Hadrian (r. 117-138) lived to the ripe old age of 62 before he died of natural causes. He was an outlier on that count. Only 25% of Roman Emperors died of peacefully. That's if you count from Augustus all the way to Constantine XI Palaeologus, who died during the fall of Constantinope in 1453. That is a total of 175 emperors. Data scientists in Brazil examined statisical trends in the lifespans of these rulers and published their findings with the Royal Society.

The researchers that found that the likelihood that an emperor would be killed early in his reign was very high. Consider the infamously named Year of the Four Emperors. But once an emperor was able to establish himself and get past these early trials, he tended to live for the next 13 years. Thereafter, his reign became unstable again and the likelihood of assassination increased.

This 13 year rule, the scholars note, confirms a study of 106 modern dictators who ruled between 1875 and 2004. Their power, once they survived initial turbulences, tended to become unstable after 12.3 years.

-via Instapundit | Photo: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin

What’s your style of kayaking? Do you like to tumble through rapids? Do you prefer the rigors of the open ocean? Or, like redditor /u/twitch119, do you enjoy quiet, still waters?

The water calls to him in more ways than one. Aside from kayaking, his favorite hobby is painting with watercolors. To combine them, he built an easel onto his boat. You can read a description of his build process here. The unit, which has a side table attached to the easel, fits around the rim of the cockpit. Paracord keeps it snugly secured. The top can be adjusted to different angles and will even fold flat.

Tom Scott, a traveler and teacher about the world’s curiosities, muses philosophically about what makes a place fascinating to people. It is usually a combination of the very familiar and the unfamiliar. For example, we’ve probably all eaten at McDonald’s at some point. But very few of us kayaked up to the restaurant for our Big Macs.

In Germany, a canal that connects to the Elbe River features a McDonald’s. You can drive up or walk up, as usual. But you can also boat up, too. Be sure to watch to the end for Scott’s punchline.

Exit question: can you swim up to the dock and get service?

The calm waters off of Puerto Madryn, Argentina are famous for the many visits of southern right whales. UPI tells us that tourists flock there during whale watching season, which runs from May to December. So far, there have been 1,600 sightings of these majestic leviathans this year.

One paddleboarder got a very close look at one. In the perfectly calm waters, a whale approached and looked at the human for a few minutes. Then he gave the back of the board a push with a fin, submerged, and left.

The human, Analia Giorgetti, tells BBC News that she wasn’t scared. She describes it as a “magical moment” that coincidentally occurred on her birthday, so it was a birthday present from the whale.

-via Lawrence Everett

スペインの画家セルギ・カデナスの作品、見る角度によって老化していく人生を表したアートが凄い…pic.twitter.com/mXOgMXWvNY

— 最多情報局 (@tyomateee) October 9, 2021

Move from one direction to another and you’re looking at a completely different subject. Sergi Cardenas, a painter from Spain, has become famous for his shifting paintings. The young become old, people change genders, or one person is swapped with another.

Artsy asserts that Cardenas taught himself this amazing skill. He uses a pastry piping bag to apply long, thick lines of paint that serve as boundaries between the two different images on a single canvas. This practice, Indie88 explains, is called “lentricular art.” Cardenas adopted it when he took up painting at the age of 30.

This was not, though, Cardenas’s first foray into the art world. He was raised in it. Cardenas’s family has, for three hundred years, operated Ferros d’Art Cadenas, a decorative iron work foundary. Cardenas is a recognized master of that craft. But, as you can see, he wasn’t bound to it.

-via @sanka_kamaru

I’m so sad no one outside of Nova Scotia - for the Most part - gets to experience moon mist ice cream pic.twitter.com/CuMxMjqnJH

— Courtney Danielle 🦔 (@WeAreTheFoxes_) June 20, 2021

What does Nova Scotia, Canada taste like? To find out, you'll need to go there and try Moon Mist, an ice cream favor that is iconic of that province. Gastro Obscura describes it as a mixture of bubblegum, banana, and grape. The origins of the flavor are shrouded in myth and legend, but it probably started in the 1980s. Although Moon Mist can be found outside of Nova Scotia, it’s a favorite there and considered one of the gastronomical delights of it.

If Moon Mist is available here in Texas, I don’t know where. I could easily combine banana and bubblegum ice cream flavors, but, apparently, grape ice cream is very unusual.

This unusual cloud formation lasts only a brief period of time, which is why it is so rare to see one in the sky. Jonathan Belles of the Weather Channel calls it a “horseshoe cloud”, which is definitely an appropriate name. Belles explains that sometimes a flat, pancake-like cloud moves over a column of warm air. The warm air punches a hole through the center of the cloud, sending that water vapor higher while the edges remain condensed. Perfect conditions are necessary for one of these horseshoe clouds to form, which is why they rarely last more than 20 minutes.

