Did you ever imagine that you’d see a “top ten” list like this? It’s not so much that a medieval monk drew a cat in the margins of an illuminated manuscript, but that there are this many of them in a list at Discarding Images, all licking their butts. Why? EmpressCallipygos at Metafilter offers an explanation, which is worth reading in its entirety. Here’s an excerpt:   

So imagine this monk sitting there in a dimly-lit scriptorum, back bent over his work - he's tired, he's achey, grinding the pigment for the paint made him sneeze, and that one other monk with the mole gave him a dirty look and oh for goodness sake how could i help it the stuff got up my NOSE, brother - and he's got a long way to go before he's done illuminating this one page from Revelations, and come to think of it it was the monk with the mole that insisted there be so much blue in the damn thing....

...And in walks his cat, just sort of ambling in. Our monk momentarily glances up, too busy to do much more than notice Puss-Puss walking in. Ah, though, maybe he can watch the cat for just a second, take a little break...

...And he looks up again, just in time to see Puss-Puss plonk down and start to lick his butt, something which always tickles him because dear lord how on earth do they get their legs cocked so far back....

And after a second, our tired, cranky, bored monk switches the blue ink for the gray, and begins drawing.

Cat images may be shared by more people in the modern age, because internet, but laughing at cats and attempting to share that humor has a long history. -via Metafilter

Screen Junkies takes on all four Mission: Impossible movies at once. Considering how alike they all are, this isn’t the most difficult assignment -and they chose to accept it.

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The impression I get from this is that all the movies exist mainly to see Tom Cruise in stunts that should kill any mortal human. Otherwise, it’s Scooby-Doo all over again. -via Tastefully Offensive  

Inspired by a flubbed prison escape, the Barkley Marathon is a ludicrously challenging 100-mile race only a handful of runners have completed. Finishing it twice? That's next to impossible.

(Image credit: Flickr user Michael Hodge)

It's reverently quiet when Jared Campbell comes running down the trail and into camp. He’s looked better. For one thing, his facial muscles appear to be asleep, even as he somehow keeps moving. He’s wilted from hours of exposure to the cold and rain, his skin covered in bloody scratches and caked with mud. The crowd—similarly battered runners and assorted spectators—is quiet for the first time in hours. The only sound is that of Campbell’s footfalls atop the soggy earth.

This silence is significant. The bugle has already sounded for most other runners at this year’s Barkley Marathons. Whenever a damaged competitor returns to camp, defeated by the course, a bugler blows “Taps” (this is called being “tapped out”). It happens to almost all the athletes who muster the courage—or insanity—to attempt the world’s most confounding foot race. Last night, in freezing rain, snow, and 45 mph icy gusts, it sounded 19 times.

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Finally, one onlooker’s voice softly breaks the silence: “He’s running. He looks good.” The crowd around the fire rolls into applause. When Campbell catches his breath, he reports on the conditions: “It snowed a lot up there. It was really pretty, but it was cold.” The 34-year-old mechanical engineer from Salt Lake City reveals he slept 20 or 30 minutes on the trail at sunrise—“until I started shivering.”

And then, just like that, he’s gone again. Campbell is attempting another loop.

Here in the backwoods of Tennessee’s Cumberland Mountains, a “loop” is 20 miles. Specifically, it’s 20 unmarked miles that traverse thick brambles, prickly briars, and relentless hills that bring more than 60,000 feet of elevation. The course’s difficulty is only amplified by the maddeningly slippery footing. To finish the Barkley Marathons, a runner has to complete five loops. It takes days, if it happens at all. Since the race began in 1986, only 14 people have finished it.

Now it's time for our collaboration with the amazing What Is It? Blog! What is this object in the picture? I don't know! The great thing is that you don't have to know the correct answer to win a t-shirt from the NeatoShop!

Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. You might know the true answer, but we're going to select two winners who come up with the funniest, most outlandish guesses to win a T-shirt from the NeatoShop. However...

This game is limited to those who haven't won a t-shirt in the last month. Please write your T-shirt selection and the artist who designed it alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?

Let your imagination run wild! Good luck! You can also challenge yourself with plenty of other mystery items at the What Is It? Blog.

