Lego is launching a new Lego set based on Nintendo’s gaming console, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The NES Lego set is a collaboration between Nintendo and Lego, along with the interactive Super Mario-themed sets that were previously launched. The new set contains a whopping 2,646 pieces, as The Verge details: 

Designed for adult builders, this new set contains 2,646 pieces that combine to create Nintendo’s first home console as well as an NES controller, a game cartridge that can fit into the console, and a miniature retro TV. The TV displays Mario traversing through a stage from the 1985 classic, and a crank located on the left side of the TV lets you move the mustached plumber up and down between platforms.

Like the earlier Super Mario sets, the Nintendo Entertainment System kit will combine traditional building with digital technology. Placing the Bluetooth-enabled Mario figurine from the Adventures with Mario Starter Course set on top of the TV will produce sounds as if you were actually playing the original 1985 classic.

The Nintendo Entertainment System Lego set will launch on August 1st — the same day as the Super Mario Lego sets — for $230. The Super Mario kits incorporate different characters and obstacles for Mario to tackle, including an expansion that lets him square off against his arch-nemesis, Bowser.

image via The Verge

If you’re one of those people who type the same sentences as replies to other people’s emails, you might be getting tired of writing the same combination of sentences over and over again. I know the feeling. Did you know there’s a great way to send out the same email messages without the copy paste trick? Check out FastCompany’s full list of tips and tricks you can do in Gmail to optimize your emails! 

image via FastCompany

The Internet is a scary place. It’s scary to search through the web for medical advice, because the most likely diagnosis that will be given is worse than what you’re actually afflicted with. But even so, a new study found that the majority of the people from the younger generation (Millennials and Gen Z) rely on social media for health information, as Forbes details: 

The information from Healthline.com was gathered in a two-wave, online qualitative study in late April and early June 2020 with people living with chronic health problems. The sources represented mix of genders, ages and ethnicities, and come from 39 different states in the U.S.

The research focused first on people living with chronic health conditions and how they are impacted by the Covid-19 outbreak. Its primary data point makes it clear that health-centric web pages such as its home site and WebMD are the most popular general resource for those living with health conditions as 76% of those surveyed go to them first.

However, amongst those younger adults questioned, social media platforms become the first source of medical information. Millennials (62%) and Generation Z (52%) go to the likes of influencers on Twitter, Facebook and other apps with medical concerns. Generation X ranked third behind its younger peers at 44%.

As for the individual platforms, YouTube and Twitter are most popular for health condition information among Millennials. Instagram tied with Facebook as the top platform among Generation Z.

Other results made it clear that so-called health influencers have an effect on the lives of all age groups with 44% of people with a preexisting health condition valuing their opinion or advice.

image via Forbes

Recent fave. She yawns like the monster she is. pic.twitter.com/FhV6avwj4B

— Hannah Bernstein (@hannahbern2) July 8, 2020

Your cat or dog or hamster might be the cutest thing ever, but we all take a bad picture occasionally. And since we take a lot of pictures of our wonderful pets, they all have at least one that's embarrassingly bad. Gina Zwicky challenged Twitter users to submit ugly pictures of otherwise wonderful pets, and got a ton of responses. See all the replies in the Twitter thread, or a ranked list of the funniest at Bored Panda.

Kochi, Japan — Found directly across from the ticket gates of the Kochi Station, right beside a bakery/ coffee shop, is this naked mascot, with swirly eyes, holding two sake cups (called o-choko in Japanese) on each of his fingerless hands, and balancing a sake flask (called tokkuri) on his head. Just one glance and the person would know that this mascot is clearly drunk. But make no mistake. He is not just a mascot. He is Berobero no Kamisama, the God of Drunkards, and he watches over the Japanese prefecture of Kochi, which is a place known for its sake.

