Through most of history in general, rich people wore nice clothing and poor people wore what they could afford. But sometimes, an ambitious person from a lower social station could become wealthy and dress in expensive garments. This wouldn't do at all, as it upset the ruling class, who preferred to be identified as separate from the masses. Therefore, in different places at different times, sumptuary laws went into effect to codify who could wear what kind of clothing, in order for everyone to tell what social class one belonged to. China's Ming dynasty tried to encode what everyone would wear. It worked for a while.

As time passed and commerce grew, violations increased. Wealthy commoners dressed in fabrics and styles supposedly reserved for nobler classes. They scorned plain silks and adopted forbidden brocades. They wore off-limits colors, including dark blue and scarlet. They sported gold embroidery. They bought hats and robes that were formally restricted to court officials. "Customs have changed from generation to generation," complained a Ming scholar, writing in the late 16th century. "All people tend to respect and admire wealth and luxury, competing for them without considering the bans of the government."

Nor were commoners the only offenders. Officials and their families dressed above their station. The sons of nobles, themselves in the lowly eighth rank, habitually donned the dress reserved for their high-ranking fathers. "They wear dark brown hats and robes patterned with qilin," a dragon-like creature with cloven hoofs, "tied with golden ribbons, even when they live at home or have been dismissed from official positions," complained another Ming writer. Emperors themselves undermined the rules too, he observed, bestowing robes on favorites without regard to whether their status merited the design.    

As they say, dress for the job (or social class) you want, not the one you have. Meanwhile in Italy, legal dress codes had to do with keeping people from showing off, which didn't work as intended, either. Virginia Postrel looks at the rise and fall of sumptuary laws at Reason magazine. -via Digg

Arcangelo Ambrosi, a craftsman of smoking pipes, recently made this whimsical mushroom. It's composed of maple with an acrylic mouthpiece. I can imagine Papa Smurf or, perhaps, the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland puffing from it.

In the Roaring Twenties, boxing was huge. There were reputations and money to be made, and people came out of the woodwork to watch their favorites go at each other. In Shelby, Montana, real estate developer (and the mayor's son) James “Body” Johnson Jr. was looking for a way to invigorate his town after an oil boom had crested, and was taken with the idea of staging a fight with world champion Jack Dempsey. Johnson and his associates arranged a fight between Dempsey and an upcoming boxer named Tommy Gibbons, although it would cost the town several hundred thousand dollars it didn't have. Up front.

Rather than despair, Johnson’s gang decided to bluff their way through, arranging lines of credit through the town’s three banks: the First State Bank of Shelby; the Stanton Trust & Savings Bank; and the First State Bank of Joplin. Lumber was bought with promissory notes to the tune of $82,000, agents launched a haphazard promotional campaign on the East and West coasts, and hundreds of locals began to swirl around the town in the excitement of the run-up. To accommodate the expected 40,000 attendees, makeshift hotels were hastily thrown up by enterprising locals sure of a healthy profit. The match was scheduled for 4 July 1923, in the hopes of capitalizing on patriotic fervor and the promise of a fight to remember. This was to be a boxing match for the ages.

Well, it was, in the respect that it became a huge story for the town of Shelby, but it didn't turn out the way Johnson hoped it would. Read about the championship fight between Jack Dempsey and Tommy Gibbons and what it did to Shelby, Montana, at Damn Interesting.

In 1995, a group of four chess enthusiasts were devastated when their opponents took their queen in a very public New Year's Eve match at Madison Square Garden. Exactly 25 years later, they are staging a rematch, online of course. Phish will present "Dinner and a Rematch" on New Year's Eve, pitting themselves against online participants. You can join in through Chess.com (registration required). In addition to chess, there will be recipe swapping and some music. Drinking is optional, since you'll be at home anyway. And may the best mass player win.  -via Metafilter

Rosemary Mosco, a naturalist, science writer, and cartoonist, proposes that Santa consider replacing his reindeer with other magical animals. I would personally go with the anglerfish and do not consider their lack of flying abilities to be a detriment: it turns out that, as I recently learned, normal reindeer cannot fly. Their flight is just part of the Santa Claus narrative.

