He'll never forget this interview pic.twitter.com/JeE3vC8QRp

— non aesthetic things (@PicturesFoIder) January 15, 2025

Do yourself a favor and watch the above video before reading the rest of this post.

Yeah, you can't always judge a book by its cover. Now that you've seen the funny part, meet John bin London. You might think he is a Saudi who has been raised in the UK, but no. This Nottingham native only began learning Arabic in the last few years. He started off with the language, and then wanted to learn the Arabic alphabet and then got into the history and culture of Saudi Arabia. He finally got to visit that land a couple of years ago. Those who know say John's Arabic is fluent but not perfect, and very good for someone who wasn't raised speaking it. He has also mastered different Arabic dialects. Learn more about his journey in this video. The documentary is mostly in Arabic, so you'll need to turn on the closed captions for English. The English parts have Arabic captions.



 -via reddit

A teeny tiny house, to be exact.

Japanese company ispace is sending The Moonhouse, a tiny toy house created by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg, to the Moon with its next lunar mission.

This step would cap Genberg's 25-year long dream of putting the miniature of a typical Swedish-looking house on the Moon. It was a "crazy, maybe idiotic but at the same time, in my mind, really poetic thought to put a red house with white corners on the surface of the moon," Genberg said as reported by the AP, "and now it's going to happen."

"What's the purpose? It's art," he noted.

Image: ispace mission2

In the late 19th century, con men of all kinds made money traveling from town to town promising to cure all manner of problems. A rainmaker, using various methods, could redeem a desperate drought-stricken town. It had long been observed that rain often follows a military battle. Or was it just that those incidences were noticed and recorded? Civil War general Edward Powers noticed, and published a book about it in 1871. He proposed experiments on inducing rain with heavy artillery, with lots of noise, flash, and reverberation. Twenty years after his request, the US government finally authorized a budget for such experiments, led by lawyer and engineer Robert G. Dyrenforth.

Dyrenforth set up his experiments with mortars, electrical kites, and hydrogen balloons. In a series of noisy deployments, some were followed by rain. But if you look out a window every Thursday morning, some mornings you will see rain. While the government didn't find his results convincing, Dyrenforth did, and took his show on the road to drought-stricken places in the West, with mixed results. Was it a matter of a good idea unevenly executed? Or was it wishful thinking on Dyrenforth's part? Or did the desire to succeed (and make money) color his thinking? Read about Robert G. Dyrenforth and his rainmaking experiments at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: Harper's Weekly 1891 via Texas State Library and Archives Commission)

Have you ever seen a truck rolling around on balloon tires this big? This 1953 British Pathé newsreel introduces us to the Rolligon, and gives the impression that it's a vehicle. But the name Rolligon actually refer to the tires that make this vehicle special. Inventor William Albee designed the tires after watching the Inuit roll heavy boats on inflated seal hides. Rolligon tires only need pressure of about seven psi because there are a lot of square inches on tires that are five to nine feet wide. They are great for rolling over soft terrain, no matter how uneven it is, and they do very little damage to plants and animals in their way. Rolligon tires never made much headway with the military because these vehicles can't go fast enough. As far as consumer use, well, any vehicle using them would be too high to easily get in and out of, and too wide for standard lanes. But they are being used today, in the oilfields of Canada and Alaska. See a modern truck on Rolligon tires here.  -via Nag on the Lake

Astronaut Don Pettit (previously at Neatorama) took this image on January 11 from the International Space Station (ISS), or more specifically, from a window of the SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle docked to it. They are both 254 miles above the earth. Pettit is an avid space photographer and a talented educator as well as an astronaut. In this picture, he was focusing on deep space, so the city lights of earth rotating below at night show up as a series of streaks. The closer stars are pinpoints of light, while the further stars illustrate why our galaxy is called the Milky Way. The horizontal streaks are Starlink satellites. The bright bands on the horizon are the sun about to rise. You can also see zodiacal light and emissions from the ISS. All this in one photo that Pettit posted to X (formerly Twitter), therefore completing an Elon Musk trifecta. -via Ars Technica

(Image credit: NASA/Don Pettit)

Bobo is a genius--a tortured genius. That's because no one understands the meaning and depth that lie within Bobo's art. He is an ape of vision. As he sucks on a heater back in his studio, Bobo knows this is true. But he remembers the fate of Vincent Van Gogh--he might not be honored in his own lifetime. Or, worse, even after that.

Bobo is less fortunate than Beetle Moses, the artist who composed this cartoon.

Certain species of frogs appear to hop across the surface of water in a process that's been called "skittering." It's like watching someone skipping a stone across the surface. While the frogs go pretty fast, it would be pretty rough to hit the water as hard as a stone does. So how do they do it? A team led by engineer Talia Weiss of Virginia Tech put some northern cricket frogs to the test and filmed them with a high-speed camera. When the film was slowed to 5%, they could see that the frogs actually become submerged in a kind of belly-flop. They don't sink all that deep, though, and use their webbed feet to re-launch themselves into another belly-flop. This kind of motion is seen in cetaceans, so it's less skittering and more like "porpoising." Read more about this research at ScienceAlert. And if you see a remix of this video with the appropriate sound effects (whee! plop) let me know. -via Damn Interesting

When former Wheel of Fortune contestant Rhea Mathew was invited back to the game, she thought that she was participating in show's 50th anniversary.

