The earliest known iteration of the legend of Hua Mulan goes back to a 1500-year-old song about a woman who took her father's place in the army and became a war hero in disguise. The story may be even older in the oral tradition, and it may even have been rooted in fact. While there isn't any evidence of a warrior named Hua Mulan, anthropologists Christine Lee and Yahaira Gonzalez re-examined remains of 29 skeletons in Mongolia, and found two that are female and show evidence of warrior training. As quoted from New Scientist:

Three of the skeletons belonged to Xianbei women—and two were potentially warriors. Lee and Gonzalez reached this conclusion partly due to the nature of marks left on the bones where muscles once attached. The marks are larger if the muscle was heavily used, and the pattern of marks on both women’s skeletons suggests they had routinely worked the muscles someone on horseback would use. There were also indications that they practiced archery.

Christine Lee talked to Ars Technica about the implications of the find. -via Smithsonian

You've heard how Sonic from the movie Sonic the Hedgehog was redesigned after the movie was finished because of the reception of the trailer. But how about the finished movie that actually played in theaters earlier this year? Turns out it was pretty good for what it is: a kid's movie based on a 1990s video game. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Andy Murdock, the editor of The Statesider travel blog, has been fascinated by fonts since he first got a Macintosh computer in 1984 that offered different fonts, many of them named for places.

Bored while in quarantine, Murdock decided to find out how many fonts were named for places in the US. He stopped at 222, although he admits that he could have kept searching for more, and placed them at their correct locations on a map. You can view his zoomable image here.

In addition to the map, he provides a list of fonts by state. West Virginia has only 1, but California has 23. Miss Cellania's home state of Kentucky has 3, including the deliciously named Kentuckyfried.

-via Marilyn Terrell

Steve Cutts (previously at Neatorama) takes an animated look at what happens when humans lock themselves inside for an extended period. This is a sequel to his 2012 cartoon called MAN. -via Laughing Squid

The Antonov An-225 Mriya is the largest cargo plane in the world. It is the only one of its kind in existence. People travel the world just to catch a glimpse of this badass plane! The Mriya has giant turbines, rail locomotives, and has ready-to-eat meals for an entire army. The Mriya is huge for a reason, as it was also made to carry rockets! Check Popular Mechanics’ full piece on the badass plane here. 

image via Popular Mechanics

Who knows what’s in a wine produced by a “cult”? Well, Buzzfeed’s Aria manages to trick his co-workers to try a wine produced by the “Fellowship of Friends”, a religious group that has been called a “cult.” Watch to find out if his co-workers enjoyed the wine! 

The 1998 OR2 asteroid will pass by Earth, and its geological features make scientists joke that it’s equipped to go near the Earth. The mile-wide asteroid poses no danger, and its features make it look like the asteroid is wearing a face mask! The asteroid was first spotted in 1998, and scientists will continue to track it to see how it will move beyond 2020, as The Guardian details: 

“The small-scale topographic features such as hills and ridges on one end of asteroid 1998 OR2 are fascinating scientifically,” said Dr Anne Virkki, head of planetary radar at the observatory.

“But since we are all thinking about Covid-19 these features make it look like 1998 OR2 remembered to wear a mask.”

The asteroid is classed as a PHO (potentially hazardous object) because it is bigger than 140 metres and will come within five million miles of Earth’s orbit, but no known PHO poses an immediate danger to the planet.

“The radar measurements allow us to know more precisely where the asteroid will be in the future, including its future close approaches to Earth,” said Flaviane Venditti, a research scientist at the observatory.

“In 2079, asteroid 1998 OR2 will pass Earth about 3.5 times closer than it will this year, so it is important to know its orbit precisely.”

The team started observations on 13 April.

“Although this asteroid is not projected to impact Earth, it is important to understand the characteristics of these types of objects to improve impact-risk mitigation technologies,” Dr Virkki added.

image via The Guardian

Agustina Bazterrica’s novel Tender is the Flesh might make you go vegan with its premise. The dystopian novel is set in a world where human cannibalism is normalised. Because of a virus that rendered animals inedible, people turned to eating human meat. Yikes. The Argentinian author describes its meat production line with extreme detail that makes it so disturbing, as BBC details: 

It centres on Marco, who is employed in a slaughterhouse, “only no one calls them that,” as he points out. He works there, helping turn humans into food, to pay for his father’s medical treatment. He recalls the mass hysteria during the animal pandemic – the articles which confirmed there wasn’t yet a cure. He is haunted by traumatic memories of “the groups in yellow protective suits that scoured the neighbourhoods at night, killing and burning every animal that crossed their paths”. This is a world where animals are a rarity – and where humans are exploited like animals instead, from being tested on without anaesthetic in laboratories to being hunted and killed for sport.

It is a provocative premise, and yet having grown up as a vegetarian in a carnivorous world, I found Bazterrica’s dystopian world utterly horrifying, but not quite as shocking as some might. After all, the way in which her imagined society blinds itself to human suffering reflects the way ours can be blind to the realities of animal killing. There’s the same normalisation of eating flesh; the same euphemisms around what is being consumed (to the consumer, they’re always sausages and burgers, not chunks of dead pig and cow); the same exploiting of each other, whatever the species involved.

image via Pushkin Press

Randy Tuten was one the dozen or so design artists who made posters for Bill Graham’s rock concerts in San Francisco in the 1960s. As such, those original posters are quite collectible today, particularly the ones for Led Zeppelin concerts. Tuten emblazoned his posters with fancy typography, often paid with a mundane but incongruent photograph of a boat, train, or automobile. Graham didn’t give Tuten a lot of direction for his posters, and trusting the artist’s instincts led to some memorable posters.