(Image Credit: Chiarat/ Atlas Obscura)

In September 2018, a woman received a phone call from her best friend, who told her that she has a squirrel that a cat had in its mouth, and the rodent was a little scratched-up. Along with her husband, the woman came to see the squirrel, and they found out that the squirrel wasn’t doing well, and so the husband decided to take her home.

Over time, the squirrel grew up to be a healthy and agile squirrel, and the man knew that it was time to release her back in the wild.

“The only reason I saved her was so she could eventually be free in the wild, happy,” the man narrates on the video. But the squirrel wants to be with him, and to this day she still is.

More about this wholesome story over at The Dodo.

(Image Credit: The Dodo)

Through this generative adversarial network (GAN) which he trained with thousands of photographs, freelance photographer Bas Uterwijk is able to create realistic images of historical figures using paintings and statues of them for reference.

Dubbed the A.I. generated portraits, this series of images by Bas Uterwijk has been created with artbreeder, an AI software that spots common facial features and qualities from the paintings and statues. The program throws different options for Uterwijk to pick from, who then continues with the editing of the image. His approach is somehow artistic as he has to decide on hair and eye color for the statues. As for the paintings, it’s a bit easier as he feeds the AI with different images meaning that the more paintings available on the subject, the more information the artist has to complete the job.

Check out the hyper-realistic photos over at DesignBoom.

Now that’s amazing.

(Image Credit: Bas Uterwijk/ DesignBoom)

Delivering his lines in the way Nathan Drake would say them, actor Nathan Fillion gives justice to the iconic protagonist of the Uncharted video game series in this fan film directed by Allan Ungar and written by Ungar and Jesse Wheeler. The short film also stars Stephen Lang as Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Drake’s mentor and father figure), and Mircea Monroe as Elena Fisher (Drake’s wife).

The fan film was praised even by Naughy Dog’s vice president Neil Druckmann and the franchise creator Amy Hennig.

Fans also recognize that the camera work used when Drake jumps out of the window is a reference to the cutscene-to-game transition in the games.

Now that’s how you do a film based on a video game!

(Video Credit: Allan Ungar/ YouTube)

With the many distractions that we could have while we work, may it be in the office or at his own home, it would really be difficult for us to complete tasks. Thankfully, we have a brain that makes our lives easier by shutting out these distractions, which thereby enable us to focus on the things we have to do. But how does this process work? This is what psychologist Edward Zagha and his team investigated in their study, which was published recently in the Journal of Neuroscience. While he and his team were not able to discover the exact process that happens in our brain, they were able to pinpoint the location where this stuff happens.

“Our discovery may have important implications for the understanding and treatment of neuropsychiatric diseases such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and schizophrenia,” Zagha said. “By studying the mechanisms underlying the blocking of distracting stimuli we may be able to unravel the neural circuitry underlying attention and impulse control.”

More about this over at Neuroscience News.

(Image Credit: ColiN00B/ Pixabay)

Bluish-white stars, as well as red and yellow stars shine brightly in this part of the cosmos, while clouds of dust and gas hover around. At the center of the most famous of all astronomy nebulas — the Great Nebula in Orion — the star-forming nebula, the M43, can be spotted.

The Great Nebula in Orion can be found with the unaided eye near the easily identifiable belt of three stars in the popular constellation Orion. The entire Orion Nebula, including both M42 and M43 spans about 40 light years and is located in the same spiral arm of our Galaxy as the Sun.

Beautiful.

(Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, HLA; Reprocessing & Copyright: Bryan Goff)

A man in a hazmat suit carries spraying equipment into a London Underground train. He appears to be disinfecting the cars, but looks can be deceiving! This is Banksy in disguise, or else someone who works for Banksy, stenciling rats and masks with a message about not spreading disease. The BBC adds,

Transport for London (TfL) said the art was removed "some days ago" in line with its "strict anti-graffiti policy".

The work, called If You Don't Mask, You Don't Get, features a number of rats in pandemic-inspired poses and wearing face masks.

