What better way to inform people about the pandemic by dressing up as Grim Reaper? It sure will get the message across that the sickness can cause severe deaths! A Florida man donned a “Grim Reaper” costume and warned beachgoers about the pandemic.
image via wikimedia commons
It depends on the location. Sharks are missing from 19% of the world’s coral reefs. This number is the highest percentage of reef shark decline ever recorded. The decline of sharks is caused by overfishing, according to a new study. Don’t worry, sharks aren’t fully extinct, this means that some reefs in the world have no sharks, as Science Magazine details:
”This study is a tour de force,” says Nick Dulvy, a conservation biologist at Simon Fraser University. “It’s the most comprehensive study that’s ever been done to look at shark abundance,” adds Ellen Pikitch, a marine biologist at Stony Brook University. Both say the findings bolster the conclusion that fishing has profoundly depleted reef shark populations in many places. (Neither was involved in the project.)
Like other large animals, sharks are vulnerable to overfishing because they grow slowly and don’t have many offspring. Demand for shark fins has grown, along with consumption, by a burgeoning Asian middle class. In other places, fishing communities are eating more shark meat as other species have declined. Researchers know shark populations have dropped in many places, but these studies are difficult to compare.
image via wikimedia commons
A telescope was able to capture a portrait of another solar system with two planets orbiting around a star. Sound familiar? It’s like our solar system (but with fewer planets involved)! The portrait was taken by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The sun and the two giant gas planets are fairly close to each other, as US News detailed:
What makes this group shot so appealing is it’s a “very young version of our own sun,” said Alexander Bohn of the Netherlands' Leiden University, who led the study.
Bohn said he was “extremely excited" about the discovery. “This is the first time astronomers were able to capture such a shot,” he said in an email.
The observations can help scientists better understand the evolution of our own solar system.
Astronomers typically confirm worlds around other stars by observing brief but periodic dimming of the starlight, indicating an orbiting planet. Such indirect observations have identified thousands planets in our Milky Way galaxy.
image via US News
As someone of Asian descent, I can say that a part of me died when the woman did not wash the rice before cooking, and then washing it after it was cooked. That’s clearly not the right way to cook rice. Aside from that, metal should not be used to scrape the saucepan.
If there’s something on the Internet that could trigger an Asian, it might just be BBC’s Egg Fried Rice Video.
In the words of Uncle Roger, “who cooks rice like this?”
(Image Credit: mrnigelng/ YouTube)
Naomi SV was recording her harp performance of "The Sound of Silence" when she was surprised by a videobomber the rest of us were watching since the beginning. She says,
My harp session turned into a Disney movie.
She labeled this video a "blooper," since she didn't finish the song, but this outtake has six times as many views as the completed song. -via Metafilter
My Heritage is offering a free online photo enhancer that uses artificial intelligence to sharpen blurry photographs, and even add color if you like. PetPixel explains.
Of course, we’ve seen this kind of AI-powered tech before, but the MyHeritage Photo Enhancer puts it all together into a one-click tool that does a surprisingly good job. And since it’s free to try it out, it’s helping to introduce this kind of technology to people who didn’t know that AI photo enhancement has gotten so advanced.
You can even zero in on the specific faces in each photo, downloading the full enhanced result or individual enhanced “headshots” for everybody in the photo. For this reason, the tool doesn’t enhance landscape photo since it has to detect at least once face to work properly.
For an example, I pulled up a rare photo of myself at age two. You can tell that my parents saved money on a haircut in order to afford the portrait sitting. Try out the MyHeritage Photo Enhancer yourself. -via Nag on the Lake
It’s all thanks to artificial intelligence (AI). Photo and film restoration specialist DutchSteamMachine was able to enhance the original Apollo film, making the footage strikingly clear and vivid. Now people can watch footage of several moon missions in high definition! If you’re curious as to how DutchSteamMachine managed to restore the footage check out the ScienceAlert’s full piece on the topic here.
image via ScienceAlert
The Photography Deck is a camera reference guide printed on a deck of playing cards. So not only can you play card games with your friends, you can also relearn some photography concepts as you play! Creator Eric Bohring organized the contents of the resource by sorting the concepts into each suit, as My Modern Met detailed:
To organize this resource, creator Eric Bohring assigned each suit its own category of information: spades represent camera basics; hearts are about composition; clubs tell you about technical aspects; and diamonds highlight shooting styles. This array of knowledge gets to the nitty-gritty of photography and discusses concrete topics like ISO and shutter speeds as well as more subjective aspects such as finding negative space or patterns in a composition. Each card highlights this information through custom artwork that is minimalist in style to let the tricks and tips shine.
The Photography Deck is now available for pre-order. There are a variety of deck designs available, including a variant that is extra waterproof and can withstand a day at the beach. Select your deck by visiting the deck’s Kickstarter page.
image via My Modern Met
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.
