On March 2, 1836, the founding fathers of the Republic of Texas gathered at the settlement of Washington-on-the-Brazos and declared independence from Mexico. Although we were an independent nation for only 9 years, we Texans maintain our independent streak and celebrate Texas Independence Day every year.
Scott Kelly, an American astronaut, recently returned to Earth after nearly a year on board the International Space Station. NASA physicians found that he's now 2 inches taller than his identical twin brother. Kelly was in very low gravity for a year, so there was no gravitational compression bearing down on him.
NBC News describes other effects of spending a long time in space, including a shrunken heart, difficulty with balance, and decreased bone mass:
Astronauts no longer walk to get in the spacecraft, they float so the bones in the legs, hips and spine experience a significant decrease in load bearing. […]
Extended spaceflight results in less work for the legs and back: muscles can begin to weaken or atrophy, and this could lead to fall-related injuries and accidents during exploration missions. […]
The heart doesn't have to work as hard up there: Over time, this could lead to a decrease in the size of the heart.
Laura of the Japanese-language blog Caroline & Laura's Tea Break loves cats and makes beautiful snacks and crafts that look like them, such aseclairsandsweets.
Her most recent project is a set of painted shells. They are used in kaiawase, a game played by women in Heian period of Japanese history, which lasted from 794 to 1185 AD. The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes the game:
To play the game, a number of shells are divided between two boxes. One group is taken out and then matched one at a time to the halves from the second box. Pairs of related scenes from the Tale of Genji and other romances are painted on the inside of the shells as clues.
Doughnut Time is a donut shop in Brisbane, Australia. It's been very successful in its first year of operation. In fact, the business is already expanding to new locations. And to celebrate its first birthday, the business invited 20 local bakers to radically alter their classic glazed donut in 6 different ways.
This one by Elisa Pietrantonio is one of the most deliciously preposterous. It has strawberry Persian fairy floss, gold leaf, vanilla unicorn buttercream, popcorn, sprinkles, chocolate bark, and more. The most novel part of it is a syringe filled with edible glitter. I'd never heard of this practice before, but I can see how it would appeal to customers.
These men are candidates in the state of Bahir for the Indian Army. They were forced to strip down to their underpants prior to taking the entrance exam. The proctors hoped that this requirement would ensure that no one could cheat by bringing in secret notes or electronic devices.
After getting naked, the 1,159 candidates were seated about 8 feet apart from each other. Uniformed soldiers patrolled the testing area while the candidates took the 1-hour exam. The Indian Express reports:
“As we entered Chakkar Maidan, the venue, we were asked to remove all clothes except underwear. We had no option but to comply with the instructions even though it felt odd. The gap between candidates was about eight feet in all directions,” said a candidate, who did not wish to be identified.
“We do not expect to appear for such largescale examinations in halls, but telling us to remove our clothes was not dignified,” said another candidate.
When she became Queen of England in 1558, Elizabeth I ramped up the suppression of Catholicism in her country. This did not deter many Catholics from adhering to their faith privately. Any Catholic priest was automatically wanted for treason against the Crown, so it was necessary to hide them.
The result was an architectural feature that has come to be known as the priest hole. It's a hidden chamber in a house where a priest could slip into and remain while priest hunters searched. Eric Grundhauser writes at Atlas Obscura:
These small hideaways were often built under staircases or inside fireplaces or behind false walls. (Even if you weren’t harboring a religious fugitive, the priest holes made a great place to stash your candles, crucifixes, and other Catholic accoutrements.) Some homes would have multiple priest holes scattered throughout, with at least one, Hindlip Hall, maintaining 12 separate holes. Some priest holes would even be hidden behind secret panels in other priest holes as an added precaution. The hiding places were generally very small, with barely enough room for a full-grown adult to fit, but they did the trick.
