You could express your love by having flowers delivered. But what do you do to convey a message that is less romantic? The Toronto-based blogTo reports that there are several options for mailing fecal matter to that special someone in your life. Some of these services, such as Poop Senders, allow you to place anonymous orders so that, like a secret admirer, your identity can remain hidden. What a sweet premise this could be for a romantic comedy!
-via Dave Barry | Image: Poop Senders
Avoid bodies of water, such as Amazonian rivers or bathtubs. Push those creatures carefully out of your hovercraft. Electric eels are dangerous. Carlos David de Santana, a zoologist, discovered that electric eels can engage in coordinated herd attacks against their prey. BBC News quotes him:
"It was really amazing - we thought these were solitary animals," said researcher Carlos David de Santana. [...]
Douglas Bastos, from the National Centre for Amazonian research in Manaus, Brazil, filmed the behaviour - capturing the moment of the collective electric strike. Small fish, called tetras, are the target of the attack; they fly into the air and land stunned and motionless on the water.
Dr. de Santana previously made headlines when his expedition discovered an electric eel that can deliver 860 volts. If he wants to be a proper mad scientist, he could put these discoveries to villainous uses.
-via Gizmodo | Photo: Douglas Bastos
It's called ColdSnap. A prototype for this marvel debuted at the online CES trade show. It functions similarly to a Keurig coffeemaker, except that it produces soft serve ice cream from pre-prepared pods. CNN describes how it works:
The company says the machine simultaneously pulls heat from the pod, creating a cooling effect on the liquid ice cream mix, and engages a part within the pod that churns the ingredients during the cooling process. Air is sucked into the can to make the required loft in the ice cream.
Michael Fonte, the developer, attributes the concept to his kids:
The idea started years ago when Fonte and his two daughters grew tired of reading the same books at bedtime and decided to write in "invention journals."
"We included new toys, toothbrushes and hoola hoops," he told CNN Business. "One day, they asked for an ice cream machine."
Fonte expects that the machine will cost $500 and each pod about $3 when it reaches the market.
-via Dave Barry | Photo: ColdSnap
These workers in Yuzawa, Japan need to remove the snow from the roof before it falls and injures someone. Triggering an avalanche takes a while, but at the end of the video, the entire mountain of snow pours on to the pavement.
Now the workers have a new problem.
-via Born in Space
So apparently knife wielding squirrels are a thing now.... #Squirrels #Toronto #blogto pic.twitter.com/bEDpTqYcS6
— Andrea Diamond (@asdiamond) January 6, 2021
Camera footage captured this squirrel rampaging through Toronto. Local resident Andrea Diamond bravely approached to record the furry menace preparing himself for a no doubt savage rampage. Residents are urged to remain indoors with all lights out until the threat is neutralized.
-via Dave Barry
Last month, a motorcyclist crashed into a baby elephant in Thailand. The rider was not badly injured, but the elephant was in very bad shape. An off-duty rescue worker named Mana Srivate came upon the scene and immediately began performing CPR on the elephant. BBC News reports:
Mr Mana, who has been a rescue worker for 26 years, told Reuters he came across the accident scene late on Sunday while he was off duty on a road trip.
"It's my instinct to save lives, but I was worried the whole time because I can hear the mother and other elephants calling for the baby," Mr Mana told the agency by phone.
"I assumed where an elephant heart would be located based on human theory and a video clip I saw online.
"When the baby elephant starting to move, I almost cried," he said.
After ten minutes, the baby elephant stood up. After subsequent treatment, it was released back into the wild.
-via Twisted Sifter
On Sunday, a 14-year old girl became entangled on ski lift at the Bristol Mountain Ski Resort in Canandaigua, New York. For two minutes, she hung from her jacket, which was wrapped around the lift. The resort's ski patrol quickly brought out a tarp to catch her. She was, thankfully, uninjured and was able to walk away from the scene.
The incident could have had a far worse outcome. ABC News reports that chairlifts can, on rare occasions, be deadly:
Ski lift accidents are rare. According to the National Ski Areas Association, a person is five times more likely to die in an elevator and eight times more likely to die in a car than on a chairlift.
Still, rare does not mean never. In 2019, 17-year-old Connor Golembiewski died after a 20-foot fall off of a lift at a ski resort in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains.
In an incident similar to this week's in 2018, a 5-year-old girl dangling from a chairlift was rescued after falling safely onto a tarp at Bear Mountain Ski Resort in Southern California.
-via Super Punch
At a site near the Brazilian border, Uruguayan miners discovered this geode shaped like a heart. It's an inspiring find by Uruguay Minerals, a company which appears to specialize in decorative crystals. My Modern Met talked to a representative of the company:
“We were opening the mine to work normally,” Marcos Lorenzelli of Uruguay Minerals tells My Modern Met, “but the land was difficult to work and our employees said, ‘We have to find something really nice due to the hard work we are doing.’” Their patience was rewarded with this once-in-a-lifetime find.
