In 1502, Leonardo da Vinci designed a self-supporting bridge for Ottoman Sultan Beyazid II of Istanbul, intended to span the Bosphorus. It consisted only of interlocking beams with no supports underneath, no fasteners, and no mortar. The sultan didn't use the design, because he didn't believe it could possibly work. But it does, because of physics! What's more, the design is simple and portable, making it a useful military tool. Da Vinci wasn't the first to build bridges in this manner, as the Chinese used this concept a thousand years earlier, but Leonardo came up with it independently.  

Still, I can't help but think of all the things that could go wrong. Sure, the physics are sound, but it would be built and used by fallible humans. If you used one piece of weak wood, it could break. It you used wet or algae-covered wood, a tiny slip by someone walking on it could bring the whole thing down. If your builders make one mistake in construction, it could be a disaster. However, as an engineering concept, it's pretty darn cool. -via the Awesomer

Our earth is vast and filled with living things, including us. But you might not have a real grasp of the relative mass of all humans to all marine animals to livestock to plants. An interactive presentation called Biocubes shows us cubes of all the plant mass, all the animal mass, etc. so we can compare. You might not be surprised to learn how the biomass of all earth's plants dwarfs the biomass of animals, but you might gasp at how fungi and bacteria also take up way more space than animals. Then when we break down the animals cube, we find that most of our animals are in the ocean. Humans are a larger biomass than wild mammals, and our livestock biomass is bigger than humans and wild mammals combined.

But it's the last part of the presentation that's a real eye-opener. The "technomass" is the volume of the things humans have made, including building materials, plastic, and metal. An animated sequence shows how the technomass has grown over time until it dominates the earth and takes up more space than all living things combined. It's a breathtaking journey with lots of information along the way. -via kottke

The genius of the best modern mashups in which characters cross over from disparate TV shows lies in their comedic value, sure, but it doesn't work without great editing skills. In this one, the YouTuber behind Alternative Cuts took three weeks to place drug dealer Tuco Salamanca from the series Breaking Bad into the competition of Squid Game. Tuco's not taking mistreatment from anyone- even when his life is at stake. Oh no, he's not going to win the game for sure, but he might make it worth watching. He fits in so well, not logically, but in a perfectly-edited way.

Alternative Cuts teased that he will have more of these. He's working on bringing the entire crew from Breaking Bad into participating on the Red Light, Green Light game from Squid Game. He says it should take about a month to get that one ready to post. -via Laughing Squid

Ai Nurul, a cosplayer in Malaysia, integrates the hijab into all of her costumes. This often involves making creatively designed and assembled hijabs that serve as wigs, convincingly presenting as hair. You can see that vividly in this horror version of a female Ronald MacDonald.

There's been a conundrum in the world of Star Trek that's been bothering fans many years. Why do Klingons look so different in every Star Trek TV series? For some of us, it's easy to explain. Star Trek: The Original Series aired in the 1960s with a measly special effects budget. To indicate an alien, all they had to do was change the shape of his ears or eyebrows, or give him an "exotic" mustache. By the time Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek: The Next Generation came about, there was money for prosthetics and they were able to make aliens look more alien. And that was fun, so they threw more into the special makeup effects with each series afterward.

But that doesn't make sense within the universe of Star Trek. Avid fans like their fantasy worlds to have a logical cohesion. You really can't blame them for wanting an explanation, because this is the kind of thing that can nag at you over the years. The producers have listened to enough complaints, and in a recent episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks, this season's finale, there appears to be somewhat of an explanation. However, even if you watched it, it could be confusing. An article at Inverse tries to parse the different ways Klingons look, although it won't be satisfactory to all fans.     

If you aren't an athlete, even if you consider yourself the picture of health, your doctor will inevitably tell you that you should get more exercise. However, the thought of joining a gym, buying exercise equipment, or counting 10,000 steps a day seems like a lot of work, and such lofty goals are liable to set you up for failure. Instead, your goal should be to incorporate walking into your daily routine until it becomes a part of your normal lifestyle. Any increase in walking will benefit your body over time. One short stroll around the neighborhood will make you feel good, and may lead to two strolls around the neighborhood.

Walking around the neighborhood has benefits beyond health, too. It gives you the chance to speak to your neighbors, meet all the dogs and cats, and admire (or judge) the houses in your area. Walking alone gives you a chance to think, and walking with a companion is a great opportunity for conversation. This TED-Ed video goes into more detail on the importance of walking just a little more than you walk now.  

Archibald Montgomery Low was an eccentric yet visionary British inventor of the early 20th century. He would have been more well known to history is he hadn't been so distractible that he went on to a new idea before completing the previous project, or if he weren't disliked for his self-aggrandizement. Low introduced a prototype television in 1914, but abandoned that work to invent the first powered drone aircraft during World War I.

Low published quite a few books, including the 1925 volume titled The Future, in which he predicted the technology that would be available in the year 2025. He predicted power from wind turbines, smart phones that you wouldn't have to dial, moving sidewalks and escalators, and news delivered by television. He also predicted online banking and online crime to go with it. Read about these and other predictions for 2025 made 100 years ago at IFL Science. -via Strange Company

(Image source: Wikipedia)

Matt Nelson of We Rate Dogs brought us The Top Ten Dogs of 2024, which we posted a few days ago. Those stories of heroic dogs were emotional enough, but there were only ten. We Rate Dogs ranks thousands of dogs every year, all above perfect. In their annual compilation video, Nelson collaborated with filmmaker West Webb to show us hundreds of the goodest boys and girls in clips from 2024 videos. After all, a dog doesn't have to save lives to be a hero. They don't even need to be heroic, because being themselves is more than we deserve. You will laugh at some dogs, tear up at others, but you'll smile the whole time.  

