Have you ever seen this piece of equipment? Redditor trsuco spotted it in a restaurant and asked the server, who, displaying a strange lack of curiosity, had no idea what it is. Then he turned to the hive mind for identification. Even after I saw the answer, I couldn't find another example elsewhere. Maybe I'm not using the correct search term, because this can't be the only existing one.
Coldplay has a new music video coming out, and the teaser for it is longer than the song. That's because the video for "All My Love" from their current album Moon Music, will star actor, dancer, comedian, and singer Dick Van Dyke. Van Dyke turns 99 years old on December 13th, which is when the video will premiere. This "director's cut" video, directed by Spike Jonze and Mary Wigmore, is not only a preview of the song, but also a love letter to Van Dyke, his family, and his career. At 98, Van Dyke stills dances, and rather than being depressed about his age, he laughs at it.
You won't want to miss the part at 5:45 when Chris Martin composes an impromptu song about getting old. What does he know about it? He's only 47, half of Van Dyke's age. The lyrics are at the YouTube page. -via Laughing Squid
Many folks were introduced to computer games by playing The Oregon Trail in the 1970s or '80s. Even if you weren't, you know the game ended when you died of dysentery. Life as a pioneer was hard. But did you really learn anything about dysentery? Dysentery can be caused by bacteria, viruses, or parasites, but the illness is defined by severe diarrhea. Most people recover, and those who die of dysentery are actually dying of dehydration. Ingesting plenty of fluids will get you through it.
Woe Industries has remade the game to reflect this reality. You Have Not Died of Dysentery is an alternate version of The Oregon Trail in which you suffer from dysentery, but do not die. Instead, you have to constantly deal with diarrhea as you make your way across the Great Plains with your family. How much toilet paper should you take? How many times can you cause the wagon train to stop before they abandon you? And how do you keep your pants clean? This game may be too real for some folks, as the aim of finding a new home takes a backseat to just finding a place to poop. -via Kottke
As they do every year, the Pantione Color Institute has decreed the fashionable color of the upcoming year. For 2025, their selection is Mocha Mousse, described as a warm brown hue with "the delectable qualities of chocolate and coffee, answering our desire for comfort." They have a point that we are craving comfort, and who doesn't like a good cup of coffee or a cup of hot cocoa? Or a mix of both (which is what mocha is)? However, Pantone partners with design companies to put their color of the year everywhere, and a nice comforting mocha in an entire outfit or in home decor can be overwhelmingly dull. It sure fits in with the "sad beige" aesthetic.
In 25 years of selecting a color of the year, this is the first time that Pantone has chosen a shade of brown. You can see this color on everything from wallpaper to Motorola phones at their announcement page. But whether it will become popular in 2025 is another question. Do you recall the color of the year for 2024? Or 2023? I didn't think do. -via Smithsonian
Underneath our feet, the earth stores masses of organic matter like peat, coal, or methane, which are all extremely flammable. When conditions are right (or someone does something stupid), these masses can ignite and burn for years underground before we even know it. Even when we know about them, there is little we can do when the fuel seems unlimited and our efforts to fight these underground fires is quite limited. What's really going on with these underground "zombie fires" that spread beneath us?
Zombie fires are even more dangerous than they appear. Sure, there's the danger of falling into one, and the danger that the fires will burst through to the surface. In addition, even when they stay underground, they are emitting smoke and tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to toxic pollution and to climate change. Oh yeah, and they are burning up our fuel. What can we do? Scientists are working on solutions. Let's hope they make progress in our lifetime. -via Damn Interesting
I first became aware of the impending death of the star Betelgeuse in this xkcd comic a few days ago. Orion will lose his shoulder! Betelgeuse is one of the brightest stars in the sky, a red supergiant 640 light years away. This star is 700,000,000 times our sun’s volume, and if it were here, it would fill our solar system. Over the past few years, Betelgeuse has brightened and dimmed (or "faintened," a word new to me) considerably. That means it is getting ready to collapse and explode, lighting up our sky to a superlative degree.
