For now, we're going to ignore the fact that Romeo and Juliet is about two idiotic teenagers who got themselves and four other people killed in four days. And we're going to hope that this couple has a happier life.

But, like the lovers in Shakespeare's tale, they did meet in Verona and woo from balconies. Quarantined in apartments across a street from each other, they felt an immediate attraction. The Washington Post describes their love story:

Michele D’Alpaos, 38, first laid eyes on Paola Agnelli, 40, in mid-March when she walked out on her balcony. Agnelli spotted D’Alpaos that night on his terrace, and said it was love at first sight.

“I was immediately struck by the beauty of this girl, by her smile,” D’Alpaos said. “I had to know her.”

Agnelli stood directly across from him on her sixth-floor balcony while her sister performed a violin rendition of “We Are The Champions” as part of a nightly 6 p.m. musical performance, intended to uplift the quarantined neighborhood.

“It was a magical moment,” said Agnelli, who has lived in the same apartment complex since she was 5 years old. She had never met D’Alpaos, even though he has lived opposite her, on the seventh floor, for most of his life.

“I immediately thought, ‘What a beautiful boy,’ ” she continued.

They met online and dated that way, eager for the next ten weeks to meet in person.

Barred from stepping closer than 200 meters away (about 220 yards), a smitten D’Alpaos was desperate to show his affection to Agnelli. He started by sending multiple bouquets of flowers, but then decided that wasn’t enough.

In an effort to put his love on full display, D’Alpaos hung an old bedsheet with “Paola” emblazoned in big, bold bubble letters from his apartment complex in late March.

They finally met in person in May and are now engaged.

-via Dave Reaboi | Photo: Paola Agnelli

When Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492, the Americas were not a sparsely-populated wilderness ready to be exploited. However, by the time serious colonial settlement began, a majority of the native people had succumbed to diseases the Europeans introduced, which made them easier to conquer. A plague called cocoliztli wiped out 80% of the Aztecs in the 16th century, opening the door for Spanish rule. Aztec authors wrote about the effects of the infectious disease that destroyed their defenses against invaders. Some of these accounts still survive. A writer thought to be Don Mateo Sánchez said,

On the first day of August [of 1576] the great sickness began here in Techamachalco. It was really strong; there was no resisting. At the end of August began the processions because of the sickness. They finished on the ninth day. Because of it, many people died, young men and women, those who were old men and women, or children… When the month of October began, thirty people had been buried. In just two or three days they would die… They lost their senses. They thought of just anything and would die.

Read about the epidemics of colonial Mexico and the accounts left by the Aztecs at Jstor Daily.  -via Digg

Now that autumn is here, you may wonder how trick-or treating can work in the era of social distancing. Matt Thompson figured out a way to deliver candy to costumed children without getting close to them- with a zip line! He recruited friends and neighbors to dress up their kids to demonstrate how it will work in this video. We assume that these people will be wearing face masks when everyone is out trick-or-treating. -via Laughing Squid

Justin Pinkney and Doron Adler have been working on a project called Toonify, which can turn a photographic face into a cartoon character. It's not yet perfected, but the story behind how they did it is kinda neat. The normal way to train an algorithm to do this would involve a large dataset of portraits and their corresponding cartoon characters. Since that does not exist (yet), they had to start from scratch and create such a dataset.

First, Doron Adler trained a StyleGAN model—the same tech behind This Person Does Not Exist, a site which randomly spits out photorealistic people that, as the name implies, are entirely computer generated—on Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks characters so it could recognize features are quintessentially cartoony. The model then automatically selected fake people from the This Person Does Not Exist universe and augmented them with those cartoon features. But StyleGAN globbed all the styles from computer generates images, cartoons, and photographs together equally, which meant that the same person might have tufts of realistic hair, CGI meatball cheeks, and eerily flat hand-drawn eyes.

This is where Justin Pinkney came in with his model, which they blended with Adler’s.

Pinkney developed a “layer-swapping” process to parse out the desirable characteristics from each image: the cartoon half affects only the structure of the resulting toonified face, while the human half contributes the lighting and other high-resolution details.

