Skeleton shrimp are neither shrimp nor skeletons, but they are fun to watch. In fact, you'd enjoy this video if it were just visuals, but of course we also get a comparative description of Caprellids from Ze Frank told in colorful terms. For example, you will try to picture a drunk person in a sleeping bag trying to answer a doorbell. Skeleton shrimp are apparently also known for their insults.
One of the ideas that come up again and again in apocalyptic fiction is that a small group of surviving people might be able to save humankind by repopulating the earth. A study of mammoth DNA shows how this concept could easily be a nightmare. Mammoths died out in most of the world between 10 and 15 thousand years ago, due to hunting, environmental changes, or both. However, mammoths survived for a few thousand more years isolated on Wrangel Island and St. Paul island, both having favorable environments and no humans. Each had a relatively small number of mammoths that became quite inbred over time, and they eventually went extinct. A genome study of a Wrangel Island mammoth, compared with continental mammoths and with elephants, may tell us why.
The scientists identified several “deleterious mutations that are predicted to cause diverse behavioral and developmental defects,” wrote the authors in the study. These included disruptions to genes associated with neurological developmental defects (including a dangerous condition known as hydrolethalus syndrome), diabetes, reduced male fertility, and strangely, an inability to “detect floral scents,” according to the paper. In other words, this Wrangell mammoth had lost the ability to smell the flowers.
You have to feel sorry for that one specimen. Read more about the study at Gizmodo.
(Image credit: Kira Sokolovskaia)
Tom Rosenthal played piano while his three-year-old daughter Fenn sang a song she wrote about dinosaurs. He Tweeted the audio, which went viral, so he then collaborated with Hannah Jacobs, Katy Wang, and Anna Ginsburg to animate the sweet and poignant song -in less than 24 hours! -via Laughing Squid
WHAT HAS OCCURRED CANNOT BE UNDONE
— Janelle Shane (@JanelleCShane) February 7, 2020
I have trained a neural net on a crowdsourced set of vintage jello-centric recipes
I believe this to possibly be the worst recipe-generating algorithm in existence pic.twitter.com/cwQwOpUNDv
Janelle Shane put out a call for mid-century American recipes last week to see what a neural network would learn from them. She received over 800 recipes, and used them to train an artificial intelligence algorithm to generate its own recipes. The results are just as horrifying as you might imagine.
Shane admits that this algorithm has previously trained on internet text to learn how to read, and she was surprised at the random bits of information it had retained from, say, fan fiction. Read about the experiment at her blog AI Weirdness, which has ten of the recipes. There are quite a few more of them at Twitter. -via Mashable
You may or may not recall reading about that time meat rained down from the sky in Kentucky. The absurd event happened in 1876 in Olympia Springs. There were many theories on how it happened, but none were proven at the time, so the incident was relegated to the "strange and bizarre news" category. Then Kurt Gohde moved to Kentucky to teach art at Transylvania University and heard the story. He did a deep dive into all the documentation from that period, which was little, but enough to make him more curious.
Fascinated with the meat shower to begin with, a serendipitous find in 2004 stoked his ardor even further. He was clearing out storage closets at Transylvania University when he stumbled upon an old glass jar sealed with a cork stopper. It contained a chunk of white, fatty-looking meat, suspended in a pale yellow liquid. The label was faded, but the words Olympia Springs could still be made out. Gohde was thrilled.
Determined to try and pinpoint what mystery animal rained down over Olympia Springs, Gohde worked with a colleague in the biology department to have the sample genetically tested. Unfortunately, the sample was too old and contaminated to give any conclusive results.
Then Gohde got creative. Much of his artwork involves community engagement, so he had a taste lab based in Cincinnati analyze flavor compounds of the meat sample and reconstruct the taste in a jelly bean. Gohde wanted to educate local Kentuckians about the curious climatic event, and if anything, jelly beans would be a great conversation starter.
Yes, he made jellybeans with the flavor of the meat shower. Read about those jellybeans and the incident that inspired them at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Kurt Gohde)
Jeff Permar was trying to grow a vegetable garden, but found signs of vandalism. So he installed a motion-sensor camera and discovered the culprit was a groundhog. This groundhog is a performer, though, and would eat his ill-gotten gains right in front of the camera! Jeff named him Chunk, and now he's a star. You can see more of Chunk at Facebook and Instagram. -via Everlasting Blort
Having trouble sleeping at night can be a pain in the butt. You don’t get the ideal hours of sleep, you wake up not feeling refreshed. You also tend to be forgetful, as well as moody, throughout the day.
In a survey conducted a few years ago, it was found out that 27% of people have trouble sleeping at night.
Are you one of those people who have trouble sleeping? Gizmodo lists the best apps that might help you go to sleep. Check it out over at their site.
(Image Credit: LOLOGO/ Pixabay)
Rhetoric, which is also known in varying titles, namely, The Art of Rhetoric, On Rhetoric, and a Treatise on Rhetoric, is a book written by Aristotle dating from the 4th century BCE. The book is about the art of persuasion. In order to persuade people, a person should be a good speaker, and a good speaker, according to Aristotle, should have these three things under control. These three things are the argument (logos), the presentation (ethos), and the audience (pathos).
Aristotle’s Rhetoric is still as valid today as in the ancient times. The tools that he gave his readers still hold true today.
Aristotle considered rhetoric to be not a tool to convince the audience but an art form that could help present a persuasive argument. Because people with good ideas are often poor speakers, he provided them with a toolbox full of rhetorical resources. You might say that Aristotle was the first person to prepare academics for their TED Talks and keynotes.
Check out the various tools that Aristotle laid down for his readers over at Medium.
