Why is Florida Man so good at ball handling on the court? When police met him at Candyland Park in Longwood, Florida, he insisted that nudity is the key to success at basketball. The New York Post reports:

When approached on the court, Anderson told officers he was “working on his basketball skills” and “feels playing naked enhances his skill level.”

He followed orders to put his clothes back on, then was arrested on misdemeanor charges for indecent exposure, according to the police report.

A superhero just can't catch a break these days.

-via Glenn Reynolds

Photo: Wendy Berry

I hadn't thought about it, but it makes sense: professional wrestling is scripted with elaborate, detailed storylines and character development. So for a business like World Wrestling Entertainment, valued in hundreds of millions of dollars, a team of skilled, professional writers could be as important as the athletes in the arena.

Would you like to be a writer for WWE? Well, too bad. That position doesn't appear to be open. But the position of writer's assistant is. Responsibilities include:

Participate and Take Notes in high level creative meetings with the Chairman of the Company, SVP and Lead Writers of the Creative Writing Team. [...]

Assist writers with the execution of Backstage and In-Ring Segments at WWE TV Shows, and serve as a Runner, coordinating talent, props, and other necessary items for the scenes

-via Aaron Starmer

Photo: Ed Webster

Redditor snoopclog brings to our attention his school, the Belmont Hill School, outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Since the 1920s, this school has required all graduating seniors to carve a 12x12 inch piece of mahogany into something meaningful to them. These are added to an ever-growing wall of about 3,000 panels. A 2004 article in the Boston Globe explains:

"It's a social history," says Headmaster Richard I. Melvoin. "From the time boys arrive, they know they'll leave a piece of themselves on the walls, and so there's a sense they're part of something larger."

The wall of panels is an ongoing work of social history. Melvoin continues:

"One from the 1970s shows a nut and bolt alongside a symbol of infinity and an arrow pointing down," says Melvoin. "It was designed to hang over a water fountain, and the message is that people of color always get screwed. The carving was moved from the fountain because, while some said it should remain as a statement of artistic license, students and faculty of color said it made them not want to drink at the fountain, so it was an interesting dilemma."

Later, in the cafeteria, Melvoin points to a panel carved in 1972 that shows symbols of the Soviet Union, China, a Nazi insignia, and Belmont Hill.

"I'm not sure what that boy was thinking of," says Melvoin, "but it engenders discussion.

"I teach an ethics class, and we talk about the power of symbols, and about racism and the incident at Harvard when a student hung a Confederate flag and people said the flag was racist. So, that set up an opportunity to talk about racism and when symbols are racist and offensive. Comparing a Confederate flag to a Nazi flag is interesting, because most boys, when they see a swastika, will say you can't show that because it's offensive.

"But then if you ask, well, why a Confederate flag? Is it because some people do not find it offensive? Inevitably, a boy will say, `Didn't I see a swastika in a panel in our dining hall?'

"And I say, `Well, yes, you did, and we need to talk about that.' "

This is snoopclog's lovely contribution to the wall.

It pays off to have pimples. Or, to be more precise, social scientists found, under certain circumstances, positive correlations between academic and financial earnings success and the incidence of acne. The abstract by Hugo M. Mialon and Erik T. Nesson in the journal Human Capital asserts:

We use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health to investigate the association between having acne in middle to high school and subsequent educational and labor market outcomes. We find that having acne is strongly positively associated with overall grade point average in high school, grades in high school English, history, math, and science, and the completion of a college degree. We also find evidence that acne is associated with higher personal labor market earnings for women. We further explore a possible channel through which acne may affect education and earnings.

-via Marginal Revolution

Photo: Caitlin Regan

“I’ll be a little late tonight,” he’d told his wife on the phone. “But hold dinner for me.”

Jack Poindexter, radio operator on board the California Clipper, a Pan Am flying boat, would be very late and would not eat that dinner on December 2, 1941.

He was substituting for another radio man on the Clipper's leg to Los Angeles, but then ended up continuing on the flight to Hawaii and then Fiji by December 7. That's when the Japanese Imperial Navy attacked Pearl Harbor.

Thus began the extraordinary journey of the California Clipper back to the United States. It went west--the long away around--landing at Auckland (where the crew "acquired" maps from a public library), then Dutch Indonesia, British Ceylon, Karachi, Bahrain, Sudan, Kinshasa, and Brazil before finally arriving at LaGuardia Airport in New York City.

You can read the first part of this amazing story at Medium.

-via Glenn Reynolds

Photo: Library of Congress

Marie Avril's choices here are perfect. The rounded, flowing forms of Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night and Edvard Munch's The Scream are ideal for translation into works of quilling. You can watch a time-lapse process video of the Starry Night composition here.

Police in Punta Gorda, Florida pulled over a truck early one morning. When asked what two people with it were up to, the couple said that they were collecting frogs and snakes. This was illegal, so the police searched the truck and asked the couple to turn over any animals that they had. Inside a backpack were 41 turtles. Then they forced Florida Woman to release her biggest catch. The Fresno Bee reports:

She “proceeded to pull an alligator out of her yoga pants (about one foot in length) and placed it into the bed of the truck,” the Charlotte County Sheriff’s deputy said in an incident report.

The officers then cited the couple for violating state wildlife laws. Excuse me, but I thought this was America!

-via Ace of Spades HQ

Photo: C Watts

I don't know if Natural Light beer is available outside of the USA. But for sake of clarity, let us say that the brand of inexpensive beer has a reputation. Twitter user David Burge puts it at follows:

Allow me to explain this to aficionados of Belugian Doppelschmutzler and such: Natty Light and Busch Light are the beers one drinks when one is planning to drink 48

Precisely. One drinks Natural Light, aka "Natty Light", in order to become drunk cheaply.