There's a lot more to it, of course. Is there an app where I can make my own face into a cartoon? Yes, but you can't do it (yet). First, the program doesn't use your face. It will select a computer-generated photorealistic face from the This Person Does Not Exist library that looks like you -and the program is pretty good at that, although it takes some time. Second, when they launched the online app, so many people invested the necessary time to try it that they couldn't afford the bandwidth bill, so they took it down. Adler and Pinkney hope to work out the kinks and make it available to the rest of us soon. Read the story at Gizmodo.

(Image credit: Justin Pinkney and Doron Adler)

A man in blue can be seen on the cargo space of the truck. Suddenly, he trips, but he has a quick reaction time, and manages to hang on the truck, albeit in a weird position. Thankfully, a car happens to pass by in the area, and the car’s driver helps him to climb back again on the truck.

Lucky man, I would say.

See the full video on Reddit.

(Video Credit: u/PowerModerator/ Reddit)

This might just be the weirdest thing that I have seen in my life — a $1,400 denim overall with grass stains. I mean, why? You could just buy a new denim overall and roll on the grass in your backyard.

“This denim overall is crafted from organic cotton and specifically treated for a stained-like, distressed effect,” reads the description of the dirty dungarees, which debuted on the runway as part of a grunge-inspired collection back in January and are now available in stores and online.

[...]

“It is produced through cultivation and manufacturing processes that don’t involve harmful chemicals, pesticides or artificial fertilizers,” a description on Gucci.com reads.

But real farmers think these fancy pants should be put out to pasture.

“For [that much money], I’m thinking, ‘What’s the equivalent of that in second-cut hay bales?’ That’s the currency I’m most interested in,” farmer Lauren Gitlin, 40, told The Post.

Well, what do you think?

(Image Credit: Gucci)

During a long road trip with my kids came inevitably the matter of farts; then the conversation veered towards serious: we asked ourselves if this is was a means of Covid-19 transmission. School, work, bus, we would be at great danger every moment!!!

Forbes made a complete post on that serious subject back in April. I guess people have more sensitive bowels than my kids to ask this question so soon!

Everyone is trying their best to make ends meet in these troubling times. Many people are looking for more ways to earn more money or expand their businesses. The new startup Civvi seized the opportunity to establish their business when unemployment is widespread and a lot of people can’t pay their rent. This company aims to make it easy for the landlords to hire eviction agents, as Vice details: 

Helena Duncan, a Chicago-based paralegal who also participates in housing activism, saw a Craigslist post from Civvl while searching for jobs. The ad alarmed her. 

"It's fucked up that there will be struggling working-class people who will be drawn to gigs like furniture-hauling or process-serving for a company like Civvl, evicting fellow working-class people from their homes so they themselves can make rent," she told Motherboard. 

In its Craigslist ads, posted across the country, Civvl explains the opportunity plainly: "There is plenty of work due to the dismal economy."

"Unemployment is at a record high and many cannot or simply are not paying rent and mortgages," the ads state. "We are being contracted by frustrated property owners and banks to secure foreclosed residential properties."

Civvl aims to marry the gig economy with the devastation of a pandemic, complete with signature gig startup language like "be your own boss," and "flexible hours," and "looking for self-motivated individuals with positive attitudes:" "FASTEST GROWING MONEY MAKING GIG DUE TO COVID-19," its website says. "Literally thousands of process servers are needed in the coming months due courts being backed up in judgements that needs to be served to defendants."

Image via Vice 

You fell in love with him when you saw him on The Mandalorian. You bought the miniatures and the toys. But you know that your soul won’t find rest until you’ve collected all of the Baby Yodas out there in the whole world. And now comes another Baby Yoda collectible, but this time in LEGO form.

Fans of The Mandalorian can soon get their hands on this adorable LEGO version of The Child aka Baby Yoda. The 1073-piece kit builds a 7.8″ tall version of the littlest could-be Jedi, and features a posable head, movable ears, and an adjustable mouth. Drops 10.30.2020. Pre-orders start at 1pm PST on 9.21.2020 on LEGO.com.

The Force and the cuteness are strong with this one.

(Image Credit: LEGO/ The Awesomer)

If you ask me, world records are getting weirder and weirder. But hey, aiming for world records is no joke. It takes time, effort, and money, and so I can say that even weird world records deserve recognition.

