Business Insider reports that the fast food chain Burger King has found a new purpose for its iconic paper crowns given to kids. By massively expanding their size, the crowns enforce social distancing rules. These are available at selected outlets in Germany.
The Italian division of Burger King is taking a very different but possibly more effective approach. Its "Social Distancing Whoppers" come with three times the normal amount of onions, thereby encouraging people to avoid the diner's toxic odor.
Luring industry to your town can involve "sweetening the pot," as in giving corporations tax breaks to bring in factories and jobs. Often the gain in jobs does not offset the loss in tax revenue, but that's not the only way to gain a CEO's attention. In order to lure a Tesla Cybertruck factory to Tulsa, they've repainted a 75-foot statue of an oilman, called The Golden Driller, to resemble Tesla's founder Elon Musk!
The gargantuan statue, unveiled earlier this week at a community event and on Bynum’s social media, now features a red Tesla logo painted on its chest. The Driller’s 48-foot belt, which once read “TULSA,” was changed to read “TESLA.” If you squint, the statue’s head now looks like a low-budget YouTube cartoon of Musk. “I was told onsite it was an ‘Elon Musk Face Skin,’” one worker wrote on Facebook. “It went on like a fruit roll-up.”
“It’s this weird, ghostly, white mask-like thing,” said Lucas Wrench, a 28-year-old Tulsa Artist Fellow, who runs an arts space called OK #1. “It sort of looks like if you FaceSwapped with some creature. I just couldn’t believe it. I’m shocked at how transparent it is—the kind of a symbol they created in putting this enormous billionaire, literally a giant towering billionaire in Tulsa—the lack of self-awareness. They’re groveling.”
Since Father's Day is coming up very soon, it's worth mentioning that this fine piece of 1970s fashion is going up for bids. The Daily Record says that it's offered by the Elvis Presley Museum (I'm guessing that's Graceland). A fan made it for the King, who wore it until he "died" in 1977.
Slip it on and it's like soaking up the ambiance, masculinity, and aroma of Elvis. Ladies will be impressed with it, provided that it is visible. So be sure wear it on the outside of your clothes before heading out on the prowl.
When scientists on World War 2 discovered that some animals and creatures are ruled by their own body clock (which we now refer to as “biological clock”), a scientist named Jürgen Aschoff wondered if humans also had this kind of clock. In the 1960s, Aschoff, alongside his research partner Rütger Wever set up an experiment, to find out the answer to his question.
To study the inner workings of human biological clocks, Aschoff built a soundproof underground bunker in the foothills of a mountain deep in the Bavarian countryside, just up the road from the well-known beer-brewing monastery Kloster Andechs. Through a series of investigations that included 200 subjects and spanned two decades, Aschoff’s bunker experiments would become a pioneering study in the field of chronobiology, changing the way we think about time today.
Free of any watches, windows, or alarm clocks, participants spent several weeks living a timeless existence, away from any temporal cues or signals from external factors, known as “zeitgebers”—such as the Earth’s cycle of day and night—that might hint at what time it was outside. To test whether or not one person’s body clock can influence another, scientists investigated subjects both individually and in small groups.
During the whole experiment, all of the participants lost track of time.
Thanks to this particular study as well as the succeeding ones, we now know that there are three clocks that govern how we perceive “time” — the body clock, the solar clock, and the social clock.
More details about this timeless study over at JSTOR Daily.
Pigeon -Rejects the extravagances and hypocrisy of late-stage capitalism -Doesn't care what you think anyways -The only god is chaos pic.twitter.com/jlEwd1ubUz
Science writer Ferris Jabr studied bird nests to see what they say about the bird itself. Or something along those lines. You know how we judge people by the homes they choose and the way they keep them? This is sort of like that.
Some birds are perfectionists, while others take the easy way out.
Megapode -Uses compost pile, sunbaked sand, and geothermal energy to warm eggs -Possibly the most ecologically intelligent species -Literally one with the Earth -Megapode 2020 pic.twitter.com/CaTTKW9m02
The deadline for entering the 2020 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards isn't until June 30th, so if you have a funny picture of wildlife, send it in! The winners will be announced in September. Meanwhile, there are some pretty funny entries. You can see a dozen of them in a ranked gallery at Bored Panda. Currently at the top is this picture from Anthony Bucci entitled "Rough Night."
You have to feel sorry for the graduates of 2020. They get no commencement ceremony, no unemployment benefits, no stimulus check for most of them, and they are thrust into a world that's had a weird job market for years and became infinitely weirder in a pandemic. College placement offices are closed, and have been for months.
There are quite a few things they don't tell you about getting a job when you finish school. One thing is that when companies say "entry level," they don't mean your first job, they just mean your first job with them, so they can pay you the lowest salary they have. Another thing is that the required qualifications they post are a wish list, not a deal breaker, no matter how they make it sound. Good luck out there. -via Digg
The funerary practices of ancient Egypt are still fascinating us today. Archaeologists have unearthed mummies from thousands of years ago, meticulously preserved by techniques that are not written down, so they are studied and sometimes reverse-engineered in order to be understood. One of these methods is the use of "black goo," used to seal coffins and therefore hiding the craftsmanship of the artwork on mummies. One example is the mummy of Djedkhonsiu-ef-ankh, a priest who died around 3,000 years ago.
