Is it 7 AM? 11 AM? 3 PM? Look at the whole picture. The tire tracks on the snowy road. The school buses. The lamps on the street. The quiet ski resort.
If you can tell the time here on this picture correctly, then chances are you have the potential to be a spy.
Members of the Central Intelligence Agency must be meticulous in order to successfully analyse global intelligence, and now it's testing the public.
The agency asked people to "put your analytical skills to the test" by working out what time of the day it was in [this] wintery scene.
This picture was posted via the agency’s official Twitter account.
It’s that time of the year again when you’ll have to think about what gifts you should give to your friends. Fortunately, there are some articles out there on the Internet, such as this one, which might give you great ideas of what to give this season. Engadget suggests 5 DIY kits that make excellent gifts, for both kids and adults who love DIY stuff. Check out the site for more details.
If ever you see this type of octopus being sold at your local market, alert the authorities immediately. While it may look good and smell good, these octopus are not edible, as they can kill people.
These are Blue-ringed octopuses, one of four most poisonous species of octopus and among the most venomous marine animals.
… The bodies of these octopuses contain tetrodotoxin, a powerful neurotoxin that can cause respiratory issues, nausea, heart failure, paralysis, blindness, and yes, even death.
Thailand's Department of Marine and Coastal Resources state that the poison is so strong that it cannot be neutralized by cooking the octopus. There is also no cure in the event that a person gets poisoned by this neurotoxin.
Unfortunately, not everyone is aware of such dangers posed by eating this type of octopus. The said department has issued a warning about these octopus after a woman alerted them that these were sold at the night market in Thailand.
Peru, Illinois — On December second, cops and firefighters as well as city residents joined forces for a mission. The mission: capture a runaway wallaroo, a marsupial between the size of a wallaby and a kangaroo.
This bloke — named Wally — got away from his owner in LaSalle County.
Over the course of two hours, Wally the wallaroo leapt through yards, streets, and roads, while the townspeople chased after it.
Fearing that the marsupial might get hit by a vehicle, Peru Police Chief Doug Bernabei shut down nearby roads.
Eventually, Wally made his way into a river, where he was rescued by two anglers who happened to be at the right place and at the right time.
“We were screaming and pointing. We were saying, ‘Get your net out, get your net out,’” Bernabei told the (Peoria) Journal Star. “They yelled, ‘It’s not a dog!’ We said ... ‘It’s not a dog, it’s a wallaroo.’”
They used a net to fish Wally from the frigid water and into their boat before taking him to shore.
“He was so cold we couldn’t register his temperature on the thermometer,” said veterinarian Allison Spayer. “We warmed him up. We dried him off.”
Japan — Twitter user Nekomarusuisan was worried about his girlfriend, who was spending a really long time in the bath. To make sure that nothing’s wrong with her, he checked up on her, and he was surprised with what he found out. “When I went to check, she was busy enjoying paradise,” he said in his tweet. And when he said that his girlfriend was “enjoying paradise”, he meant this.
If we were the girlfriend, we probably wouldn’t have moved from that position either. A nice drink, a nice game, and two nice cats. What more could you possibly want?
Nekomarusuisan also has a YouTube channel for their cats, Chamunosuke and Marukichi.
Pavlov is known for discovering classical conditioning, the process in which a person or animal learns a new response when two stimuli are linked together. Could Pavlov have conditioned himself during his own experiment unknowingly? We can only speculate.
It was 1872, and the United States was still expanding westward, when suddenly, a virus spread from Canada to Central America. While the virus did not affect people physically, their social and economic life were still heavily affected by the virus. But why was this the case? It was because the virus targeted horses.
For centuries, horses had provided essential energy to build and operate cities. Now the equine flu made clear just how important that partnership was. When infected horses stopped working, nothing worked without them. The pandemic triggered a social and economic paralysis comparable to what would happen today if gas pumps ran dry or the electric grid went down.
This is the Gara Medouar, a geological formation near Sijilmasa, Morocco. You might have seen this place in the films The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, whose stories were set in Egypt, but were largely filmed in this place. The Gara Medouar is also featured in the 2015 Bond film Spectre as the evil lair of the villain.
Gara Medouar, literally “the round mountain”, is the eroded remains of a large limestone massif that, at its current state, rises 50 meters above the desert and encompasses an area of about 50 hectares. But there is no plateau. Instead, the central region is collapsed to form a valley, and the resulting circular formation is broken by a ravine that provides entrance into the heart of the massif. The interior is flat and any loose material has long been washed away, presumably by water, although there is no source of water nearby in the desert today. Most of the perimeter consists of vertical rocks with loose gravel at the bottom.
Learn more about the Gara Medouar and how it was used in history over at Amusing Planet.
Don’t have a place to park your scooter? That won’t bother you anymore if you have this electric scooter made by the startup company WheelKinetic. The scooter, called BooZter, can be folded to a size that can fit inside a backpack or a laptop bag. It can also be carried by its integrated handle if you don’t have a bag.
