It's been said, often, that the US and Britain are two countries forever divided by a common language. And there are folks who will tell you that the language is not at all common, that it's two languages, and that you can only understand the other if you've been exposed to it quite a bit. I recall trying to share Monty Python and the Holy Grail with my kids, who refused to watch because they couldn't understand what was being said. Their loss.

There's a big ocean between the two countries, so it's no wonder that the pronunciation has diverged. But the United States is such a big country that Americans pronounce words differently depending on the area they are from. Laurence Brown has spent the last ten years contrasting Britain with America. In this video, he tells us about the American words that are not only pronounced differently from the British version, but also differently from other Americans. I'm sure there are some here that you (if you are American) pronounce in your own way. There's a 75-second skippable ad at 3:19. 

The story of Macquarie Island, halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica, is the go-to tale illustrating the devastating effects of invasive species. Before 1810, the island was uninhabited, but an amazing variety of sea birds flourished there. Several species of penguins used it as a mating ground because there were no land predators. Then Macquarie Island was claimed as a base for British sealing ships, and both seals and penguins were hunted to near extinction. The ships brought rats, who settled in and ate seabird eggs. The rats became so numerous that cats were brought in for rat control. However, the cats found seabirds easier to catch, and the cats multiplied while seabirds died out. 

At the same time, rabbits were introduced to Macquarie Island so that sailors would have something to eat besides penguins, and they took over the island as well, damaging the grassland and native vegetation. Seabirds suffered further, and some species went extinct. By the 1980s, conservationists were ready to do something about Macquarie Island. Read up on the measures they took, some more successful than others, at Amusing Planet. 

(Image credit: Hullwarren) 

When my kids were young and complaining about being bored, I would always tell them that it was their own fault and they needed to figure it out themselves. The complaining eventually stopped. The truth is that we've all managed to eliminate boredom with a device in our pockets that can fill even the smallest amount of downtime with information or entertainment. 

We hear a lot about the epidemics of depression and loneliness in the modern world, and that could be explained by the lack of real-life social interaction, or maybe it's the lack of introspection. When the dishwasher was invented, housewives didn't want one because washing the dishes was the only time of the day they could be alone with their thoughts. Being alone with your thoughts has value, so why do we find ourselves avoiding it? Some of it is FOMO, the fear of missing out, and some of it is the fear of wasting time. We are lucky to have the time to be bored. Professor Arthur C. Brooks explains why we should let ourselves be bored sometimes, and how we can find the time to do it.

The visible spectrum of light that humans can detect is relatively limited. Ultraviolet light waves are too short and infrared waves are too long for our perception, although some animals have developed signal detection outside of humans' natural ability. But scientists in China have been experimenting with "upconversion nanoparticles" that can convert infrared light in the environment into colors that we can detect. After seeing success when injecting these nanoparticles into the retinas of mice, they looked for a non-invasive way to use this technology in humans. The answer is soft contact lenses embedded with these nanoparticles.

These lenses enable the wearer to see near-infrared signals. They can see these signals even with their eyes closed, because eyelids are only good at blocking visible light. The lenses do not detect far-infrared signals, which would be thermal vision, an ability some animals have already. Read about this ocular breakthrough at the Guardian. -via kottke 

(Image credit: איתן טל) 

Mateo Niclas was kayaking off the coast of Alaska when he spotted a beluga whale mired in the mud. He called over his buddies, eight men in all, to see what they could do. First, they provided buckets of water to keep its skin moist. It was big for a beluga- they estimated that the whale was about 3,500 pounds. That's way more than a kayak could pull. But there were eight guys and a rope, and the mud was just slick enough to allow them to pull together and free the whale. That beluga is going to have a real story to tell his beluga buddies, although they will not believe him. 

A situation like this could be dangerous for amateur rescuers. GoPro recommends that if you see a stranded marine animal, call the professionals. NOAA Fisheries has a website that lists the closest organization staffed with experienced rescuers who will come to help. -via Born in Space

During World War II, the Nazis confiscated thousands of artworks owned by Jewish artists and collectors. These included works from Dutch art collector Jacques Goudstikker confiscated by the German government after his death and sold cheap to Nazi officials. Some of those paintings have been found, others are still missing. 

