Russia's far east, an area that Americans call Siberia (although the traditional Siberia is bigger), is a vast area with very few people. How few? Fewer than eight million people. Compare that to London, the small dot on the left, which has more than eight million. New York City also has more than eight million people in the city limits (23 million in the combined metro statistical area). 

Siberia's reputation in the West is that of Stalin's exiles, when millions of people were sent to the far east for political or genocidal reasons. Most of them either died or left when they got the chance. But the far east has been losing people steadily even in the 21st century.   

I once flew over east Russia, and although it took forever, I never saw any evidence of a city or manmade infrastructure. The landscape, however, is both majestic and frightening. Why is there so much empty land in this area? Yes, it's cold, but there are many other reasons, both geographical and historical, laid out in a post at Brilliant Maps. -via Nag on the Lake 

I once asked a talented friend if she could teach me to sing. She determined that I have a problem changing smoothly from the lower register to the soprano or falsetto register. Maybe I should have tried yodeling, which involves rapidly moving from one to the other, but it didn't matter as I can't carry a tune anyway and she gave up on me.  

Yodeling has a long tradition in Switzerland, where a yodel can be heard from one Alpine mountaintop to another. Great Big Story went to the Alps to talk to people about yodeling. In this video we learn of its origins, continued popularity, and the nuts and bolts of how to yodel from Melanie of the famous Swiss band Oesch die Dritten. They also take us to Jodlerfest Altstätten, a yodeling festival that draws world-class yodelers. It was difficult, but our host finally found some yodelers and fans who speak English. -via Laughing Squid 

Ta Prohm is a Buddhist temple complex in Ankhor, the ancient capital of the Kmer Empire in what is now Cambodia. It was built in the 12th century and flourished until the 15th century, when it was abandoned. The buildings of Ta Prohm feature many reliefs carved in stone that depict people, animals, deities, and mythological creatures. One of these carvings, shown above, appears to be of a stegosaurus! 

Well, a stegosaurus is what it looks like to modern eyes, due to the row of plates that grow out of the animal's back. But is this a case of seeing something that isn't there? The head is too large for a stegosaurus, and it doesn't have a thagomizer. There has been plenty of speculation about what the artist meant to portray hundreds of years ago. Is there a mythological animal that looked like this? Did the Kmer people reconstruct fossils long before Western scientists? Some see it as proof that humans and dinosaurs existed together. Read about the Ta Prohm stegosaurus at Amusing Planet. The last picture in the article will make it clear why the carving looks the way it does. 

(Image credit: Harald Hoyer) 

It would have been easy to completely miss the fact that there is another new movie based on H. G. Wells's 1898 novel The War of the Worlds. The 2025 film War of the Worlds is the eighth film based on that novel, not to mention the infamous 1938 radio play by Orson Welles, or the TV shows, or other adaptations. The new movie is only available on Amazon Prime, and I never heard of it until everyone and his brother (including mine) saw it and can't stop talking about how awful it is. Screen Junkies counts the reasons in this Honest Trailer, so you can stop listening to less eloquent screeds.  

The hero is played by Ice Cube, a government surveillance expert who is confined to his cubicle and watches aliens attack earth through his screens. He has a family, who all happen to be involved in earth-changing events. The whole movie is claustrophobic, because it was conceived during the pandemic, as if we want to relive that. And it may strike you as an 89-minute ad for Amazon. Doomed to be a classic.  

Carbonated beverages got their start in pharmacies, because pharmacies were great at combining chemicals, whether it was for refreshment or medicinal use or both. In fact, pharmacies offered the earliest soda fountains. Cincinnati, Ohio, was the site of the Eclectic Medical Institute, a pioneer in pharmacy. It was in that city that the nectar soda was developed, and served as a side story to the history of cream soda.  

While cream soda was flavored with vanilla, it was too sweet for some people, so nectar soda added the flavor of bitter almond to counteract the sweetness. This unique flavor was tinted pink to distinguish it from other sodas, as it mimicked the color of bitter almond flowers. Nectar sodas were so popular they were served at pharmacies, soda fountains, ice cream shops, and candy stores across Cincinnati. It spread to other cities, although the only other place it took permanent root was New Orleans. Read about nectar soda at Gastro Obscura.  