After solving the puzzle - "Will You Marry Me?" - Rhea realized that the game was just a clever ruse: her boyfriend Robin Kuriakose showed up from the backstage, knelt and proposed!

What a sweet proposal (and can we buy an OMG?)

Some people enjoy pineapple on pizza. I am one of them and am a noted gourmand, so let that fact speak on behalf of this pizza preference.

The "chefs" at Lupa Pizza in Norfolk, UK* disagree. The Norfolk Evening News reports that they will make you a Hawaiian pizza if you insist upon it. But it's going to cost you £100.

The owner, Francis Woolf, is allowing customers to vote to make this pizza a special. But he's also threatening to raise the price to £200 if they do so. Cross his taste buds at your peril.

-via Dave Barry

*The British should not criticize anyone's culinary choices.

Colossal introduces us to the fabric arts of Emily O'Leary, an artist in New York who has gained fame for her original applications for embroidery and rug hooking. The latter category includes rugs that looks almost exactly like dogs sleeping on floors, enjoying the carefree lives that we humans give to them.

The dogs are functional rugs, so they look flattened. But, from a distance and without depth perception, you'd swear that you're about to meet a real dog.

O'Leary crafts her rugs from photos of real dogs. You can read a comprehensive description of her creation process with photos of each step here.

Besides fried chicken and a horse race, Kentucky is also known for its bourbon, particularly Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. It's a common misconception that for a whiskey to be labeled as bourbon, it must be distilled in Bourbon County, Kentucky. This is not true. While there are legal standards for bourbon, the distillery location is not one of them. Bourbon is distilled in North Carolina and other places. Yet most bourbon is indeed distilled in Kentucky, the whiskey was developed there, and the word itself came from Bourbon County.

Kentucky is known as the home of bourbon for its history in the state, and that history comes from the confluence of the state's geography and climate and the people who settled there. Read up on what makes bourbon, how it differs from regular corn liquor, and why Kentucky was the perfect place to make bourbon what it is today.
 
(Image credit: Jackdude101)

In the year 2071, technology has achieve the ability to connect our brains to our computers and other machinery through an implant in our bodies. But that communication goes both ways. The implant called Integrated Intelligence, from the company BrightMind, can also filter one's perception of reality using artificial intelligence, in essence building the reality that we think we want. But is that a good thing? Being disconnected from reality, as comforting as it can be, is not really in line with what it is to be human. Everyone thinks Mina is in need of such manipulation, so she became an early adopter.

The science fiction short film (DIS)CONNECTED from Dust was produced and directed by Karl Stelter. The film explores the upsides and downsides to outsourcing our reality to elevate our emotions. The last few seconds are a twist, leaving us wondering what it means and what will happen next. What do you think?  -via Geeks Are Sexy

The parachutist had planned to land in a soccer field as part of a public celebration in Rhenen, the Netherlands, on Saturday. But he was unable to steer his descent precisely and instead came down inside the Ouwehands Zoo. Specifically, he arrived inside the enclosure dedicated to and ruled by bonobo chimpanzees.

The NL Times reports that the gentleman was fortunate in that he landed in that particular open-air habitat. The bonobos were indoors at the time. And, furthermore, had he drifted a bit further, he could have landed in the nearby lion or elephant habitats.

-via Super Punch | Photo: Aart Maren

Archaeologists are finding out a lot about ancient Egypt from excavations at the Saqqara necropolis in the ancient city of Memphis. They recently uncovered the tomb of the most distinguished physician of his time, a doctor named Tetinebefou. The 4,100-year-old tomb has an inscription on a stone sarcophagus labeling Tetinebefou as "the chief palace physician, priest, chief dentist, director of medicinal plants and conjurer of the goddess Serket." Serket was a deity who cured snake and scorpion bites.

Ancient Egyptian doctors often specialized in treating one body part, and the label Tetinebefou sported as an expert in many specialties elevated him greatly. The title of dentist is especially rare in that culture, so it's no wonder Tetinebefou was tapped to be the pharaoh's personal physician. The tomb had been previously looted, and Tetinebefou's funerary treasures are no longer there, but the rich wall paintings and carvings depict his belongings and the objects he may have used in his practice. Read about Egypt's medical practitioners and see more of this lavish tomb at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Franco-Swiss Archaeological Mission of Saqqara)

If you recall the climactic scene in Star Wars: A New Hope, Luke Skywalker is negotiating a terrifying trench run on the Death Star, risking certain death with one false move. That's the feeling you'll get watching Carl Weiseth flying down a mountainside with a gliding parachute and skis. He speeds through rock formations like it's easy, and even flips around a few times on his way.

Besides wondering about Weiseth's sanity, you might also wonder how this is filmed. There is no cameraman following him; this was all captured from his helmet with a Go Pro Max 360° camera, which has the ability to appear as if it is filming from a distance. Luke Skywalker looked real in the trench run, although it was filmed in a studio with special effects. This video is real, but looks fake because the technology used to capture it is beyond our experience. This sport is also beyond our experience, so hey, don't try this at home. -via Laughing Squid