When it happens, Betelgeuse will go supernova, and become brighter than a full moon over the course of about ten days. It will stand out among other stars for many months. When will this happen? It could be soon, or anytime in the next 100,000 years. We will know when it happens, because astronomers will detect neutrinos before the light show begins. Or when it has already happened sometime in the last 640 years. Read what is going to happen to Betelgeuse in more detail at Big Think.
Ze Frank was surprised with an invitation to join the advisory board of the Senkenberg Ocean Species Alliance (SOSA), based in Frankfurt, Germany. To find out if this was legit or just a prank, he went to Germany, and surprise! He's on the advisory board of a research center that studies and names new species of mollusks. They obviously realized that an American who makes fun of ocean creatures draws a lot of attention to them. So of course, Ze Frank repays the gesture by making fun of the institution, its scientists, mollusks in general, and Germany as a whole. In the meantime, we learn about how taxonomy works and how long it takes for a new species to be named. Some of the folks he roasted in this video came into the comments to show they are good sports. Of course they are, or they wouldn't have contacted Ze in the first place. The result is that today, a lot more people know what SOSA is and what they do, even if they never hear the end of a crayon's worth of argon or jiggly DNA. Watch out, Ze, you'll be inundated by requests to join other scientific boards now.
Houska Castle is in the city of Blatce in the Czech Republic (Czechia). It was built sometime between the years of 1253 and 1278 under the reign of Ottokar II of Bohemia as a sort of headquarters for the administration of his estates. No one lived there for a few hundred years until it was renovated in the 16th century. Why would such a castle be built in the middle of nowhere, on a mountain side where there was no water supply? And why were the fortification walls built facing inward, so that defenders could shoot into the compound?
Because the castle was built over a "bottomless" pit, said to be the gateway to hell. Legend tells us monsters, demons, and human-animal hybrids emerged from the pit. Anyone that ventured into it came back aged and traumatized, if they came out at all. The castle was meant to keep the demons enclosed. The castle's chapel is directly over the pit.
During World War II, the castle was occupied by the Wehrmacht, who are said to have conducted occult experiments there. There are tales of ghosts still roaming the castle. If you want a thrill while you're in the Czech Republic, you can visit Houska Castle, although getting there won't be simple. It's still in the middle of nowhere. -via Cracked
Posy is a Dutch musician who has wide ranging interests and hobbies. Last year he introduced us to motion extraction. Posy has a camera that takes macro video images with an overly sensitive focus. In this video, he shows us some of the everyday objects in his home in very closeup mode. You might be able to guess some of them, but certainly not all. Surfaces that we normally think of as smooth are anything but at the macro level. The wandering focus gives these objects a surreal and artistic, if confusing, quality. Posy's narration is what's really entertaining here. He doesn't have interesting facts about what we are seeing, but he shares our marvel at the way they look with his lovely European accent. You can tell he's having fun with the camera. Until he gets bored. To be honest, it's rather charming to listen to a video producer who has the same reactions his audience has. The music is really nice, too. -via Kottke
Christmas is a festive, loving time, but a story about it wouldn't last long without a villain to create conflict, or at least a dilemma. Slashfilm has taken on the challenge of collecting Christmas movie villains and ranking them, counting up to the best villain. They lay out the rules they made up for themselves when considering a villain for the list, and even acknowledge that they eliminated the actual best villain ever in a Christmas movie, although the reasoning behind his absence isn't all that clear. Maybe it's the eternal squabbling about what is and isn't a Christmas movie.
Oh yes, Old Man Potter (Lionel Barrymore) from It's a Wonderful Life is there, but he's not ranked all that high. The explanation is that Potter completely gets away with his crime, and that's not quite acceptable to the audience. I disagree; I think it makes the fantasy scenario more realistic in our modern world. At any rate, you might disagree with the choices for the list, but you probably won't have an argument about numbers 1 and 2 on the list of the ten best Christmas villains at Slashfilm.
