While the weather is warming up and dog grooming businesses are closed, some folks took a chance on removing their doggo's winter growth themselves. While they get points for self-reliance, the results are not quite as planned. Okay, these dog owners get more points for seeing the humor in their situation and sharing the pictures online.
The good news is that it's hair, and it will grow out eventually. And the dogs probably don't care nearly as much as their pictures might imply. Get a laugh at 52 dogs who had to endure home grooming at Bored Panda.
We may never know how people in the distant past regarded the concept of time, at least before they left evidence in the form of symbols and language. But once they developed those things, we can chart how the world not only saw time, but tried to measure it and understand it. Quanta magazine has a timeline of some of the highlights in that journey, as they pertain to culture, physics, timekeeping, and biology. While all timelines end with "now," we are sure to learn more about time and its nature in the "future." -via Damn Interesting
Technology and artificial intelligence has greatly improved throughout the years. But if there’s something that still has lots of room for improvement, it would be the AI’s ability to talk to humans. Chatbots and virtual assistants still suck at keeping conversations. But perhaps starting now, things will be different.
Now Facebook has open-sourced a new chatbot that it claims can talk about nearly anything in an engaging and interesting way. Blender could not only help virtual assistants resolve many of their shortcomings but also mark progress toward the greater ambition driving much of AI research: to replicate intelligence. “Dialogue is sort of an ‘AI complete’ problem,” says Stephen Roller, a research engineer at Facebook who co-led the project. “You would have to solve all of AI to solve dialogue, and if you solve dialogue, you’ve solved all of AI.”
Nowadays, it has been very easy to look for ways to lose or gain weight. Answers to many of your diet questions can be found at the tip of your fingers (or your thumbs, if you’re using a phone). But, as they always say, not everything that can be found in the Internet is true.
Nutritionists examine four trending diets, namely reverse dieting, GAPS, HCG, and IIFYM. Their conclusions? These diets are just fad diets which lack scientific evidence.
Compilations of news bloopers are added to YouTube's library all the time, but in the era of social distancing, a new difficulty factor had been added. Many correspondents are filing reports from their homes, which means technical glitches, lack of direction, and family members and pets popping up at the most awkward time. -via Digg
Make your desk more… intriguing with this banana lamp designed by Studio Job and produced by Seletti. With its golden peeling and its shining body, this banana lamp surely makes for an eye-catching desk. The lamp comes in three designs, namely Huey, Dewey, and Louie (the names of Donald Duck’s nephews).
Choose one to suit your mood, or grab all three if you like your bananas by the bunch. Each lamp sells for $295 over on Gessato, which is a whole lot of bananas if you ask me.
In order to learn more about our organs such as the brain, as well as cancerous tumors, scientists have been trying to get detailed 3D views inside our bodies — views so detailed that they will be able to identify blood vessels and cell types. But doing this is far from easy, and it takes a lot of time.
Now, dramatic improvements to a 3D imaging technique can reveal the internal components of entire organs or even animals in a simple procedure, researchers report this week.
Scientists were able to take a peek inside a mouse’s brain using this new staining method, which could help in many scientific fields.
There are many things that cause distress to children. To name a few, some of them are hunger, fatigue, and loud noises (the same things that cause distress to adults, actually), while the two most common causes of distress in children are boredom and anxiety. Psychology Today offers alternative ways in addressing the causes of distress in children. They also provide examples that might help you identify if your child is bored or anxious. Check out the article over at the site to learn more details about this.
Adam Hillman is an artist, but more humbly refers to himself as an "object arranger". Lately, the objects that he has been arranging into mosaics are colored paperclips. Here is his recreation of Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night.
In 1847, Ireland was suffering through the Potato Famine. Across the Atlantic Ocean, the Choctaw Nation felt the pain of the Irish and gathered together to raise funds. They sent a gift of $170 to Ireland to buy food for those who needed it, despite still suffering from the effects of displacement on the Trail of Tears. That $170 is the equivalent of $5,000 today, and represented a real sacrifice. The Irish never forgot that generosity from Native Americans. In 2020, Navajo and Hopi people are suffering from the pandemic, particularly due to lack of running water, so they set up an account to take donations to ensure the supply of food and bottled water through the Rural Utah Project Education Fund. Donations poured in, many from Ireland, and the account has raised $1.5 million so far.
One Irish donor, Pat Hayes wrote: ‘From Ireland, 170 years later, the favour is returned! To our Native American brothers and sisters in your moment of hardship.’