-via Marilyn Terrell

This time of year you'll find tons of lists of the best and worst things of 2020, but the most interesting are the ones that focus on the odd, strange, and bizarre. A list at LiveScience will entice you to read all ten stories, because they are medical reports of the weird things that can happen to someone's health. Maybe not you. We hope.  

The 54-year-old man suddenly lost consciousness after experiencing a life-threatening heart rhythm problem, according to a report of the case, published Sept. 23 in The New England Journal of Medicine. His family said that the man had a poor diet, and in recent weeks, he had consumed one to two large packages of black licorice every day. Despite receiving multiple treatings in the intensive care unit, the man died 32 hours after arriving at the hospital, the report said.

Black licorice often contains a compound called glycyrrhizin, which is derived from licorice root, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Consuming too much licorice root or candies flavored with licorice root can be dangerous because glycyrrhizin lowers the body's potassium levels. This, in turn, can lead to high blood pressure and abnormal heart rhythms.

So how much licorice is too much?

The FDA says that eating just 2 ounces of black licorice a day for two weeks can cause heart rhythm problems, particularly for people ages 40 and older.

This is the only case in the list in which the patient died. Read more of the strangest medical cases of the year, like the man with green urine, another man with three kidneys, and a woman who shed infectious particles of the novel coronavirus for 70 days straight, at LiveScience. -via Digg

(Image credit: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration)

When interpreting literature (or, more broadly, narratives), what should be the role of the author in the interpretation of that work? Carl Jung said that "Poets are humans to, and what they say about their work is often far from being the best word on the subject." What are we to do when an author explains his or her work in a way that makes no sense? Is interpretation bounded by the author's intentions or life experiences?

In a 1967 essay, the French literary critic Roland Barthes famously proclaimed the "death of the author." He meant that the author's interpretation of the meaning of a work should not be prioritized over other interpretations. Authorial intent is not authoritative.

Now game designer David J. Prokopetz helpfully updates the Death of the Author to critique other abuses of literary interpretation:

Death of the author: Treating the author’s stated interpretation of their own work as merely one opinion among many, rather than the authoritative Word of God.

Disappearance of the author: Treating the context and circumstances of the work’s authorship as entirely irrelevant with respect to its interpretation, as though the work had popped into existence fully formed just moments ago.

Taxidermy of the author: Working backwards from a particular interpretation of the work to draw conclusions about what the context and circumstances of its authorship must have been.

Undeath of the author: Holding the author personally responsible for every possible reading of their work, even ones they could not reasonably have anticipated at the time of its authorship.

Frankenstein’s Monster of the author: Drawing conclusions about authorial intent based on elements that are present only in subsequent adaptations by other authors.

Weekend at Bernie’s of the author: Insisting that the author would personally endorse your interpretation of the work if they happened to be present.

-via Alex de Campi | Image: 20th Century Fox

I don't know what they expected, riding bikes down a ski slope, but you know what to expect, you just don't know when. When it starts, it's all downhill from there, so to speak. You can see the long version here.

Held annually at the Les Deux Alpes ski resort in France, the Mountain of Hell pits 700 racers against a 15-mile course of snow, ice, rocks, and singletrack. The riders descend 8,530 feet in the process. And what’s best is they all start at the same time. So when one rider loses it on the slippery glacier, well, it becomes a pinball machine at full tilt.

-via Bits and Pieces

Rik Villanueva posted a Star Wars timeline that corresponds with earth years. These aren't the years that these movies actually happened, because we were told right off that it happened "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away." It's all about order and perspective. Villanueva apparently used 2019 (the year we saw The Rise of Skywalker) as a starting point and counted back, but some fans are disappointed he didn't use 1977 (when the first Star Wars movie was released) as the anchor year.

