Some design failures lead to accidents, but on a lighter note, some can just give us a good laugh. In a compilation of photographs originally shared on a Reddit thread, people share designs that range from inappropriate to amusing. From a fence randomly secure in the middle of a field to a sign that tells customers to ‘eat kids free’, which one is your favorite?
Image via The Daily Mail
Humans are always looking for a way to answer questions. It frustrates us when we have no answer to a question that’s been bugging us. One of the mysteries we can’t solve is the existence of the very universe we live in. The universe is so vast that there’s not a single theory that can help us understand everything. A small group of physicists are working on a theory that can describe the universe itself. The constructor theory might solve questions such as why biological evolution is possible and how abstract things like ideas and information seem to possess properties that are independent of any physical system, as Gizmodo details:
“When I first learned of constructor theory, it seemed too bold to be true,” said Abel Jansma, a graduate student in physics and genetics at the University of Edinburgh. “The early papers covered life, thermodynamics, and information, which seemed to be too much groundwork for such a young theory. But maybe it’s natural to work through the theory in this way. As an outsider, it’s exciting to watch.”
As a young physics researcher in the 2010s, Chiara Marletto had been interested in problems regarding biological processes. The laws of physics do not say anything about the possibility of life—yet even a slight tweak of any of the constants of physics would render life as we know it impossible. So why is evolution by natural selection possible in the first place? No matter how long you stared at the equations of physics, it would never dawn on you that they allow for biological evolution—and yet, apparently, they do.
Marletto was dissatisfied by this paradox. She wanted to explain why the emergence and evolution of life is possible when the laws of physics contain no hints that it should be. She came across a 2013 paper written by Oxford physicist and quantum computing pioneer David Deutsch, in which he laid the foundation for constructor theory, the fundamental principle of which is: “All other laws of physics are expressible entirely in terms of statements about which physical transformations are possible and which are impossible, and why.”
Image via Gizmodo
What do you do if you don’t have the prop needed for the scene? As the popular meme says, you improvise, adapt, and then overcome. But hey, it really does resemble a real defibrillator, at least from a distance.
Image via 9GAG on Facebook
Before there was Amazon, there was ACME, the company where you could order anything and everything, from hot air balloons to unicycles to anvils to toothpicks to vitamins to bombs. Those diverse products would be delivered at the speed of light, even if you lived out in the middle of the desert. Where else could you select a Strait-Jacket Ejecting Bazooka and receive it within a moment or two? Check out the Complete Illustrated Catalog of ACME Products and marvel at what they once offered.
For the first time ever, information and pictures of all ACME products, specialty divisions, and services (from 1935 to 1964) are gathered here, in one convenient catalog. For more information about any ACME product, simply click on the thumbnail picture. Thanks to Warner Bros. studios and their fine animation department for advertising ACME products in their cartoons!!
However, it may be argued that the line of products may have been much larger than this archive suggests. All that are listed here are the products we have actually seen in Looney Tunes stories. Who know what else they had? -via Metafilter
Do sounds have shapes? Or do shapes have sounds? Does it depend on which language you know? The answers require a deep dive into linguistics, a discipline which really doesn't have enough research into questions like these. Tom Scott gives us an overview of what we know and what we don't.
Any time you hear the word "buttload" as an amount, you know it mean a lot. But it turns out that it really does mean a specific amount, and that amount is... a lot.
After immediately falling down a Google hole about it, I discovered that this is, indeed, true! A butt, also known as a pipe, is a unit of measure for English Brewery Cask Units and English Wine Cask Units. It's the second-largest barrel size, equal to half a tun, which was typically 252 Imperial Gallons (although that exact quantity has changed throughout history; current standards place an English Tun at 259 US gallons or 216 Imperial Gallons).
You have to admit that 129 gallons is a substantial amount of beer or wine. That's enough for the kind of party the police would want to speak to you about. Read more about beer and wine measurements with plenty of links to follow at Boing Boing.
(Image credit: Grolltech)
The living room is a room with a lot of functions. It’s a place where people can host visitors, or lounge and relax after a long day of work. When someone assembles or designs a living room, it always has the same format: couches for sitting, a center table, and some appliances for entertainment. It didn’t always look that way. Apartment Therapy explains the design evolution of arguably the true heart of any home:
“The living room is the central entertaining space of the home,” explains Alessandra Wood, Modsy’s vice president of style and author of “Designed to Sell,” which traces the history of design retail back to the 1930s. “It’s often the most public space of the home as well, so it’s the area where dwellers usually add the most personality and design attention.”
For those above reasons, Wood thinks the living room has often become a backdrop for showcasing new trends. Interestingly enough, as is often the cyclical nature of fads, certain living room decor items and decorating ideas have come in and out—and back into—vogue over the years. With that in mind, I examined just how living rooms have changed since the ’60s.
Perhaps Kate Butler, head of design for Habitat, a British furniture retailer, says it best: “It’s important to see where we have previously been by looking at elements of design and the ever changing interior industry landscape, whilst also still looking to the future of design.”
Ready to take a walk down memory lane? Looking back on living rooms of the past just might give you some insight into what to expect for the rest of 2020—and beyond.
Image via Apartment Therapy
The Fyre Festival made news in 2017 for being so horrible that the founder got a six-year prison sentence for fraud, and several lawsuits are pending. But there have been many festivals that were overhyped and underproduced, or just ended up being terrible for one reason or another. Take the third TomorrowWorld electronic music festival, hosted on a rural farm in Georgia in 2015. Things were going well until it started to rain.
