In Thailand, the duck industry and the rice industry are symbiotic. The ducks rid the rice paddies of snails and insects after the harvest. They also fertilize the fields, one would assume. The ducks get fed. And we get to watch an army of 10,000 ducks waddling to work. It's a win-win all around! -via Boing Boing

Every year, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park posts their interactive fall foliage map, so that you can plan a road trip to catch the most breathtaking views of trees turning into their blazing natural colors after they lose their chlorophyll.

However, you might not want to take to the road this year. But like college classes, awards shows, and annual festivals, you can do it online! Many parks and local governments are setting up webcams that will allow you to check the fall colors as they change in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Georgia, Vermont, New Hampshire, Colorado, and other places. Find a list of these webcams at Mental Floss.

The magazine Annals of Improbable Research has bestowed the annual Ig Nobel Prizes for scientific research "that makes you laugh, then makes you think." The award ceremony was held virtually this year, which you can see here.

The 2020 Ig Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the governments of India and Pakistan, after their diplomats played ding-dong-ditch with each other. A special Management Prize was awarded to five professional hit men in China for each taking a cut of the profits and never committing the murder. A Medical Education Prize was awarded to a group of world leaders for teaching us that "politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can." And there were some actual scientists who won Ig Nobel Prizes. Find out who they are in the complete winners list ahead.

Underage drinking is taken a lot more seriously now than it was 40 or 50 years ago. Liquor stores can lose their license by selling booze to anyone under 21, on the first offense in some states. So liquor store employees, if they've been there any time at all, have stories about teenagers trying to get around the rules. A redditor asked, "What is the craziest instance of underaged kids trying to get booze you've ever encountered?" Some the answers are pretty funny.   

2. "I had a guy come in to try to buy booze with an absolutely terrible fake tattoo (tattoos and alcohol have the same age restrictions here). I'm guessing he thought that if he had massive tribal tattoos down his arm we would just assume that he was old enough. He'd clearly done them with a felt tip pen, but it was a hot day so the sweat was making them drip down his arm."

—Camyas

3. "This dude came in and tried to buy a handle of whiskey. Looked super young to me, like 14–15 max. He started telling me how he needs to get drunk because his wife just left him and his four kids behind...I ask to see his ID, he awkwardly pulls out his student ID from the local high school. I told him we couldn't sell him the liquor, but good luck with the four kids."

—futbo0lbo0i

Read 16 of the funniest stories from liquor store employees at Buzzfeed.

Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore made a sequel to their 2004 film 50 First Dates, 16 years later. there's a lot to update her on. It's actually a promo for The Drew Barrymore Show. -via Boing Boing

The Transcontinental Railroad changed the American West by enabling travel and cargo shipments all across the country. Even as it was being built, it was settling the West. As railroad crews inched along building the tracks, far away from the comforts of the east, entrepreneurs traveled with them to provide services and profit from the worker's pay. The temporary camps they set up along the way were called Hell on Wheels.

“The history of any one of these places is the history of them all … It was entirely formed of large tents. Every other tent was either a gambling den, or a ‘drinking saloon,’ or a dancing hall – with adjoining chambers that go down to hell. There were sixty woman in the town, not one of them virtuous, all of them belonging to the vilest grade of criminal life.

Every night in the large tents (they are a hundred feet long by sixty wide) there are lewd dances, and drinking and gambling, and every variety of obscene and criminal indulgences. Every man goes armed; every man and every woman drinks; every one of both sexes gambles, and, of course, fights, are frequent and murders not uncommon.”

This is not news to those who followeed the television series Hell on Wheels. However, any time the encampment lasted for some time, say, several months, there would be some who decided to stay put. This meant the beginning of a permanent town, or even a city, many of which still exist today. Read about the temporary towns of the Transcontinental Railroad and the settlements they left behind at Geri Walton's blog.  -via Strange Company 

Have you ever considered living in an underground home? Caves made great homes for prehistoric families, but they don't have the features modern people consider necessary. You can build an underground home, or buy one. However, you can't inspect construction that is covered with soil, and there may be conditions that you don't expect until they happen. MizBejabbers and her husband purchased an underground home in Arkansas in 1994. The story of what they've gone through since then may remind you of the movie The Money Pit. She outlined a list of problems, beginning with flooding.  

Location makes all the difference. I do not advise building on a hillside, but if you do, make sure that you have an oversized drainage system. Water can’t flow underneath our concrete slab like it can with a house built on a foundation, and the French drains in the atrium cannot handle a deluge.

One particularly stormy night, a torrent poured into the front atrium from the street above the house and flooded the great room. We finally gave up mopping and just opened the doors. We swept water out the back doors as a river poured through the front door. Luckily, the carpet had been removed years ago.

You have to feel sorry for anyone who lives for 26 years in a home they don't like, but it was a big investment, and it appears that anyone who could provide relief either went out of business or died. Read the details of her ordeal at dengarden. -via Digg

Designer and illustrator Matt Stevens launched an art series called Good Movies as Old Books, in which he designs book covers in minimalist fashion to lure a reader in. If you've seen the movies, you'll understand the concept that the semi-abstract cover illustrations are trying to convey.

