Registering to be a bone marrow donor means that someday you might possibly be called upon to save the life of someone you don't know, who would otherwise die without your genetic match. Sarah Lazarus registered in 2016. The call came in 2020, after she'd been self-isolating in Los Angeles for months. The proposed recipient was dying of cancer and the procedure had to be soon. However, complication arose that prevented her from donating the necessary blood plasma through apheresis in southern California. the only alternative was for her to board a plane during a pandemic and donate in Boise, Idaho.    

How do you make a call about your personal risk tolerance when it’s also a choice about the course of a stranger’s cancer treatment? If the pandemic had taught us all a valuable lesson about the interconnectedness of our fates, I was now being beaten over the head with it. Stuck without enough facts to make an informed decision, I thought about my dad’s old hospital room in Baltimore, the airlock separating his ward from the rest of the building because any mundane microbe could kill the patients on the other side. I imagined a somber-looking doctor walking through those doors to give my vulnerable recipient the news.

“I’m afraid there’s been a change of plans,” he would say, removing his glasses. “It seems your donor is a pussy-ass bitch.”

I called Heather back and told her to arrange my donation in Boise.

Read the story of Lazarus' donation, along with a thoughtful essay on weighing risk for oneself and others, at Crooked. Although she cannot know the identity of her recipient, she includes a view of the process from her father, which will make you go all verklempt.  -via Metafilter 

(Image credit: Waldszenen)

Poetry on the highway? Yes, in the form of senryū, a Japanese variant of haiku referring to humans and human nature. A collection of artists are erecting signs all over the US containing such poems. They resemble regular road signs, but have a thoughtful message in poetry. Have you seen these where you live?



See all the signs with locations, including coordinates, at Roadside Senryū. -via Boing Boing

Smartphones have capabilities that replaced an entire store full of electronic equipment, but who knew that they might someday replace the standard breathalyzer? In addition to multimedia equipment and everyday tools, there's also an accelerometer in there.  

No matter how well you think you’re walking when you’re intoxicated—especially if you compare yourself to your friend in the gutter—subtle and not-so-subtle changes in your gait could betray your alcohol level. And if you’re carrying a smartphone, its onboard accelerometer can pick up those changes. In fact, scientists from University of Pittsburgh just published research showing that, in the lab at least, they can use smartphone motion data to detect if a subject is intoxicated, with an average accuracy of 93 percent. It sounds like fun and games—getting people loaded and watching them stumble around for science—but the work could have some serious utility.

While this use of technology may raise some legal and ethical questions, it may also have useful applications for treating problem drinking. Read about the experiment and what it could mean at Wired.  -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Carol VanHook)

You've been wearing a mask anytime you go out, right? You probably encounter other people who are wearing masks, some of which are cooler than yours. You've also seen people in public not wearing masks, so is it really worth the hassle? Yes. Minute Physics crunched the numbers for us and explain how masks are actually more effective than you might think. Of course, there are plenty of variables, which they go over at the end of the video, and there's a lot more information in this essay by Aatish Bhatia. Oh yeah, and don't forget to wash your hands. -via reddit

Now we know where Sam-I-Am found green eggs to go with his ham -from a cassowary! Cassowary eggs come in several shades of green and blue-green, and this cassowary hen is quite proud of her lime-tinted eggs. I wouldn't get too close, as cassowaries are known to be aggressive and fairly dangerous, and a mother guarding her eggs is not to be trifled with. However, according to Wikipedia, cassowaries that have been raised by humans are semi-docile, and have been used as poultry. -via TYWKIWDBI

We went from tiny houses to tiny offices. Are tiny offices the next trend? With the current situation, many of us are working at home. That situation is difficult at times, and takes a lot out of you. Sometimes, the couch isn’t enough for work. Design studio Dutch Invertuals created compact office spaces designed to be in public spaces so people don’t have to stay at home. The office spaces, called Tiny Offices, are designed for someone’s personal office space, as Travel and Leisure detailed: 

The office, the design firm wrote on its site, is “your own compact space in which you can dream, perform and create freely. It takes you away from the domain of ‘the others’ as needed and offers you not only a view of calming nature but also the spiritual space for insight into wherever you are doing.”

The Tiny Offices, made out of corrugated aluminum and wood, were designed to be placed where users could "freely dream, perform and create,” Dezeen reported. And these aren’t just some dream design. The Tiny Offices are already installed in two of Droomparken's holiday parks in the Netherlands.

