Batangas, Philippines — A few days ago, a man named Elliot Andal used his smartphone along with a National Geographic 76/700mm telescope and has successfully captured a photo of the gas giant Jupiter.
While the photo of the planet is a bit blurry, the planet’s most identifiable feature, its Great Red Spot, can be seen on the image.
Amazing!
(Image Credit: Elliot Andal/ Rappler on Facebook)
For many people, Starbucks isn’t just a place to stop by to drink coffee and chill — it is a place to drink coffee (or any beverage) and work. Seeing this...
Tokyo’s newest Starbucks is fully aware that customers are as likely to want to use it as an office as a cafe, and so the branch is designed to cater to teleworkers.
On the first floor of Starbucks’ Circles Ginza branch, located in Tokyo’s swanky Ginza neighborhood, things look pretty normal, with a counter to place drink and food orders at. It’s when you climb the stairs to the second floor that the differences become noticeable.
More details about this Starbucks’ branch over at SoraNews24.
(Image Credit: Starbucks/ SoraNews 24)
If you've ever gone through a tunnel underneath a body of water, you probably wondered how on earth they managed to build it. Rivers carry a lot of water, which has a tendency to seep down into the earth. The first such tunnel was the Thames Tunnel, built under London's river in the 19th century. This kind of construction was attempted in 1799, but that was the first of a string of failures. Engineers knew how to build a tunnel, but you have to dig the hole before you build the walls inside, leaving a dangerous gap for flooding or collapse. French engineer Marc Brunel came up with a workaround: a temporary tunneling shield that could move with the diggers and builders.
Brunel’s tunneling shield consisted of a large, rectangular, grid of iron frame with 36 chambers distributed into three levels. Each chamber was open to the rear, but closed in the front with moveable boards. The front was pressed firmly against the tunnel face, and the workers would remove the boards one at a time and excavate the earth behind it to a predetermined depth. Then the board would be pushed into the hole and screwed back into place before the next one was removed. The whole process was repeated until the earth behind all the boards were excavated. Then the entire iron frame was laboriously moved forward, and the newly excavated section was shored up with bricks and mortar.
The tunneling shield was revolutionary, but the work was slow, progressing at only 8 to 12 feet a week. And although the shield worked well in preventing cave-ins, seep-ins were another problem. The filthy, sewage-laden water from the Thames above dripped down from the roof of the tunnel and poisoned the poorly ventilated space. Many miners including Brunel himself fell ill to a wide range of affliction such diarrhea, headaches and temporary blindness. Pumps worked all round the clock removing water from the tunnel, and when they failed, the whole shaft would flood to a depth of several feet.
The work was not safe, and setbacks meant the tunnel took nearly twenty years to complete, at an expense way beyond what was estimated. Read about the construction of the world's first completed tunnel under a navigable river at Amusing Planet.
Will Smith is working on a new version of his '90s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, but this time, it will drop the comedy to be an hour-long drama. It will be called just Bel-Air. This may sound a bit familiar to Neatorama readers, as we posted a short that does just that, produced by Morgan Cooper. Will Smith liked it, too.
Bel-Air is described as a dramatic take on the beloved '90s comedy that catapulted Smith to stardom over six seasons starring as the street-smart kid who moved from West Philly to the tony Los Angeles neighborhood. With a reimagined vision, Bel-Air will dive deeper into the inherent conflicts, emotions and biases of what it means to be a Black man in America today, while still delivering the swagger and fun nods to the original show.
Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that the new Bel-Air has been in the works for more than a year after the four-minute clip went viral when it was posted in March 2019 and caught Smith's attention. Cooper, a Fresh Prince superfan, created and directed the trailer that reimagined the series as if it were a drama. He will co-write the script, direct and be credited as a co-EP.
The series will eventually land on a streaming service, but we don't know yet which one will win the bid. Read more at The Hollywood Reporter. -via Uproxx
This personal cabin can be placed anywhere you like. You can have the Mountain Refuge airlifted into the middle of the woods or to a precipice looking over the ocean. Live the secluded life, or just throw it in your backyard as a personal hub where you can rest. That is, of course, if you buy this cabin-style micro home. The Mountain Refuge features light wood, rustic finishes, a small kitchen, and a sauna-like bathroom. The structure can stand alone or be connected to another structure!
Image via Urban Daddy
I wish it could be though. Discharge is an art installation composed of approximately ten thousand pigeon feathers. The five-meter tall installation pours down from a built-in bookcase like water. Don’t worry, it is static, but artist Kate MccGwire evokes the way water appears as it cascades down, as Colossal details:
The delicate feathers are sourced ethically from pigeon racers who collect the plumes in August and October when the birds molt. MccGwire sorts the materials in her studio, separating the ones that curve left from those that bend to the right, before arranging them in captivating, color-specific patterns. “When visitors see the piece for the first time they are drawn to the phenomenal scale, rhythmic patterning, movement, and perfection of the piece,” she says of the mixed-media installation. “But are often perturbed and revolted when they understand what the material is,” which is exactly her intention. By juxtaposing the raw materials with the finished artwork, she asks viewers to consider the everyday beauty that’s often overlooked.