We're not kidding about the "post-apocalyptic hellscape" part either -- you can actually put "and then the crows came" after every sentence for the rest of this entry and it won't seem out of place at all. The rain turned the site into a muddy bog, which would have been manageable, but then the organizers suddenly announced that they would no longer be able to provide the shuttle service that was supposed to take non-campers back into Atlanta on Saturday, stranding everyone in the middle of nowhere as night arrived. Thousands of drunk EDM fans ended up stumbling for miles through dark and muddy woods, desperately seeking a way out. Some people collapsed and had to be carried, while others gave up and slept in the forest without shelter.
Witnesses described seeing "Walking Dead hordes" of increasingly hungover and dehydrated David Guetta fans moving listlessly through the trees. Others described it as "like the Hunger Games," which is hopefully an exaggeration, unless surviving staff from the face-painting tent disguised themselves as rocks to hide from bands of spear-wielding feral teens. Once the march hit a road, people banged on bus windows and lay down in the road to stop vehicles from driving away without them. Desperate marchers pooled cash and formed competing alliances trying to bribe drivers to take them out. Ubers and cabs flocked to the area, charging a small fortune to ferry the wealthier revelers to safety. Which might actually be a fun glimpse of the real Tomorrow World, if the worst predictions about climate change are on the money.
There's more to that story, and those of other massively-oversold festivals centered around food, Christmas, and music, which you can read about at Cracked.
During the lockdown, the sidewalks in my neighborhood turned into a colorful gallery of encouraging slogans and artwork by kids organized online by the local library. Sidewalk chalk is great for trying your hand at public art, political slogans, graffiti, or hopscotch, since it will wash off as soon as the rain comes, or even sooner with a garden hose if you mess up. But your tools may also tend to get lost or crushed. You'll have no such problems when your sidewalk chalk is as big as a Pringle's can! And you can make these chalk sticks yourself with some plaster, tempera paint, water, and Pringle's cans (yeah, I said they were that big). Find the recipe for homemade giant chalk at Instructables. -via Nag on the Lake
Instructables member XYZ Create has a brilliant way to hide your valuables. First, hollow out the core with a bandsaw. Then attach neodymium magnets to hold the pieces together. Put inside your valuables, such as cash, bearer bonds, or essential papers, then leave the safe on a pile of firewood. Your most important pieces of property are then hiding in plain sight! It's a foolproof plan.
-via Dave Barry
Asbestos is now known to be a dangerous substance which can cause various diseases such as asbestosis and pleural disease. People exposed to this substance could have higher risks in developing certain cancers. But before asbestos was known to be a material dangerous for one’s health, it had different uses for different kinds of people. Kings and nobles have used asbestos to display grandeur, while scammers used it to create false relics.
According to legend, Charlemagne liked to lay out his lavish banquets on a sparkling-white tablecloth spun from pure asbestos. After his guests had eaten their fill, the king would pluck the tablecloth off the table and fling it into the hearth. In the blaze, the cloth turned fiery red, but did not burn. When it was plucked out, it was cleaner than ever, with the debris of the meal roasted away.
[...]
The wondrous properties of the material made it a prime tool for the creation of false relics: its incombustibility served as proof of authenticity. Scammers passed off chunks of asbestos as fragments of the True Cross, and the monks of Monte Cassino bought an asbestos towel under the impression that it was the cloth Jesus had used to wash his disciples’ feet.
Asbestos has always been a strange substance in history. Where you find it, however, is even stranger.
More details about this over at JSTOR Daily.
(Image Credit: Aram Dulyan/ Wikimedia Commons)
Smartphones indeed have evolved through time. Before, these devices only had limited functions, but now, they have proven to be indispensable, because of their versatility. With only a smartphone, you could already do lots of things, like make music, edit videos, and take amazing photos. But those are not the only things that we could do with our smartphones
Scientists have experimented with the smartphone, and they found out that we could use smartphones to help us monitor our health, such as gauging fertility (if you’re female), and even detecting serious diseases such as type 2 diabetes and cancer.
Learn more about this over at New Atlas.
(Image Credit: deeptuts/ Pixabay)
You might have heard of Laika as the first dog to be launched in space, but did you know that she was not the first animal to be launched there? In fact, there were already lots of animals who have been into space over a decade before her, from fruit flies, to mice, to numerous monkeys.
Know more about the animals launched before Laika, as well as the animals launched after her, over at Amusing Planet.
(Image Credit: NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center)
We all know that giant pandas are already endangered, and so it is always nice to hear news of them giving birth to their cubs, which would increase their numbers. On August 21, at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C, a 22-year-old giant panda named Mei Xiang gave birth to a giant panda cub. Currently, the newborn panda was about the size of a stick of butter.
The cub's sex will be determined after neonatal exams are completed at a later date.
The cub will also be named after 100 days.
Mei Xiang "picked up the cub immediately and began cradling and caring for it," according to a Zoo release. "The panda team heard the cub vocalize and glimpsed the cub for the first time briefly immediately after the birth."
Awesome!
(Image Credit: smithsonianzoo/ Instagram)
Artist Katrina Herrndorf explains that "what started out as a simple study in ceramic sculpture class of the form of my bra drying on a doorknob has evolved...." For her exploration of the bra, she made examples from unusual materials, such as baseball gloves, and inspired by usually non-mammary themes, such as Canada Day.