A Texas city's annual Rotary Duck Derby, delayed for months..., went forward without some of the usual fanfare, but with a Guinness World Record for lining up rubber ducks.

The City of Graham's 3rd Annual Rotary Duck Derby, which was originally scheduled for April, took place at the city's Downtown Square.

Residents could sponsor a duck in the race for $5 or 24 ducks for $100, with the proceeds being donated by the Graham Rotary Club to a variety of community projects.

[...]

Organizers said they expected the number of ducks to come out to 20,000, enough to break the Guinness record of 17,782 ducks.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: KWKT FOX44/ YouTube)

The greatest enemy that you can have in life is not your best friend. It’s not your partner. Nor is it another family member. The greatest enemy that you can have is yourself.

But how do you battle against yourself? How do you confront yourself? This goat decided that the best way that he can confront himself is through hand-to-hand combat, or in this case, head-to-head combat, in the mirror.

Via Laughing Squid

(Image Credit: Laughing Squid)

Consider this: You manage to steal some things that are extremely valuable because they are unique, historic, and irreplaceable. Only afterward do you realize that you cannot sell those things, because they are unique, historic, and irreplaceable. That may have been the case when a shipment of rare books including first editions by Galileo Galilei, Sir Isaac Newton, and Francisco Goya, plus 16th-century editions of works by Copernicus, Euripides, Aesop, and Manutius were stolen from a London postal warehouse in 2017.   

Now, after three years of coordinated efforts by the MPS, the Romanian National Police, the Italian Carabinieri, Europol and Eurojust, authorities have finally recovered the purloined papers.

Per the statement, police discovered the trove of books—neatly wrapped and buried in a cement pit—beneath a house in Neamț, a county in eastern Romania, last Wednesday. The individuals responsible for the burglary appear to be connected to a network of Romanian families involved with the notorious Clamparu crime group.

Read about the heist and the recovery at Smithsonian. -via reddit

(Image credit: Metropolitan Police)

The guys at Dip Your Car tried an experiment in which they painted a car lime green, then added five coats of black thermochromic paint. Thermochromic means it loses color with the application of heat. After the paint dried, they threw buckets of hot water on the car to see what would happen. Skip ahead to 5:15 to watch the fun. Then if you're interested, you can go back to the beginning to get a thorough explanation. It's fun to watch, but they really should have shown what engine heat does to the appearance. One suspects that they used a non-running car for the experiment. Would the air temperature have an affect? If so, the car would be green on sunny summer days and black at night or in winter or rain. Also, before you consider this for your car, keep in mind that the thermochromic effect is not all that durable over time. -via Boing Boing

So the secret to stopping your feline companion from taking over your keyboard while working is to give them a computer of their own. Twitter user @Roshinee_M shared a video of her testing out the tip she found on TikTok. Surely enough, her cat seems to love its new gadget, and looks happy to copycat their owner! 

Image screenshot via Twitter 

Fashion shows are now moving towards a heavily tech-based mode of presentation. Virtual models now take over the runway, partnering with savvy technical creative companies and programs to build a show that can advertise and showcase their garments well. Forbes cites Miami Swim Week as an example of brands relying on technology to showcase their garments:

Despite the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, this year, the technological risk became reality at Miami Swim Week. Swimwear presenters hadn’t the choice to stay idle but rather were pushed forward in a rough and ready manner. With limited luxuries and hard work, there is an opportunity to help the industry envision new ways to support the swimwear industry overall. More to the point, technology is an important and much-needed platform for the swimwear marketplace.

"It was a beautiful thing to witness technology and fashion merge ogether during Paraiso Miami Beach. As we enter into this dawn of this new normal, technology came to save the day for these designers to be able to show their collections digitally - in real time and across all different platforms from Instagram TV to YouTube and other web based portal’s.

The Diigitals are utilizing the rising accessibility of new technologies and taking the first steps into a new frontier of digital exploration. Within this collaborative hub, they demonstrate the potential of 3D fashion modeling and showcase its applications for innovative brands. The new era in creative seemingly erase the boundaries between real time reality and the digital world. Leading the charge into this new synthetic landscape is Shudu, the enigmatic and technical muse who's inspiring a new generation of artists. In a sense, she is the first of a generation but I assure you there will be many more like her in the years to come!

Image screenshot  via YouTube