Augie, along with his mom, Katina Behm, loves to make fun of his uncle Aristotle Polites, who works as a model, by recreating Polites's photos. And because Polites is a model, Augie gets to have a lot of photos to recreate.
See Augie’s recreations over at Bored Panda.
Cute!
(Image Credit: Bored Panda)
Would you keep a leech as a pet? For many of us, the answer would be no, but believe it or not, there are some people who keep leeches as pets. To make things even weirder, these people even let these leeches suck their blood. But why in the world would they do that?
ScienceAlert documents the story of Ariane Khomjani, a leech keeper. This is what he has to say.
"They're amazing, curious creatures that grow like crazy and make wonderful pets,"...
He explained how individual leeches have their own unique personalities, with some being more adventurous and others more shy.
"Some like to try and sneak a feed more often than others, haha! But once they're full, they're content to sit and rest for a bit out of water if handled gently," he said.
… The species he keeps is one of the larger types: buffalo leeches (Hirudinaria manillensis) from Asia.
Learn more about this strange practice over at the site.
(Image Credit: Ariane Khomjani/ Instagram/ ScienceAlert)
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could see tardigrades in action with our naked eye? Perhaps that’s what the guys Archie McPhee had in their minds when they decided to make these cute racing tardigrades.
These pull-back tardigrades come in a set of four so you can race up to three of your friends to see who has the fastest time in a drag race.
The full set goes for just $14.95 and would be lots of fun to race against some babies, possums, or cockroaches. Place your bets now!
I have a feeling that this will be a hit in the market.
Well, what do you think?
(Image Credit: Archie McPhee/ Technabob)
Two robots, both of which have brains that have evolved for over 300 generations, can be seen in the video. Both of them have one leg broken as well. However, only one of them can walk upright, while the other struggles to get back up. But why? That’s because one of them has been programmed to keep learning.
Artificial intelligence (AI) often relies on so-called neural networks, algorithms inspired by the human brain. But unlike ours, AI brains usually don’t learn new things once they’ve been trained and deployed; they’re stuck with the same thinking they’re born with.
So, in a new study, researchers created nets with “Hebbian rules”—mathematical formulas that allow AI brains to keep learning. Rather than their synaptic weights—the values dictating how activity spreads from one neuron to another—remaining static, they change based on experience. Then, the team partially removed the left front leg of both bots, forcing them to try to compensate for the injury. Both bots struggled at first, but the Hebbian bot was able to walk nearly seven times as far, the researchers report this month at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems.
Hebbian learning could someday improve algorithms used to recognize images, translate languages, or drive.
Truly amazing.
(Image Credit: Science Magazine/ YouTube)
After taking off on his powered parachute near a school in Rio Linda, California to deliver candy canes to children in his community, a man dressed up as Santa found himself in a maze of power lines and ended up being suspended in them. Thankfully, the man was not injured.
Video from the rescue shows the red-white-and-blue aircraft dangling overhead as Santa sat fastened to the pilot seat.
Neighbors watched from the ground as crews worked.
Colleen Bousliman, who lives nearby, said the pilot flies overhead often.
“He flies just around so people can see and flies around people’s houses,” she said. “This was the first time he was in his Santa suit.”
[...]
“W/o a scratch & full of good cheer we made sure Old St. Nick will use his reindeer when he sees you later this year,” the fire department said in a tweet after the incident.
I guess Santa has better watch out, too.
(Image Credit: California Highway Patrol via AP)
Footage from a trail cam at a beaver dam just south of Voyageurs National Park shows us a variety of animals using it as a river crossing. Over a year's time, we see wolves, bears, deer, beavers (of course), and other creatures, as well as the changing of the seasons. The dam is so sturdy that vegetation thrives on top, and the resulting pond is calm enough to freeze in winter. Good work, beaver! -via Metafilter
I had no idea that UPS invested so much time and resources in calculating the movements and actions of its drivers. The delivery company is already famous for not making left turns because it's more efficient to make a series of right turns.
But its training facilities teach more than efficient land navigation. There's even a simulator for walking on ice, as well as drills for drivers protecting themselves from dogs and getting into a truck with a minimum number of movements. As this video from Business Insider illustrates, what appears to be a casual if rapid process by drivers is actually precision drill designed to move quickly and safely through the delivery process.
-via Born in Space
In the old days, before the internet, if you wanted to encounter the rantings of angry, semiliterate people, you usually had to go search your house for a family member or, possibly, even step outside. Now you can enjoy such delights from wherever you are seated at the moment.
To enhance this experience, you can listen to Instagram user Lubalin melodiously sing these online arguments. That he sings the misspelled words as they are written is especially delightful.
-via @kaijubushi
Minnesotastan has been running a series of pictures of his readers' bookcases at TYWKIWDBI. You can learn a lot about someone by looking at the books they keep and how they display them. The picture here of Bruce and Carol's bookcase also drives home how you can interact with people for years on the internet and still not know important things about them.
