All for the sake of a prank, three teens are facing disorderly conduct charges for covering people’s property with cheese slices. How much did they spend on cheese to be able to cover a home, and two cars with it? Two 17-year-olds and an 18-year-old tossed the sandwich slices at a residence in Girard, Pennsylvania.
image via Philly Voice
Two brothers, ages 3 and 10, were saved from an apartment fire in France when they dropped more than 30 feet from a window and were caught by neighbors below.
— ABC News (@ABC) July 23, 2020
The boys, along with 17 residents of the building, were treated for smoke inhalation. https://t.co/T8RsSpQsVP pic.twitter.com/99DSu5GFhE
An apartment building in Grenoble, France caught on fire. Two brothers, ages 3 and 10, were trapped inside on the third story. They jumped off the balcony and were caught by people gathered on the sidewalk below. Although they were treated for smoke inhalation, the boys otherwise escaped serious injury. BBC News reports that, unfortunately, two of rescuers at the bottom broke their arms during their rescue efforts.
-via Sohrab Ahmari
Take our gloves off
Take our shoes off
Put them where they’re supposed to go.
You take off your brave feeling
Because there’s nothing
to be scared of in the house
That's "Coming Home" by the acclaimed British poet Nadim Shamma-Sourgen. He's four years old and has landed his first book deal. The Guardian exasperates:
Now he has landed a book deal with Walker Books, which will release his “astonishing” collection next summer. Walker executive Denise Johnstone-Burt said that she had been “astonished that anyone so young could write such sensitive verse”.
“The poems talk about such important feelings, like love and loneliness, and Nadim finds the perfect words,” she added. “They are simple, inspirational and have a wisdom all of their own”.
Clanchy said that the nickname she had given Nadim, the “Four Year Old Poet”, made him sound “scarily precocious”; in fact, as his mother explained on Sky News, he is still learning to read and write and he dictates his poems to her.
-via Marginal Revolution | Photo: Picador
If you've ever studied plate tectonics, you know that dry land on earth was once a giant supercontinent, then it separated into plates that began moving away from each other. But how did that get started? It could be the same way you ruined Mom's serving dish by treating it as a baking dish.
In a new study, led by planetary scientist Alexander Webb at the University of Hong Kong, in collaboration with an international team of researchers, scientists have come up with a new idea to explain why Earth's crust cracked into pieces.
According to the study, the early Earth's outer shell, or lithosphere, heated up, which caused it to expand and crack. This might seem like a simple explanation, but it contradicts many earlier theories.
Previously, scientists thought the cracking came from the earth's crust cooling down. Read what's behind both of these ideas at Space.com. -via Damn Interesting
(Image credit: US Geological Survey)
Kids will find ways to scare that you would never have thought of in a million years. Adults look at a light fixture and see illumination. This little girl saw an opportunity.
"After converting my twins’ cribs to 'big girl beds', I quickly realized it was a mistake. I could hear a noise coming from the girls’ nursery during their nap time so I pulled up my Arlo Security app and realized one of my twins, Elise, was swinging from the chandelier. Thankfully she wasn’t hurt but the chandelier was immediately removed. This is just one, of many, reasons why I can’t have nice things anymore. My girls still ask for their chandelier but I’d be willing to bet their reason isn’t for utility."
Were you waiting for that fixture to "untwist" and swing her around like a ceiling fan? I was. -via Digg
There have been numerous attempts at making a decent movie out of familiar video and board games, some that did well, like Clue and Angry Birds, and others that did not, like Battleship. A few years ago, there was actually an effort to make a movie called Tetris, but it never got off the ground. The problem is the nature of the game, and whether a story can be built around it. The game Clue was already based on a familiar book and movie plot, and they made the film a comedy. Tetris has no story... or does it?
A quick overview: Software engineer Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris (a portmanteau of "tennis" and "tetra") in 1984 while working for the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He shared the game with his coworkers, and they copied it onto floppy discs to share with their friends. The game went viral before viral was even a thing, spreading all across Moscow and even into a software exhibit in the Hungarian Institute of Technology.
It is there that UK citizen and owner of Andromeda Software Ltd., Robert Stein found the game. He wanted to license it to distributors in the US and UK, so he went to Russia to make a deal. Unfortunately for Pajitnov, in Soviet Russia, the game plays you. Pajitnov didn't own the rights to Tetris, the game instead, falling under the purview of Elektronorgtechnica, a soviet agency created to oversee the distribution of their software to foreign countries.
In other words, Tetris is going to be a drama based on a true story about doing business in the Cold War era, and not an adaptation of game play. Read more about the upcoming production at Cracked.
A dog may be man's best friend, but a dog's intelligence can vary from amazing to comically dumb. They are a peculiar species in that nature never intended to give us a pet. All domestic dogs were bred originally from wolves, with breeders aiming for features that would be useful to humans, like herding sheep or fitting into the sleeve of one's gown. It usually doesn't matter how intelligent a dog is, because he's loved and cared for by his humans anyway. But maybe they are just intelligent in a different way from what we normally think.
