The Egyptian game called senet probably wasn't the first board game, but it's pretty old. It was first developed around 5,000 years ago, and became extremely popular. A view from the side, as in the image of Nefertiti above, makes it looks like chess, but senet was played more like backgammon, with a roll of the dice to determine how far you moved your pieces.

There is no evidence that senet was anything other than a form of entertainment at the time of its invention. But by about 4300 years ago, Egyptian tomb art began to depict the tomb’s dead inhabitant playing senet against living friends and relatives. Texts from the time suggest the game had begun to be seen as a conduit through which the dead could communicate with the living.

Over the next millennium, Egyptian texts came to describe the game as reflecting the movement of the soul through the Egyptian realm of the dead—called Duat—and toward the afterlife. And by about 3300 years ago, the game board itself had changed. In place of three simple vertical lines on square 28 of early senet boards, for example, some now had three hieroglyphic birds that Egyptians used to symbolize the soul. The board retained this symbolism for another 800 years, until the game fell out of fashion.

Read about the rise and fall of senet, and the changes in the game that showed its link to the afterlife, at Science magazine. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: The Yorck Project)

Can cancer spread from one person to another? We have become more aware of HPV, a rather contagious virus that can eventually lead to cancer, and it's true that HIV patients used to develop a particular type of cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma, but it's the virus that's communicable, not the cancer that may develop later. So the question is: Can you catch cancer from someone who has cancer?

In an oversimplified nutshell, cancer is, to quote cancer.gov, a disease “in which abnormal cells divide without control and can invade nearby tissues.”  Given its propensity to spread and divide in an uncontrolled manner throughout a person’s body, it brings up the question of whether it’s possible for cancer cells to make their way into someone else’s body and infect their tissues.

Surprisingly, the answer to that question is yes.

It's happened quite a few times, in quite a few different ways. But that doesn't mean you're in danger from caring for a cancer patient. Today I Found Out gives us the details on cases in which one person's cancer infected someone else, and further information on some terrifying cancers in the animal kingdom that can spread rapidly.

(Image credit: Pfree2014)

We all have stories from work that we swore we'd never tell anyone, and then 20, 30, or 40 years later, the beans are spilled. By then, who will remember, much less punish us? James Dator spent a few years working in movie theaters, both in Australia and the US. Now that time has passed, he discloses a few adventures from his younger days, like the time he left a woman alone in a theater all day, the time he almost killed a movie star, and the time he had to break up a sex act during a screening of The Passion of the Christ, among other memories. Read them all at SB Nation. -via Digg

In 1977, the space probes Voyager I and II were launched, and they are still moving away from us, now beyond the bounds of the Solar System. Considering the chance that the probes may be found by interstellar life forms, they were each equipped with a "golden record" containing sounds and data that may be deciphered somewhere, sometime. That assignment fell to the project's creative director, Ann Druyan, and eminent astrophysicist Carl Sagan. The two colleagues fell in love while discussing the record by phone, and were married from 1981 until Sagan's death in 1996. That story is cute enough, and then there's this:

But the evidence of their love has taken on a life of its own. Not long after that serendipitous phone call, Druyan had an idea for the record: They could measure the electrical impulses of a human brain and nervous system, turn it into sound, and put it on the record. Then maybe, 1,000 million years from now, some alien civilization might be able to turn that data back into thoughts. So, just a few days after she and Sagan declared their love for each other, Druyan went to Bellevue Hospital in New York City and meditated while the sounds of her brain and body were recorded. According to Druyan, part of what she was thinking during that meditation was about "the wonder of love, of being in love."

The record of that data is still making its way through the cosmos. Read the entire story at NPR. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: NASA)

The first thing I searched for this morning was the the Golden Raspberry Awards. See, the awards for the worst movies of the year, affectionally called the Razzies, are always bestowed the night before the Academy Awards. But not this year. For only the second time in its 40-year history, the Razzies are running late. However, the nominations have finally been announced.

