The Disney+ series The Mandalorian definitely has the heart of a Western, only set in the Star Wars universe. YouTuber kingkida pictures it as a Sergio Leone production from the 1970s, and frames it so well that you would expect to see Clint Eastwood, if the title character ever took his helmet off. And if you look closely, you'll see some intentional humor, too. -via Boing Boing

What we know of Easter Island is a story of environmental degradation fueled by human activity. The island had a varied ecosystem, including forests, before Polynesian sailors settled there around the year 1200. By the time the Dutch arrived 500 years later, the forests were gone, agriculture was difficult, and the human population of the island called Rapa Nui was in decline. The huge stone moai figures were fascinating, though, and posed a mystery as to their meaning. It took a couple more hundred years before anyone bothered to ask the islanders about their cultural legacy, and by then both the oral traditions and written language were fading away. However, even the soil on Rapa Nui can tell a tale.

A recent study by Van Tilburg and her archaeological team has helped fill in these gaps. By testing the soil of the area where moai rock was quarried, they found evidence that the statues not only symbolized prosperity, but that the very creation of the moai contributed to agricultural abundance.

Van Tilburg’s team has spent the past five years excavating Rano Raraku, a quarry in the island’s center whose rock accounts for 95 percent of the moai. The team was analyzing statues found in the area when geoarchaeologist Sarah Sherwood, more out of habit than anything else, tested the local soil. “When we got the chemistry results back, I did a double take,” Sherwood told UCLA’s Newsroom.

The team expected the quarry to just be a quarry. Instead, the analysis suggested that sweet potatoes and bananas had grown nearby, in soil rich in calcium and phosphorous. On an island with limited resources, where the rest of the soil had long since been depleted, the presence of such fertile soil was stunning.

Read about Sherwood's find and what it means to Easter Island's history at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen)

I'm biased here, but this is one of the strongest visual illusions I have ever seen.

None of the colored lines are moving. pic.twitter.com/QcW3u6WFB4

— Chris Said (@Chris_Said) January 3, 2020

Chris Said brings us this stunning example of the Müller-Lyer illusion (previously at Neatorama). The colored lines are the same length throughout; only the angle of the arrows change. If you don't believe it, put a straight edge up against your screen. You can see more examples of this type of illusion at Laughing Squid.  -via Nag on the Lake

Sometime around 2,600 years ago, a man in England died when his head was cut off. In 2008, he was exhumed during an excavation by the York Archeological Trust, or at least his head was; the rest of his body was not found. Inside the skull, scientists found his surprisingly well-preserved brain, while other tissues were completely gone. The Heslington Brain had shrunk to a fraction of its original size, but was otherwise intact.   

For the past decade, scientists have sought to understand how and why the Heslington brain could have survived. In the study, the researchers note that, apart from this brain, no other brain from the Iron Age has been found preserved without deliberate human intervention.

That’s because the human brain breaks down rapidly after death. When a person dies a process called autolysis kickstarts, which causes tissues and organs to break down. The brain is 80 percent water and one of the first organs to go down. Within five to 10 years, the brain tissue is typically totally degraded, research suggests.

The writer of the article uses the word "survived" a bit differently from most folks. The brain is not alive, just extant, and in fairly good condition. Now scientists have figured out why. It has to do with the behavior of proteins. But did these proteins "behave" before or after the beheading? Read about the latest research on the Heslington Brain at Inverse. -via Digg

(Image credit: James Gunn)

Big Cat Rescue (previously) took in a bobcat kitten named Flint last summer after he was attacked by hunting dogs. Flint has some bone deformities and was malnourished, and so became a permanent resident of the shelter in Florida.  

Chris Poole (previously) built and donated a cardboard castle to Big Cat Rescue, which they gave to Flint. The half-grown bobcat was delighted with it, and quickly found the cameras placed inside, which were obviously toys to play with!

In verifying facts from the distant past, historians want more than one source, that is, corroborating evidence. One instance does not make a trend, or even a fact, because fiction was just as popular in days of yore as it is today. A painting could be a portrait or a fantasy, or something in between. A written account could be a chronicle or a retelling of a popular yarn. And so it is with the Iron Maiden, a medieval torture chamber shaped like a human body with spikes on the inside, in which a victim could be interred, leading to a slow, painful death. The first actual relic of this practice appeared in a museum in Nuermburg, Germany, in 1802.

This device was supposedly “discovered” in a German castle in the late 18th century. Not just a cask, this killing machine was roughly human shaped, made of iron, and even had a face, supposedly based on the face of the Virgin Mary, hence the torture instrument’s name- the Iron Maiden.

