Imagine digging in your garden and finding this lovely floor, just covered up with soil! Archaeologists knew there was an ancient villa under a vineyard in Northern Italy, but discovering this intricately-tiled floor was a surprise, just a week after the excavation resumed after a pause during the coronavirus outbreak.
The team discovered the tiles, as well as portions of the villa’s foundation, “a few meters” below the vineyard’s surface, according to the statement. To make the “archaeological treasure … hidden under our feet available and accessible,” the researchers will collaborate with authorities and the vineyard’s owners. The process will likely require both significant time and resources.
Move trailers in the 21st century tend to follow a pattern, a formula if you will, and over time began to all look alike. AD_edits did a nice job on The Empire Strikes Back, with a trailer that will make you want to see the movie again. But what if you'd never seen it before? What makes the "modern trailer" above so noteworthy is the contrast between it and the real 1979 trailer.
The production values and the use of a narrator make it seem hopelessly dated, but this one honestly gives fewer plot points away then the newer style trailer. It worked 40 years ago. -via Geekologie
Chris Kyle tried a new restaurant and wrote a review that has gone quite viral for reasons you will be pleased to learn.
So I tried to support another Black Owned Business for lunch today. It’s called Ava’s Kitchen, just opened end of April. It’s a very clean establishment, but whewww let me tell you about this owner.
To read the rest of the review, you can continue reading or go to Facebook.
Even movie stars are looking for something to do during quarantine. Sam Neill and Helena Bonham Carter made a short film on two different continents. Bonham Carter plays Sam's phone, and she is not happy. -via Laughing Squid
Raiders of the Lost Ark came out almost 40 years ago. Harrison Ford, who played Indiana Jones, will soon be 78 years old. Yet Indiana Jones is getting another movie, starring Ford. Steven Spielberg, however, is stepping back from directing. Producer Frank Marshall lets us in on how the production is going.
Currently scheduled to be released by Disney in 2022, Indy 5 originally had Steven Spielberg returning to direct Ford. Since then, we’ve learned that Spielberg has stepped away to allow James Mangold (Logan) to take over directorial duties, the first time anyone other than Spielberg has directed an Indy film. Marshall explained why Mangold was the ideal choice to take over for Spielberg: “His love of the franchise. He’s a wonderful filmmaker. I think he also has a relationship with Harrison. It was all of the right pieces coming together, at the right time.” I must agree with Mr. Marshall — I think Mangold is an expert at twisting old-fashioned genres and tropes with just enough postmodern intrigue to result in comforting yet challenging Hollywood movies. And for those who are still worried about Spielberg’s exit, fear not: “Steven is staying on as a producer, so we’ve got the best of everything.”
People all over have been binge-watchingFriends during isolation, either because they always meant to see it or they haven't seen it in so long they barely recall it. The show ran for ten seasons, with a total of 236 episodes. While the adventures of six friends in New York was not at all realistic, it was funny. And the editor who cut this Honest Trailer for it should get some kind of award.
An asteroid now known as Chicxulub (after a nearby town) struck earth some 66 million years ago and led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Not all at once, but the impact plunged the globe into a dark and cold period that the large reptile could not withstand. Plenty of other species died out, too, allowing small mammals to take over. New research reveals why it was so deadly.
The space object, which wiped out 75% of all species including the dinosaurs, hit the worst possible place on the planet and - according to new research - at the most lethal angle.
Investigations at the crater site, together with computer simulations, suggest the impactor dug into the crust at an inclination of up to 60 degrees.
This exacerbated the climatic fallout.
We know that the target rocks, in what is now the Gulf of Mexico, contained huge volumes of sulphur from the mineral gypsum. When this material was thrown high into the atmosphere and mixed with water vapour, it produced a "global winter".
And the angle of attack ensured this environmental crisis was intense and prolonged.
What do you do when the kids are sent home from school weeks early, and family fun parks are closed? Maybe you get out the inflatable pool or set up the badminton net, and then turn green with envy over the guys who have their own backyard theme park rides. Homemade roller coasters and other rides are a real thing, if you have the time, the room, a few extra bucks, and the will to make it happen, which means that grandpas are way ahead of the rest of us. And now there are enough backyard roller coasters on the internet to allow a few builders to rise above the pack, like engineering professor Steve Dobbs, who now has an entire theme park in his backyard.
Over time, the park grew into an entire backyard amusement park. “I have grandkids and they love Disneyland, so I thought that a good way to spend time with them was to build a little amusement park in my backyard,” Dobbs says. “Dobbsland” — as it would come to be called — now has nine rides, all in his backyard.
In addition to the train, Dobbsland has a princess castle and a Winnie the Pooh ride, complete with an animated Pooh and Tigger. There’s also a roller coaster built by his engineering students at Cal Poly Pomona, who offered the idea of building a coaster for Dobbsland as their senior project last year. He’s also built a submarine ride out of a trash can and a Star Wars ride — complete with laser targets and a lightsaber battle — out of a swingset.