How far can a tire roll when you throw it off a sand dune? The group called Tuk South did just that, and they were ready with a drone to follow it on its adventures. As the tire goes on and on, you have time to contemplate the meaning of all this. Where is this? The description only says that this is one of the tallest sand dunes on earth. How far did the tire roll? Did they go get it? I wouldn't bother. The drone can come back on its own, but let's think about that drone for a minute. It has remarkable range from the controller. Did it have enough power to get back? With live streaming, you don't have to retrieve a drone to have the footage. And after you think all that, you think, goodness, that tire is still rolling.

This may remind you of the movie Rubber that starred a tire going on a murderous rampage. Except the tire above is no villain, but a hero for its perseverance, determination, and sense of adventure. -via Memo of the Air 

(Image credit: Benreis)

It's no wonder there are so many old German folk songs about linden trees. For more than a thousand years, people in German communities used a linden tree as a gathering place. They were even the site of public dances. Then someone got the idea to build a dance floor around a linden tree. If you train the lower side branches outward, you will have a support for an elevated dance floor. But then you built supports for it anyway, because they were quite popular. Those side branches grew upward to provide shade for the dancers. This is a Tanzlinde, or a dancing tree. The plural is Tanzlinden, because Germany still has a few of these charming arboral structures, some hundreds or even a thousand years old. 

(Image credit: Benreis) 

See and read about Tanzlinden in Sachsenbrunn, Effeltrich, Galenbecker, Gößweinstein, Limmersdorf, Peesten (shown above), and in Schenklengsfeld, where the linden tree is 1265 years old! -via Metafilter 

New, creative ideas in cinema often come from merging two genres. The movie Good Boy is about a dog, but it's a horror film. A guy inherits his grandfather's farm house and moves in with his loyal dog Indy (you know where that name came from). Indy detects malevolent forces before the guy does, as dogs will. It's the first horror film shown from the dog's point of view.  

Indy (the dog's real name as well as the character) belongs to Good Boy director Ben Leonberg. That's how we have that archival footage of him growing up in the beginning of this trailer. We aren't shown much of the horrors. Good Boy got positive reviews at SXSW last spring, and is at 95% among movie critics at Rotten Tomatoes. The one question everyone has is Does the Dog Die? No definite answer so far, but I can't imagine the reviews would be so good if Indy doesn't make it out alive. Good Boy will open in theaters October 3rd. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

 

You know Davy Crockett as a bear hunter, congressman, king of the wild frontier, and hero of the Alamo. His image is instantly recognizable in his coonskin cap and fringed buckskin, played by Fess Parker in a Disney TV series -or was that Daniel Boone? The 1954-55 Disney miniseries Davy Crockett was later released theatrically as two movies and caused a mid-century Crockett craze among young Baby Boomers. While that's where the contemporary image of Crockett came from, he was quite famous in the 19th century as well, because he was a storyteller who knew how to draw publicity. 

You might be surprised to learn that Crockett never went by the name Davy, served three non-consecutive terms as a congressman from Tennessee, and only spent the last year of his life in Texas. He wore a coonskin cap only after people began to expect it. And he was only 49 when he died defending the Alamo under circumstances that historians still argue about. Crockett really was a bear hunter, because bears can provide a lot of food for a hungry farm family. Crockett's life was chronicled by friends, allies, and enemies, so there's a lot of varied opinions on the man. Read what you might not know about David Crockett at Smithsonian. 

A talk box is a musical effects device that you most likely recall from the 1976 Peter Frampton song "Do You Feel Like We Do?" although its been used in a lot of music since it was developed in the 1930s. It makes the singer sound like he/she is singing through an electronic instrument. But that's not the way it works at all, and it's more difficult than you knew. 

In this video, musician Lorenz Rhode sings through a talk box in a song he wrote about using a talk box. You get the idea that a lot of this is him improvising and free-associating, but it's a genuinely catchy tune. He explains that the sound is not coming from your voice at all, but from the musical instrument that's attached to the talk box, in this case a keyboard. The singer is mouthing the words, shaping the instrument's sound into words, but not using his vocal cords at all. It's hard to do, but it also allows you to breathe while holding a note. -via Laughing Squid 

The Rocky Horror Picture Show was released on August 14, 1975 in the UK and on September 25, 1975, in the US. The movie is a science fiction horror comedy musical with a ton of sexual innuendo (but no nudity) starring Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, and Meat Loaf. I didn't see it until early 1977, when it was established as a midnight movie in college towns. The Rocky Horror Picture Show seemed shocking and downright deviant to mainstream audiences, but it was a lot of fun and had plenty of catchy songs. It also had quite a few awkward pauses in the dialogue, which led to the custom of audience responses. Over time, going to the movie became an full-on participation event, with thrown props, cosplay, and even shadow casting, in which costumed characters perform the parts along with the movie. It's no wonder it became the biggest cult movie of all time. It never left theaters, even during the pandemic.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show and its audience traditions spurred the formation of fan clubs and communities of people who appreciated the film's subversiveness and sense of fun. Those who felt excluded from the wider culture found kindred spirits among Rocky Horror fans -and that's been going on for 50 years now. Read more about the legacy of the longest-running theatrical film ever at Ars Technica. 