This probably first real Iron Maiden was sadly destroyed during WW2 by Allied bombers, but a copy created “as decoration for the ‘Gothic Hall’ of a patrician palace in Milan” in 1828 survived and currently resides in the Rothenburg, das Kriminalmuseum (Museum of Crime). From this copy, we can see that the device was certainly designed to cause unimaginable agony in its victims. Along with having strategically placed spikes designed to pierce approximately where a person’s vital organs and sensitive nether-region dangly bits are, the face of the Maiden did indeed have spikes designed to pierce a victim’s eyes upon closing, assuming the person wasn’t vertically challenged.

This copy did a lot to help popularize the idea of the Iron Maiden as a real thing thanks to its prominent display at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 in Chicago, and subsequent tour across the United States to much fanfare.

However, there is no real evidence that an Iron Maiden was ever used in medieval times, or whether it actually existed. What we have are isolated accounts of similar torture that go back a lot earlier than the medieval period, which could easily be fiction. We also have real evidence of devices that may have inspired the stories of the Iron Maiden, although those real devices were not nearly as cruel. Strangely, the strongest evidence of the possible use of an Iron Maiden comes from the late 20th century! Read those accounts, and how they may have led to the myth of the Iron Maiden at Today I Found Out.

(Image credit: Lestat (Jan Mehlich))

Parents have always felt free to get creative with names for baby girls. They can be named for relatives or Biblical characters, but they can also be named for flowers, gems, places, or virtues -basically anything can be a girl's name. Boy's names tend to be more traditional and generic, until recently. While extreme names are in the minority, there's a growing number of parents who will give a baby boy "doer" names that imply action, often a rather masculine action.

Angler, Camper, Tracker, Trapper, Catcher, Driver, Fielder, Racer, Sailor, Striker, Wheeler — deep breath — Breaker, Roper, Trotter, Wrangler — still going — Lancer, Shooter, Slayer, Soldier, Tracer, Trooper — wait, “Slayer”? — Blazer, Brewer, Charger, Dodger, Laker, Pacer, Packer, Raider, Ranger, Steeler, Warrior — kill me — Dreamer, Jester and — wait for it — Rocker.

What's behind this trend? Mel magazine takes a look into the rise of extreme names for baby boys.

Mel magazine has a series of articles about names this week, about men who select a new name as they transition, people who drop their father's name because of a difficult relationship, selecting names for TV characters, and how code names are chosen.

Jennifer Kirkeby makes herself into celebrities, memes, and fashion models. The fashion runway cosplay is hilarious, mainly because her targets already start out as quite ridiculous. She uses whatever is at hand that will work, like chicken wire and Christmas ornaments to recreate the high-fashion hat you see above. But if combat boots are all you have, that will work, too.



Sometimes it's hard to tell the original runway image from the spoof, so you need to look closely to spot the added humor.



It's not just hats, either. See more of her glorious recreations at Instagram. -via reddit

Quentin Tarantino movies vary widely in setting and somewhat in their basic premise, but they have enough in common with each other that Screen Junkies can critique all of them at once. Since I've only seen one of them, I guess I'm caught up.

A dumpster-diving teenager found a notebook in 1970 and kept it for many years. It was full of varied and detailed illustrations, but the artist was not named. The only clue as to its provenance was the fact that it was a decades-old billing pad for State Hospital #3 in Nevada, Missouri -a mental asylum.

These drawings weren’t an afterthought. They were 300 pages of someone’s life. The dumpster-digging teen who’d made the discovery waited more than three decades before he decided to sell the book on eBay in 2006, when a collector in St. Louis didn’t hesitate to snatch them up for $10,000. Today, a single page fetches around $16K at auction.

Who was the artist – or, artists? The element of mystery only added to public intrigue. The St. Louis collector in turn sold the notebook on to New York City collector Henry Diamant, who decided to call the mystery artist “The Electric Pencil” due to the letters “ECT” on some of the drawing – electro-convulsive therapy.

Dark things had been happening inside the hospital, which was long gone by the time Diamant was investigating the Electric Pencil Artist. Today, we know that it was underfunded, understaffed, and a breeding ground for caretaker and patient abuse. The colourful notebook was likely one patient’s coping mechanism. Compiling a nameless portfolio of wide-eyed Victorians and baby blue rivers; circus animals and steamboats, the notebook was both impeccable, and troubling.

The identity of the artist was eventually revealed, but the inspiration for his art remains mysterious. Read about the notebook and see a sampling of the artwork at Messy Nessy Chic.

If you truly want to be both economical and environmentally-friendly, the best thing you can do with a car is to drive it forever. That negates the manufacture of a new car somewhere, and avoids car payments for you. If you like your car and want to extend its life, Andrew P. Collins shares some tried-and-true tips for making that happen, like getting into the habit of setting your parking brake before setting your parking gear.  