“Discharge” has been exhibited in an evolution of configurations in South Korea, Berlin, Paris, and now, Harewood House in West Yorkshire until August 14.
Image via Colossal
A dust devil is a short-lived whirlwind that can form suddenly and dissipate just as suddenly. They are smaller than tornados, and much less dangerous. However, this particular dust devil seemed to have a grudge against a guy running a fruit stand in Haines Junction, Yukon. From the YouTube description:
"I was buying fruit with my girlfriend at this fruit stand that comes every other week to our community. All of a sudden the wind started to get stronger and a table blew over and before we knew it, a huge strong dust devil formed. It lasted about three minutes and the dust devil took all of the guy's cash money and blew it all up into the air. After it ended, people who saw and watched it came to help clean up the big mess, there was fruit and boxes all over the place."
It was not a good day for the poor guy just trying to sell some fresh produce. -via Geekologie
Well, not exactly. Thanks to trading, Demi Skipper already has an iPhone and a minivan. The 29-year-old began a trading challenge with a simple hairpin. Skipper won’t stop until she gets a house. Now that’s dedication! Skipper was able to trade an iPhone 11 Pro Max for a van, as Sky News details:
Skeptics might wonder if her friends are helping her achieve her goal, but under the rules of the challenge she is forbidden from using cash or trading with anyone she knows.
Ms Skipper, who works for a restaurant reservation app, said she sends out around a thousand messages early in the morning and late at night, when her life is "all trades".
Image via Sky News
Sugar Bean 슈가빈 shares a video of herself creating a lot of macarons for her store. Over a thousand macarons, on her own! I can’t even bake a simple treat for myself. If you’re looking for an inspiration for your stress baking sessions, this video might inspire you (or intimidate you).
Proposing to your girlfriend is a risky venture. She could say no. Riky Ash's proposal had additional risks, as he waited until he had been set on fire before popping the question. The New York Post describes his stunt:
Ash, who’s been stunting as a body double for 27 years, says he was able to stay relaxed while on fire thanks to his kung fu training and says the nerve-wracking part was making sure the surprise went off without a hitch. “This one, I’m more nervous about the actual proposal than being set on fire.”
Ash's girlfriend, Katrina Dobson, says that she didn't know he would propose at that moment. She thought that she was simply joining him for a romantic photoshoot.
-via Instapundit
David Rush was able to reclaim his previously-held Guinness World Record for most balloons popped with chopsticks in one minute. Rush was able to pop 40 balloons, beating previous record holder Ahsrita Furman’s record of 36 balloons. This isn’t even Rush’s only claim to fame. Actually, he has broken more than 150 Guinness records to promote STEM education!
Image screenshot via UPI
The TV series Unsolved Mysteries kept us in suspense in the 1990s, and has been resurrected three times on TV. It's also survived on YouTube, Hulu, and now Netflix. In this parody video by Nerdist, the experts take on a cold case close to our hearts: Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Just like the original show, the case is presented with a combination of actual footage, recreations, and expert commentary. -via Laughing Squid
BoMcCready crunched the numbers and found out how common each day of the year is for birthdays. It appears that September is the time more people are born, which leads us to believe the cold of the winter solstice and the cheer of holiday parties may have an effect. The interactive version is here, in case you want to click on your birthday and see how far it diverges from the average. My birthday, September 27, is the 27th most common birthday on the calendar. You would think that February 29th is the least common, but it was apparently weighted for how often that date appears on the calendar. We can see that December 25 and 24, January 1, and July 4 are relatively rare ...possibly because inductions and non-emergency cesarians aren't scheduled on those days. -via Digg
The marvelously surreal world of artist Hugh Hayden now includes cast iron skillets and pots that are cast to resemble masks. Hayden explains that in his exhibition titled "American Food," the masks speak of the African diaspora offering a hazy look into the past:
The function and form of both the skillets as early African cookware and the masks’ ancestral and ceremonial origins are merged in a technique called sand-casting; Hayden adopts this rudimentary means of manufacture to celebrate the imperfectness of the materials, their colonial histories, and the inherent loss of detail in the reproduction process. Hayden likens the abstraction of the original objects that occurs in the sand-casting process as a form of diaspora that transforms the skillets into something layered and culturally syncretic.
-via Colossal | Photo: Lisson Gallery
Are you looking for a good place to Netflix and chill? Or would you like to have a movie night with friends? The last standing Blockbuster Video rental store, which is located in Bend, Oregon, is open for business as an AirBnB rental property. There's a living room and an air mattress set up in front of a big screen TV among the rows of VHS cases on shelves. According to the hosts, the experience is authentic to its origins:
Whether you want to stay up until sunrise or pass out on the couch, we’ve created the perfect space complete with a pull-out couch, bean bags and pillows for you to cozy up with “new releases” from the ‘90s. Crack open a two-liter of Pepsi before locking into a video game, charting your future in a game of MASH, or watching movie after movie. But be wary of reciting “Bloody Mary” in the staff bathroom off of the break room, as you just may summon the ghost rumored to haunt the store. And help yourself to some NERDS, Raisinets and popcorn (heavy on the butter), but make sure you save room for a couple slices.
-via The Mary Sue | Photo: AirBnB