Earlier this month, we reported on guitarist Brian May's injury sustained while gardening. It turns out that a torn butt was just the beginning of his health problems. His continuing pain led to more tests that revealed a a severely compressed sciatic nerve, then he had a "small" heart attack, and doctors discovered three blocked arteries!
In a series of posts on his Instagram account, the 72-year-old said that a week after he was sent home after sustaining the gardening injury, he was still in such agony that he “wanted to jump at some points”. He was readmitted to hospital for an MRI scan, which discovered a severely compressed sciatic nerve – the product, he concluded, of 50 years as a guitarist. “That’s why I had this feeling that someone was putting a screwdriver in my back,” he said.
During the “whole saga of the painful backside”, May said he experienced 40 minutes of chest pain and tightness that turned out to be a small heart attack. He was readmitted to hospital for an angiogram, which found three blocked arteries. May said he was pressured by some parties to have open-heart surgery, but took alternative advice to have three stents implanted.
Read more about May's health at the Guardian. The article includes a video of May telling the story himself. -via reddit
Yes, it looks like a Kurzgesagt video, but only the Day-Glo illustrations. They felt that an essay from John Green fit into their mission of spreading thought-provoking ideas. He tells a story about the records left from people who lived long, long ago, but also still live on in the things they left behind. Green and his brother Hank have an entire podcast series called The Anthropocene Reviewed which you can listen to here.
The iconic video game Pac-Man just turned 40 years old, so Smithsonian magazine brings us a comprehensive history of the game itself, plus an analysis of why it became so instantly popular, and even a look at the world's biggest Pac-Man fan, Tim Crist. Along the way, we find out some neat tidbits about the game's juggernaut journey.
One artifact in the museum’s collection provides some insight into the messy reality behind the big business of Pac-Man. A 1982 Bally Midway advertisement shows Pac-Man in the center of a boxing ring, surrounded by Pac-People who gaze up at him. “Don’t Trifle With a Heavyweight,” the headline warns. The text below reveals that Bally Midway aggressively pursued companies that attempted to sell unlicensed Pac-Man merchandise.
Despite the ad’s firm, clear argument, the legal complexities surrounding Pac-Man were considerably more complicated. “The early intellectual property stuff around video games is really messy,” says Kocurek. Arcades and other companies that hosted cabinets would often refurbish them, swapping out the games and marquees for new games as they became available, aided by products called conversion kits. Alongside Bally Midway’s officially licensed Pac-Man kits, a murky wave of competitors swept in. A group of MIT dropouts who formed a company called General Computer Corporation (GCC), for instance, developed Crazy Otto, a game with a leggy Pac-Man knock-off.
Freshly humbled by a legal scuffle with Atari, GCC approached Bally Midway in an attempt to either sell the game or obtain the company’s blessing. After a successful test in Chicago, Bally Midway purchased Crazy Otto in October 1981, offering GCC royalties for each kit sold. “The fact [GCC founders] Doug [Macrae] and Kevin [Curran] knew that there was only one way they could sell this thing, and how they convinced Midway to do it, is just one of the great sell jobs,” recalled former GCC engineer Mike Horowitz in a Fast Company interview. “They were like 21 years old.”
Those youngsters at GCC went on to sell another game to Bally called Ms. Pac-Man, which is just one of the twists and turns in the history of Pac-Man you'll learn at Smithsonian.
You probably learned about the schwa (Ə) somewhere in the lower grades, and it didn’t make a bit of sense, so you didn’t bother to remember anything that was taught. The teacher gave us plenty of examples, but we couldn't figure out how they were supposed to sound alike, or what the real soundof a Ə is. Okay. TomScott brings it back with a much better explanation: the schwa is a vowel that is so unstressed that we cannot really define it. Of course, Tom is British, and thinks that the vowel sound in “bath” is made in the back of the mouth. But he does shine some light on phonetics for us in his latest video.
If you’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time at home the last couple of months, you’ve probably turned to TV for entertainment. Streaming services and on-demand TV make it easy to binge-watch some of your old favorites or maybe a series you never got around to watching before. The website Cable TV maps out what people in the 50 states are watching most. Check out how your choices compare to your neighbors! I have a couple of college refugees upstairs who are finally watching all of Breaking Bad, since one of them was too young for the show when it aired, and the other arrived in America after it finished. But more folks in Kentucky are watching The Walking Dead, despite the fact that we all saw it the first time around. Overall, Friends is the binge-watching winner, being the top show in eleven states. -via Digg
The Italians developed star forts, a geometric design to help protect the interior village from cannonballs, in the 15th century. The idea caught on and was imitated far and wide. While cities are now mostly protected by nations, and defense from cannonball fire isn't a priority, these existing forts live on because they were built to last. But it's only been in the last century that we can see them from above and appreciate their geometric beauty. Read about the why's and how's of star forts, their history, and where you can see them today ay Messy Nessy Chic. Yeah, there are plenty of pictures.
Union Glacier Camp is a unique, but real, camping experience in Antarctica. it is only open from November through January, which is summer in the Southern Hemisphere, and houses guests in tents. Talk about getting away from it all! -via The Kid Should See This