Three films were nominated for eight Razzies: Cats, Rambo: Last Blood, and A Madea Family Funeral. All three are up for Worst Picture. Tyler Perry is nominated for four acting awards: two nominations for Worst Supporting Actor, one for Worst Actress, and another for Worst Screen Combo... all for the same movie. John Travolta received one Worst Actor nomination for two movies. Joker made the list, nominated as a contender in the Worst Reckless Disregard for Human Life and Public Property award. That is the only Razzie appearance of a movie also nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

There is one category an actor might want to be nominated for- the Razzie Redeemer Award, which is bestowed on an actor for "Becoming a respected artist after having been nominated for a Razzie." The list for 2020 includes Jennifer Lopez, Eddie Murphy, Keanu Reeves, Adam Sandler, and Will Smith.      

The Razzies will be televised for the first time this year, but there is no indication of when that will be. You can watch the nomination announcement video, or just read the full list, with a chart of the movies' performances, at Wikipedia.

Skeleton shrimp are neither shrimp nor skeletons, but they are fun to watch. In fact, you'd enjoy this video if it were just visuals, but of course we also get a comparative description of Caprellids from Ze Frank told in colorful terms. For example, you will try to picture a drunk person in a sleeping bag trying to answer a doorbell. Skeleton shrimp are apparently also known for their insults.

WHAT HAS OCCURRED CANNOT BE UNDONE

I have trained a neural net on a crowdsourced set of vintage jello-centric recipes

I believe this to possibly be the worst recipe-generating algorithm in existence pic.twitter.com/cwQwOpUNDv

— Janelle Shane (@JanelleCShane) February 7, 2020

Janelle Shane put out a call for mid-century American recipes last week to see what a neural network would learn from them. She received over 800 recipes, and used them to train an artificial intelligence algorithm to generate its own recipes. The results are just as horrifying as you might imagine.

Shane admits that this algorithm has previously trained on internet text to learn how to read, and she was surprised at the random bits of information it had retained from, say, fan fiction. Read about the experiment at her blog AI Weirdness, which has ten of the recipes. There are quite a few more of them at Twitter.  -via Mashable

Tom Rosenthal played piano while his three-year-old daughter Fenn sang a song she wrote about dinosaurs. He Tweeted the audio, which went viral, so he then collaborated with Hannah Jacobs, Katy Wang, and Anna Ginsburg to animate the sweet and poignant song -in less than 24 hours! -via Laughing Squid

One of the ideas that come up again and again in apocalyptic fiction is that a small group of surviving people might be able to save humankind by repopulating the earth. A study of mammoth DNA shows how this concept could easily be a nightmare. Mammoths died out in most of the world between 10 and 15 thousand years ago, due to hunting, environmental changes, or both. However, mammoths survived for a few thousand more years isolated on Wrangel Island and St. Paul island, both having favorable environments and no humans. Each had a relatively small number of mammoths that became quite inbred over time, and they eventually went extinct. A genome study of a Wrangel Island mammoth, compared with continental mammoths and with elephants, may tell us why.     

The scientists identified several “deleterious mutations that are predicted to cause diverse behavioral and developmental defects,” wrote the authors in the study. These included disruptions to genes associated with neurological developmental defects (including a dangerous condition known as hydrolethalus syndrome), diabetes, reduced male fertility, and strangely, an inability to “detect floral scents,” according to the paper. In other words, this Wrangell mammoth had lost the ability to smell the flowers.

You have to feel sorry for that one specimen. Read more about the study at Gizmodo. 

(Image credit: Kira Sokolovskaia)

You may or may not recall reading about that time meat rained down from the sky in Kentucky. The absurd event happened in 1876 in Olympia Springs. There were many theories on how it happened, but none were proven at the time, so the incident was relegated to the "strange and bizarre news" category. Then Kurt Gohde moved to Kentucky to teach art at Transylvania University and heard the story. He did a deep dive into all the documentation from that period, which was little, but enough to make him more curious.  

Fascinated with the meat shower to begin with, a serendipitous find in 2004 stoked his ardor even further. He was clearing out storage closets at Transylvania University when he stumbled upon an old glass jar sealed with a cork stopper. It contained a chunk of white, fatty-looking meat, suspended in a pale yellow liquid. The label was faded, but the words Olympia Springs could still be made out. Gohde was thrilled.