Measuring in at six square meters (64 square feet), the offices are ideal for one person to sit and find a bit of tranquility in an otherwise chaotic world. The offices come with wooden doors and a large window so users will never feel claustrophobic. Each one comes with a daybed as a place to relax, as well as a desk area and acrylic walls so you can write ideas directly on them. If you’re interested in a tiny office you’ll have to visit the Netherlands to see it. However, the company says they may be working on new office spaces in the future.

Image via Travel and Leisure 

Amplify your dining experience by trying out these unorthodox (and oddly expensive) choices! Take for example, the Anty Gin. This drink is the first to be made using distilled wood ants. Yes, you read that right, ants. The Anty Gin is a collaboration by Nordic Food Lab and The Cambridge Distillery. Each bottle contains the essences of sixty-two ants. Insane, right? If you’re looking for more food and drinks to step up your dining experience, check out Wired’s full piece here. 

Image via Wired

There’s a lot that can be said on how people selectively celebrate and remember certain points in history. In many cases, women and their discoveries and accomplishments go unnoticed. Lilian Bland is one of those unique women forgotten or ignored. Bland was the first woman to design, build, and fly her own plane. She designed the Mayfly, an aircraft that could successfully fly short distances with or without an engine. Her forgotten story makes us ask, why are women like her who are innovators and intelligent beings remain obscured? Historian  Dr. Bettany Hughes explained that a lot of women we remember and are part of recorded history are there because they are portrayed as highly sexu in alized, as Jalopnik detailed: 

She goes on further to add: A lot of the women that we think of, like Cleopatra and Helen of Troy, one of the reasons their stories have lasted is that they are portrayed as highly sexualized. They are exciting, but the danger of their influence has also become a warped morality tale; we remember them as creatures who draw men towards their beds and towards their death.

Often women aren’t allowed to be characters in history, they have to be stereotypes. Cleopatra was a poet and a philosopher, she was incredibly good at maths; she wasn’t that much of a looker. But when we think of her, we think: big breasted seductress bathing in milk. Often, even when women have made their mark and they are remembered by history, we are offered a fantasy version of their lives.

In other cases, history is more likely to remember tragedy. Amelia Earhart was the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean, but as I’ve shown through the history of women in racing, being the first or best woman to do something doesn’t necessarily guarantee your place in the stories we tell decades later. Do we remember Earhart as an investor? One of the heirs to her grandmother’s fortune? Do we remember the details of her flights that weren’t record breaking or the cause of her death? Often, we don’t.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

For four decades, Richard Burnham has been commercially harvesting salmon in the Alaska village of Katlag. Over the years, however, Burnham, as well as the fishermen, noticed something was off with their catch.

“At first, it was just a general comment by everybody: ‘The fish, yeah, I didn’t get any big ones this year,’”

It wasn’t bad luck, however. The fish really had become smaller over the years. 

… a new study has borne out those observations on a huge scale, documenting body size declines in fish across the entire state of Alaska in four different species of salmon: chinook, sockeye, silver and chum.

Alaska is “the last largely pristine North American salmon-producing region”, the authors write. Yet the size of the Yukon region chinooks – the largest of the four salmon species – has diminished the most, by 10% compared with those caught before 1990.

The bodies of commercially valuable sockeye shrank by 2% statewide, and silver salmon grew 3% physically smaller.

But why?

It would seem that there are two reasons why the fish have become smaller: climate change, and competition.

One likely factor, the authors say, is climate crisis-driven changes in the quality or availability of the fishes’ food. A second constant, albeit weak, dynamic was that all four species were smaller when they were competing with larger numbers of a fifth species of Alaska salmon, the hatchery-raised pink.

Learn more details about this study over at The Guardian.

(Image Credit: Andrew Hendry/ Reuters/ The Guardian)

1927. The Germans had a new toy on their hands. It was a fearsome cruiser 174 meters (571 feet) in length, and with many turrets and cannons. The ship’s name: Karlsruhe. 

Throughout its lifetime, the Karlsruhe was used as a training cruiser for naval cadets. It was also used for non-intervention patrols. It sank, however, only 13 years after its launch, and nobody knew where it sank… until this year, 80 years later.

The wreckage of a German warship that was struck by a British torpedo in 1940 has been discovered off the coast [of] Norway. Norwegian power grid operator Statnett said the cruiser Karlsruhe was identified more than 1,600 feet underwater from sonar images.

Launched in 1927, the 571-foot ship led the attack on the southern Norwegian port of Kristiansand during the invasion of Norway on April 9, 1940. With nine cannons and three triple turrets, it was "the largest and most fearsome ship in the attack group," Statnett said.

