If you have an iPhone, Pei Ketron has the tips, tricks, and editing techniques to make your photos look like they were shot by a professional. Ketron is a photography teacher and commercial photographer. Ketron specializes in mobile photography, so her tips are definitely something we could learn from! Check the full list at Outside Online.
image via Outside Online
A wine glass used around 1600 CE made drinking wine a challenge. The wine glass was from Venice, Italy. It looks like a cake stand. Is that supposed to hold wine? Apparently, the difficulty of drinking from it is the point. People who attended banquets in Italy were supposed to be good at doing everything effortlessly, as Atlas Obscura detailed:
You’d be expected to lift it by wrapping three fingers around the base, and raise it to your lips without spilling a drop. The whole process should look effortless.
Courtiers were expected to embody the ideal of “sprezzatura,” a hard-to-translate word that combines the senses of elegance, sophistication, and nonchalance. In other words, you were supposed to be good at everything, without ever seeming to put any effort into it. What could be a better demonstration of sprezzatura than casually raising one of these sloshing, top-heavy goblets and taking a sip?
Even at the time, these bizarre glasses mystified visitors to Italy, such as the Englishman Richard Lassels, who wrote that “the Italians that love to drink leisurely, they have glasses that are almost as large and flat as silver plates, and almost as uneasy to drink out of.” But to those in the know, even subtle distinctions in how you held your glass could reveal your place in the social hierarchy. At least, that’s what the 17th-century artist Gerard de Lairesse implied in his best-selling manual for painters—he writes that a princess should be depicted “drawing warily and agreeably the little finger” from the glass, while her lady-in-waiting “fearful of spilling, holds the glass handily, yet less agreeably than the other.” The difference between royalty and mere gentility is the lift of a pinky.
image via Atlas Obscura
Snowskating is like snowboarding, except it incorporates skateboard tricks done in the snow. That sound difficult enough, but even a cat can do it. Yeah, this is no ordinary cat. Phil Smage's cat Taddy loves snowy weather, and really goes for sliding around in it. He even inspired the song behind this video, "Hustle to Meowrivate" by @Ande_TheOne. -via Geekologie
Monday, May 4 will be the 50th anniversary of the anti-war demonstration on the campus of Kent State University in which four students died when they were shot by Ohio National Guardsmen. An elaborate commemoration of the anniversary was planned around 2020 graduation events, but graduation has been canceled -for the first time since the shooting in 1970. The school is just now coming to terms with its place in history, as the polarized views of the shooting have matured somewhat.
The Kent State shooting remains a watershed moment in American history. It sparked a nationwide student strike shortly thereafter and reverberated throughout the final years of the Vietnam War and the passage of the 26th Amendment in 1971, which lowered the voting age to 18. Folk rockers Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young quickly released a song about the shootings. The incident was also regarded as a seminal moment in the founding of the band Devo—many of whom were from the area; founding member Jerry Casale was in the crowd during the shootings.
But for decades afterward, both the university and the town of Kent had a complicated relationship with the event. Civil and criminal cases resulting from the shootings wound their way through the courts in the ’70s, and the university sponsored commemorations for the first five years after the shootings but stopped—and then built a gym on part of the parking lot where students were wounded and killed. The university commissioned a sculpture by pop artist George Segal, then refused to display his creation, “Abraham and Isaac.” (It’s now at Princeton University.) The school even tried to rebrand itself as “Kent” because the next word in many people’s minds after “Kent State” was “shootings.”
Read how history -and Kent State University- has dealt with the fallout and changing attitudes toward the shooting that thrust the campus into the national consciousness at Smithsonian.
Remember those "supermarionation" TV shows of the 1960s like Thunderbirds and Fireball XL-5? Of course you do. And they are back ...in a slightly different mode. The folks from Century 21 Films, who produced the original Gerry Anderson shows, have used their quarantine time to create a new online supermarionation series called Nebula 75.
When the social distancing and lockdown measures of 2020 all but halted global film and television drama production, a thought occurred to the team at Century 21 Films. While more conventional dramas with human casts and vast crews now posed a logistical nightmare to all involved, the heroes of Supermarionation hold no risk of coughing or sneezing on one another! In this very strange time, the decision was made to see what sort of "Superisolation" production could be put together under these extremely odd circumstances. The result is NEBULA-75, a short-form puppet drama that follows in the tradition of 1960s favourites while offering something brand new at the same time .
