John D. Boswell, better known as Melodysheep (previousy at Neatorama), brings us a visually-stunning illustration of the things that can happen in a fraction of a second across the known universe.
When we look up at night, the universe seems pretty quiet. But that perspective is an illusion; in reality, there are millions of world-shattering events happening every instant across the cosmos. This short film explores just how much is going on every moment in our ridiculously enormous universe.
In the fraction of a second it takes to blink your eyes, thousands of stars will be born, hundreds will explode and die, millions of planets will form, and our universe will expand by half a million kilometers in diameter.
When you put it that way, it makes one’s individual world seem kind of small and insignificant. But since our own is really the only perspective we have, keep blinking. You don’t want your eyes to dry out. -via Laughing Squid
In which “artwork” becomes “fartwork.” Moni Powers has a series of movie posters starring butts in place of movie stars, with reworked titles that give farts and butts center stage. Sure, it’s juvenile, but it’s a bit of fun on a cold February day.
NASA’s fifth Mars rover Perseverance launched in July of 2020, and is scheduled to land on Mars on Thursday, February 18th. The purpose of the rover is to look for signs of previous life on the red planet. You can follow along with NASA’s streaming coverage beginning at 2:15 PM Eastern time, which will be as “live” as possible.
After six months of travel, the actual process of entry, descent and landing happens in just seven minutes. But because Mars is so far away from Earth, radio signals from Perseverance take about 11 minutes and 22 seconds to travel back to mission control. So, by the time mission control receives the signal that the rover has reached the top of Mars’ atmosphere, Perseverance will have already landed—or crashed.
Scientists call that tense entry, descent and landing period the “seven minutes of terror.” Not only is that period the riskiest part of the entire mission, but the delay in communication between Earth and Mars means that Perseverance has to land itself completely autonomously. “There’s no joysticking that we can do,” [guidance, navigation and controls operations lead Swati] Mohan says.
But before you watch the signals from Mars, and the response of the crew holding their collective breath on Earth, a bit of background will help you understand the rover and its mission. Smithsonian catches us up on what will happen, what could go wrong, where the landing will take place and why, and what to expect from the event.
This looks a little concerning, don’t you think? Redditor dhl posted a picture that drew all sorts of speculation, the most obvious being that blood is draining from a dead body hidden up there. Or maybe cedar wood responding to temperature fluctuations by dripping sap. Or bees, of course. But since it’s dhl’s picture, he probably knows the real problem.
Apparently the chimney in the house isn't properly insulated. Condensation, mixed with soot, that slowly turned to ice seems to have caused this. No body. Yet.
The Underwater Photographer of the Year recognizes the best pictures from the adventurous photographers who take risks to bring the ocean to all of us. The 2021 awards have been announced. American photographer Renee Capozzola garnered the top prize for her photograph titled 'Sharks' Skylight.’ The photo also won in the Wide Angle category. The runner-up in the Wide Angle category is the image above by Martin Broen called ‘Gothic Chamber.’ The runner-up in the Macro category is this ‘Larval Lionfish’ by Steven Kovacs.
You’ll see lots of amazing shots that show us life below the mysterious depths of sea at the winners gallery, plus hear the stories behind the images from the photographers themselves in their acceptance videos. -via Digg
Taking care of the diverse and diminishing species of wild animals in Africa requires constant management of populations for their own good. You can imagine that moving a rhinoceros from one area to another is a massive undertaking, no matter how you do it. Believe it or not, veterinarians and scientists have determined that the best way to move rhino is the method you see above: hanging by its feet from a helicopter.
“We’ve been picking animals up by their feet for 20 years now,” says Pete Morkel, a wildlife veterinarian who is considered the world’s foremost expert in black rhinos. The options were either moving the animal by the feet or flat on its side—and placing straps around the feet was much easier than hoisting a sometimes-enormous animal onto a stretcher for transport. The animals sport a blindfold and earplugs to help limit stimuli. “We started small, with zebra and antelope, and then moved on to the big stuff,” Morkel says. “There was a lot of trial and error—and luckily, we haven’t had much error.”