Update: We still haven’t found out exactly what this thing is for, so it is a true mystery. But we had some excellent guesses! Congratulations to ryanduck, who wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop for this:

Clearly the first prototype of a flat screen TV mount

And to  ChrisM 1, who said,

It is a device invented by a parent of two children for ensuring that nobody's piece of anything is bigger than anybody else's.

That makes sense. Thanks to everyone who played along, and a big thanks to the What Is It? Blog!

Colin Woodard’s new book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures in North America divides North America into districts that have no bearing on state borders, but are identified as unique cultures. Who knew that you could draw a map that puts John Farrier and me into the same category?  

Woodard says that among these 11 nations, Yankeedom and the Deep South exert the most influence and are constantly competing with each other for the hearts and minds of the other nations.

"We are trapped in brinkmanship because there is not a lot of wiggle room between Yankee and Southern Culture," Woodard says. "Those two nations would never see eye to eye on anything besides an external threat."

Woodward also says the regions are becoming more polarized, because humans are mobile and “self-sorting.” That’s not universal. I am still in Kentucky because of relatives and the property I own, not the politics. Read a short history and description of each of these cultures at Business Insider. -via mental_floss

(Image credit: Colin Woodward and Tufts/Brian Stauffer)

This case of a missing purse may be harder to solve than it should be. I doubt the cops were working too hard on the investigation past putting it on the local police blotter. -via Bad Newspaper

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Have you ever smelled things in your dreams? That’s kind of rare, but maybe that’s why you still remember it. there’s been quite a bit of research into dreams, although we still don’t understand the process of dreaming. John Green tells us about some of the more interesting findings in the latest episode of The List Show from mental_floss.

Herman Harband commissioned his own headstone ahead of time to be placed on his grave when he died. It was ready for him at Beth David Memorial Gardens in Hollywood, Florida. The inscription reads:

My wife Eleanor Arthur of Queens, NY lived like a princess for 20 years traveling the world with the best of everything. When I went blind, she tried to poison me, took all my money, all my medication and left me in the dark alone and sick. It's a miracle I escaped. I won't see her in heaven because she's surely going to hell!

However, Harband remarried. When he died in 2011, his second wife Domnita had him buried in a couple’s plot in Raleigh, North Carolina, with a different stone. See his actual grave. According to Find a Grave:

Herman Harband was not buried at Beth David Memorial Gardens, but he did own a headstone at the cemetery, thus making it a cenotaph, not a grave. The internet-famous headstone is real (confirmed by records and the cemetery director), but it was removed in early 2014 and the plot was sold back to the cemetery at the request of his wife. According to the cemetery directory, the headstone (as of this writing) is in storage at the cemetery.

-via reddit

Peter Watts recalls a study in which an adult had a brain scan and was found to have almost no brain at all. The skull was filled with cerebrospinal fluid except for a thin layer of brain tissue around the edges. This person had an undiagnosed case of hydrocephalus that left him with a cavernous hole in the middle of his head. Yet he had an IQ of 126 and a math degree.

It happens occasionally. Someone grows up to become a construction worker or a schoolteacher, before learning that they should have been a rutabaga instead. Lewin’s paper reports that one out of ten hydrocephalus cases are so extreme that cerebrospinal fluid fills 95% of the cranium. Anyone whose brain fits into the remaining 5% should be nothing short of vegetative; yet apparently, fully half have IQs over 100. (Why, here’s another example from 2007; and yet another. Let’s call them VBNs, or “Virtual No-Brainers”)

What makes the difference between those who are fully functional and those who aren’t? Watts gives us a few ways the brain might work around such damage, some which have been debunked, and some that have never been adequately studied. What is unsettling is the thought of how many people never need a brain scan and go their entire lives not knowing they have none. Do you know for sure that you have a brain? -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Oliveira, et al 2012)

Moo is a barn cat at Sunflower Farm Creamery. She’s a dedicated barn cat, keeping watch out for vermin and even sits and supervises goats when they give birth. When week-old kids Lady Bug and Princess Leia try to make friends, Moo makes it clear she just wants a little nap. While Moo has seen lots of goats come and go, everything is new to the bouncy goats.