Although team members from around the world contributed remotely to pre and post production, the entirety of the filming for NEBULA-75 was undertaken by a crew of three who happened to already live together in a small flat in London. Their living room was transformed into a makeshift movie studio – with bookshelves, cardboard boxes and other household objects becoming the interior of the show's hero spacecraft. This flat was also fortunately home to many of the puppets, props, and costumes that have been accumulated over the course of different productions.
Follow the adventures of Commander Ray Neptune and the crew of NEBULA-75 as they explore space. Episode one is above; episode two is scheduled to debut on May 3. -via Boing Boing
The Pudding launched an online music challenge that's a lot of fun and contributes to data you may find quite interesting. How well do you recognize hit songs from the past 60 years? Enter your birth year and listen to what they give you.
This project is inspired by a YouTube trend where Gen Z’ers film themselves listening to Queen, The Beatles, and Led Zeppelin for, astonishingly, the first time.
I want to quantify this: music that I assumed was culturally pervasive, but in actuality has no reason to be revered by folks outside my generation.
That is, should I be surprised that someone born in the 2000s has never heard my childhood anthem, “The Sign” by Ace of Base?
Be aware that the algorithm gives you one decade at a time, and you may have to refresh to get a different decade. I recognized 200 songs from the 1960s before I figured that out. But persistence got me into the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I'm not going to try too hard to get into the 00s and 10s because it is apparent that my music knowledge fell off a cliff in the 1990s, when I began to work in country music (which is vastly underrepresented) and started raising children. More fun to be had is in the data you'll find scrolling down, that shows which generation is familiar with which songs. Try it, and you might surprise yourself. -via Metafilter
Update: They have changed the test, and you now get to select which decade you want to be tested on.
We know how some insects, fungi, and sea creatures harness bioluminescence to glow in the dark. Pretty soon, we might see genetically-modified garden plants that also produce their own light. Scientists have experimented for years to introduce fluorescent proteins into plants, or to get plants to combine certain chemicals (luciferin in and luciferase, which sound downright diabolical) to produce light, with little luck. Now a new process uses a more natural pathway to trick plants into producing the necessary chemicals.
The new work relies on the discovery of a new pathway in fungi that feeds on rotting wood. As you might imagine, a fungus that feeds on wood has to have some metabolic pathways that overlap with those of the plants that provide its food source. In this case, the fungus produces its luciferin through a biochemical pathway called the caffeic acid cycle. Conveniently, caffeic acid is an intermediate on the pathway that plants use to make lignin, a key component of plant cell walls and a major contributor to the robustness of wood.
It turns out that only three enzymes were needed to convert caffeic acid to a luciferin. Add in the need for a luciferase to get the glow and the researchers were looking at a total of four genes. They engineered them into a single stretch of DNA and inserted that into the cells of a tobacco plant. While tobacco may seem like an odd choice, it has been intensively researched and is often used for experiments like this.
There are research applications for this work, but you know that someone will monetize this to make garden plants that glow in the dark, so you might be able to put off spending money on backyard illumination by electricity. Read about the research at Ars Technica.
(Image credit: Mitiouchkina et al)
Ze Frank tells us about the life of Abigail, a snail of the Olivella semistriata species. Watch as she deploys her snot-net to catch something to eat, and swim-walk-fly around the tidewaters. But don't get too attached to Abigail, because she's also prey for other snails. Snails are weird.
Like his father before him, Friedrich Christian Juncker was a professor of medicine at the University of Halle in Germany. This was in the 18th century, when procuring human corpses for anatomy class was a dicey undertaking, and they were often bought from grave robbers. Juncker agreed to purchase two fresh corpses, executed criminals which were delivered at night when the university was closed. So the professor stored them in a closet at his home until morning. But late that night, he began to hear strange sounds.