An off-road pro once told me, in the cab of a late-model Range Rover I was parking on a steep hill, to “hit the parking brake while it’s still in drive, then put it in park.” His explanation was that this way, kinetic energy from the vehicle’s weight gets transferred to the parking brake instead of its transmission.

Is that better? Well, brakes are a lot cheaper than trannies. Any opportunity to move stress from a more expensive component to a lesser one seems prudent, I guess.

In my experience, taking this step eliminates that big clunk you might hear when you shift from P to D on even just a moderate hill. Clunks bad. So, parking brake trick good. And that’s as technical as we’re going to get because I promised superstition here, not science. (I should do that more often.)

That won't help with my '97 Camry, since it doesn't having a parking gear. But there are other tips for promoting a car's longevity that involve vehicle maintenance, behavior in traffic, and even paperwork, at Jalopnik. -via Gizmodo

(Image credit: Bull-Doser)

Victor Ribeiro made a simple city builder web toy called Iso City that lets you place streets, buildings, and trees wherever you want by clicking your selection and then clicking on the grid. The neighborhood I constructed in a hurry, shown above, is rather simple. I could have made a canal instead of a pool, and I'm sure with time I could have made a better traffic pattern. But it's fun! -via Kottke

In traditional Western culture, women's fashions change with the seasons, as fast as designers can produce something women will buy and wear. Men's fashions, on the other hand, change glacially. The basic suit and tie have been the business uniform for a couple of centuries now. Worldwide, the figures who change that trend tend to be political leaders, some who changed what men wore in direct defiance of colonialism.

After years of Western domination, swaths of the developing world that had long been forced to follow the norms set by European and American powers wanted their own alternative to the Western suit and tie. So they came up with their own formalwear. China had the Mao suit, India the Nehru jacket, the Jamaicans wore the Kariba suit and the Congolese donned the abacost.

All of those are either untucked shirts or button-up coats, which would easily fit in the wardrobe of any present-day 20-something fashionista. Similar ensembles were featured in Phoebe English’s show at London Fashion Week in 2018, while Chinese brand Pronounce brought pink Mao jackets to the runways that same year. But right after World War II, these garments had a more radical message: They showed how recently decolonized countries were trying to go their own way. “Politics and fashion are very much related,” says Sean Metzger, an associate professor at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television who has written about the Mao suit. “It’s a way to show conformity, but also resistance, to certain political regimes.”

It might surprise you to know that Mao Zedong was not the first to popularize the Mao suit. Read the history of some of these anti-colonial fashions at Ozy.

It doesn't matter that you aren't a Phish fan, you'll enjoy this story. Phish played an elaborate New Year's Eve concert at Madison Square Garden in which each band member was elevated on a separate platform high above the stage. And then at about 21 minutes into the show...

...midway through the next song, Sand , the platform holding guitarist Trey Anastasio came to a sudden halt , tilting a bit and requiring the frontman to grab his microphone stand to keep his balance.

After the song ended and the rest of the band was lowered to the stage, there was a few minutes of awkward silence and darkness as the automation team and choreographer tried to figure out what to do. When it became clear to the guitarist that he wasn't going up or down any time soon, he made a few jokes about falling to his death , and then did what he does best, he improvised.

Anastasio was still up there are the concert ended. You can see the relevant (meaning funniest) parts with timestamped and additional videos linked at the Metafilter post. Concert contains NSFW language.   

You already know that the first child born via in-vitro fertilization (IVF) was Louise Brown in 1978. She was the result of research that went back to the 1940s. Dr. John Rock (who would later develop the birth control pill) was determined to cure infertility, and hired Miriam Menkin to perform experiments in fertilizing a human egg with sperm.

Week after week, Menkin followed the same routine: chase eggs on Tuesday, mix with sperm on Wednesday, pray on Thursday, look into the microscope on Friday. Every Friday, when she looked in the incubator, all she saw was one cell – an unfertilised egg – and a bunch of dead sperm. She did this 138 times. Over six years.

Until that fateful Friday in February 1944, when she opened the incubator door, and screamed for Rock. “As usual he was at the other end of town in the hospital getting a real baby for a mother,” she recalled later, in a talk to a classroom of schoolchildren. “We telephoned him… When he saw what was in the dish, he became pale as a ghost.”

The story of how that first IVF came about is fascinating, but Menkin's story is a sad one. She was a brilliant scientist who earned several degrees, but couldn't get into medical school, probably because of strict limits on the number of women admitted at the time. Instead, she married a medical school student and worked to pay his tuition. Menkin's husband was also the reason she later had to leave Rock's laboratory and her fertility work. Read the story of the first in-vitro fertilization and the woman who accomplished it at BBC Future. -via Damn Interesting