While ease of movement plays a part in determining best practices, the effect on the animal is the top priority. Read about the experiments that revealed it was safe and effective to hang a rhino by its feet at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Cornell School of Veterinary Medicine)
Would you like to listen to what’s going on around the world? Radio Garden is a map (actually a globe) of streaming radio stations around the world. Spin the globe, zoom in, and find treasures of world music, pop, metal, traditional music, and talk in many different languages. I looked up places where various family members have lived and listened to broadcasts from Ambilly, France; Windhoek, Namibia; Change Mai, Thailand; Trinidad, Bolivia; and Banjul, The Gambia. With Radio Garden, you’ll either find something you love or have fun exploring new places and sounds. -via Metafilter
The title of this list is 15 Food Origins That'll Make You Say "Huh. Wish I Hadn't Read That." However, it’s not that gross and will not turn you off eating the foods you already like. Longtime Neatorama readers will recall that we’ve covered many of these food origin stories, but there are a few that were new even to me.
Shakespeare’s romantic tragedy Romeo and Juliet has been adapted for the big screen a million times, but in 1996, one such adaptation, styled Romeo + Juliet, became a big hit. Maybe it was the guns and drugs. Maybe it was Leonardo DiCaprio. Maybe Screen Junkies can explain it better with this Honest Trailer.
The obituary for Margaret Marilyn DeAdder stands head and shoulders above everyday obits you may come across. It begins by describing her as many things, including “self-described Queen Bitch,” and then goes into the highlights of her life.
Marilyn loved all children who weren’t her own and loved her own children relative to how clean-shaven they were. She excelled at giving the finger, taking no sh!t and laughing at jokes, preferably in the shade of blue. She did not excel at suffering fools, hiding her disdain, and putting her car in reverse. A voracious reader, she loved true crime, romance novels and the odd political book. Trained as a hairdresser before she was married, she was always doing somebody's hair in her kitchen, so much so her kitchen smelled of baking and perm solution. Marilyn had a busy life, but no matter what she was doing she always made time to run her kids’ lives as well. Her lifelong hobbies included painting, quilting, baking, gardening, hiking and arson. Marilyn loved tea and toast. The one thing she loved more than tea and toast was reheated tea and toast. She reheated tea by simply turning on the burner often forgetting about it. She burned many a teapot and caused smoke damage countless times, leaving her kids with the impression that fanning the smoke alarm was a step in brewing tea.
Oh, there’s lots more, including her relationships with her family members. All in all, it’s a loving and memorable tribute to a life well lived. No one will forget Margaret Marilyn DeAdder. Read the whole thing at the website of Cobb’s Funeral Home in New Brunswick. -via Fark
Have you ever run across someone who had such an amazing encyclopedic knowledge of everything on the internet that it made you speechless? Maybe it was someone you knew, but you never knew they spent that much time online, or had such a memory for detail. That happened recently during a workplace Slack chat. Most Slack conversations are short and to the point, as people communicate with others about work. But occasionally, someone will share something funny. In this instance, it was the above video of a dog farting. The coworker who uses the display name Samer stole all the thunder, so to speak.
Samer:
somehow i recognize that audio from the guy who farted into the walmart phone, but it’s still good
Patrick: oh damn really?
Samer: yeah, the brassiness of it is distinct
Patrick: this man knows his toots
David Roth: Tuba Energy
The next 20 minutes gave us a Slack conversation for the books. Everyone in the loop was impressed at Samer’s response, and expressed it in all different ways. You can read a transcript (which contains NSFW language) at Defector. A good time was had by all. -via Kottke
This film experiment shows that you can find pretty much anything you want in stock footage. If you have the time, money, and patience, you can string together whatever you want. Filmmaker Matthew Highton put in the time and effort to recreate every slip of The Simpsons intro scene using available stock footage. Fox Broadcasting really should use this for the show sometime. -via Fark
If by some chance you were planning to show your love to someone this Valentines Day with a curated playlist, congratulations, that is almost as cliche as a heart-shaped box of candy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. A shared love of music is probably healthier than chocolate, anyway. However, before you go choosing messages of undying love from various top 40 lists, you might want to take a second look at the lyrics. Songs that became classic love songs in the past often have rather problematic story lines.
