We all recognize Banksy's art style, but can a neural network learn to mimic it? Yes and no. Matt Round trained an algorithm named GANksy by feeding it Banksy artworks. The result is about what you'd expect- GANksy learned the style as it was supposed to, but like other artificial intelligence algorithms, it doesn't really understand reality. GANksy's artworks are for sale, and "All proceeds will help us make more nonsense."  -via Boing Boing

The game is to guess what product they are advertising, which will be revealed at the very end. If you want to have some real fun, stop the ad and tell us your guess as soon as you come up with one. Otherwise, just watch and feel sorry for these guys.  -via reddit

Imagine that you traveled the world with a particular destination in mind, and just as you were about to reach it, it was decreed off-limits. You can see it, but you can't touch. And you had to stay there, so close yet so far away. That's the story of 26-year-old Jesse Katayama of Osaka, Japan, who flew to Peru to visit Machu Picchu. He landed on March 14, just in time for a national lockdown.  

With international flights on hold and lockdown in full effect, 26-year-old Katayama was stranded, report Tiffany May and Hisako Ueno for the New York Times. He rented a small room in Aguas Calientes and passed the time by teaching boxing to local children, taking yoga classes, and studying for various exams.

In his free time, Katayama visited nearby attractions like the Putucusi Mountain and the Calientes Waterfalls. But the destination he’d originally set out to see remained elusive.

“I go to run every morning and I could see Machu Picchu afar in distance,” he tells CNN’s Lilit Marcus. “I thought I would never make it to Machu Picchu as I was expecting it [wouldn’t] open within this year.”

Seven months later, Katayama finally got to see Machu Picchu in a most spectacular fashion, which you can read about at Smithsonian.

Kevin James' short comedic videos have become so popular that he's expanding his scope and getting his friends involved. Nature Planet is a sendup of overly dramatic nature documentaries focusing on the critically endangered Silver-Breasted Montle, played by James. Adam Sandler does his best impression of Sir David Attenborough as the narrator. -via Nag on the Lake

The property at 34-36 Tirangi Road in Wellington, New Zealand, served as the air traffic control tower for the Wellington Airport from 1959 to 2018, and then was replaced by a new tower. Now the old tower, which the neighbors call "Arnold," is for sale. It is listed as having one bedroom and one bathroom, an interior space of 290 square meters, a land area of 941 square meters, and an outstanding view of the airport runways. The price right now is $895,000 (US$596,000), and the buyer will have to upgrade it with earthquake reinforcement and asbestos abatement, so the real estate company thinks it will most likely be torn down by developers, unless someone really, really wants to live in an air traffic control tower. -via Metafilter

It may seem absurd to think that plants have a short-term memory, but considering the way that Venus flytraps know when to snap shut on a bug, the alternate explanation is that they can tell time. So, memory it is. See, one touch of a flytrap plant will not ignite the leaf-closing reflex. That would drain too much energy on false alarms. The flytrap shuts when a second touch sensation is detected within 30 seconds.

The researchers added genes to the Venus flytraps that produce a protein, which glows green when exposed to calcium. When the team tapped one of the trap’s sensory hairs, the base of that hair began glowing, and then the glow spread through the leaf before beginning to fade. When the researchers touched the hair a second time — or touched a different hair on the leaf — within about 30 seconds, the trap’s leaves lit up even brighter than before, and the plant quickly snapped shut.

The results show that the flytrap’s short-term memory is a waxing and waning of calcium within leaves’ cells, the researchers say. Each time a sensory hair is triggered, it signals the release of calcium. When the calcium concentration reaches a certain level, achieved by that second, faster surge of calcium, the trap closes.

However, there is a second system in the flytrap that involves electricity, which means more research is needed. Read more about the experiment at ScienceNews.   -via Boing Boing

The Natural History Museum in London has announced their Wildlife Photographer of the Year winners for 2020. The overall winner in the adult photographer category is Sergey Gorshkov for the above picture of an Amur tiger in a Siberian forest. He worked ten months to get this photo!

These solitary cats exchange vital information, such as the need for mates, by leaving scent, hairs, urine and other markers on prominent spots, including tree trunks. In the far east of Russia, a population of around 500 Amur tigers persists, occupying a fragment of its former land. Under threat from habitat loss and poaching, these tigers are close to extinction.

The Young Grand Title winner is Liina Heikkinen, who captured this image of a young fox with a piece of a barnacle goose for dinner on one of Helsinki's islands.  



See more winning images from the various categories (although they are not labeled) at Mashable. Be warned that some involve prey, and a couple show animals in captivity.

Eva Perón was a movie star who went on to serve as First Lady of Argentina from the inauguration of her husband Juan Perón in 1946 until her death in 1952. She was extremely popular with everyday Argentinians, and is revered there to this day. Evita was only 33 when she died of cancer. But few people know that Perón underwent a lobotomy only a few weeks before her death, which was most likely done without her consent or possibly even her knowledge.

Perón made her last public appearance at her husband's second inauguration in June 1952. Though the surgery she received possibly calmed her anxieties, it also may have worsened her physical health. After the lobotomy, she stopped eating, and by the time of the event she weighed just 78 pounds. She was so frail that she needed a cage-like contraption made of plaster and wire to stand.