“When I started working for Bill Graham,” Tuten says, “I learned pretty quickly that the band names were more important than the artwork. If I did a nice piece, that was all fine and dandy, but it was the band name that made the poster collectible.” In fact, Tuten designed a lot of Led Zeppelin posters that have since become quite collectible. “Rick Griffin ended up doing most of the Jimi Hendrix posters for Bill,” he says. “I ended up doing all of the Led Zeppelin posters. It wasn’t planned that way. It was just an accident.”

Many of those posters have become iconic, including the one shown here that was a recycling of a college project. Read how that came about, as well as Tuten's other posters for Led Zeppelin and other concerts (for decades afterward) at Collectors Weekly.

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has announced some changes for the 93rd Academy Awards. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, films that had a planned theatrical release but were released on a streaming platform may qualify for categories such as best picture. Time has the details: 

“The Academy firmly believes there is no greater way to experience the magic of movies than to see them in a theater. Our commitment to that is unchanged and unwavering,” said Academy President David Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson in a statement. “Nonetheless, the historically tragic COVID-19 pandemic necessitates this temporary exception to our awards eligibility rules.”

image via Time

Around Sixty-five million years ago, it is said that an asteroid the size of a mountain entered the Earth’s atmosphere. The atmosphere was filled with gas, dust, and debris that quickly changed the planet’s climate. The asteroid continued its descent, and eventually crashed on the Earth’s surface. And just like that, many living things, such as the dinosaurs, were wiped out into extinction. This hypothetical scenario was called the Alvarez hypothesis, named after Luis and Walter Alvarez.

There’s a good chance your mind might have conjured up an image of an enormous asteroid barrelling down through the atmosphere, wreathed in fire, slamming into the earth and creating worldwide dust storms, heat, and general death.

This is a fairly accurate doomsday scenario – one that has happened before and will happen again. For over four billion years, the Earth has been constantly clobbered by asteroids and other objects zooming around the solar system. While the majority have burned up harmlessly in the atmosphere, others have smashed into the surface and caused global devastation.

With these things in mind, space programs that scan the Earth’s surroundings have been dispatched to monitor threatening asteroids. Unfortunately, identifying which asteroid will most likely hit Earth prove to be a difficult endeavor, as a lot of factors are involved.

More about this over at Cosmos Magazine.

(Image Credit: MasterTux/ Pixabay)

“Every top mathematician was in awe of his strength,” says Stephen Miller, a mathematician at Rutgers University. “People said he was the only mathematician who could do things with his own bare hands,” he continues. “Mathematically, he was the strongest there was.”

Clearly a genius, this man is known for coming in and doing things his way. Aside from that, he is also known for rapid computation. Throughout his life, John Conway has proved, refined, and tweaked theories that mathematicians still apply to this day.

More details about his life over at Quanta Magazine.

(Image Credit: Thane Plambeck/ WIkimedia Commons)

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The bioluminescence has been insane the past few days! Hands down one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced. Here’s a little vid of @blairconklin hacking into some phytoplankton and lighting up the night ✨ #bioluminescence #phytoplankton #catchsurf #skimboarding #womper

A post shared by Skylar Wilson (@skyrar) on Apr 24, 2020 at 3:01pm PDT

One of the many amazing creatures that can be found in the oceans are dinoflagellates, microscopic organisms that have the ability to make themselves glow (a process called bioluminescence) to scare predators away. While this phenomenon might be a common sight to see, documenting them could prove to be difficult.

Though they sometimes appear in the wake of red tide—massive blooms of dinoflagellates that stain the sea crimson—bouts of bioluminescence are often unpredictable, reports Laylan Connelly for the Southern California News Group.

This year, a group of local photographers decided to take the gamble after noting a spate of red tide off Newport Beach, which, as of April 28, is still open to the public. “We went back that night hoping to see something, and sure enough we did,” local Royce Hutain told Lauren M. Johnson and Amanda Jackson at CNN. Videos and images from the outing are now on Instagram.

More details about bioluminescence over at Smithsonian Magazine.

(Image Credit: skyrar/ Instagram)

When it comes to hearing the word “river”, the pictures that may come into one’s mind are long waterways that flow from various landforms all the way to an ocean or lake. This body of water causes both the flora and the fauna to thrive. But while we think of rivers as big and lengthy bodies of water, there are also rivers that are so short that you can walk their entire length in just a few minutes.

You might argue that if a river is so small, it shouldn’t be called a river at all but a stream or a creek, which begs the question: what defines a river?

[...]

The distinction between rivers, streams, and creeks, is… based entirely on size and is possibly subjective. Creeks are the smallest of the three, streams lie in the middle, and rivers are the largest. The definition is so vague that there are a lot of contenders to the title of “the shortest river in the world.”

Check out some of these short rivers over at Amusing Planet.

(Image Credit: Bracodbk/ WIkimedia Commons)

It looks just like a tiny zen rock garden! This is the work of Japanese artist and designer Manami Sasaki, who has lately been sculpting slices of toast into elaborate works of art. In this case, the sand substitute is sour cream carefully raked with a fork.