Photo: Uruguay Minerals
Joselyn Anderson, a wildlife photographer in Michigan, is exceptionally skilled at luring wild birds to feed from her hand. Her slow motion videos reveal in detail the movements and behaviors of these birds. Of the above Red-Bellied Woodpecker, she writes "the tongue connects around the right nostril. Watch closely at 30 sec. to see the flexing around the nostril as he uses his tongue."
-via My Modern Met
In 1936, when she was 17 years old, Helen Viola Jackson married James Bolin, 93 years old, of Niangua, Missouri. Private Bolin served in the 14th Missouri Cavalry Regiment, a US unit, during the Civil War. Jackson was a caretaker for the elderly Bolin, who offered to compensate her for her work by marrying her, thus entitling her to his military pension.
Ms. Jackson died on December 16 at the age of 101. The Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War asserts that she is the last documented widow of a Civil War veteran. She never applied for the pension, as she worried about how it would impact her reputation.
With her passing, an era slips out of our grasp.
-via Kottke | Photo: Helen Viola Jackson
Previously on Neatorama: The Last Person to Receive a Civil War Pension
When the astronauts from Apollo 11 returned to Earth, could they bring with them a microorganism that could sweep across the earth, killing an Earth population biologically unprepared for it? That was a major fear leading up to the moon launch and return. Aeon describes the extraordinary precautions that NASA engineers and scientists took to ensure that there were no breaches in the quarantine around the astronauts, machines, and lunar samples:
It was now clear that NASA would need to design a facility that could not only protect Moon rocks from terrestrial contamination but also protect Earth from contamination by those rocks – all while conducting complex experiments using the rocks and maintaining a strict quarantine of everything else that had returned from the Moon, astronauts included. Nothing like the facility they would need had ever been imagined, let alone built.
After more than a year of bureaucratic squabbling, NASA planners settled on a design for an 86,000 sq ft laboratory. It would cost nearly $75 million to build, $60 million to equip, and more than $13 million annually to operate (all in 2020 US dollars). It would consist of three parts, each with a different function: a quarantine facility to isolate returned astronauts and spacecraft behind a biological barrier; a sample operations area to run experiments on Moon rocks and Earthly biota behind another barrier; and an administrative area.
Despite these expensive and carefully-arranged procedures, there were several breaks in the quarantine system. Fortunately, the astronauts did not return to Earth with a plague (such as space herpes).
-via Nag on the Lake | Photo: NASA
Weird Universe introduces us to Stuart Stebbings, a businessman in Wisconsin (of course), who marketed candy made from cheese. He speculated that cheese might absorb smoke effectively and could therefore be used as the filters in cigarettes. In 1958, he worked with Henry Lardy, a biochemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin, to develop an effective filter and patented the result. The best cheeses for these filters are Parmesan, Romano, and Swiss.
I had no idea that UPS invested so much time and resources in calculating the movements and actions of its drivers. The delivery company is already famous for not making left turns because it's more efficient to make a series of right turns.
But its training facilities teach more than efficient land navigation. There's even a simulator for walking on ice, as well as drills for drivers protecting themselves from dogs and getting into a truck with a minimum number of movements. As this video from Business Insider illustrates, what appears to be a casual if rapid process by drivers is actually precision drill designed to move quickly and safely through the delivery process.
-via Born in Space
In the old days, before the internet, if you wanted to encounter the rantings of angry, semiliterate people, you usually had to go search your house for a family member or, possibly, even step outside. Now you can enjoy such delights from wherever you are seated at the moment.
To enhance this experience, you can listen to Instagram user Lubalin melodiously sing these online arguments. That he sings the misspelled words as they are written is especially delightful.
-via @kaijubushi
When interpreting literature (or, more broadly, narratives), what should be the role of the author in the interpretation of that work? Carl Jung said that "Poets are humans to, and what they say about their work is often far from being the best word on the subject." What are we to do when an author explains his or her work in a way that makes no sense? Is interpretation bounded by the author's intentions or life experiences?
In a 1967 essay, the French literary critic Roland Barthes famously proclaimed the "death of the author." He meant that the author's interpretation of the meaning of a work should not be prioritized over other interpretations. Authorial intent is not authoritative.
Now game designer David J. Prokopetz helpfully updates the Death of the Author to critique other abuses of literary interpretation:
Death of the author: Treating the author’s stated interpretation of their own work as merely one opinion among many, rather than the authoritative Word of God.
Disappearance of the author: Treating the context and circumstances of the work’s authorship as entirely irrelevant with respect to its interpretation, as though the work had popped into existence fully formed just moments ago.
Taxidermy of the author: Working backwards from a particular interpretation of the work to draw conclusions about what the context and circumstances of its authorship must have been.
Undeath of the author: Holding the author personally responsible for every possible reading of their work, even ones they could not reasonably have anticipated at the time of its authorship.
Frankenstein’s Monster of the author: Drawing conclusions about authorial intent based on elements that are present only in subsequent adaptations by other authors.
Weekend at Bernie’s of the author: Insisting that the author would personally endorse your interpretation of the work if they happened to be present.
-via Alex de Campi | Image: 20th Century Fox