While this timeline can be useful, particularly in pegging when The Mandalorian occurs, it still leaves us wondering how Obi-wan Kenobi looked so young when played by Ewan McGregor and so old when played by Alec Guinness. The adventures of the space wizard in Disney's upcoming series may have aged him. That series is supposed to be set ten years after Revenge of the Sith and nine years before A New Hope, which would put it at 1975 in this graph. -via Boing Boing

Redditor emkay95 made a full-size apple rose tart for Christmas and wanted to show it off. Isn't it lovely? She said it was so labor-intensive she probably wouldn't ever make another. It's a good thing she took a picture before baking it.

That was a heartbreaking twist for readers, who were even more upset that she didn't take pictures of the aftermath. So no apple pie for Christmas dinner?

Well. It had tinfoil over it so it was kind of saved. We still made it and ate it but it wasn’t so beautiful anymore and kind of tasted like defeat

I'm sure it was delicious. Here's the recipe she used, although she did make a few alterations. Your mileage may vary.

To what would you compare a home run? For this commentator, he would compare it to an ex-girlfriend. Did he just break up with a girl when this happened? Was it recent that time? Only he knows.

Well, what do you think?

(Image Credit: Most Viral/ Team Super Saiyan/ YouTube)

Scientists from UChicago have created a groundbreaking tool called Voltair that allows researchers to measure voltage differences between organelles. Scientists knew that there were voltage differences in the organs of the human body. However, they weren’t able to measure these. This went on for decades.

"Scientists had noticed for a long time that charged dyes used for staining cells would get stuck in the mitochondria," explained graduate student Anand Saminathan, the first author for the paper, which was published in Nature Nanotechnology. "But little work has been done to investigate the membrane potential of other organelles in live cells."

The Krishnan lab at UChicago specializes in building tiny sensors to travel inside cells and report back on what's happening, so that researchers can understand how cells work—and how they break down in disease or disorders. Previously, they have built such machines to study neurons and lysosomes, among others.

In this case, they decided to use the technique to investigate the electric activities of the organelles inside live cells.

Details over at PHYS.org.

Awesome!

(Image Credit: allinonemovie/ Pixabay)

Can you picture your first grade classroom? How about that restaurant where you had your first date? For many of us, it would be easy, but for some, it is extremely difficult.

These individuals have a rare condition called aphantasia, which prevents them from easily recreating images in their mind's eye—in fact, the phrase "mind's eye" may be meaningless to them.

"Some individuals with aphantasia have reported that they don't understand what it means to 'count sheep' before going to bed," said Wilma Bainbridge, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Chicago who recently led a study of the condition, which can be congenital or acquired through trauma. "They thought it was merely an expression, and had never realized until adulthood that other people could actually visualize sheep without seeing them."

What goes inside the mind of an individual who has aphantasia? Bainbridge’s study, published in the journal Cortex, sheds some light on the topic. More about this over at MedicalXpress.

(Image Credit: geralt/ Pixabay)

If you want to be great at games, consider paying attention to Albert Einstein’s advice, which is to learn the rules of the game, and then play better than anyone else. Of course, this is easier said than done. But if you’re an AI like DeepMind, then it would be much easier for you — so much easier that you can even skip Einstein’s first advice.

DeepMind, a subsidiary of Alphabet, has previously made groundbreaking strides using reinforcement learning to teach programs to master the Chinese board game Go and the Japanese strategy game Shogi, as well as chess and challenging Atari video games. In all those instances, computers were given the rules of the game.

But Nature reported… that DeepMind's MuZero has accomplished the same feats—and in some instances, beat the earlier programs—without first learning the rules.

Programmers at DeepMind relied on a principle called "look-ahead search." With that approach, MuZero assesses a number of potential moves based on how an opponent would respond. While there would likely be a staggering number of potential moves in complex games such as chess, MuZero prioritizes the most relevant and most likely maneuvers, learning from successful gambits and avoiding ones that failed.

More details about this over at TechXplore.

Wow!

(Image Credit: PIRO4D/ Pixabay)

For many years, scientists have been trying to understand reality through the laws of physics. However, it would seem that the more they try to understand, the more confused they become. The reason for this? Quantum philosophy. ScienceX tells us four ways of how this certain subject challenges your perception of reality. Learn more about this over at the site.

(Image Credit: insspirito/ Pixabay)