Whether they’re a little too obsessive, written about an inappropriately young love interest or romanticizing a toxic relationship, there are a surprisingly number of songs about love that actually are far creepier than they were intended to be. To help you know which ones you should steer clear of when putting together your Valentine’s Day playlist this year, we’ve rounded up some of the most disturbing examples. (For the purposes of this list, we’re focusing solely on songs that are unintentionally creepy, meaning self-aware depictions of unhealthy relationships or songs that are specifically intended to shock — like The Misfits’ “Die, Die My Darling” or Gnarls Barkley’s “Necromancer” — don’t fit the bill.)
InsideHook spells out what’s wrong with 13 love songs that you might not have noticed when casually listening. After all, you don’t want to send the wrong message, or give the impression that you don’t pay attention to details. Yeah, "EveryBreath You Take" is there, because that's a gimme. The others may surprise you. -via Digg
The United States officially entered World War II on December 8, 1941, but troop buildups had been going on for some time. The first group of American GIs landed in Belfast on Jan. 26, 1942, to aid the British in the liberation of Europe. Military publicity units on both sides of the pond knew this was a big story, and needed a "hero" to represent those 500 men in the papers. They had disembarked in a hurry after eleven days at sea. Despite being near the end of the line, Private First Class Milburn H. Henke found himself chosen to the the "first."
Henke was with his company when a Colonel asked for a volunteer. Henke’s Lieutenant put his name forward and the Private expected he was going ashore to unload equipment.
“I was sitting on some barracks bags, and this colonel came up the gangplank, and there were about fifteen of us,” Henke would later recall. “There was a lieutenant there and he said: ‘I want a man from Company B, 133rd,’ and Lieutenant Springer, he turned around: ‘Henke, you go with him.’ When I got by the gangplank, General Hartle came to meet me. He said, ‘Do you think you can talk over a radio?’ And I said, ‘Well, if I have to, I think I can.’”
Henke met with Major General Russell P. Hartle, commanding officer of 34th Infantry Division. There was some surprise when Hartle discovered the ceremonial first soldier to go ashore was from Minnesota rather than his home state of Iowa. Yet Henke had the look of a typical United States doughboy, with an easygoing nature and good looks. The irony that the first American GI in Europe had a German surname was conveniently overlooked.
Henke posed for pictures for some time and gave interviews to the press. But his day in the sun stretched to weeks as his persona as an everyday soldier was harnessed for the war effort. Read the story of Milburn Henke at Military History Now. -via Strange Company
Once upon a time, if you wanted to ski downhill, you had to hike uphill first. There were other ways to get people up a mountain, like trains or horse-drawn carriages, but you can see how this would be rather time-consuming and limited in the number of people served. There had to be a better way.
According to the association, German farmer and innkeeper Robert Winterhalder invented the world’s first overhead cable tow in 1906—skiers hooked handles onto the water-powered continuous cable above their heads, then glided uphill on their skis. Though it was easy to use, Winterhalder’s invention didn’t catch on elsewhere.
In America, the first surface lift—the umbrella designation for uphill transportation that keeps a skier’s skis on the ground—was a steam-powered toboggan tow built in Truckee, California, in 1910 and later adopted by skiers.
Canadian skier Alex Foster built the first working model of the rope tow—a continuous rope that skiers simply grabbed onto and held with their hands—in 1931 outside of Shawbridge, Quebec. By 1934, the tow rope technology had made its way to Woodstock, Vermont.
Meanwhile, in Europe, Swiss ski mountaineer and mechanical engineer Ernst Constam invented the world’s first J-bar in 1934 in Switzerland, followed by the two-passenger T-bar in 1935. Both technologies quickly caught on across Europe and the U.S.
Still, all these methods were designed for athletic people, and they were still limited in how many skiers they could serve at once. Meanwhile, ski resorts were opening in the Western US and needed to accommodate as many people as possible to turn a profit. So James Curran invented the ski chairlift, although he was neither a resort employee nor a skier! He didn't have a college degree, and he never profited from his invention. Read the story of Curran's chairlift at Smithsonian.
