hasn’t had any interest. We hope that he finds love before Valentine’s Day.

"Degus really don’t cope well on their own, so we really want to find Greg a new best friend as soon as possible."

Well, I hope he will find a great companion pretty soon.

(Image Credit: PA/ Independent)

The Venus Flytrap is a carnivorous plant that can be found on the East Coast of the US. It was used as a sample for an experiment about the magnetic signals on plants. Though magnetic fields on plants are weak, scientists discovered that there is a tool which can measure its magnetics impulses.

"We have been able to demonstrate that action potentials in a multicellular plant system produce measurable magnetic fields, something that had never been confirmed before," said Anne Fabricant, a graduate candidate in Professor Dmitry Budker's research group at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM).

Living organisms are known to generate magnetic fields, and at least one scientist has even suggested that some people can sense magnetic fields. But there's still a lot we don't know about magnetic fields in plants. In this research, the scientists used sensitive atomic magnetometers instead of bulky superconducting-quantum-interference-device (SQUID) magnetometers that are typically used in plant studies.

The atomic magnetometers showed that the flytraps were producing magnetic signals that have maximum amplitudes of 0.5 picotesla (a level that is millions of times lower than our planet's magnetic field). "The signal magnitude recorded is similar to what is observed during surface measurements of nerve impulses in animals," said Fabricant.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

Ultra Safe Nuclear Technologies, a Seattle-based company, suggested using nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) engines to fly the astronauts from Earth to Mars. The proposal is said to potentially transport humans to Mars in three months' time. That is much faster than the current engine design that would take almost nine months for a crewed mission to reach the red planet.

Michael Eades, director of engineering at USNC-Tech, says that nuclear-powered rockets would be more powerful and twice as efficient as the chemical engines used today, meaning they could travel further and faster, while burning less fuel.

"Nuclear technology will expand humanity's reach beyond low Earth orbit, and into deep space," he tells CNN.

As well as enabling human space travel, it could open up space for galactic business opportunities, he says.

Though this might be a good plan, there are still some questions about safety which need further study.

(Image Credit: USNC-TECH/ CNN)

Researchers have found an ancient henge in the Preseli Hills of west Wales which is missing some stones that line up with the dimensions of the bluestones of Stonehenge. The newly-discovered henge, called Waun Mawn, is rather close to the quarry from which the bluestones were unearthed. It appears that the residents built a henge from local rock, then for some reason up and moved to what is now Salisbury, and took their massive stones with them.   

At 360 feet (110 meters) wide, both Waun Mawn and the ditch surrounding Stonehenge have similar diameters, and both monuments were oriented to align with the midsummer solstice sunrise, according to the research. What’s more, a bluestone from Stonehenge features a distinctive cross-section that nicely matches an empty stonehole found at Waun Mawn. Rock chips found in the same hole were also found to match those found at Stonehenge.

The discovery also helps to explain some unanswered questions about the people who lived in west Wales at the time. Preseli Hills was an important and densely populated region in Neolithic Britain, but evidence of these people from 2000 to 3000 BCE is practically non-existent. It’s “as if they just vanished,” said Pearson in the statement, adding that these people possibly migrated, “taking their stones—their ancestral identities—with them.”

The next question is why they moved. Taking the stones meant it was clearly a permanent migration. Read about the research and how the connection between Waun Mawn and Stonehenge was made at Gizmodo.

(Image credit: Flickr user thegarethwiscombe)

Science has codified what many cat owners already knew. You can't force a cat to love you, but if you're a nice person in their eyes, they will come around. But first, you have to know what "nice" is to a cat. If you already know this stuff, then it's a video full of nice cats.