I guess it's a good thing there's a video. -via Boing Boing

Theodore Roosevelt began his presidency in 1901 promising to follow business-friendly policies. However, it was the Gilded Age, where monopolies grew to dominate industry, particularly coal and the railroads that delivered it. Roosevelt soon turned toward regulating those monopolies and their predatory practices. Then in May of 1902, the United Mine Workers of America went on strike in the Pennsylvania anthracite fields. That strike lasted 162 days and threatened to deprive a big part of the US of heating fuel for the winter. Advisors cautioned Roosevelt stay out of it.     

By early September, the Washington Monument had run out of coal to operate its new electric elevator for the thousands of tourists who visited every month. Unscrupulous businessmen in cities throughout the Northeast and Midwest were buying most of the remaining supply and charging four times the normal price. The Post Office threatened to shut down, and public schools warned they might not be able to remain open past Thanksgiving.

Roosevelt was restless, fretful. He knew he would be blamed for remaining idle while Americans suffered. “Of course we have nothing whatever to do with this coal strike and no earthly responsibility for it. But the public at large will tend to visit on our heads responsibility for the shortage,” he wrote a friend.

Prices increased at laundries, bakeries, cafés, restaurants. Landlords raised the rent on apartments. Hotels charged more for rooms. Landowners sold their timber. In Chicago, residents tore out wooden paving from their streets to use as fuel. Railroads gave their employees old crossties to burn. Trolley lines limited service. Some manufacturers had to get by with sawdust in their furnaces. Pennsylvania steel mill owners said they might be forced to impose mass layoffs.

Eventually, Roosevelt did intervene. Read how that worked, and how he became the first president to settle a labor strike at Smithsonian.

Swan Lake Bath Ballet - 27 elite ballet dancers from companies across the globe perform a modern-day Swan Lake from their own home (filled) baths. Remotely directed by @CoreyBakerDance from his UK bathroom.
#FilmedInLockdown #CultureInQuarantine @ace_national @thespacearts pic.twitter.com/uzXReJtbRD

— BBC Arts (@bbcarts) July 8, 2020

Corey Baker choreographed a version of Swan Lake that dancers can do in their own bathtubs! He taught the dance to 27 professional dancers, who then filmed themselves at home in their own tubs. Edited together, it’s a quarantine project you have to see to believe. On another note, a-list dancers have really nice bathtubs. -via Metafilter

There's something very enthralling about watching Mantenka Hime, a Japanese calligrapher, work at her desk. Sora News 24 tells us that she's popular in Japan, where a fanbase supports her enormous talents. There's a lot to watch here:

Mantenka Hime’s videos are focused on visual examples, and often include an overhead view or her writing in a separate window in the video’s top left corner. As a result, even viewers who don’t speak Japanese can learn the proper order, number, and direction of strokes to write each character. Watch closely, and you’ll even be able to spot where she performs hane, the subtle flourish where the artists leaves behind brush strokes while drawing the bristles away from the paper at the end of certain strokes.

And thanks to the scientists in MIT who first thought of the concept of the internet in the 1960s, we get to experience the fine arts of so many cultures around the world. Verily, it is an uplifting tool for all humanity.

I often hear skeptical voices say that today's youth don't have what it takes to thrive in a changing, demanding world. But then I read uplifting stories like this one in the New York Post. Teenagers are taking advantage of masking requirements to disguise themselves as old geezers and buy alcoholic beverages:

The “prank” has taken social-media platform TikTok by storm, with videos of users bedecked as boozehound bubbies — seemingly victorious, bottles in hand — racking up millions of views. [...]

“PSA: use ur fakes as much as possible bc if you wear a mask they can’t see ur whole face lol,” one adolescent posted to her not-of-legal-age brethren.

“Now that we have to wear masks, this is the best time to buy alcohol with a fake ID since the early 80’s . . .” standup comedian Jason Lawhead posted on Twitter.

The future is in good hands.

-via Kurt Schlichter | Image: TikTok