Fast forward 80 years, and the Argentine home of former SS officer Friedrich Kadgien is put on the market by his daughters. The listing had a picture of the living room, with a painting on the wall that looked suspiciously like Portrait of a Lady by Italian artist Giuseppe Ghislandi, which had been owned by Goudstikker. It was not a famous painting, but was known to be in Kadgien’s possession in 1946. The image, and all interior photos, were removed from the real estate listing after the news got out. A police raid on the house found that the artwork was gone. One of Kadgien's daughters told a newspaper that she didn't know what painting they were talking about. It might have been a simple matter for the daughters to have claimed ignorance about the painting's provenance and repatriated it to Dutch authorities, but as it is, the story is far from over. -via Metafilter

Update: Police in Argentina put Patricia Kadgien and her husband under house arrest, and have since found and confiscated this painting and other stolen artworks.  

(Image credit: Robles Casas & Campos) 

Spot can do a lot of things, and now he can do backflips. I don't think Simone Biles has anything to worry about just yet, but it's a breakthrough in robotics. 

Why would a robot dog need to do gymnastics? Their clients don't need it. People who watch videos on the internet do, but that's not worth the research dollars. Robotics engineer Arun Kumar explains that a backflip requires precise abilities that are useful in the robot being able to recover when it trips or someone collides with it, and also tests the limits of its many motors. As you can see, doing a backflip takes lots of practice for a robot, just like it does for humans. The eeriest part is how practice makes perfect for a robot. They didn't have to tweak the hardware or software after every unsuccessful attempt. Instead, the artificial intelligence inside Spot learned by positive reinforcement, meaning it gets a reward when it performs well. Just like training a real dog. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

Thousands of people in New Orleans have no baby pictures. They were lost in the flood 20 years ago. On August 29, 2005, hurricane Katrina ripped through the South, creating havoc everywhere. But New Orleans was changed forever when the levees, holding back water from the city that lies below sea level, failed. An evacuation order had gone out the day before, and thousands of people fled the city. But even more had no transportation, or no money at the end of the month, or stayed with the sick and elderly who couldn't leave. Flood waters covered 80% of the city. More than 1,300 people died, and more than 200,000 homes were damaged or destroyed.  

The Louisiana State Museum today opened their new, expanded exhibit on Katrina and its aftermath. The exhibit includes artifacts gathered after the storm, photographs, and accounts from those who lived through it. Read some of those accounts, and see plenty of images, at Smithsonian. 

(Image credit: NOAA) 

A guy in China is testing the explosive power of different levels of firecrackers by placing them under a cooking pot and igniting them. He starts with the least powerful firecracker he has, which is still enough to lift the pot off the ground. As they increasingly get bigger, the pot flies to amazing heights. Do not try this at home! It appears quite dangerous, although if you're not in China, you probably can't get this variety of firecrackers.

He's purportedly testing the firecrackers, but I'm most impressed with the pot. How heavy is that thing? What is it made of? It goes to ridiculous heights before showing even the slightest dent. Up until the last explosion, it's only slightly damaged by falling, not from the fireworks. Yeah, that last one was a doozy, and the only one that made him walk any distance to retrieve the pot. -via Laughing Squid 

Here's a creepy and salacious love story that surely would have gone viral on the internet, if it hadn't happened in 1911. A pretty young woman named Marie Bondi developed a crush on the local undertaker. Leonardo Grasso was married, however, so how was she to get his attention discreetly? Her solution was to dress as a man and apply for a job as the undertaker's assistant. She not only got the job, but Grasso's attention, as he became close with his assistant "Mike." 

Shielded by the disguise, the two weren't particularly discreet. The affair was uncovered when a client caught the couple displaying affection right there in the funeral home in a room with a row of coffins. Mrs. Grasso had "Mike" arrested for masquerading as a man, which was apparently against the law at the time. As a result, Bondi went back to dressing as a woman, but that didn't stop her affair with Grasso. Read how all these shenanigans played out at Strange Company. 