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What impressed me in this video is the relative size of the goats and the cat. Those are tiny little kids! Well, Moo is a pretty healthy size for a barn cat. After all, she lives in a creamery, and apparently gets her share of goat’s milk. -via HuffPo

See more of the goats from Sunflower Farm Creamery.

Now that we finally know what Pluto and its moon Charon look like, the first thing we want to do is name the stuff we see there. And so we have maps with names. And what names! Pluto gets craters, plains, and other features named for historical figures like Hillary and Norgay, science names like Sputnik and Challenger, and even fictional names like Cthulhu and Balrog. As far as that goes, Charon is even more interesting. A portion of Charon’s map is shown above, with names from Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, and other science fiction worlds.

“It shouldn’t be a big surprise to anybody that once we put [the fictional explorers and travelers theme] up for a vote that names like Kirk and Spock and Skywalker and Leia became popular names,” Showalter added. A quick glance at the map will show Lord of the Rings fans will not be disappointed, either.

Among many others, there are also references to Alice from Alice in Wonderland, Stanley Kubrick for his film 2001: A Space Odyssey, Douglas Adams for his book The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and Madeleine L’Engle, the author of A Wrinkle in Time.

The place names aren’t set in stone yet. They must first be approved by the  International Astronomical Union. But these preliminary place names give scientists reference points to study and communicate to each other. Read about them and see more maps at Buzzfeed.

In this new video from NASA, astronauts aboard the International Space Station play with a ball of water by adding Alka-Seltzer. Oh, it bubbles, alright, but those bubbles really don’t have anywhere to go, so they just float around inside the orb. One occasionally explodes from the surface, but there’s not enough gravity to force it upward, because there really is no “upward.”

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NASA is all excited about their new Red Dragon camera, which captures images in 4K resolution. You can read more about it at their website. It will enable scientists on the ground to observe experiments on the ISS as well as the crew does. If you want, you can change the YouTube resolution to the highest level under the settings button, and see each bubble clearly. -via Digg

Even Hitler had a bomb shelter, actually, many of them. But none compared to the vast network of underground facilities and tunnels beneath his favorite vacation getaway town of Obersalzberg.

This multi-roomed subterranean compound is composed of an apartment and a set of underground chambers for fellow Nazi inner circle members—over four miles of tunnels, bunkers and hidden rooms in total. Above ground, an entire village was built as an Alpine retreat for the Nazi government.

But with the war failing, the mysterious underground complex was to be the last redoubt of the Third Reich. Carpet bombed by the Royal Air Force in April of 1945, then locked up by the occupying U.S. Army, it was handed back over to Germany in 1952 with the proviso that the remnants be blown up again out of existence. But not everything was destroyed, and today, you can still visit the secret ruins of the Nazi’s planned Alpine fortress.

If you can’t get away to visit the bunker in the mountains of Bavaria, you can learn the history of the underground city and see what remains at Atlas Obscura.   

(Image credit: Luke Spencer)

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Action Park in New Jersey is famous for their history of crazy and dangerous rides. The newest attraction at the refurbished and upgraded park is a water slide that’s 1,975 feet  long. That’s a third of a mile! The folks at Guinness agree it is the world’s longest water slide. It’s not open to the public just yet -the state of New Jersey has to approve it first. However, park employee Jason Mulder strapped on a GoPro and went down the slide for a media day event. The video is unsettling and soothing at the same time. -via Boing Boing

A group of street artists called the Germen Crew collaborated with the Mexican government to paint a neighborhood in the district of Palmitas in Pachuca. After 20,000 square meters of walls were painted, the 209 homes are a rainbow of color!

On top of beautifying the neighborhood, the project has been a tool of social transformation as during the process, the violence amongst younger people has been entirely eradicated and several jobs created.

The houses were a jumble of individual muted pastels before, in need of a unifying factor. They were first covered in white primer, then the rainbow was unleashed! You can see a sequence of pictures illustrating the project at Street Art News. -via Daily of the Day

(Image credit: Germen Nuevo Muralismo Mexicano)