[...]

"You can find Karlsruhe's fate in history books, but no one has known exactly where the ship sunk," Norwegian Maritime Museum archaeologist Frode Kvaloe said. "After all these years we finally know where the graveyard to this important warship is."

More details over at CBS News.

(Image Credit: Stattnet/ CBS News)

The ACH160 is Airbus’ luxury version of the H160 helicopter. Guess what, you can grab a unit for yourself if you’re willing to pay a whopping $14 million for it. The luxury aircraft can accommodate up to ten passengers. It is also customizable! Buyers can choose between bench-style seats, individual seats, or a mix of both. Check out more photos of the ACH160 at Business Insider. 

Image via Business Insider

With the current pandemic, most food establishments are predicted to close. Lee Sungwook has designed a food truck designed to work during the pandemic. Meet the Streat is a conceptual food truck that operates on a low-risk, low maintenance model that can drive itself. Yanko Design has more details: 

The Streat comes outfitted with a fully functional kitchen on the inside, big enough for as many as 3-4 cooks. The modular kitchen counter allows you to customize it based on the appliance you need, choosing between fryers, ovens, grills, hobs, and even fridges and deep-freezers for storing produce. A semi-transparent clad sits on top of the truck, illuminating it with sun-light to reduce energy consumption, while allowing patrons outside to see their food be prepared. Set your truck up with an online food-ordering system and you prevent the need for people lining up outside the truck. Moreover, the truck can even travel directly to deliver food to people, eliminating the need for delivery agents… and basically operating quite like a takeaway restaurant, but without the risk of one.

Image via Yanko Design

Hokusai. The name might not be familiar to you, but I’m sure that the picture above is. The picture, called The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, or simply The Wave, is the most famous work of Hokusai, the non-Western world’s most famous artist.

Hokusai lived from 1760 to 1849. It was still a time when “sakoku” — the policy in which no Japanese can come out, and no foreigners can come into 99 percent of the country — was still implemented in Japan. Thus, the Japanese had very little knowledge of the outside world, with all of their knowledge coming from outdated books. This could be one of the reasons why Hokusai tried to make the Great Picture Book of Everything. Unfortunately, he was not able to finish it.

The project was abandoned in the 1830s – either because of cost or possibly because Hokusai insisted on reproduction standards that were difficult to attain.

The Great Picture Book of Everything was to have been a comprehensive way for the Japanese to have access to images of people, cultures and nature around the world – at a time when virtually no Japanese people had been allowed out of Japan for some two centuries - and virtually no foreigners had been allowed into 99 per cent of the country.

In that ultra-restrictive atmosphere, the project was to have given people an opportunity to explore a highly stylised printed version of the outside world as well as Japan itself.

However, so limited was Hokusai's access to up-to-date images of foreigners and foreign cultures, that he often had to use very old pictures as his source material – which led to him portraying much of the outside world as it would have looked several hundred years earlier.

Today, the Great Picture Book of Everything is considered as one of the world’s most important collections of art. And after having been lost for over 70 years, it has now re-emerged.

See some pictures from the book over at Independent.

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

It’s always a great experience to be in the kitchen as a child. You get to learn how to cook, and you get to learn the texture and taste of each and every ingredient. You also get to snack on these uncooked ingredients, like this kid who immediately grabs what his grandma puts in the mixing bowl, including the raw eggs and the flour.

Yum!

(Image Credit: Today)

David Klein was the founder of the Jelly Belly jellybeans, although he parted ways with the company in 1980. Now he has launched a contest, actually a treasure hunt, in which he plans to give away a 4,000-square-foot property containing a candy factory in Florida. Yes, it sounds like the plot of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, but this is real. Fast Company has more details.

You have to pay $49.99 to enter the statewide treasure hunts, and each one is limited to 1,000 participants. As the news release describes it, “David and his partner have started going across the USA hiding gold style tickets in the form of necklaces in places they come across with an interesting story. Plans are to have multiple treasure hunts for these gold tickets in each state.”

Those who pay will get clues on Facebook as to the location of the golden ticket (worth $5,000) in their state, but it's not clear what will happen when someone who did not enter the contest finds one of the hidden gold dog tags. State winners will compete in some fashion for the grand prize.   

As of now, some of the pages at the contest site are returning errors, possibly because of too much traffic. There is a Facebook group where people can ask questions, but it seems to be mostly complaints about the website not working and the difficulty of buying tickets. -via Boing Boing