It sounded almost like a rumbling and scratching noise, and as he walked around the house by candlelight trying to figure out what it was, he noticed that it seemed to be coming from the closet and its makeshift morgue within. At first, he thought that his cat might have been locked in there with the dead bodies, and so he opened the door to take a look around inside. As he examined the room he could see in the flickering, dancing light of the candle that one of the sacks that had held the bodies had been torn open, and not only that, the corpse within was gone, although the other body was still lying there untouched. His first reaction was that someone had stolen it, and so he checked around the house but found no unlocked doors or windows, and no sign of forced entry or an intruder. He then went back to that darkened closet in bafflement, and as he stared at that empty sack his attention was drawn by a sort of sigh from the shadows in the corner. This time when he raised the candle, the jumping flame eerily illuminated the form of the missing corpse sitting in the corner on a chair, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
Juncker's first response was to run away to his bedroom, but the "corpse" followed him. Juncker not only had to confront the man, but then decide what to do about him. Years passed before Juncker knew he made the right decision. Is this a true story? Who knows, but it's a compelling tale you can read at Mysterious Universe. -via Strange Company
We’re coming up to a really dangerous point at this pandemic because frustrated families might just start to ease restrictions before they should, something that would put many people in danger. While most people think that we need to remind parents to do the right thing, we believe we have to get to the kids and give them a sense of purpose along with the information they need to keep their families safe.
Say what? Yup. Think about it. Recycling? Kids made that happen. Anti-smoking? Kids again. Seatbelts? Bingo! And guess who is driving the current environmental movement and the fight for gun control. (Hint: it’s not 80-year-old billionaires.)
We’ve partnered with top doctors, hospitals, parenting experts and a psychologist to create five 4-minute animated shorts that help kids understand what they have to do and why
Many TV shows and films use the Latin language for summoning demons, reciting incantations, and casting spells, so I won’t blame you if that’s all you know about Latin. But if you don’t want to risk accidentally summoning a not-so-likable creature, but still want to sound great to your friends and be respected in chat rooms, then this is your lucky day. Mashable compiles the most badass Latin phrases that you might want to memorize and remember.
Check them out over at the site, and then tell me your favorite Latin phrase.
(Image Credit: Wknight94/ Wikimedia Commons)
This photo was submitted by IG user @femaleputin over at Awkward Family Photos. The photo shows her sister, who is celebrating her birthday at the time this photo was taken, standing and smiling in front of the camera. Meanwhile, @femaleputin stands menacingly just a few feet behind her sister. She clearly did not want her sister to get all the attention.
I wonder what happened next after this photo was taken.
Well, what do you think?
An aquarium based in Tokyo is pleading the public to show their faces towards the aquarium’s garden eels, as they notice that the eels are forgetting what humans look like. Before, when these eels remove their heads from the sand, they are usually met with human faces staring at them. But now that many humans can now only stay indoors, the institution fears that their behavior towards humans will change drastically.
Concerned that the garden eels – so named because their grass-like appearance when, en masse, they poke their heads out of the seabed – could come to see visitors as a threat, the aquarium is asking people to get in touch in the form of a calming video calls.
“They don’t see humans, except keepers, and they have started forgetting about humans,” it said on its Twitter account this week.
“Garden eels in particular disappear into the sand and hide every time the keepers pass by,” it said, adding that their oversensitive nature was making it difficult to monitor their health.
More details about this request over at The Guardian.
(Image Credit: Truth Seeker/ Wikimedia Commons)
Using a technique called the breath figure method, researchers from the North Carolina University were able to create a stretchable, and breathable, electronic material, which they believe could be used for biomedical and wearable tech. To put the aforementioned material to the test, they created a wearable sleeve and used it as a controller for a Tetris game.
Breathable wearables should be more comfortable and less likely to irritate the skin than non-breathable alternatives, in part because they allow sweat to evaporate. The team believes this material could be used to create skin-mountable dry electrodes, which might make new electrocardiography (ECG) and electromyography (EMG) applications possible. The material may also be used for human-machine interfaces, like the prototype sleeve the researchers created.
“If we want to develop wearable sensors or user interfaces that can be worn for a significant period of time, we need gas-permeable electronic materials,” Zhu says. “So this is a significant step forward.”
The future is now.
(Video Credit: NCState/ YouTube)
— Strangest Videos Online (@StrangestMp4) April 16, 2020
Watch as this doggo quickly drags his body from the corner upon hearing the distinct sound that a can of whipped cream makes.
Just look at him smile! His excitement cannot be contained!
(Image Credit: Strangest Videos Online/ Twitter)