When I finally achieved getting a yoyo to return to my hand consistently, I was rather proud of myself. If I had attempted anything like this, I would have hit myself in the face a couple of times and ended up with a ball of permanently tangled string binding my fingers, all in less than 30 seconds. This is Hajime Miura (previously at Neatorama) performing in the 3A event at the World YoYo Contest held in Prague, Czech Republic, last week. If you have a hard time following his moves, you can listen to the crowd full of yoyo fans to tell which moves are most impressive.  

Yeah, he won. It's not the first time, either. Miura has now won his eighth world championship- and he's only 22 years old! This year's performance is kind of a comeback for Miura, who placed fourth in the category last year. He won both the 3A and 4A championship in 2018. Yoyo enthusiasts have been following Miura since he started winning competitions as a child, back in 2012. -via Memo of the Air 

Phineas Gage was 25 years old and had a job working on a railroad in 1848. As he was tamping down explosives, they went off and sent the iron tamping rod through his head, from the jaw through the top of his skull. Gage lost vision in one eye, but surprisingly recovered and survived for another 13 years. Scientists who studied Gage's case learned enough to begin removing brain tumors and performing lobotomies. But Gage had trouble holding a job because of changes in his personality. He would drink, fight, gamble, and consort with prostitutes. Scientists called this "disinhibition," and attributed it to his brain injury. It became a theory that his damaged frontal lobe was the center of inhibition that kept most people from doing things they shouldn't. Gage became patient zero for the science of personality by brain mapping. 

Another case of a personality change after a brain injury involves Eadweard Muybridge. Muybridge became both eccentric and creatively productive after a brain injury, but he also shot and killed a guy. Was this frontal lobe disinhibition? The case of Muybridge is not so clear-cut, because it was much better documented. That brings up the question of whether Gage's personality really did change. The actual evidence is scant, and what is there could be explained by the life-changing trauma of his accident. And Gage's and Muybridge's behaviors were ultimately judged by different scales. Read about science's new look at the case of Phineas Gage at Aeon, or here if you're out of free articles.   -via Metafilter 

(Image credit: Originally from the collection of Jack and Beverly Wilgus, and now in the Warren Anatomical Museum, Harvard Medical School) 

As you might guess, the portmanteau "scamageddon" refers to the end of the world brought about by folks who con you out of your money. It seems like this is happening now, but to truly be world-ending, it would come from extraterrestrials.In this scenario, Steve Buscemi plays the supreme leader of an invading force using scams against Earthlings, with all the pomp and circumstance that a sci-fi movie would require. But in their plans of domination, they didn't count on a security network that blocks their efforts. Yeah, it's a dumb idea, because what would aliens do with our money, after all? This story would require a suspension of disbelief if it weren't a total comedy. Forget plausibility, because this alien is a ridiculous stereotype, and so are the weird minions (Zelunians?) who worship him, and his incompetent henchmen. -via The Awesomer 

If you didn't learn to cook before you left your parents' home, you may have had to consult a video to learn the proper way to dice an onion. While methods vary, it's usually a straightforward operation. However, if you are a math nerd, you might worry about the uniformity of the onion pieces you are left with. Since an onion consists of round layers, and chefs cut them straight down from top to bottom to maximize both speed and safety, the pieces from the side of the onion tend to be slightly larger than the rest. 

To make the most uniformly diced onion pieces, you need to reduce the standard deviation in the size of the pieces. Radial cuts makes sense for this, but it does nothing for the safety of the knife wielder. And using math, we find that it actually increases the standard deviation in size because of the smaller pieces in the middle. There is another cutting technique that will reduce that standard deviation, and you can learn all about it at The Pudding. Personally, I find no correlation between the consistency of onion pieces and the enjoyment of the finished dish, but your mileage may vary.  -via kottke, who mainly admired the onion font in the article.