Blogger's note: After scanning the rows of books, my eyes were drawn to the top of the photo, where sharp-eyed readers may note on the bookcase the bases of some trophies. I emailed Bruce back to inquire whether they would be of interest to TYWKIWDBI readers. The answer startled me...
Yeah, they are Emmys. Seven of them. Read the rest of the story at TYWKIWDBI.
I can’t even hold a regular pan properly without fearing I might spill its contents. This chef takes cooking to a higher level, as she spins her wok and swings it around her body. That might sound simple, but it’s not really. I’m not sure how she can do that, but it’s really amazing!
Mitosis (not the biological process) is a sustainable architectural concept that focuses on regenerative sustainable living and urban development. The structure, a collaboration between Amsterdam-based architecture firm GG-loop and Arup, has the ability to expand itself to accommodate more people. YankoDesign has more details:
Just like flexible organism evolves to adapt to different settings, Mitosis will also be able to do that with its individual, rhomboid-shaped modules that are stacked together to create shared outdoor spaces and private terraces. The outdoor areas would be filled with enough plants to make a lush green cover which will allow the residents to reconnect with nature while offsetting the urban heat island effect – pretty ‘cool’, eh? These plants will also elevate the air quality levels, especially in cities while encouraging sustainable living practices of urban farming and community gardens. The terraced build provides ample natural light to both plants and apartments. The greenery will also help the existing wildlife of the area to continue having their space and coexist with the residents.
“Mitosis adopts the 14 principles of biophilic design and articulates the relationships between nature, human biology, and the design of the built environment. Its construction is organic and flexible, providing large areas of urban and vertical farming, greenhouses, wildlife corridors, and integration of habitat creation, that encourage shared outdoor activities among residents,” said the team in their project statement. The unique concept aims to give its residents an outdoor space along with the amenities needed to participate in environmentally friendly communal activities.
Image via YankoDesign
Nick Drummond and Patrick Bakker bought an old house in the small town of Ames, New York, and set out to repair and renovate it. The house had once been owned by "Count" Adolf Humpfner, who was rumored to have been a bootlegger, but he died in 1932, so those stories may have been just a legend. Two families lived in the home since then, for decades each. So it was quite a surprise when Drummond and Bakker pulled some wall panels out and found whisky bottles. A lot of them.
“I was in the process of removing this rotted wood skirting that went around the mudroom sort of where the foundation would be if it was a truly finished structure, and as I’m peeling back the boards on one of the sides, all of the sudden all this hay falls out and I was very confused," Drummond said. "And at first, I was like ‘oh this must be insulation’ – of course all this is taking place within a few seconds in my head -- and then I look and I’m like ‘well wait a second, what’s that glass thing? And then I pull it up and I’m looking at this old liquor bottle. And then I’m looking at the other package and there’s these other little tops poking out of the hay. And then I look back at the wall and there’s like the edge of this other package tied up with string and I’m like, ‘Holy crap, this is like a stash of booze.’”
Brown paper packages tied up with string filled with an alcohol lover’s favorite thing.
“I was totally excited and we ended up finding the rest of the mudroom was lined with these packages,” Drummond said.
“At the end of the day we were just sitting, and we were like, ‘We really like the house so much more now,'” Bakker said.
So far, they've found 72 bottles, some empty, but most containing Prohibition-era Gaelic whisky under the name Old Smuggler. The bonanza led them to find out more about Adolf Humpfner, who led quite a colorful life, although much of it is still shrouded in mystery. The house has since been dubbed the Bootlegger Bungalow. Read about Humpfner, the house, and the whisky at the Denver Channel. Find out more at Drummond's Instagram page. -via Laughing Squid
The Knights of Renesmee, from Tauranga, New Zealand, spent three years making a shot-for-shot Sweded version of the entire Star Wars prequel trilogy. You may ask, "why?" but I have no answer for that. It's actually quite funny due to creative prop choices, wardrobe malfunctions, and the world's least expensive CGI. While these guys put their hearts and souls into this, they can't help but laugh at themselves. The 6-hour video includes The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, and bloopers. If you don't want to watch it all at once, the YouTube page has a handy linked index for each scene. -via reddit
(Image credit: The Knights of Renesmee)
Boston Dynamics gives us a New Year greeting in the form of dancing robots. This is terrifying. If robots can dance this well, is there anything they can't do? -via reddit
A new discovery has been made in Pompeii! Remains of a hot food and drink shop has been uncovered by archaeologists. The shop, also known as a thermopolium, contained 2,000-year-old food stored in deep terra cotta jars, as Reuters detailed:
The front of the counter was decorated with brightly coloured frescoes, some depicting animals that were part of the ingredients in the food sold, such as a chicken and two ducks hanging upside down.
“This is an extraordinary find. It’s the first time we are excavating an entire termopolium,” said Massimo Ossana, director of the Pompeii archaeological park.
Archaeologists also found a decorated bronze drinking bowl known as a patera, ceramic jars used for cooking stews and soups, wine flasks and amphora.
Image via Reuters
