If you’re someone who always has to explain something to someone, then this class might be helpful to you. If I were to take a guess, this class is like debate class or course, but way friendlier.
Well, what do you think?
Image via Engrish.com
Or maybe it's the same monolith that inexplicably appeared, then disappeared, in Utah last week. The construction of this monolith on Pine Mountain in Atascadero, California is definitely cruder, suggesting that's an imitation of the original alien object. Atascadero News describes it:
The three-sided obelisk appeared to be made of stainless steel, 10-feet tall and 18 inches wide. The object was welded together at each corner, with rivets attaching the side panels to a likely steel frame inside. The top of the monument did not show any weld marks, and it appears to be hollow at the top, and possibly bottom.
Unlike its Utah sibling, the Atascadero obelisk was not attached to the ground, and could be knocked over with a firm push. The Atascadero News estimates it weighs about 200 pounds.
The material appeared to be stainless steel, similar to a hood above the stove in a commercial kitchen.
So it's more likely to be from pranksters rather than our actual alien visitors.
-via Celine D. Ryan | Photo: Atascadero News
In the world of lizards, males who have flashier colors are more likely to attract mates. Having flashy colors, however, is a double-edged sword; aside from being able to attract females, flashier male lizards are also more likely to attract predators. A study, which was published in the journal Evolutionary Ecology, proved this phenomenon.
To attract females' notice, male anoles have dewlaps: colorful extendable flaps of skin under their chins. In most species of anole, dewlaps evolved to be as noticeable as possible within the environment, given an environment's predominant colors and lighting conditions.
[...]
While some water anoles have dramatic red-orange flaps, others have more muted colors, more of a dull brownish-red.
[...]
To prove that flashier males face greater risks of being attacked, the researchers created clay models with colored dewlaps—some bright, some more muted…
Learn more about this study over at PHYS.org.
(Image Credit: J. Montemarano/ PHYS.org)
During the Civil War and Reconstruction Era, the Manning family was beset with tragedy after tragedy. They lived in the town of Holly Springs, Mississippi. In 1875, the couple, Van and Mittie Manning, watched as a second child, Mittie, died in front of them
The mother, Mary Mitting, went insane with grief. Atlas Obscura describes the unusual grave they erected for the little girl:
When it came time to bury her second child, Mary had a breakdown. She refused to allow Van or anyone else to place her daughter into the ground. A compromise was made and Mittie Manning was buried in a sarcophagus above ground.
However, this did not fully console Mary, who wanted to be able to see the face of her daughter. In the marble slab that covered the tomb, a sliding window was installed, allowing Mary to see her daughter.
According to some local legends, as Mittie’s body began to decompose, Mary became insane from grief and refused to leave the grave. Eventually, Van was forced to bury Mittie underground. The original slab, with its window, was left in place.
Photos: HauntedHolly
There's someone for everyone, and Satan finds his true love in this ad for Match.com. Not only is it grimly hilarious, it's full of easter eggs. Her profile pic is a murder hornet. The actress appears to have subtle fangs. They're from the same home town! Check out the end zone lettering in the empty stadium. The fine print on the treadmill sign. The asteroids. It's perfect. This ad was written and directed by Ryan Reynolds and features a newly-recorded version of Taylor Swift's 2008 hit "Love Story." -via Today
Update: Part two is now available.
For Christmas 2020, mashup artist extraordinaire Bill McClintock combined Slayer's "South of Heaven" with Wham!'s "Last Christmas" into a song he calls "South of Christmas" by Slam! There's also a cameo appearance by Rammstein and McClintock himself with a festive guitar solo. The best edit in the song comes at about 3:20. Try not to laugh.
In 1934, Edward Powys Mathers, a crossword puzzle designer, published Cain's Jawbone. It's a mystery novel sorted onto 100 separate pages. It's also a puzzle, as the pages arrive in no particular order. The goal of the puzzle is to put the pages in the correct order. There are 32 million possible sorting orders, but only one is correct.
For the third time, someone has solved the puzzle. That accolade goes to British comedian John Finnemore, who took up the task during lockdown. Public Radio International reports:
“Originally I had a look at it and decided that it was too difficult for me and there was no point. So I just put it back on the shelf,” Finnemore says. “Then the pandemic came knocking...and suddenly said, ‘You know all that time you wanted, to do that thing? Well, here you go, knock yourself out, you’ve got as much time as you want.’” [...]
If you’re looking to undertake the puzzle yourself, Finnemore has some advice: use Google.
“It’s full of really obscure references to literature and geography and all sorts of things...You need to know about licensing laws in 1930s London, like, where, in London, you were allowed to buy a drink without a sandwich and where you could only have one with food after 10,” he said. “The history of prisons comes into it, geography...there’s references to people who turn out to be tennis players in the 1930s and when they played a particular match.”
-via Oddity Central | Photo: Ryan Baumann
Engineers from Stanford University have developed a method for imaging underwater objects. By combining light and sound, this method, called the Photoacoustic Airborne Sonar System (PASS), could be an alternative method to sonar systems.
The researchers envision their hybrid optical-acoustic system one day being used to conduct drone-based biological marine surveys from the air, carry out large-scale aerial searches of sunken ships and planes, and map the ocean depths with a similar speed and level of detail as Earth's landscapes. Their "Photoacoustic Airborne Sonar System" is detailed in a recent study published in the journal IEEE Access.
Learn more about this system over at EurekAlert.