By the time this video is over, you'll fall in love with the song, too. It's "Bloom" by The Paper Kites. See the original video here. You can keep up with the dogs of 2025 at Instagram or Facebook.

Montchavin is a picturesque village in the French Alps where many are employed in the skiing industry. The region is home to Paradiski, one of the world's largest ski resorts. Thousands of people visit every year, but Montchavin itself only has a couple hundred permanent residents. In 2009, a woman from Montchavin was referred to neurologist Emmeline Lagrange, who diagnosed amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Dr. Lagrange contacted the Montchavin general practitioner, who told her he was well aware of ALS, because he knew of three other cases in the village.

Lagrange was puzzled, because ALS is fairly rare, with two or three new cases diagnosed per 100,000 people in a year. She eventually uncovered 16 cases of ALS in Montchavin, an extraordinary cluster of diagnoses. The patients were not all related, and several came from other countries, although they had lived in Montchavin for years. Of 12 patients who had blood tests, none had genetic markers for ALS susceptibility. Was it an environmental pollutant? Many possibilities were investigated, but no risk factor was identified as being common to all the patients. However, a 2017 report mentioned that six of the patients reported eating wild mushrooms. Lagrange spotted that detail and went back to the 13 patients she was studying. She discovered that all of them had eaten Gyromitra esculenta, a delicious wild mushroom that is so toxic that it is illegal to sell them in France. Read about the investigation, and the state of research into the causes of ALS at Knowable magazine.

(Image credit: Audrey OT)

Explore this image and you'll see represented an entire year of one person's life. Specifically, it's Sophie O'Neill's experience of 2020.

She tells BBC News that she began January 1 of that year by embroidering an icon representing the fountain at a hotel where she worked. Each day, she added a new icon representing that particular day in her life and the experience that was for her. She matches each icon with a few words that she writes down in a journal to provide context.

Now, in 2025, O'Neill is still going strong. She offers online resources for people who would like to join her in embroidering 2025.

-via Kottke

The upcoming film Love Me has an intriguing concept. In a post-apocalyptic world in which humans have gone extinct, a buoy falls in love with a satellite. To be together, they review historical accounts of humanity and create avatars of themselves, played by Steven Yeun and Kristen Stewart. While this may be the best that such diverse machines can accomplish for happiness, we are forced to consider how this kind of virtual love may replace actual companionship among humans.

The idea may remind you somewhat of the plot of Wall-E, in which we felt compelled to root for the success of animated robot romance. Love Me was screened at Sundance a year ago and has middling reviews, so the execution may not quite live up to the idea. Releasing a movie in January doesn't inspire that much confidence, but I certainly enjoyed the trailer. Love Me opens in theaters on January 31. -via Gizmodo  

Human beings have exerted enormous control over the earth, particularly in modern times. But there's a bit of hubris in thinking that we are mightier than the world beneath our feet. The forces of nature are always showing us who's the boss. In 1929, the authorities in Sugarloaf Key, Florida, thought they would conquer mosquitoes by bringing in bats. How? By building the world's largest bat tower, which they did. They planned to attract 100,000 bats with a special bait made by bat expert Charles Campbell. Their tower was up for one day before a hurricane hit. No, it didn't destroy the tower, which survived for close to a century, but no bats ever lived in it because the bait was washed away.

Read the details of that story and four others concerning the folly of man vs. nature at Cracked. As Chiffon margarine once said, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."

(Image credit: Ebyabe)

Kaido is a miniature Australian Shepherd. Matty is a human (I'm guessing; he doesn't say directly). Together, they bike through the streets of New York City.

Kaido is a civic-minded dog who contributes to the well-being of his polity. He is involved with the efficient implementation of social services, such as ambulances, by howling whenever he hears the siren erupting from one.

-via Laughing Squid

The trope of the evil scientist is useful for fiction, but it is grounded in real history. Scientists as a whole are just as ethical as the population of people they came from, and that means that some were fine with doing horrible things to experimental subjects they considered lesser than themselves, whether that involved animals, disabled people, subjugated races, or even uninformed volunteers. Some of these experiments turned out to be a bit fraudulent in their findings as well.

A psychological experiment conducted by John B. Watson in 1920 may seem tame compared to those linked above, but it involved an innocent baby, which shocked the scientific world. It was one of the experiments that led to stricter ethical standards in science experiments, and drove home the importance of scientific rigor in claiming results that may or may not stand up over time. There is little direct documentation left of the Little Albert experiment, but Weird History uses what little photographic evidence is left plus plenty of stock footage to tell the tale.

British artist Chris Barker made a poster in the style of the album cover for the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band featuring images of notable people who died in 2024. It's a big crowd.

Barker has worked around the clock in the past few days trying to include every celebrity. The image above is version five for 2024, as he updated the collage to include former president Jimmy Carter and a couple of other people who passed on in the last week. By now it should be definitive. Barker said he received more notifications about Carter than anyone else since he's been doing this annual project. You can enlarge the picture at Instagram or Bluesky. The latest key we have is for version four, enlargeable here, and if he gives us an updated key I will edit this post. Note Kobosu, the dog we know from the doge memes, in front. Also Burt the crocodile who starred in the movie Crocodile Dundee. The objects in front are representative of people who aren't recognizable by their pictures.

See Barker's poster from last year here, and those going back to 2016 here.