With all of the surveillance cameras that we can find when we go outside, we can conclude that it is pretty much very easy to track a person’s movement. In this day and age where it has become entirely possible to monitor a person’s every move, one could wish that he could turn invisible even for a moment. But is that even possible?

While we can’t conceal our presence to fellow humans (yet), it is entirely possible to make cameras think that you’re not there, even though you’re hiding in plain sight.

Much like in Harry Potter, where Harry usually uses his invisibility cloak in order to not get detected when he sneaks into places, concealing your presence from cameras also involves a cloak of sorts.

Find out more about this over at Ars Technica.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

England is well-known for street names that seem NSFW, especially in American English. Those street names may be centuries old, and they sometimes mean something quite different from what they sound like. The name could be a descendant of Old English words, or just a geographical feature that doesn't translate well. Some, however, were originally meant as exactly what they sound like now.

The British often celebrate their rude street names, though understanding why they’re rude requires a schoolboy’s knowledge of slang. For a people considered demure, their vocabulary of filthy words is truly impressive. In 2016, the UK’s Office of Communications, a government agency that regulates offensive language on radio and television, published the results of a survey asking British people which words they considered the most offensive. The study only confirmed that British and American English are two different languages. I could hardly understand why many of the words were dirty at all, from the mild (“git”?) to the medium (what are “bint” and “munter,” and why are they about the same level of rudeness as “tits”?). But I could see why busloads of tourists detoured to take pictures in front of signs for Cracknuts Lane, St. Gregory’s Back Alley, Slutshole Road, and Cockshut Lane. An Oxford resident complained that he finds his street name most awkward when he is sitting with “official people,” and they ask, “you know, where do you live?” His answer? “Crotch Crescent.”

Find out which rude street names are meant that way, and which are completely innocent at LitHub. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Duncan Harris)

A historic 75th anniversary is coming up that few even realize today. April 25, 1945 was the day that the Eastern Front met the Western Front in World War II. The Americans were waiting at the Elbe River in Germany, and when the Red Army reached the shore on the other side, they jumped into boats to cross over and meet the Americans. That meeting meant that the German forces had essentially been split into two.

Meanwhile the jubilation among the troops would have made you believe that the war was already won. The soldiers embraced each other, and exchanged buttons, stars and patches from each other’s uniforms. Officers exchanged their service weapons.

After the war, as relations between the former allies soured and descended into Cold War, Elbe Day became a powerful symbol of unity between the East and the West, reminding people that even the fiercest enemies are capable of peace and friendship.

Read about Elbe Day and what it meant at Amusing Planet.

Swimming slowly, but gracefully, at a speed of just 6km per hour (4 mph), in the Arctic, is the narwhal. Some consider this majestic whale (yes, it is a whale) as a sea unicorn, because of its tusk on its head, but what is the tusk really for?

Biologists have long debated the purpose of male narwhals’ tusks. The tusk, like those of elephants, are actually elongated teeth. And since narwhals are usually below the sea ice, it’s tough to see how they use their tusk.

Check out the story over at Scientific American.

(Image Credit: Carsten Egevang, Greenland Institute of Natural Resources)

Back in 1977, it was discovered that, just like its gas giant pals Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune, Uranus also had rings of its own. Back then, however, the origin and the composition of Uranus's rings were pretty much unknown.

Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of scientists, as well as advances on technology, we might now have a glimpse of what caused Uranus’s rings and what they are made of.

Astronomers at UC Berkeley just took the temperature of the mysterious rings surrounding Uranus for the first time, using data from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and the Very Large Telescope (VLT).

[...]

Now, thanks to the new thermal imaging data, the astronomers determined that the rings exist at an icy 77 degrees Kelvin, about -321 Fahrenheit, or roughly the boiling point of liquid nitrogen at standard pressure.

What had the researchers scratching their heads, though, is the composition of Uranus’s rings. Other planets in our Solar System have rings made up of either larger particles or powdery dust, or a mix of both. For instance, Jupiter and Neptune’s rings are largely composed of fine particles.

More details about this one over at Futurism.

(Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ Wikimedia Commons)

This image shows an emergency room display of fishing lures that have been removed from people. It doesn't show the ones that got away, meaning the ones that the patients insisted on keeping. Redditor ReeveStodgers shared a lovely story of when that happened to her.

-via TYWKIWDBI

The garden at Claude Monet's home in Giverny, France, inspired some of the most beautiful paintings ever. It is still kept filled with flowers as it was during the artist's lifetime. But not everyone can get to Giverny to see it, so why not take a three-minute look on video? -via Everlasting Blort

Have you ever looked up the meaning of your name? Do people gravitate away or towards you because of your name? Some might argue that it’s just a name, nothing more, nothing less, but there is a theory called nominative determinism. It’s the theory that people gravitate toward professions that sound like their names, as Carlyn Beccia details: 

nominative determinism — the theory that people gravitate toward professions that sound like their names. Even the father of modern psychology, Dr. Sigmond Freud’s surname means “joy” in German. Now you know why he connected all our motivations with sex.

Psychologists have theorized that nominative determinism is a form of implicit egotism — the unconscious drive for humans to gravitate towards anything similar to ourselves. Researchers found that people are more likely to choose professions and residences that resemble their names.

I may be trapped by my ego too. My name is CarLYN and I live in the town of LYNNfield. Coincidence? (Although I should have become a car salesman then and not an author/illustrator.)