Indeed, considerable variation exists among dogs, as their behavior can be influenced by breed, socialization, life experiences, and so on. Importantly, however, dogs are really good at being dogs, including stuff like playing fetch, barking at the neighbors, herding sheep, mooching for snacks, and, very importantly, providing companionship. There’s literally no reason for them to be more human-like when it comes to their intelligence, even if we sometimes mistakenly project more smarts onto them than they deserve.
“Dogs are very good at what they’re bred to do—they’re excellent at doing those things, and in some cases even better than other species we think are intelligent, such as chimps and bonobos,” Zachary Silver, a PhD student from the Comparative Cognitive Lab at Yale University, told Gizmodo. “But as soon as we step outside of that domain, we see a lot of failures in cognition, including a lack of flexibility and cognitive sophistication.”
Read about the intelligence and the limitations of our dogs at Gizmodo.
This is one of the earliest "music videos," meaning an artful illustration of a song instead of a filmed performance. And I do mean art. Strangely, the music and the film existed separately before coming together in 1968. Mason Williams, who wrote and performed "Classical Gas," tells the story at the YouTube page.
During the time that CLASSICAL GAS was a hit I was also the head writer for THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS COMEDY HOUR on CBS. I had seen a film titled "GOD IS DOG SPELLED BACKWARDS” at The Encore, an off beat movie house in L.A. The film was a collection of approximately 2500 classical works of art, mostly paintings, that flashed by in three minutes. Each image lasted only two film frames, or twelve images a second! At the end of the film the viewer was pronounced "cultural" since they had just covered "3000 years of art in 3 minutes!"
The film was the work of a UCLA film student named Dan McLaughlin. I contacted Dan and told him that I was interested in the idea of using his film as a visual for CLASSICAL GAS to air on THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS COMEDY HOUR. (His original sound track had been Beethoven's 5th Symphony.) THE COMEDY HOUR offered him the money to finance a new film he wanted to make in exchange for the right to change the original soundtrack from Beethoven's 5th Symphony to CLASSICAL GAS and air it on the show. As a “music video" it was first shown on THE SUMMER BROTHERS SMOTHERS SHOW (Glen Campbell was the host) in the summer of 1968.
You can read the rest of the story here. We can quibble with the "3000 years of art" because there are Lascaux cave paintings included that are around 17,000 years old. -via Nag on the Lake
Police officers from Fort Lauderdale captured a renegade kangaroo hopping through the city streets. The officers patted Jack, the kangaroo, and placed him in the back of a police cruiser. It turns out that Jack was under the care of Anthony Macias, as Oddee detailed:
It didn’t take authorities long to locate the owner, who lived just a few blocks away from where cops apprehended the animal. Anthony Macias forgot to latch the gate after taking out his recycling bins earlier.
“I guess he just punched his way through,” he told the Sun Sentinel. Also, do you think that paper has an animal-hijinks beat that someone gets to cover?
Macias got the kangaroo, named Jack, from a friend who was moving out of the area and didn’t want him anymore. Maybe because he missed being able to put drinks on his coffee table? Watch the tail. Unfortunately, Fort Lauderdale doesn’t allow kangaroo ownership, so Jack’s living at the police horse stables for his safety
image via wikimedia commons
Wildlife photographer Mithun H has been watching Saaya the panther and Cleopatra the leopard, a bonded pair in the Kabini Forest in India. He writes:
Saaya and Cleopatra have been courting since 4 years now and whenever they are together it’s a sight to behold. The forest comes alive as they trot nonchalantly in his fabled kingdom. Usually in the courting pairs generally it is the Male who takes charge and moves around with the female following close behind. But with this couple it was definitely Cleo who was in charge while the Panther followed.
From this perspective, it looks the leopard is being followed by her shadow.
-via Colossal
We’ve seen support animals helping people go through therapy or tough times, but usually people just touch or interact with these animals, not take care of them. Israeli psychotherapist Yono Yehuda provides therapy for people with mental health conditions by letting them take care of animals. The Guardian has more details:
“With humans, it’s survivor thinking: if I’m nice to people, they will be nice to me,” says Yoni Yehuda, an Israeli psychotherapist, as his cat Jack Daniels licks water from a jug on his office table.
With animals, he says, there is no apparent quid pro quo. We help them for purer reasons, often with no expectation of a return. “It’s giving from something that is very clean inside.”
This concept is the foundation of the professor’s work – providing therapy for people with mental health conditions by asking them to care for animals. There is healing, he believes, deeply rooted in the animal-human relationship. “The first animal-assisted psychotherapist was God,” he says, as a parrot pecks at the mosquito netting on his office window.