The last video we posted from the What If? series looked at the feasibility of light reaching from the earth to the moon. It ended up with a disaster, actually blowing the moon out of its orbit. After the video was posted, the question stayed with Randall Munroe and Henry Reich. Munroe couldn't stop thinking about even more power, and what that would do. After all, there are more powerful beams than mere visible light. He's talking about gamma rays, the kind of things that pull stars apart. Not that we have gamma ray weapons here on earth, besides the flashes produced by nuclear explosions, but this is a thought experiment. If we could harness such power, it would be in line with the planet-killing beams from the Death Star or Starkiller Base. Once we've fashioned this hypothetical death ray, we could cause all kinds of destruction. Yay! -via Damn Interesting
You've heard of Sasquatch and Mothman, yet there are other cryptids told of in the hills of Appalachia that may go by various local names, but are referred to collectively as the "white things" (pronounced "white thangs"). What they have in common is that they are big, white, hairy, and will scare the crap out of anyone who sees them. Some are described as humanoid, yet much larger than any human, with horns. Others walk on four legs and have claws. From the accounts of sightings, they rarely do much damage beyond terrifying the observer and fortifying the story.
You may get the idea that the white things are a combination of fear, the power of suggestion, and alcohol or drugs. Or maybe they are albino versions of scary animals that make the mountains their home, such as bears, bobcats, or even deer. Even the occasional stray white cow would be terrifying in a dark forest at night. Someone who is predisposed to fearing the white things they've heard of would become a true believer if they encountered such wildlife, especially if they've had a few. But the stories continue. Read up on sightings of the white things of Appalachia at Mental Floss.
It's that time of year when the producers of various dictionaries let us know about trends in language. The Oxford University Press, who produces the Oxford Dictionary, has decided that "brain rot" is their word of the year for 2024, despite the fact that it's two words. Brain rot means the deterioration of someone's intellect or mental health due to overconsumption of mindless entertainment, mostly on the internet. Oxford noticed that the use of the term has grown by 230% over the past year. The word of the year was determined by an online poll of six finalists presented by Oxford. The term brain rot is not new, however. Henry David Thoreau used it in his 1854 book Walden.
The Oxford Dictionary word of the year is not the last word, though (pun in tended). The Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year for 2024 is "manifest." Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year for 2024 is "demure." And Collins Dictionary’s word of the year is "brat." Maybe we should look these words up in the dictionary.
A man in Texas sought medical help for a severe rash, actually a burn, on his hands. The burn eventually produced blisters, and it took several months for him to fully heal. He was diagnosed with phytophotodermatitis, a condition in which chemicals from certain plants interact with the skin and makes one extremely vulnerable to sunburn. The man had manually squeezed a bunch of limes and then went to a soccer game without sunscreen. The traces of juice on his hands altered his skin to react with UV light, causing serious sun damage.
The plant chemicals that can do this are called furocoumarins, which exist famously in hogweed, but also in many plants we eat. Read about phytophotodermatitis, and learn which foods can cause it, so you'll know to wash your hands thoroughly after preparing them. And always apply sunscreen before attending outdoor events.
Minnesotastan cites the same study and reposted a case from 2013 with much more explicit pictures of the worst effects of phytophotodermatitis. You've been warned.
This video begins by posing the question: Does earth exist in the Star Wars universe? Of course it does, although you have to dig into Star Wars lore a bit to find the evidence. A broader question is: Where does the Star Wars universe end and where does our familiar world begin? The simple answer is Disney World, but that's not satisfying, either. We are told that the events of Star Wars take place long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, so the light (and/or video signals of some sort) from that galaxy might just now be reaching us here on earth. But that's just one theory.
The Art Of Storytelling explains some of requirements of a shared universe, and how some similarities between that fantasy world and our own can be tolerated while others cannot. The many Star Wars properties range from the quite plausible (Andor) to the ridiculous (The Rise of Skywalker), so you can pick your poison. Egregious errors in Star Wars stories make it difficult to fantasize about the reality of that galaxy so far, far away. For those who like to think that the events of Star Wars could be real, those errors can induce rage. And outside of the political realm, no one feels rage like an avid Star Wars fan. -via Laughing Squid