See all of them at Stevens' site. These can be purchased as individual art prints or a collage of all of them at Stevens' store. -via Colossal

The house is only 5.5 feet wide, yet the asking price is £950,000. That 's $1.3 million! The five-story home has two (or possibly three) bedrooms, a garden, a roof terrace, and a bathroom that covers en entire floor. It also has some strange features, such as an opening looking into the bathtub from the floor above, a closet in a bedroom floor, a kitchen in the basement, and a hat-shaped lamp in front (it used to be a hat shop). Read about this unique home in London and see pictures at Bored Panda.

(Image credit: Winkworth)

Twelve-year-old Emma Pickles carefully performs surgery on fruits and vegetables. Watch her do a cesarian on a squash, transplant a heart into a pepper, and remove tumors from all kind of produce. She also does a living-donor transplant, and separates conjoined twins. The operations are not always successful, but they are done with the utmost care. -via Laughing Squid

Plants have a mission to grow and reproduce, but in order to survive, they must also defend themselves against destruction from insects. But plants only have the resources nearby, so they must perform a balancing act between using resources to grow and resources for defense. Many plants therefore have developed defense mechanisms that only go into operation when the plant is attacked.

Rather than pump out chemical defenses 24-7 (a waste of resources), plants hold off production until an attack is underway. As soon as an insect bites a leaf, the leaf sounds the alarm by emitting volatiles—chemical flares that tell other parts of the plant, as well as its neighbors, to start manning the barricades.

This early warning system works via a cascade of molecular events. First, it triggers the release of “jasmonate” hormones, which in turn break down proteins known as JAZ. These proteins silence genes that direct the manufacture of various toxic and protective chemicals. By eliminating JAZ, jasmonate hormones free these genes to express themselves, thus powering up a plant’s weapons assembly line.

You'll never know when the war begins, because this is chemical warfare, marshaling the plant's own chemistry, its neighbors, and underground networks. Read how various plants use toxins, weapons, communication, and trauma repair in the fight for survival against insects at Nautilus. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Seth Williams)

Although it has been done, making a movie of the 17th-century novel Don Quixote has been quite a challenge for anyone who attempts it- just ask Orson Welles or Terry Gilliam. Or the Disney company, which has considered, and even developed the idea, many times over the past 80 years. The treatments varied from exhausting fidelity to the original to a 2012 adaptation that involved the CIA.

Writing partners Jeff Morris and Steve Pink successfully pitched a live-action Don Quixote, with Johnny Depp’s production company, Infinitum Nihil, scheduled to produce. Unlike the other attempts, this was going to be a modern retelling of the story, focusing on a literature professor who suffers a concussion and begins to believe he’s a retired CIA agent brought back into the espionage world.

“We had this idea that when CIA Agents are put out to pasture they have their minds’ scrambled,” Morris says in a message on Twitter. “They go through extensive debriefing/brainwashing. They’re given a new identity and start their life over without any memory of ever having been an agent.” He continues, “But what if that guy has an accident and starts to get his memory back? What if the accident unscrambles his head and he begins to believe he’s a CIA Agent — the way Don Quixote believed he was a knight? We used just that idea and a few central story points from Cervantes as the basis of the movie.”

However, it never got off the ground. Disney's many Don Quixote projects got bogged down in perfectionism, with support pulled when each movie took too long to produce. Could it be that the story itself is cursed? After all, it is about a mentally ill man and his delusions of knighthood that charmed those around him. It has constantly drawn filmmakers who became overly obsessed with Don Quixote. Read about Disney's struggle with the story at Polygon. -via Digg

(Image credit: William Stewart Watson)

This fan film mashup uses clips of the superheroes we know and love from the Wonder Woman TV show from the 1970s, the Batman films starring Michael Keaton, the Superman movies starting Christopher Reeve, and the 1990 Flash TV series. Oh yeah, even Supergirl has a cameo. It's all packaged for a 1993 release. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Adidas is rolling out a series of limited edition sneakers to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the greatest Star Wars film ever, The Empire Strikes Back. First there were Bobba Fett sneakers, then Darth Vader sneakers, but now they've unveiled a Chewbacca design so insane it's worth sharing here.

Don’t get us wrong, we definitely think the ‘ol “walking carpet” deserves his own sneaker, and the Rivalry Hi, with its tall silhouette, was a perfect choice, but there had to be a better way to get “Chewbacca” across to people than by covering this sneaker in faux-fur and draping a belt over the laces. Featuring a mixed upper of leather, suede, and faux fur in a mix of raw desert, mesa, and chalk-white colorways, the Chewbacca Rivalry Hi looks more like a collector’s item than an actual functional piece of footwear. Maybe that’s the point.

See the sneakers from all angles at Uproxx. If you have £119.95 ($155), you can order them from Adidas UK starting on October 21st.

If you enjoyed the 11' 8" videos (until they raised the bridge), you are in for a treat here. This accident supposedly happened in Memphis last Sunday, when a train went under a bridge that was a bit too low for clearance. As you can see, the metal began stripping off the top of the rail cars before the videographer began filming. And it just goes on and on, because trains take a long time to stop. Did it damage the cargo inside? You betcha! -via Jalopnik