After Djedkhonsiu-ef-ankh died, he was mummified, wrapped in fine linen and sewn into his plaster and linen mummy case. This case was beautifully painted in bright colours and gilded with gold leaf over the face. At the time of his funeral, he was lowered into his coffin, and carried to his tomb. Then several litres of warm black ‘goo’ were poured all over the mummy case, covering it completely, effectively cementing the case into the coffin. The lid was then placed on the coffin, and he was left to journey forth to the underworld.
Djedkhonsiu-ef-ankh was not unique. Though not used by everyone – there are a number of instances of this ‘black goo’ being used in Egyptian burials. But what is it? And if we find out what it was made from, can we learn more about why the Egyptians used it?
The black goo was found in objects besides coffins. Was it used as a religious practice or for more practical purposes -or both? Researchers at the British Museum's Department of Scientific Research analyzed the substance to find out what it was made of and what that can tell us, which you can read about at the British Museum's blog. -via Strange Company
What do you get when you line a building with a wraparound LED facade and fuse that technology with art? You get a fantastic illusion titled "Wave."
Appearing for exactly one minute every hour, the simulation is so realistic it looks as if water is about to pour over the heads of people who pass through the busy commercial square.
Titled "WAVE," the project was designed by d'strict -- a firm that specializes in using immersive technology to create public art. The project took four months to execute from start to finish, including three months of digital design work to make sure it achieved the desired effect.
Released on May 21, 1980, The Empire Strikes Back is officially 40 years old. The anniversary is not being commemorated as spectacularly as that of the first Star Wars movie, but ESB is now widely considered the best Star Wars film of all, and deserves a look back. The Empire Strikes back expanded the Star Wars universe in ways we may have forgotten by now. Let's look at some of the things that ESB introduced us to.
AT-ATs
Every Star Wars movie introduces new ships and vehicles. That’s just what they do. But few introductions are as memorable or impactful as the AT-ATs introduced on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. Their sheer size and scope captured our imaginations and were a perfect representation of just how impressive and imposing the Empire truly was.
Jedi Training
How did one become a Jedi? We didn’t quite know. But The Empire Strikes Back showed some of the processes as Yoda and Luke ran and jumped all over Dagobah. It was important to let audiences know that Jedi aren’t just born, they’re made, and it was going to take a lot of effort and courage for Luke to reach that goal.
Here’s a good dose of cuteness: three good doggos waiting for their sticky bun, Watch as the adorable dogs excitedly wait for the lady to hand them the tasty treat. Oh, and make sure to watch until the end for a little cute surprise!
Our animal companions are smarter than we think. Our furry friends would miss us if we were away for a long time. This is proven by Ismael Fernández’s reunion with his pet donkey. Fernández thought Baldomera (his pet donkey) would not remember him after he went away to be under quarantine. But his beloved pet gave him a touching reunion.
Did you know that we can record audio using a cup? Well, it’s a little more than a cup, as dusttodigital shared a video of their setup on Instagram. The cup serves as the microphone that takes in the sound one wishes to record. Head over to their post to see the full setup!
Peter Gordon placed a love poem under his wife Alison’s pillow every day for twenty-five years. The actor wrote a whopping 8,500 poems for his wife. Now that’s devotion, effort, and love. Even after Alison’s death, Gordon continued to write about the life and love he shared with Alison, as BBC details:
It's hard to think of a gesture that could be both as grand and as sweetly personal.
The poems form a remarkable chronicle of domestic devotion, passion and bliss. If Peter's not the most romantic bloke alive, they suggest he's been one of the luckiest.
Peter started writing the poems in the 1980s, but they became a daily fixture in 1990, and remained so until her death from lung cancer in 2016.
"She was very touched and used to look forward to it," he recalls.
"It started off as little notes and then little poems. I would put them under her pillow, she would come to bed, look under the pillow, give it to me, and I would read it to her.
"Then I'd give it to her and she would read it silently and then fold it up and put it back under the pillow."
Around 340 of his vast archive of poems have now been put online by their daughters Cassie, a charity content creator, and Anna, a writer who has worked on Succession and Killing Eve.
Some of the poems are recited in accompanying videos by actors like Julie Hesmondhalgh and Pearl Mackie.
Spoiler alert: it isn’t “Z”. The alphabet wasn’t created in the order we sing the alphabet song. Ironically, we can say that the alphabet wasn’t created alphabetically. The last letter added was not “Z”, but “J.” Reader’s Digest has more details:
In the Roman alphabet, the English alphabet’s father, “J” wasn’t a letter. It was just a fancier way of writing the letter “I” called a swash. When lowercase “i”s were used as numerals, the lowercase “j” marked the end of a series of ones, like “XIIJ” or “xiij” for 13. Both letters were used interchangeably to write the vowel sound /i/ (like the “i” in igloo) and the consonant sound /j/ (like the “y” in yes).
Then along came Gian Giorgio Trissino, a grammarian who wanted to reform Italian linguistics. In 1524, he wrote an essay that identified “I” and “J” as two separate letters. “I” distinguished the aforementioned vowel, and “J” became a consonant that probably sounded more like the “j” in Beijing. Others later adopted his use of “J,” but Romance languages altered its pronunciation to the “j” we’re familiar with (as in jam).