So yeah, don’t name your kid “Dick,” or you might end up with a future pornstar.

image via wikimedia commons

A gallery in Guatemala City has jumped into the viral meme trend “nature is healing”. The meme usually features fake photos about animals suddenly emerging in cities. The gallery, Proyectos Ultravioleta Photoshopped animals into their installations in a new exhibition, The Gardeners. Hyperallergic has the details: 

“We’ve witnessed the return of swans to Venice, dolphins in Sardinia, mountain goats in North Wales, and now the unimaginable: ostriches, pandas, and even penguins, amongst other animal friends in our space in Guatemala!!” reads the caption of the gallery’s Instagram post, where the images were first shared.

Proyectos Ultravioleta closed its doors about three weeks ago, after the first case of the coronavirus was confirmed in Guatemala. Stefan Benchoam, one of the gallery’s co-founders, told Hyperallergic the meme idea came as the team brainstormed how to rethink its programming for an online-only platform.

“Suddenly we saw a saturation of the digital space. The question for us was, how can we add to this?” he said. “We didn’t just want to add more noise, we wanted to make people smile a little bit.”

image via Hyperallergic

League Of Legends fans (those who have access to ESPN), rejoice! ESPN will broadcast the League of Legends Championship Series Spring Split Playoffs live on ESPN2 or the ESPN app. This move isn’t surprising, as esports is one of the few live programming options left, as Engadget details: 

You can expect follow-up matches at the same time on April 11th, April 12th and April 18th. The final match for the North American championship is due on April 19th, although there isn’t a set time for it at this stage.

The network has a growing presence in esports coverage, and isn’t new to League of Legends coverage. Until now, though, you had to subscribe to ESPN+ if you wanted to watch pro LoL games live. This theoretically brings the series to a wider audience. 

If you have access to ESPN, maybe you can add this to your ‘to-watch’ list.

image via Engadget

The British Museum’s decorated ostrich eggs have been reexamined by experts to understand where they came from and how the eggs’ elaborate designs were created. The eggs date back five millenia, all the way to the early bronze age. The Guardian has the details: 

Until now, most academic study of the eggs has been stylistic, focusing on their designs. An international team of archaeologists, led by experts from the universities of Bristol and Durham, set out to discover more about how cultures across a broad swathe of the Mediterranean, north Africa and the Middle East secured their eggs, and how the highly prized items were made.

Even in areas where ostriches lived at the time, however, such as in the eastern Mediterranean and north Africa, the eggs excavated by archaeologists had sometimes been sourced from distant regions, their isotope analysis found. “This was a really unexpected discovery – that just because you could source an ostrich egg locally doesn’t mean you necessarily did.

“This opened up new questions such as: in antiquity, was there some prestige value in an egg that was laid in a different climactic zone?”

The team’s microscopic and isotope analysis also suggested that, contrary to their supposition that some later eggs in particular might have been sourced from captive birds, almost all of the specimens were probably collected opportunistically from wild birds, which can be extremely dangerous.

image via The Guardian

Add The Broad Museum to your list of potential sources of entertainment this quarantine season. The museum has announced an initiative to bring art to your home through various activities via their social media channels and their website. One of the museum’s first digital shows is  "The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away," the acclaimed infinity mirror rooms by contemporary Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. You can see the fascinating exhibition on The Broad Museum's IGTV.

image via Hypebeast

When it comes to firefighting, firefighters have a difficult time putting out fires in high-rise buildings, because the firefighting equipment is not long enough to reach those heights. Thankfully, we have technology that would sure be a great help to firefighters. Introducing firefighting drones.

Recently, a company in China performed a live fire drill using drones they programmed to carry fire hoses.

… Each drone carries a tank filled with fire suppressant powder, and is connected to a skinny water hose tether. Using this setup, each drone can control fire in up to 100 cubic meters (~3531 cubic feet) of space, and can reach up to 200 meters (~656 feet) off the ground.

Impressive!

(Video Credit: iChongqing/ YouTube)

85-year old Victoria Slater of Shropshire, UK is down to one working leg since breaking her hip. But even with just one leg and while confined to a wheelchair, she can put the soccer ball anywhere she wants.

Slater lives with her son, Phil, and grandson, Kodi, the latter of whom can be seen in this video. The soccer pitch was originally his. But it's become grandma's obsession. The Daily Mail quotes him:

Phil said: 'She was heartbroken after what happened with my dad.

'We found a passion for football in her which came from my boy. We started getting her out in the garden and we both trained her up.

'The smile was back on her face, she was loving the activity and exercise and created a unbreakable bond between the three of us.

-via Super Punch

Yo, the Doctors are in the house and they're going to drop some sick rhymes on you. That's Dr. Seuss and Dr. Dre, whose works are now combined by Wes Tank. This media producer from Milwaukee says that Seuss and Dre were made for each other. CBS 58 quotes him:

"I would pair them with Dr. Dre beats because it was kind of a funny doctor and doctor thing." Tank said, via FaceTime from his home in the Washington Heights neighborhood. "But for some reason, the beats and the books just go together really well. Kind of scarily well."

Tank was asked to perform Dr. Seuss raps at an annual fundraiser at Bookworm Gardens in Sheboygan. He was booked to perform at birthday parties. He says people always told him he needs to put it on YouTube. He agreed, but he wanted to make sure it was done right.

"I'm very busy with video work most of the time." said Tank. "I don't really prioritize my rap career. But during quarantine, I'm kind of stuck in the house and I'm like this is kind of a perfect thing to do right now."

Tank also has videos for Green Eggs & Ham,The Cat in the Hat, and The Lorax.

-via Twisted Sifter