Ddangerous Ddave loves hard rides on his Norco Sight C7. Here he is on a forested mountain trail, going at high speeds through bone-breaking obstacles. He never falls, but he does have the sense to look at one jump and say, "That's not solo ride material." Yet, at another, seemingly more challenging jump, he takes his bike airborne.
Watch it all, if for nothing more than hearing his joyful laughter.
-via The Awesomer
Political historian Robert Justin Goldstein writes about an extraordinary incident in 19th Century Sweden:
In another case of press repression which succeeded only in creating a martyr, the editor of the Swedish newspaper Stockholms Posten, Captain Anders Lindeberg, was convicted of treason in 1834 for implying that King Karl Johan should be deposed. He was sentenced to death by decapitation, under a medieval treason law. When the King mitigated the sentence to three years in prison, Lindeberg decided to highlight the King’s repressive press policy by insisting upon his right to be beheaded and refusing to take advantage of the government’s attempts to encourage him to escape. Finally, in desperation, the King issued a general amnesty to ‘all political prisoners awaiting execution’, which applied only to Lindeberg. When the editor stubbornly insisted upon his right to execution, the government solved the problem by locking him out of his cell while he was walking in the prison courtyard and then refusing him re-entry.
I encountered this story in the wonderful blog Futility Closet and decided to post about it here at Neatorama. But my efforts at verifying the story (which sounds too good to be true) came to nothing.
So I ordered Goldstein's book through interlibrary loan to check his source. Goldstein's source is a 1940s book series on Scandinavian historian by Swedish author B.J. Hovde. I don't have access to Hovde's book and am thus unable to track his sources. But given the contemporary scholarly book reviews of his work that I have found, I'd say that the likelihood that the story of how Lindeberg escaped is true is, on a scale of 1 to 10, about a 6.
Photo: Der Vollstrecker
Ayhan Tomak, a Turkish sculptor who specializes in wood, has many fascinating pieces on his website, his Instagram page, and his DeviantArt page. But I'm particularly struck by his mirror backings. They exhibit incredible fluidity--like they encapsulate shimmering pools of water in constant motion.
To be more precise, Madeleine Ravier referred to her invention as a "bicycle for animals." She did not restrict the design in her 1907 patent to horses.
Ravier concluded that, as human locomotion is more efficient on a bicycle, animals likewise benefit by an appropriately adapted vehicle. Weird Universe quotes a translation of her patent:
What man did for himself he can do it for animals, or at least for some of them; There is a way to increase the efficiency of their limbs by the intercalation, between these limbs and the field of motion, of mechanical devices receiving the reciprocating motion of the limbs, transforming it into continuous rotary motion, and ending in rotating parts; and the result obtained can be used to make animals move man faster and farther than has hitherto been done by using them.
With a wingspan up to 11 inches, the appropriately named Atlas Moth can attract unwelcome attention from predators. Fortunately, one of its evolutionary advantages is that the tips of its wings look like snake heads. The Natural History Museum in London describes how this feature helps:
The moth's Cantonese name translates as snake's head moth, because the tips of its wings look similar to the head of a deadly cobra.
When threatened, the moth will drop to the floor and writhe around, slowing flapping its wings to imitate snake head and neck movements and scare away predators.
-via The Fabulous Weird Trotters | Photo: Pixabay
Redditor UNHOLYpuppetboy shares this photo of the book stacks of his local public library. It's the Merchants' Square location of the Carmel Clay Public Library in Carmel, Indiana. The main library of that system is under renovation, so the collection and its services were moved into a closed grocery store last October. The local NBC News affiliate described the changes last year:
That's right, the library is now in the old Marsh in Merchants' Square while the main library undergoes renovations. The library expects construction could take up to two years, with a focus on expanding the "teen" area. [...]
"Our books in the freezer section. That's a popular area," said Director Bob Swanay. "The children's area is in what was formerly the winery section of the store."
-via TYWKIWDBI
Custom dicemaker RitualCast of Ketchikan, Alaska says that this ominous street art recently appeared downtown. And there's evidence that the situation has become even more dangerous: packets of googly eyes have been mysteriously appearing around the city.
-via Super Punch
Capuchino Cosplay offers this fresh take on Marvel cosplay. Here is a Rococo-style rendition of Captain America and Iron Man. The pair of heroes are ready for the masquerade ball.
This unique blown glass piece designed by Jim Rokos and made by glass artist Jochen Holz is called My Other Half. The glass with the lowest level will fill up, so it's necessary to coordinate your drinking with a partner. Rokos designed it as part of a project that he calls Blindspot, which is about how people work together (or don't) as couples.
-via Toxel
How shall we protect our property from people stealing packages away from our front doors? Stage magician and science educator Jason Latimer reasoned that the best way is to convince thieves that there are no packages to steal. He built a box with a mirror that reflects the side wall of his house. As a result, when viewed from the front, the box appears to be a transparent table.
-via The Awesomer
When surfboards have ceased to be useful on the waves, Claire Marie, an artist in Western Australia, gives them new life. She reinvigorates the boards with vibrant seascapes harkening to past adventures on the water.
Marie explained to My Modern Met that each painting is personalized to the past of the board:
“It’s the small details in the artwork that makes each commissioned surfboard unique and personal but the surfboard itself also holds its own memories from the time it has spent out in the waves,” she continues. “On the back of each board is a small handwritten note which gives a little insight into the story of the board and the artwork.”
Oleg Chernyshenko's feat is so extraordinary that I was inclined to think that the video was fake until I discovered similar accomplishments on his Instagram page. According to the Daily Mail, Chernyshenko completed this series of backflips at Cape Kiwanda, Oregon while his brother ran down the hill recording it.
-via The Awesomer
How would you remove tree stumps before internal combustion engines created automated options? One way is with a stump puller, like the one owned by the family of Guy Temple. He donated his old fashioned tool to the Pasto Agricultural Museum at Pennsylvania State University. In this video, Mr. Temple explains how a team of horses is able to gradually lever a stump out of the ground using a tool anchored to another tree.
-via reddit
Captain Montgomery Scott, a Starfleet officer of great renown, will be born in the town of Linlithgow, Scotland about two centuries from now. Civic minded citizens of that town are justly proud of their native son and so marked the local museum with a commemorative plaque. Atlas Obscura has photos of it.
Feel like this might help fr 👀
— Overtime (@overtime) July 26, 2021
(via handinyofacehoops/TikTok) pic.twitter.com/wJqWIqac8P
This is a clever invention. The HandInYoFace places a hand-shaped obstruction in front of a player's eyes to simulate the obscured vision of a player trying to shoot and pass while blocked.
I'm struggling to find the origin of this product and video, the latter of which appears to be a TikTok account. Hopefully we can see the training aid in sporting goods stores soon.
-via Super Punch