Another donor shared, ‘Solidarity with the Navajo people from Ireland. Ní neart go cur le chéile.’
While a third wrote: ‘Remembering the help you gave us during the Great Famine – not forgotten. Go raibh maith agaibh. Thank you.’
An investment in humanity is paying off 173 years later. -via Metafilter
If you've gotten sick of your usual toast, Manami Sasaki might inspire you to take your toasts to the next level.
Taking inspiration from Japanese traditions, Sasaki created a zen garden-inspired piece of toast art, featuring sour cream for the base that was “raked” with a fork to mimic patterned sand. Matcha powder was used to represent moss, while macadamia nuts and walnuts were artfully placed to look like rocks. Sasaki also created toast inspired by Kintsugi—the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer. The thoughtful food artist filled the “cracks” of the bread with edible gold leaf.
One of our Troopers in Weber Co. initiated a traffic stop on what he thought was an impaired driver. Turns out it was this young man, age 5, somehow made his way up onto the freeway in his parents' car. Made it from 17th and Lincoln in Ogden down to the 25th St off-ramp SB I-15. pic.twitter.com/3aF1g22jRB
— Utah Highway Patrol (@UTHighwayPatrol) May 4, 2020
An officer from the Utah Highway Patrol pulled a vehicle over and found the driver to be a five-year-old boy. He wasn't driving the car all that well, which was why he was pulled over.
Family members told troopers the boy had gotten upset with his mother at some point earlier when she wouldn't let him buy a Lamborghini, Street said. The boy's parents told investigators the boy had never driven before and they hadn't had any issues like that prior to Monday's incident.
However, it's believed the boy grabbed the keys from a hook in the home, started the car and made it from his home located in the area of 17th Street and Lincoln Avenue to the I-15 South on-ramp at 21st Street, Sreet said. That is about a five-minute drive from the home to the freeway.
The unnamed boy told the state trooper that he was trying to get to his sister's home in California so he could buy a Lamborghini. He had three dollars on him. The child was returned to his home, where he had been under the care of a sibling while his parents were at work. See a video of the encounter at KSL. -via reddit
Finnish Aalto University has introduced the CHEMARTS cookbook, a project for those interested on experime ting with wood-based materials. The recipes included are both simple and advanced, combining design methods and chemical engineering, which can be done at home, in workshops or in chemistry labs.
the cookbook by aalto university asks questions including: how can we make flexible, transparent wood-based materials? what kinds of materials can we derive from trees, while still respecting the preciousness of nature? could the innovative use of renewable cellulosic materials change our material world? the book showcases experimental ideas and interesting results, focusing on raw materials that are processed either chemically or mechanically from trees or other plants: cellulose fibres, micro- or nano-structured fibrils, cellulose derivatives, lignin, bark, and wood extractives.
Philadelphia will memorialize Dinah, an African American woman once enslaved by the property’s owners. Why? She saved Stenton House—a historic landmark built in the early 18th century for colonial statesman James Logan—from being burned down.
Freed from slavery in 1776, just months before the Declaration of Independence was signed, Dinah took a paid job as a housekeeper at Stenton. The following fall, she encountered two British soldiers who told her that they intended to set the building ablaze. After the pair retreated to the adjacent barn to gather kindling, Dinah alerted a British officer who had stopped by the residence in search of deserters to the would-be arsonists’ presence. The soldiers were promptly arrested.
Despite the overwhelming accounts and evidences that credit Dinah for saving the Logan's property, several omit her name, and refers to her only as an “old Negroe servant.”
The descriptors that adorned a bronze plaque at Stenton, installed in 1912 to honor Dinah’s contribution, also memorialized her poorly, referring to her as a “faithful colored caretaker.” The stone marker was later removed during renovations. (As of May 1, Dinah remains conspicuously absent from the Wikipedia entry on Stenton.)
Now, centuries after her still-largely anonymous act of bravery, Dinah is finally getting her due, reports Karen Chernick for Atlas Obscura. In collaboration with Germantown-based artist Karyn Olivier, curators at the Stenton House—which has since been converted into a museum—plan to install a proper commemoration of Dinah on its grounds.
Image Courtesy of Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum
We learn to use language and communication as little children, although it is a vast structure of rules, implications, and intuitive leaps. But there is always more to know about the way we communicate, that we really already knew deep down, but never knew how to explain. Tom Scott shares certain assumptions that people communicating with each other start out with. However, you and I and everyone else have known people who don't follow these guidelines. Communicating with those people is strange, and then difficult, and then you just give up. Those are the exceptions that confirm the rules.