A Jesuit priest named Nicholas Owen was among those priests in hiding. He was also a master architect who helped build excellent priest holes. He paid the ultimate price for his devotion:
Owen was almost found out a number of times during his career, and got arrested and tortured in 1594. But even when subjected to agony, Owen never gave up the location of another priest or the holes he built. When was caught a final time in 1606, he gave himself up to distract from other priests hiding in the house. He was taken to the Tower of London and tortured to death, never giving an inch. For his work in creating the priest holes that saved countless lives, Owen was sainted by Pope Paul in 1970, and is now known as the patron saint of illusionists.
1979 saw the revival of the Star Trek franchise with Star Trek: The Motion Picture. McDonald's was part of the marketing blitz. It tried to draw in kids by offering Happy Meals inspired by the movie and its fresh take on Star Trek. The box included a connect-the-dots game, corny jokes, and puzzles.
McDonald's commercials pushed this Happy Meal option. One of them used a Klingon as a pitchman. The narrator offers a translation, but the character is not actually speaking Klingon--just gibberish. He's assuming that no child who was watching would know the difference.
Make that trench run in warmth. There's no need to endure the bleak coldness of space while giving up your life for the rebellion. MJ made these X-wing blankets to prevent that. They wrap around the lower body, so they're perfect for binge watching the entire septology. Send your R2 unit to the kitchen for snacks when needed.
It would cost $12.86 billion USD. That's the answer on Quora from Kynan Eng, an expert on artificial intelligence and something called neuromorphic engineering--whatever that is. To sum up: he's a math guy who is much smarter than you or me. He's also the guy who once calculated how much money we spend rescuing Matt Damon over and over again.
Eng explains in great detail over at Quora how he arrived at $12.86 billion. He found a way to randomly generate a sample of Amazon.com products, then created a price distribution of them for his statistical model.
In about 1925, the Parisian perfumer Parfums de Marcy packaged its perfume in this unique arrangement. Each bottle takes the shape of a segment of the orange.
Parfums de Marcy was noted for its clever bottle designs. You can see more of them at Cleopatra's Boudoir.
Comedian Seth Meyers is one of Immortan Joe's War Boys from Mad Max: Fury Road. Joe has ordered his War Boys to prepare for an expedition from the Citadel to Gas Town to get gasoline.
Meyers has an important point to make: these expeditions--of which there have been so many--waste vast amounts of gas on heavy vehicles that literally shoot fire. They are extremely fuel inefficient. There can be and in fact are more sustainable alternative forms of transportation that make best use of scarce resources to build a better society.
The other War Boys are, as you can expect, tired of listening to this killjoy.
You will exercise your middle fingers a lot while participating in Rage Yoga. Seriously, that's a major part of the movements.
Lindsay Istace developed the practice and teaches it at her studio in Calgary, Alberta. In the dimly lit pub basement that serves as her studio, she blasts loud heavy metal music. It helps set the mood for her students. She says that the music and the movements help her students vent their anger. CBC News reports:
Istace says she developed Rage Yoga while dealing with a painful breakup. According to her website, combining swearing and screaming with her yoga practice helped her overcome addiction and anger issues.
"When you create a space for yourself to be angry and to shout and swear and scream, suddenly it's hard to take yourself so seriously.
"So it goes from anger to laughter pretty quickly. And we have a lot of that going on here."
"Manhunt," an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, featured two characters belonging to the Antedean species. Worf referred to them as a "handsome race" -- and with reason. Beneath that makeup was Mick Fleetwood of the rock band Fleetwood Mac.
He's one of many celebrities that has appeared on Star Trek, often under heavy makeup. Uproxx has a round up of 40 of them, including King Hussein of Jordan, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Iggy Pop, and Kirsten Dunst.
Helen Stephenson is an artist in Edinburgh. One day, while walking from her apartment to her studio, she saw 2 old bathtubs dumped on the street for disposal. She realized that they could be cut and made into chairs. After all, they're already made to fit the shape of the human body.
Stephenson used an angle grinder to trim the sharp edges, then decorated them with tiles to add color and flair. Some are especially vibrant:
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