So its intern must be on-brand. CBS 6 News in Richmond, Virginia cites the minimum qualifications cited:

21 years of age or older as of May 8, 2019

Be outgoing, but not annoying, there is a fine line

Be able to spell Protractor

Just be cool

Be prepared to work, though. Here are just two of the heavy job responsibilities:

Product research (yes, it's what you think it is)

Design some sick swag that gives consumers all the feels

Good luck with your future careers, graduates.

The object, which appears to be some type of kitchen appliance, is actually a primitive telecommunications device. You can't access Discord or Twitter from it, nor play games, let alone watch movies. Instead, this device was used to transmit oral communications over distance--provided that one could figure out the interface.

-via Aaron Starmer

Jean-Christophe Bonaparte, 32, is the head of the House of Bonaparte, the ruling house of France under Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. In the eyes of the small Bonapartist movement, he is the legitimate ruler of France. Countess Olympia von und zu Arco-Zinnerberg is the great great granddaughter of Karl I, the last Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

It is not the first union within these two families. The original Emperor Napoleon married an Austrian Archduchess from the same family in order to secure his political and therefore military positions in Europe.

Prince Jean-Christophe, though, claims no imperial ambitions. In fact, he and Countess Olympia were unaware of the historical relationship between their families or that they were related to each other until their relationship had already developed. The Daily Mail reports:

He said: 'It's a story of love rather than a nod to history. When I met Olympia, I plunged into her eyes and not into her family tree. Afterwards we were able to smile at this historical coincidence.'  [...]

The couple are keen to honour their heritage by marrying at Les Invalides, where Napoleon's body was brought back from St Helena after his exile from France. 

Jean-Christophe told the French newspaper Le Figaro that their marriage was 'the fruit of European reconciliation and construction, which I believe in enormously'.  

He went on to say he felt a deep commitment and sense of duty to France, and that he was keen to honour the legacy of his ancestors. 

He said: 'The Bonapartes have always been modern men in the avant-garde and helping their era to move forward, and figures who have built their own lives with an extraordinary freedom. 

'I firmly intend to pursue my heritage in this direction.' 

-via Glenn Reynolds

Photo: Reuters

Cosplayer Bethie Duvall, inspired by the image of a little girl wearing a Spider-Man princess dress, decided to make this full cosplay outfit inspired by Belle from Beauty and the Beast. She writes:

The dress has multiple pieces. There is a 160” hoop skirt, a petticoat, the skirt, and then the bodice. Its has 48 yards of beads making the webs on the skirt. The spider webbing is a lace that is stretched over satin, and the crystals are all hand glued on. The spider made of crystals on the front took 3 hours to make. In total, the cosplay took 120 hours and over 40 yards of fabric to make. The only part not made by me was the wig. My best friend styled it for me!

-via Cosplay in America

Photo: Portraits N Cosplay

Notre-Dame de Paris, that masterful symbol of civilization, is gutted. But it can be rebuilt and, thanks to a scientific study conducted 6 years ago, even its acoustic properties can replicated.

In 2013, physicists conducted a detailed study of the acoustics of Notre-Dame as they existed at the time. Phys.org reports:

Six years ago, on April 24, 2013, Brian FG Katz, a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and CNRS research director at Sorbonne Université, and colleagues obtained detailed measurements of the acoustics of the main space within Notre Dame. [...]

Measurements were made using a collection of omnidirectional, 3-D (first order ambisonic), and dummy head (binaural) microphones. Several dodecahedron loudspeakers were situated at key positions inside the cathedral, representing either typical source positions or those measurement positions of a series of measurements carried out by the same lab in 1987.

Katz explains that the measurements his team took can aid reconstruction efforts:

"It can help during renovation works when considering how the impact of any choices might change the acoustics, such as choice of materials," Katz said. "It's not clear yet what state the interior finishes are in, but the wooden panels and paintings within the cathedral are not at all insignificant when it comes to acoustics. Compared to the raw stone structure, these small elements act as possible acoustic absorption and diffusion and can have significant impacts on the resulting acoustics."

-via Wrath of Gnon

Photo: Brian FG Katz

According to a news story of dubious sourcing, a Taiwanese man named Hsu accidentally swallowed one of his iPhone AirPods while sleeping. When he searched for it in the morning, he realized that the sound from the AirPod was coming from inside him. The Deccan Chronicle reports:

The next day, when Hsu got a call of nature, he found the missing AirPod in it. In a great show of commitment to Apple products, he not only fished it out of his poop, he started wearing it again after cleaning it as well.

What was even more bizarre was that despite passing through a human digestive system, the AirPod was still in working condition. Speaking to Asia Wire, Hsu added: "The battery was still at 41 per cent! It was incredible." This extraordinary result could serve as a great advertising campaign for Apple; AirPods can be swallowed and pooped out, and still work at the end of the day.

Yes, Apple should definitely turn this event into a commercial after further product testing. Proper scientific research does, after all, call for duplication of experimental results.

-via Debby Witt

Photo: Tatsuo Yamashita

How does he do it? How is this even possible?

Belgian tattoo artist Inal Bersekov has both great talent and skill. His tattoos look like perfect duplicates of photographs, such as Alfred Eisenstaedt's famous photo of two people kissing in Times Square at the end of World War II.

You can watch this process video giving a brief overview of how Bersekov works his magic.

DeviantArt member Fantasio composed this haunting image of old, long-abandoned starship left to molder in a forgotten corner of a faraway world. We know not what became of Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise, but we can only assume the worst.

Fantasio composed this image as part of a series showing similarly abandoned machines, including an AT-AT, an AT-ST, and the Iron Giant (warning: artistic nudity).