Determined to try and pinpoint what mystery animal rained down over Olympia Springs, Gohde worked with a colleague in the biology department to have the sample genetically tested. Unfortunately, the sample was too old and contaminated to give any conclusive results.

Then Gohde got creative. Much of his artwork involves community engagement, so he had a taste lab based in Cincinnati analyze flavor compounds of the meat sample and reconstruct the taste in a jelly bean. Gohde wanted to educate local Kentuckians about the curious climatic event, and if anything, jelly beans would be a great conversation starter.

Yes, he made jellybeans with the flavor of the meat shower. Read about those jellybeans and the incident that inspired them at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Kurt Gohde)

Jeff Permar was trying to grow a vegetable garden, but found signs of vandalism. So he installed a motion-sensor camera and discovered the culprit was a groundhog. This groundhog is a performer, though, and would eat his ill-gotten gains right in front of the camera! Jeff named him Chunk, and now he's a star. You can see more of Chunk at Facebook and Instagram. -via Everlasting Blort

Scientists have been studying an extremophile fungus growing at the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone for years. This fungus apparently grows toward radiation the way plants grow toward sunlight. It consumes the radiation and uses it for energy, like little power plants!

How can this fungus process radiation in this way? Because it has tons of very dark melanin pigment that absorbs radiation and processes it in a harmless way to produce energy. Scientists believe this mechanism could be used to make biomimicking substances that both block radiation from penetrating and turn it into a renewable energy source.

Chernobyl is a special case where extreme ambient radiation is a huge danger to anyone who enters, and having a “radiation blocker” to treat protective suits or even the entire inside of the plant to reduce ambient radiation could be a huge boon. Besides reducing danger, though, the world is filled with machinery and devices that safely use radiation, from medicine to manufacturing. Even low levels of contained radiation could be used to make energy that could reduce the energy burden of those devices.

Materials made of this fungus could also be useful to shield spacecraft from radiation. Read more about this discovery at Popular Mechanics. -Thanks, WTM!

Freddie and Truus Oversteegen and their mother Trijntje were communists who lived in Schoten, Netherlands, during World War II. The sisters had been raised to always help the underdog, which included sheltering refugees in their home.

When the leader of a Dutch resistance group took notice of their radical bent, he asked Trijntje if she would permit her daughters to join. Freddie was 14. Truus was 16. Without knowing explicitly what they were agreeing to, the three women all said yes. And soon, the teenage girls were doing more than handing out literature. They were luring Nazis into the woods and assassinating them.

Before long, Freddie and Truus supplemented their resistance orders by freelancing their Nazi-killing. They were joined by 22-year-old Hannie Schaft in 1943, making them the real-life civilian girl equivalent of Inglourious Basterds. Read about the exploits of this girl gang at Mental Floss. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Ministerie van Defensie)

In 1865, 17-year-old Mollie Fancher fell from a trolley in New York and was dragged behind by her scarf. She survived the accident, but spent the next 48 years in bed, until her death in 1916. Fancher became rather famous for the psychic abilities she developed in her invalid condition, and she reportedly gave up food and drink, saying she no longer needed it.  

Fancher slowly recovered from basically being declared dead by her physician, and claimed to experience a series of trances. She had lost her sight, but, placing her hands behind her, claimed to see through the back of her head. “I am sometimes conscious of what others are not,” she said, and explains how she stopped eating. “I rejected it. My doctor thought I was insane, but, as a matter of fact, I had never been more rational in my life.”

She claimed she could read, even without use of her eyes, and predict the future; she created beautiful tapestries despite the fact that her hands were paralysed. You can actually find one of her creations on display at a hotel in Lily Dale, New York’s “Village of Psychics”, a blossoming Spiritualist community during the time of Mollie Fancher’s notoriety.

Fancher was never put to a test about her fasting, nor about her psychic abilities. But she was only the most famous of the "fasting girls" of the Victorian era, and others who were put under medical supervision actually died of starvation. Were they frauds, victims of anorexia nervosa, or was it something else entirely? Read about Fancher and the other fasting girls at Messy Messy Chic.

In 1963, Helen Klaben and Ralph Flores crashed their plane into a mountain in Yukon territory. No one could find them in the snow-covered wilderness. They were lost for 49 days, but lived to tell the tale! -via Digg