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

— Ferris Jabr (@ferrisjabr) May 7, 2020

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.  

Penguin
-It's fine, I put some blubber on it pic.twitter.com/ROADdRsGcj

— Ferris Jabr (@ferrisjabr) May 7, 2020

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

— Ferris Jabr (@ferrisjabr) May 8, 2020

See lots more of these, from robins to toucans to ostriches to potoos, in a Twitter thread that was so popular he published part two as well. -via Metafilter

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

In our latest blog, scientist Kate Fulcher explores the mysterious ‘black goo’ used in Egyptian burials nearly 3,000 years ago.

She investigates what it’s made of and what it can tell us about life in ancient Egypt: https://t.co/oPakiIuZrh pic.twitter.com/HLOTVFpWsJ

— British Museum (@britishmuseum) May 20, 2020

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.

Via - CNN

Image: d'strict video

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.

By now we are used to sequels being a rehash of what worked before, prime examples being Star Wars episodes VII and IX. Take a fresh look at what impressed us when The Empire Strikes Back hit theaters at io9.

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!  

image screenshot via Reddit

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.

image screenshot via CNN

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! 

View this post on Instagram

An audio recording made using a cup.

A post shared by Dust-to-Digital (@dusttodigital) on May 19, 2020 at 10:44am PDT

image screenshot via Instagram

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.

image via BBC

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).

image via Reader’s Digest

Dr. Cynthia Kudji and her daughter Dr. Jasmine Kudji both recieved their medical degrees in the spring of 2020. Cynthia Kudji, originally from Ghana, worked as a nurse and then a nurse practitioner before deciding to go to medical school. She attended the University of Medicine and Health Sciences in St. Kitts. Her daughter Jasmine went to LSU.

Because both women look so young, it’s often hard to tell them apart. Do people mistakenly think they are sisters?

“All the time,” Dr. Cynthia said with a big laugh. “I’ll take it. I’ll take it.”

Dr. Jasmine added, “I’ll never forget when my mom came to lunch with me my freshman year of college and the guys were like ‘who’s this new girl?’ “

After years apart during their studies, both women have been matched to a residency program at LSU Health in Louisiana. Read more about the mother-daughter doctors at the UNHS Endeavour. -via reddit

As soon as the news was broadcast that Adolf Hitler was dead, conspiracy theories began to emerge. Hitler had faked his own death, he was in hiding, or he had escaped to some other country. The most long-lived theory was that he was in Argentina, as were other Nazi escapees. But some said he went to Kentucky.

Some American papers cited rumors that he had taken to digging tunnels in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky. The evidence of survival was weak to non-existent. But by 1947, a Gallup poll found 45 percent of Americans believed Hitler had survived—among them, a group of disgruntled German descendants scattered across the country who, for several months, had been corresponding with a man who called himself “Furrier No. 1.”

In hundreds of letters mailed between 1946 and 1956, “Furrier No. 1” explained that he was, despite misspelling his title and writing in vernacular English, Adolf Hitler. As it turned out, both he and Braun had survived! They had set up camp in Kentucky to plot a “new revolt” and take over the United States, then the world, and finally: outer space. Hitler and his gang of 36,000 German dissidents were hard at work digging tunnels from the nearby mountains to Washington, D.C., to aid their revolution. When he wasn’t underground, Hitler got around by way of “invisible cab.” Together, his “huge armies of soldiers and scientists” had built 116 secret factories across Kentucky and Idaho to develop atomic bombs and “invisible spaceships which made no sound.”

The strange thing is that not only did people believe the story, quite a few sent him money! The even stranger stuff is in the story behind “Furrier No. 1,” which you can read at The Daily Beast. -via Fark

(Image credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1990-048-29A/CC-BY-SA 3.0)

The island of South Georgia, located in the Atlantic Ocean, is a sanctuary for king penguins. The island is said to be supporting approximately 300,000 breeding adults today. Because of the large population of king penguins, the island has also seen an increase in penguin poop, which releases greenhouse gases in the air, which makes the icebergs melt.

When researchers visited South Georgia in order to learn more about ecosystems at the bottom of the world, they did not expect that the penguin poop would be too intoxicating even for them.

The environment isn't the only thing susceptible to the gases from penguin guano. Scientists from Denmark and China were in South Georgia to study this cycle when they started to feel sick and loopy. They had spent the day breathing nitrous oxide, which is more commonly known as laughing gas.

“After nosing about in guano for several hours, one goes completely cuckoo. One begins to feel ill and get a headache,” Bo Elberling, a researcher from the Center for Permafrost at the University of Copenhagen, told the AFP. He and his colleagues published a study on the relationship between glacial retreat, penguin activity, and greenhouses gases in the journal Science of The Total Environment.

Yikes!

Thankfully, the amount of nitrous oxide that is released from the penguin guano is not enough to make a global impact.

Whew!

(Image Credit: Andrew Shiva/ Wikimedia Commons)

It might seem silly to see kids strike a Superman or a Wonder Woman pose. While it might really look silly, if not awkward, science tells us that they can help boost a child’s confidence and self-esteem. That’s right; power poses have a positive effect on a child.

The concept of power posing (a.k.a. postural feedback) became a business world fixation in 2012. That year, social psychologist Amy Cuddy presented a TED Talk detailing her 2010 research with psychologist Dana Carney and Andy Tap. It quickly became the second most-watched TED Talk ever.

The gist of Cuddy's hypothesis is simple. Nonverbals, such as body language, don't just affect how others perceive us; they also change how we perceive ourselves. If we maintain "high-power poses"—that is, postures expressing friendliness, strength, and openness—our minds will interpret those qualities as self-possessed.

This power-posing works on adults as well, according to Cuddy’s TED Talk video.

More details about this topic over Big Think.

(Image Credit: AD_Images/ Pixabay)