The lobotomy was said to have been a treatment for pain, or it may have been to relieve anxiety over her impending death. Or was it to calm her ever more erratic political pronouncements? Read what we know about Eva Perón's lobotomy at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Iberia Airlines)

Scream came out in 1996, but since it's October and we've never seen an Honest Trailer for it, well, that makes today an appropriate time to take another look at the movie. Scream was both a slasher/horror film and a comedy satire of such films ...and it almost single-handedly saved the horror genre from fading away in the mid-'90s. If you've never seen the original Scream, this Honest Trailer might convince you to give it a look this Halloween season -or maybe watch it again, because it's been long enough to forget the details.

Under most circumstances, a mountain lion will avoid humans. But they are dangerous cats, and will attack if they are frightened or hungry. Kyle Burgess was running a mountain trail in Utah and saw some cats. He thought they were bobcats, but they were cougar kittens, and their mother was not happy about it. From this rather long sequence -six minutes!- we can gather that she was trying to get rid of him more than wanting to kill him. Kyle had the presence of mind to keep facing the cat, because turning his back could have been deadly. He finally threw a rock, and the cat decided it had chased him far enough. -via Digg

You know your local scary tales, and you know monsters from the movies. But legendary monsters are everywhere, and the further you look, the more of them you'll find. It's time you got to know the scary monsters that terrify children in places from the Arctic to Australia.

Meet some ghosts, demons, beasts, killers, and monsters from around the world in a pictofacts list at Cracked. Each comes with a link for further exploration.

The 2020 fall semester is different, so Duke University Library wanted something catchy to explain to students how to get the library materials they need. Luckily, they had a music composer on staff, librarian Jamie Keesecker, who was working from home while caring for his three-year-old daughter. He started writing music as a teenager.

And he kept writing music, for more than 17 years. He got a master’s in music composition from Duke in 2011 and a doctorate in 2016, but worried constantly about his career. He realized he would make a better hobbyist composer than professional.

Keesecker began work at the library, where his work felt refreshingly regular. He didn’t need to invent things from scratch.

But this project he started completely from scratch, and ended up with a cute hand-drawn animation and an earworm song that is now available on Spotify and Apple Music. -via reddit

I like to call this her “awkward school photo smile” face. #unflatteringcatphotochallenge pic.twitter.com/HnzWxEdOtp

— ℕ𝕒𝕥𝕒𝕤𝕙𝕒 𝕃𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕪 (@nattydelightful) October 9, 2020

Junebug is a cute cat, but not every picture can be purrfect. We love to see funny and cute LOLcats, and looking at adorably beautiful cats can make you feel better after a bad day. But the odd unflattering cat picture can give us a belly laugh that does just as much good! A new Twitter challenge has people digging up that awful picture from years ago to show how weird their cat can look when they're not ready for their picture to be taken.  

I've been prepping for this moment my entire life.#unflatteringcatphotochallenge pic.twitter.com/enSRlcrFV7

— Steph but Spooky 🌙 🎃 (@velociraptisart) October 10, 2020

Does this couch make my butt look big? See more of Leo at Instagram. See a roundup of the 30 best pictures (for the purpose) at Bored Panda, and check out the Twitter hashtag #unflatteringcatphotochallenge to see all of them.

Psychedelic drugs are illegal, but is that a good thing? Studies show there are clear benefits to the use of psilocybin, or magic mushrooms, in treating a wide range of mental illnesses. But it also has a tendency to alter one's personality, shift their religious beliefs, and even channge their political views.

Although its precise therapeutic mechanisms remain unclear, clinically relevant doses of psilocybin can induce powerful mystical experiences more commonly associated with extended periods of fasting, prayer or meditation. Arguably, then, it is unsurprising that it can generate long-lasting changes in patients: studies report increased prosociality and aesthetic appreciation, plus robust shifts in personality, values and attitudes to life, even leading some atheists to find God. What’s more, these experiences appear to be a feature, rather than a bug, of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy, with the intensity of the mystical experience correlating with the extent of clinical benefit.

There's a reason it's called a mind-expanding drug. Fully-informed individuals who get the chance to try this therapy might consider it worth the risk when they are suffering. But government approval of the drug, not to mention insurance coverage, might hit a snag. Read about the conundrum facing the use of psilocybin at Scientific American. -via Damn Interesting

Palmyra Atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean was once a paradise of coral, seabirds, marine life, and forest. But when the US military and other people moved in, they brought invasive species with them. Most notable and destructive were the black rats that always seem to find somewhere to hide in ships, and coconut palms, which made their way from plantations.

By the end of the century, the rats and palms had transformed the atoll’s entire ecosystem. Eight seabird species roaming the wider area were ominously missing – according to conservationists, possibly because the rats had driven them into local extinction. Some crab species were dwindling, or had even completely disappeared from sight. On other tropical islands, evidence emerged that rodent invasions were affecting species as ostensibly far-removed as coral reefs, by disrupting their supply of nutrient-rich seabird droppings.

The coconut palms also damaged the delicate chain of nutrients that sustained life on and around Palmyra. They took over half the atoll. Seabirds avoided nesting in the palms, preferring sturdy native trees with branches. As the supply of bird droppings declined, the impact rippled through the ecosystem. On islets with palm forests, the soil was poorer in nutrients than on those with native forests, as was the water running off them. The plankton along the palm forest coastlines was less abundant, and there were fewer manta rays, which feed on plankton, than along native forest coastlines.

There were about 20,000 rats when the Nature Conservatory bought Palmyra Atoll in 2000. Could they restore the island to its natural condition? The first thing they did was to call the world's most successful tropical exterminator. Find out what's happened since then at BBC Future. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: Kevin Lafferty, U.S. Geological Survey)