The 61st Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition received more than 60,000 entries from 117 countries this year. The record number of entries has been winnowed down to the top 100 photos, which will all be a part of the annual exhibit at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, UK. The top winners will be announced on October 14. The museum exhibit will run from October 17 through July 12 of next year. 

Some of the top 100 images have been released for our enjoyment, six of them in the collection above. My favorite is the last one, featuring bats leaving a historical ruin. Photographer Sitaram Raul sat in total darkness in Banda, Maharashtra, India, aiming his camera at where he thought the bats might appear. He got pooped on, but also got some great pictures. Read the stories behind these photos and more, 16 in all, at BBC.  -via Damn Interesting 

Healthy ecosystems maintain a delicate balance of resources, plants, and animals. Remove one part of the food chain, and you get cascading effects that throw the balance off, and it could take many years to fix it even if we recognize the problem and can do something about it. Bringing in an invasive species can have the same devastating effect on a fragile ecosystem- just ask Australians about their rabbits and cane toads. That scenario is playing out now in the savannas of Kenya. The arrival of the big-headed ant (Pheidole megacephala) some twenty years ago has changed the diet of the lions who live there- they are eating more water buffalo and fewer zebras. It's a chain reaction that involves several other species along the way, and as the story is still playing out, we don't know how it will end, or how other species will be affected. I'm pulling for the lions, in any case.

Way back when, people could gauge the passage of time by seeing how far a candle burned down. This has nothing to do with that- it has to do with the flicker of the flame. Candlemakers spent hundreds or even thousands of years getting rid of the flicker because it was annoying in your only light source. Now we are trying to engineer LED candles to mimic the flicker because people like it. So now wax candles are mostly flicker-free, but you can bring it back by tying three candles together.

By measuring the flicker of such candles with modern high-tech instruments, we've determined that candles flicker at 9.9 Hz, which is roughly one tenth of a second. With a lot of measuring equipment and an awful lot of candles, one could build a clock out of such knowledge. Read how this was determined at Tim's Blog. 

This project is an entry into HackaDay's One Hertz Challenge, in which entrants design a device that measures time in 1 Hz (one second) increments. If you are so inclined, you can read 116 entries so far.  -via Metafilter

The question is: how many sequels can a franchise have before it runs out of steam? The answer: not this many. Jurassic World Rebirth is the seventh movie in the Jurassic Park franchise. It made a ton of money, but at this point, going to a Jurassic movie is a habit. The 1993 movie Jurassic Park, directed by Steven Spielberg and based on a book by Michael  Crichton, was a wonderfully fresh idea, but you'd think by now this fictional world would have learned its lesson about dinosaurs. But no, they make the same mistakes over and over. What's different about Jurassic World Rebirth is that the dinos are mutants. You get the idea that they want to avoid the fate of the first movie in which we learned over the subsequent 30 years that dinosaurs didn't look like that. Not that it makes any difference to the audience; the plot is the same. Screen Junkies has fun tearing Jurassic World Rebirth apart. 

Documented history goes back a lot further than science. We have written chronicles of dates when people were surprised that the sky grew black and the sun didn't shine. Oh yeah, they knew weather, but some dark days couldn't be explained by storms. In October of 1762, the skies over Detroit turned black and a sulfurous rain fell that was black even when it hit the ground. There was no industrial pollution back then, so what was it? We don't know to this day. One day in 1857, the skies over Baghdad turned black for a short time, then red, with red sand falling over the town. In 1938, skies over Siberia turned black. No rain this time, but accounts from that day tell us that radio signals could not get in or out in the region.  

Many historical accounts of daytime darkness can be explained now as solar eclipses or volcanic clouds. But those weren't the explanation for any of the eight mysterious dark days on this list. A couple can be explained by rare weather phenomena, but most have no definitive cause to this day. Read about eight incidents of daytime darkness at Mental Floss.