Constructed using carbon fiber, titanium and aluminum, the 14-lb (6.5-kg) electric scoot is small enough to fit in a backpack or even a laptop bag when folded down to 10 x 18.5 inches (26 x 47 cm) in around 10 seconds, or can be carried by hand using a convenient integrated handle. And interestingly, when the ride is folded down, its wheels sit inside the unit to potentially lock away any dirt accumulated while scooting.
[...]
Kickstarter pledges for the BooZter start at US$899, with the estimated retail price being $1,300. The usual crowdfunding caveats apply, but if all goes to plan, shipping is estimated to start in August 2021.
It is said that cats love to be in enclosed spaces because they get comfort and a sense of safety in staying in those kinds of places. This is why they spend many hours just staying inside boxes.
This is probably why cats hate sleeping in the bed provided by their humans, because they feel exposed on those beds. And this sense of safety might also be the reason why this Banana Cat Bed could be the perfect bed for them.
… a plush, banana-shaped cat bed, complete with a peelable peel on top.
While available in a variety of sizes (18-inch small, $20; 22-inch medium, $25; 26-inch large, $30; and 36-inch extra-large, $41), it is not available in a variety of colors. It’s yellow or nothing.
Many of us by now have probably adapted a sedentary lifestyle. Because work is now done from home, commuting to work has now become as simple as rolling over in bed and opening the laptop. We know that too much sitting is risky for our health, and the way to reduce that risk is to exercise. But how long? A new study suggests that at least 11 minutes of moderate exercise could greatly reduce that risk.
The study, a meta-analysis of nine other studies tracking nearly 45,000 people, found that those who were most sedentary risked dying prematurely. But even when people sat as much as 8.5 hours a day, getting just 11 minutes of moderate exercise significantly cut that risk. Thirty to 40 minutes of exercise was even more helpful.
Keith Diaz, one of the co-authors of the study, clarifies that this amount of exercise will not eliminate the risk of long hours of sitting. However,...
if some amount of sedentary time is unavoidable, any movement helps.
From a laptop that already has a swollen battery but is still used, to a melted telephone that someone apparently put in the oven, Bored Panda compiles some of the nightmare-inducing pictures from the subreddit Tech Support Gore. Should you want to see more of these, be ready to abandon all hope as you visit the site.
The government of Singapore has recently given the company Eat Just the green-light to sell their lab-grown chicken in restaurants. Sales to regular customers have also been scheduled at a later date. According to the company, before it gained the government’s approval, it had to run through 20 production runs of its chicken to prove lab-grown meat’s safety and consistency.
According to the company’s press release, initially, Eat Just’s lab-grown chicken will be used as an ingredient in chicken bites or chicken nuggets, though Eat Just is already working on other “cultured chicken formats” for use in other dishes or applications. However, while its first lab-made chicken has been approved for use, there currently isn’t a specific date for when it will go on sale in restaurants in Singapore.
Unlike some of the company’s other plant-based products like Just Egg (which is based primarily on mung beans) or Just Mayo (which is based on yellow peas), or other plant-based meats like Impossible Burger, Eat Just’s lab-made chicken is derived from chicken cell-cultures grown in a bioreactor fed with various proteins, amino acids, sugars and minerals.
Learn more about Eat Just’s lab-grown chicken meat over at Gizmodo.
It was twenty years ago since Craig Mod first set foot in Japan. Back then, with his “extremely unsophisticated” palette, Mod did not know what to eat in the land of sushi and natto (fermented soybeans). Fortunately for him, he found a place that he describes as “a sort of bridge space for [him] between where [he] came from and Japan itself.” That place was the kissaten, or the kissa coffee shop.
Leather sofa seats, mod bubble lights, elderly patrons smoking at the bar, and thick slices of pizza toast: These are the elements of a typical Japanese kissaten, or kissa coffee shop. Part bar, part restaurant, and part community center, these humble, Shōwa-era cafés serve tea, coffee, alcohol, and delightfully hybrid dishes such as pizza toast. Made of inch and a half thick slices of white bread topped with tomato sauce or ketchup, processed cheese, and whatever toppings the chef has on hand, this gooey, crunchy comfort food is what American writer, photographer, and designer Craig Mod calls “a hug produced in a toaster oven.”
The kissaten is a slowly disappearing culture in Japan today, and so Mod decided to pay homage to this culture before it’s gone.
Mod pays tribute to pizza toast and these endearing eateries in his new book, Kissa by Kissa, which documents his 1,000-kilometer, 40-day walk across Japan in search of kissa and his favorite menu item. He follows the Nakasendō Route—a historic highway from Japan’s Edo period—from his home in Kamakura to Kyoto, often walking eight to 10 hours per day. In lushly detailed photographs and perceptive, punchy texts, we meet charming, octogenarian kissa owners, sample an array of pizza-toast styles, and witness fascinating, fading kissa culture.
Learn more about the kissaten, as well as Mod’s journey, over at Atlas Obscura.
(Image Credit: Craig Mod/ Kissa by Kissa/ Special Projects, 2020/ Atlas Obscura)