Animals were used in mental health institutions in the late 18th century to encourage socialisation. Today, a patient might be given time to stroke a dog, which has been shown to reduce stress. Practitioners say animals can also motivate patients to stay in treatment, or be used as a metaphor for their own struggles. Some traumatised people prefer not to interact with another person at all.
image via The Guardian
People who are more inclined to spend hours on social media have personalities that indicate they enjoy angering and embarrassing others, according to a study from Michigan State University and California State University at Fullerton. Social media usage of 472 university students were tracked for the study, as FastCompany detailed:
A fascinating study of 472 university students tracked their usage on two top platforms for 18-to-24-year olds: Snapchat (2.64 hours per day) and Facebook (2.28 hours per day). Researchers found that users displaying addictive behavior were also more likely to be motivated to be cruel and callous and to use others for personal gain.
“Our results demonstrate that individuals who have a greater preference for these types of rewards display greater problematic use of both platforms,” write the researchers, who note that these traits are also associated with narcissism and psychopathy and have previously been correlated with addictive internet use. They write that social media sites unwittingly “cater to people who seek rewards from being cruel, such as through cyberbullying or various aggressive online behaviors.”
The researchers hope that their study will help clinicians treat addicted patients by better understanding the social rewards that may be driving them.
The same study also found users logging longer hours with more addictive behaviors on Snapchat, but more frequently attempting to quit Facebook.
image via FastCompany
The city of Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has more than 100 Art Deco buildings. They were constructed in the 1930s by Belgian colonizers as a European neighborhood where the Congolese weren't allowed -except for household help.
“Art Deco architecture was abundant in colonial cities in the 1920s and ‘30s,” says the architectural historian David Rifkind. “Colonial authorities liked Art Deco because it portrayed an image of technological modernization that was intended to present colonization as a benevolent and ‘civilizing’ gift to native inhabitants.” Its association with glamour and international travel, says Rifkind, gave the impression that the colonizers were dynamic and forward-thinking.
In Bukavu, colonial-era buildings exemplify a particular type of international Art Deco architecture that emerged in the 1930s, according to Adedoyin Teriba, an assistant professor of art and urban studies at Vassar College. “There is no doubt that the buildings exemplify ‘Streamline Moderne,’” says Teriba. The style was inspired by aerodynamic engineering, as seen in the curvilinear edges of many of Bukavu’s buildings, imitating the surfaces of airplanes.
To architects and historians, these buildings capture a signature style of colonialism, of an imperial drive toward the future. But for today’s residents, these buildings are a daily reminder of both a painful colonial history and a frustrated, politically futile present.
While these buildings are a reminder of colonization, they are also beautiful and well-built, but are falling into disrepair. Preservationists want to keep them as both a part of history and as a tourist draw. Read about the Art Deco architecture of Bukavu at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Esther Nsapu for Atlas Obscura)
Some are chonky, while some have an average body size. These new summer fruits also vary in color, probably depending on the tree where they have grown. And if there’s one thing common in all of them, it is their love for sleep. For some reason, they look similar to cats, but it isn’t proven by science that cats grow on trees, so maybe these are different species.
What are your thoughts about this one?
(Image Credit: Sad and Useless)
Yes, at other times, submarines have fought each other. But only while one was surfaced. What was unique about the battle between Britain's Venturer and Germany's U-864 on February 9, 1945, was that both vessels were submerged at the time. At The National Interest, Sébastien Roblin explains why technology limited such combat at the time:
During World War II, submarines came to make greater use of hydrophones as well as active sonar; however, the latter models could only plot out a submarine’s location on a two-dimensional plane, not reveal its depth.
Furthermore, the torpedoes of the time were designed to float up to near the surface of the water to strike the keel of enemy ships. Although the “tin fish” could be reprogrammed to an extent, it was not standard to adjust for depth, and guessing the azimuth of an enemy submarine with the limited targeting information available posed an immense challenge.
U-864 was on a journey from Germany to Japan. The collapsing Germany hoped to deliver cutting edge technology to its ally, including jet fighter design schematics, two aeronautical engineers, V-2 missile parts, and 67 tons of liquid mercury.
The Royal Navy's submarine Venturer caught up with the U-864 off the coast of Norway. At the end of the chase, Captain Launders made a desperate ploy to sink the Germans:
After three hours of pursuit, the Venturer was running short on battery and would soon have to surface itself. Launders decided he would simply have to attack U-864 while it remained submerged. He calculated a three-dimensional intercept for his torpedoes, estimating his adversary’s depth by the height of the snorkel mast protruding above the water. However, he knew the enemy submarine would quickly detect a torpedo launch, and planned his firing solution to account for evasive maneuvers.
At 12:12, Venturer ripple-fired all four of its loaded torpedoes in a spread, with 17.5 seconds between each launch. Then the British submarine dove to avoid counterattack.
The U-Boat immediately crash dove as well, then swerved evasively. After four minutes, it had managed to duck under three of the incoming torpedoes. But Launders had launched the second pair of torpedoes at lower depths. The fourth torpedo struck U-864, breaking it in two; the gruesome sound of popping rivets and cracking metal filled the Venturer’s hydrophones. The U-Boat fell 150 meters to the bottom of the ocean, taking with it all seventy-three onboard and sinking Operation Caesar along with it.
-via Glenn Reynolds | Image: HMS Venturer by Imperial War Museums