-via Nag on the Lake | Photo: GerritR

Ever wondered if you could meet all your favourite wildlife biologists in a video game? pic.twitter.com/RALrkEB2w2

— Peter Cooper (@PeteMRCooper) October 6, 2021

Peter Cooper, a wildlife biologist, describes the different species of wildlife biologists that you may encounter. Be careful: they are wildlife biologists, not domesticated, and thus should be approached with caution. Do not feed them and, more importantly, do not attempt to touch them.

A safer approach is to play an immersive role-playing video game that lets you encounter highly realistic simulations of these creatures. You can practice safe handling practices, such as not accepting brownies offered by the mycologists. No matter what they tell you, the brownies will not enable you to make planar shifts.

-via Rosemary Marco

The Awesomer introduces us to this art exhibit by FudouKamui, a student at the Xi’An Academy of Fine Arts in northwestern China. Pay and the machine will dispense one of the ceramic plates, each of which has a different price. When the plate hits the bottom port, it breaks.

The exhibit is subtly titled “This Is the Proof of Our Stupidity.”

I don’t get it, but perhaps if I buy a few more plates, I will. I mean, eventually, I have to win the game, right?

This is a Collignon projection. How does that work? I'll explain: [insert math here].

Got it?

It’s very straightforward and, thanks to the work of Florian Ledermann, adjustable. At his website, Map Projection Playground, you can experiment with dozens of different world map projections, all of which distort the curved Earth on a plane in different ways. You can also see all of these different types of projections on a single page here.

Ledermann knows his business. He’s engineer and computer programmer who teaches cartography at the Technical University in Vienna. Ledermann executed this project for students in his course titled “Cartographic and Geodetic Foundations for Planners.”

-via Marilyn Bellamy

Many traditional martial arts of eastern Asia have spread outside of that region and become very popular. But one martial art that has not gained much traction outside of Japan is jukendo, the art of bayonet fighting.

The bayonet has fallen out of priority in recent years. But its use was once viewed as an essential skill for an infantryman. In the 1840s, inspired by watching Dutch soldiers drilling, Japanese soldiers began training in it. During the Meiji Era, the Japanese armed forces required formal instruction for soldiers. It grew into a martial art called jukendo or juken-jutsu, which means “the way of the bayonet.”

As the Japanese Empire expanded during the early Twentieth Century, so did the prominence of jukendo. During World War II, the Japanese government systemized the mass training of the students in jukendo.

The Allied occupiers banned jukendo after 1945, but the ban was lifted in 1950. Perhaps 40,000 people in Japan practice jukendo under the governance of the All Japan Jukendo Federation. Most are members or veterans of the Japanese Self Defense Forces. Jukendo still carries an association with Japan’s militarism of a past era, making it controversial in modern times.

In the above video, you can watch a demonstration of this unique martial art with training implements that are shaped to resemble rifles with fixed bayonets.

Sources:

Bennett, Alexander C.. Kendo : Culture of the Sword, University of California Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central.

“Children Learn Ancient Art of the Bayonet.” Dominion Post, 15 Apr. 2017, p. B3. EBSCOhost.

“Roundup: Japan’s New Education Guidelines Condemned for Adding Wartime Military Training Item.” Philippines News Agency, 3 Apr. 2017. EBSCOhost.

-via reddit

Matthew T. Hall is the opinion editor at the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper. He recently received this letter from a long-time reader. The correspondent writes that, 25 years ago, they were homeless and in desperate need of a job. Back then, the best option to find job openings was in the classifieds published in the Sunday edition.

The newspaper lost money, but it was the paperboy who suffered for it, as the minor crime required extra unpaid labor. It’s very late, but the writer has a conscience that has never been freed from the guilt until now.

-via Josh Hadro

There’s something otherworldly about the pottery of Keiko Masumoto. This Japanese artist, who studied and worked in Kyoto, has become famous around the world for her groundbreaking ceramic sculptures that break out of traditional forms for pots and plates. Other creatures and structures erupt from them, often showing entire tiny worlds within inanimate pots.

Recently, Dane Hirst, a cameraman with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, gathered crocodile footage at a crocodile park in northern Australia.

Nota bene: crocodile parks are a thing in Australia. Don’t ask me why.

Anyway, he piloted a drone over the surface of the water of a lagoon when one of the crocodiles leaped out of the water and snatched the crunchy drone out of the air.

The crew was able to recover the drone. It will not be serviceable again, but the video card was fine. The footage is invigorating to watch and a reminder to stay out of Australia.

-via Dave Barry

YouTuber Not Just Bikes is really excited about the Dutch approach to urban design. In this video, he explains why the way that sidewalks in the Netherlands are optimal for pedestrian and bicyclist safety.

The key feature is called “continuous sidewalks.” In the United States, the most common design for an intersection between pedestrian and motorized traffic is a crosswalk in which the sidewalk lowers and then disappears into the road. People walking across a street are entering the territory of cars.

In the Netherlands, it’s far more common for the sidewalk to remain at the same level and for the road to rise to the sidewalk. Cars crossing are entering the territory of pedestrians. Because there’s a rise, the sidewalk acts as a speedbump so that drivers are encouraged to slow down.

-via Nag on the Lake