Cool!
(Image Credit: Arbabian Lab/ Kindea Labs/ EurekAlert)
As someone who knows something about interruptions, we asked #BBCdad @Robert_E_Kelly to help us talk about Twitter’s conversation settings, which give brands more control over the conversations they start. https://t.co/i5eC2qEyRf pic.twitter.com/RSvqqpIyjT
— Twitter Marketing UK (@TwitterMktgUK) November 17, 2020
It's been almost four years since Robert Kelly was interrupted at his home office while on live TV. While such interruptions have become common in 2020 with so many people working from home, Kelly remains the undisputed pioneer and still champion. That's why Twitter UK recruited Kelly (and his family) to star in an ad for their new "conversations" setting. The kids have grown quite a bit since 2017! -via Metafilter
Astronomers might have witnessed, for the first time ever, the birth of a magnetar when two neutron stars collided and merged into one massive object. However, this is only a possibility, and scientists say that other explanations for the phenomenon are possible.
Astrophysicist Wen-fai Fong of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and colleagues first spotted the site of the neutron star crash as a burst of gamma-ray light detected with NASA’s orbiting Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory on May 22. Follow-up observations in X-ray, visible and infrared wavelengths of light showed that the gamma rays were accompanied by a characteristic glow called a kilonova.
Kilonovas are thought to form after two neutron stars, the ultradense cores of dead stars, collide and merge. The merger sprays neutron-rich material “not seen anywhere else in the universe” around the collision site, Fong says. That material quickly produces unstable heavy elements, and those elements soon decay, heating the neutron cloud and making it glow in optical and infrared light…
[...]
Observing how the object’s light behaves over the next four months to six years, Fong and her colleagues have calculated, will prove whether or not a magnetar was born.
More about this story over at ScienceNews.
(Image Credit: NASA, ESA, D. PLAYER/STSCI / ScienceNews)
Perhaps these people are just tired of the conventional designs for staircases, and apparently they did a great job! These photos of unique staircases were compiled by My Modern Met. My first thought upon seeing them though is this: These are not suited for homes with children!
Photo by Edouard Brunet and François Martens via My Modern Met
In terms of design, they're definitely a step above the rest, and also in terms of danger! As someone who's a bit paranoid, seeing these photos made my heart skip a beat. They look so dangerous, but at least they were able to pull off being artistic.
However, I'm not an expert in this, so please share your thoughts if I'm wrong!
Photo By Roberto Murgia and Valentina Ravara via My Modern Met
Photo by nC2 via My Modern Met
Which one is your favorite?
Photo Credit: Rumi Baumann
Bredo Morstoel of Norway was 89 years old when he died in 1989. His frozen corpse is now the center of an annual party in Nederland, Colorado.
There's quite a bit to unpack here. The official website for Frozen Dead Guy Days details how Morstoel's grandson had the old man cryogenically frozen in California. After four years of deep freeze, the family was forced to abandon the body in a crudely-built cryogenic storage shed in the little town of Nederland.
Starting in 1995, local resident Bo Shaffer and his friends visited the body every month to repack it in dry ice. And every March, they threw a big party about their hobby. This party has grown into a festival with live bands, drinking, and coffin racing, which you can see pictured above. Participants call themselves Frostifarians.
They had to cancel this past March, but plan to relaunch it next year. It looks like a wonderfully lively carnival!
-via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo: Frozen Dead Guy Days
Imagine you are in your car, trying to get somewhere in an area you've never been. You pull up a map, spot a shortcut, and decide to take it, since it appears that you'll save a lot of time. Then eventually you notice a lack of gas stations or any facilities, then your cell service fades out, and the pavement turns to gravel. That's bad enough, but imagine you were taking your family and all your worldly possessions to a new place you couldn't even imagine, with no roads, fuel, or communication at all.
In the summer of 1846, a party of 89 emigrants was making its way westward along the 2,170-mile-long Oregon Trail. Tired, hungry, and trailing behind schedule, they decided at Fort Bridger, Wyoming to travel to their final destination of California by shortcut. The “Hastings Cutoff” they chose was an alternative route that its namesake, Lansford Hastings, claimed would shave at least 300 miles off the journey. The party believed this detour could save more than a month’s time. They were wrong.
Hastings Cutoff turned out to be a waterless, wide-open stretch of the Great Salt Lake Desert, bordered by sagebrush wilderness, that began with having to forge their own wagon route through Emigration Canyon in the Wasatch mountains. By the time the party finally reached the Sierra Nevada mountains, the shortcut had cost them weeks. Snow fell, trapping the Donner-Reed party. This is when the most infamous (and deadly) part of their tale began. When members of the party began starving to death, survivors ate their remains to stay alive.
Find out why Hastings promoted the cutoff when he never even traveled it himself, and read stories of other horrible shortcuts on the Oregon Trail at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Albert Bierstadt)
Natalie Sideserf of Sideserf Cake Studio is renowned for her realistic cake sculptures, some which you've seen here at Neatorama. The ultimate test of realism is to create a face that looks like someone's real face -in this case, her own! She also recorded the process, which you can see in this video. Cutting into a cake like this must be a bit unsettling, but that's a sacrifice I'd make for a piece of cake. -via reddit
The moon is one of landscape photographer Zach Cooley's favorite subjects. Last October, he nailed his timing when capturing a shot of the moon passing through the opening of a natural arch. With humans resting on the edge, it looks like the eye of a god.