(Image Credit: Broesis/ Pixabay)
Wasps, when in excessive numbers, are considered pests. They can present a danger when people come in close contact with them, as they sting. While their stings usually just cause a lot of pain, sometimes they can put people in life-threatening situations.
But when not seen as dangerous pests, wasps are seen as one of the most interesting and most mysterious creatures here on the planet. A comic series from The Highlight tells their story.
See the comic strip over at Vox.
(Image Credit: JMK/ Wikimedia Commons)
One of the things I get annoyed about is the fact that we have different types of charging cables for different types of smart devices. It seems that I’m not the only one annoyed by this, as the European Parliament just voted in favor of setting a standard for charging cables.
“Continuing fragmentation of the market for chargers for mobile phones and other small and medium-sized electronic devices translates into an increase in e-waste and consumer frustration,” the resolution said.
For the resolution to become a law, the European Commission would have to draft a law and vote on it in July. But the idea of adopting a charging cable standard has overwhelming support in Europe, as evidenced by the 582-40 vote. With some exceptions, chargers use either USB-C, micro-USB, or Apple’s Lightning Cable. The vast majority of the industry uses micro-USB and is slowly adopting USB-C.
Apple’s Lightning Cable will be most affected by this law, should it ever be made.
More details over at Vice.
What are your thoughts about this one?
(Image Credit: FelixMittermeier/ Pixabay)
Scientists have been studying an extremophile fungus growing at the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone for years. This fungus apparently grows toward radiation the way plants grow toward sunlight. It consumes the radiation and uses it for energy, like little power plants!
How can this fungus process radiation in this way? Because it has tons of very dark melanin pigment that absorbs radiation and processes it in a harmless way to produce energy. Scientists believe this mechanism could be used to make biomimicking substances that both block radiation from penetrating and turn it into a renewable energy source.
Chernobyl is a special case where extreme ambient radiation is a huge danger to anyone who enters, and having a “radiation blocker” to treat protective suits or even the entire inside of the plant to reduce ambient radiation could be a huge boon. Besides reducing danger, though, the world is filled with machinery and devices that safely use radiation, from medicine to manufacturing. Even low levels of contained radiation could be used to make energy that could reduce the energy burden of those devices.
Materials made of this fungus could also be useful to shield spacecraft from radiation. Read more about this discovery at Popular Mechanics. -Thanks, WTM!
Have you ever wondered how IKEA’s naming system goes? I sure didn’t know it works this way.
Apparently, Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of the aforementioned furniture company, struggles with dyslexia. When Kamprad found out that nouns helped him remember the products better compared to using code numbers, he created this unusual naming system that the company still uses up to this day.
A bookcase, for instance, is probably always going to be named after a profession, if it doesn’t have a boy’s name like Billy. Rugs tend to be named after cities in Denmark and Sweden, while outdoor furniture is named after islands in Scandinavia, like Kuggö, an outdoor umbrella named after an island about 125 miles west of Helsinki. Expedit, the beloved, discontinued shelving unit, means “salesclerk,” while its replacement, Kallax, is named after a town in northern Sweden. Curtains are named for mathematical terms.
Unfortunately, should the Swedish names sound like dirty words in another language, the product name will be changed in that country.
Not only do you buy furniture from IKEA, but you also get to know a bit of the Swedish language.
(Image Credit: IKEA International Group/ Wikimedia Commons)
It is said that practitioners of the Balinese martial art, called Yellow Bamboo, have the ability to blow their opponents away with their “chi” believed to be charged by a god. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work on non-believers of the martial art.
There’s also George Diliman, a master who claims that he can knock out and even knock down his opponents without touching them; a claim that his students very much believe.
Finally, there is Yanagi Ryuken, a Japanese man claiming to possess psychic abilities. Described as a master of Daito Ryu Aikido, he defeats his students with ease. But in 2006, then 65-year-old Ryuken was challenged by then 35-year-old journalist and mixed martial artist Iwakura Tsuyoshi. Ryuken was, unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, defeated.
Ryuken said he lost because his psychic abilities were temporarily weakened due to illness. It's impossible to know whether Ryuken's faith in his own psychic abilities was pummelled that day, but he reportedly continued to train students in his special style.
In any case, it's a brutal sight. It also highlights the darker, not-so-funny side of fake martial arts: people looking to defend themselves are being sold shoddy techniques that fail in real-world fights.
How are people convinced into fake martial arts? Super Eyepatch Wolf’s video titled “The Bizarre World of Martial Arts”, gives an answer to this question.
Well, what do you think?
(Video Credit: Super Eyepatch Wolf/ YouTube)
As humans, we do things that are, well, normal for us to do, like go outside to hang out with friends or work, put perfume, or wear clothes that change how we look. But for animals such as dogs, these actions can be seen as weird, confusing, or even threatening.
Take for example our love for hugs.
How humans use their forelimbs contrasts sharply with how dogs do. We may use them to carry large objects a dog would have to drag, but also to grasp each other and express affection.
Dogs grasp each other loosely when play-wrestling, and also when mating and fighting. Being pinned by another dog hinders a quick escape. How are puppies to know what a hug from a human means, when that behaviour from a dog might be threatening?
The Conversation lists 8 things that we do that make dogs confused. See them over at the site.
(Image Credit: birgl/ Pixabay)
Oftentimes, the young mind would think of illogical or nonsense things that make us adults annoyed. But sometimes the young mind can amaze even the old. Children can sometimes drop bits of life lessons that we either have forgotten or overlooked.
Check out 30 instances of these over at Bored Panda.
(Image Credit: Bored Panda)
