The mysterious Area 51, inside the Air Force's Nevada Test and Training Range, has long been rumored to hold evidence of UFOs and the aliens they contained. An internet joke has turned into a Facebook event called Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us, scheduled for September 20. Over a million people have signed up, with another million expressing interest. Can people really make their way into a desert military facility just by showing up in large numbers? It won't be easy. It's a two-hour drive from Las Vegas, and the road goes through a restricted nuclear weapons testing area. Then there are the "camo dudes."

The “camo dudes” are generally known to UFO watchers as a humorless lot that take their job very seriously. They are quite well armed, and in one case in 2016 drew their firearms on a pair of motorcyclists. It has also been alleged for years that Area 51 is ringed with sensors, including seismic intrusion devices designed to detect the rumble of vehicles, and that explains how the camo dudes often respond so quickly to trespassers.

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Deadly force is authorized even for a misdemeanor offense. Maybe that’s bit unusual, but then again, this is Area 51 we’re talking about. A smart defendant in federal court could argue that there is no mention of “alien hospitality suites” in the Internal Security Act, forcing the government to drop the charges-or produce the aliens.

Read more about the security around Area 51 at Jalopnik.

In January of 2017, Zainab Bibi gave birth to twin girls by C-section. They were craniopagus twins, joined at the head. When the twins Safa and Marwa were 19 months  old, they traveled to the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London for separation surgery. It was a complicated case.

Their skull is like a stove pipe, a long straight tube. Scans show that the girls have two distinct brains but these are misshapen. The right hemisphere of each brain is sticking up 90 degrees, projecting into the other twin's brain cavity.

This distorted shape will need correcting if the girls are to have near normal-shaped heads.

The surgical team's biggest concern is how to separate the complex shared network of veins and arteries. Each twin supplies the other with blood. Severing these connections carries a risk of starving the brain of nourishment and causing a stroke.

Last year, the separation was accomplished in three operations: the first (15 hours long) to separate the brains and arteries, and the second (20 hours) to separate the veins. In February of 2019, the final operation detached the twins from each other. But their brains still needed to be reshaped, and their skulls crafted to cover them, which brought the surgery to 17 hours. Read the fascinating story of how Safe and Marwa were separated at BBC.  -via Damn Interesting       

We are gearing up for the 50th anniversary of the first person walking on the moon, on July 20, 1969. That was American astronaut Neil Armstrong, followed by Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin. But the moon mission required the work of thousands of people, who each had a hand in that historic moment. These range from the 21-year-old astronaut secretary Jamye Flowers (shown above) to the president who worked hard to make John F. Kennedy's vision a reality. This included the "back roomers," the tech experts who knew the smallest details about the Apollo mission.

Never did the “back roomers” prove their value more than on Apollo 11, when computer alarms sounded inside the lunar module just as Armstrong and Aldrin were minutes from landing on the moon. Not recognizing the codes—1201 and 1202—the astronauts asked for Mission Control’s decision: Abort or keep going?

Because the alarm involved the onboard computer, Flight Director Gene Kranz asked his guidance officer, Steve Bales, for a call. Bales in turn consulted one of his back roomers, 24-year-old Jack Garman, who recognized 1202 as a memory overload, and not a serious problem if it didn’t keep recurring. “Go!” came his instant response to Bales. (According to historian David Mindell, another computer expert sitting with Garman, Russ Larson, was too engrossed to speak, but gave his own thumbs-up.) The astronauts were cleared to land.

Read about the technicians, rocket scientists, programmers, directors, navigators, designers, dietitians, and seamstresses who contributed to the Apollo 11 moon landing at Air & Space magazine. -via Smithsonian

(Image credit: NASA)

The 2019 superhero comedy Shazam! was an attempt to take DC Comics movies in a different direction. It was a kids' movie, so it didn't have to make much sense. Shazam! was a big hit, but it had quite enough flaws for Screen Junkies to give it the Honest Trailer treatment. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Disney is on a mission to remake their most successful animated movies in "live action" versions. For movies based on humans, this means using actors in the roles. For animal stories, this means "photorealistic CGI," as in The Jungle Book and the remake of The Lion King. And in the quest for realism, something got lost. While many reviewers give the film a high score, much of that is due to the voice cast and the impressive technology. Others saw a problem. The New York Times said, "There is a lot of professionalism but not much heart." Indiewire calls it "little more than a glorified tech demo from a greedy conglomerate". The A.V. Club said, "We’re watching a hollow bastardization of a blockbuster, at once completely reliant on the audience’s pre-established affection for its predecessor and strangely determined to jettison much of what made it special." In another post comparing movie graphics to the evolution of video games, the A.V. Club describes exactly what went wrong.

For a generation of children, the sight of lion prince Simba watching his father, Mufasa, die in a wildebeest stampede in 1994’s The Lion King represented a first encounter with mortality. Disney’s animators render the moment with a terrible poignancy that can stay with a person for the rest of their life. Mufasa first falls down toward the “camera,” a reverse shot from above accompanies his final roar, and then we rapidly zoom out from the pupil of Simba’s eye to reveal his horrified face. His mouth hangs agape, his eyebrows pull back in shock, and his yellow-orange eyes widen to make him look like the frightened little boy he is.

The Mouse House’s new Lion King remake employs photorealistic computer animation to replicate this moment almost exactly. Except that when we get that glimpse of Simba’s reaction, there’s no helplessness, no lost innocence, no fear. There is just the face of a lion, making the only face lions make, albeit with his jaw lowered. One thinks of the words of Werner Herzog, who described looking into the eyes of a chicken and seeing nothing but “a real stupidity, a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity.” Having said all that, you’ve got to hand it to Disney: It sure does look like a real lion.

Even the worst reviews of the new Lion King admit that it will be a big hit for Disney, due to the talented voice cast and the fact that everyone knows and loves the original so well. The 2019 version of The Lion King is an excuse for people to go experience the story again, and their memories may fill in what is lacking in the photorealistic CGI. The Lion King opens nationwide this weekend.   

In school, we learned the "proper" way to write, and everyone was supposed to learn the same rules. Those rules worked for both books and letters, but accomplished writers knew when to break them to make a point. Then came the internet, texting, and social media. New methods of writing for new purposes gave way to bending the old rules and instituting new ones. The new system may seem lazy to those using the "proper" rules of capitalization and punctuation, but there's are reasons behind each new convention. Tom Scott explains.  

Ella White was among the passengers of the RMS Titanic who escaped the sinking ship on a lifeboat. It was a very dark night, and the lanterns the lifeboat had were worthless. It was White's high-tech cane that came to the rescue then, as it had a small battery-operated light that shone just bright enough for the lifeboat to steer its way.

Like many other survivors, White, then 55, boarded the Titanic as a first-class passenger. She was traveling with her companion, a 36-year-old piano teacher named Marie Grice Young, along with several exotic chickens from France that they planned to breed in their Westchester mansion. They’d been on vacation in Europe and had chosen to return to America on a ship called the RMS Titanic, which was about to make its maiden voyage, according to Guernsey’s listing.

White had injured her foot during her travels, but she’d acquired a rather snazzy cane to help her keep her balance. The enameled black cane looks pretty simple at first glance, but its amber-colored bakelite head—made from the world’s first synthetic plastic—held a tiny, battery-powered light. This technology may seem kitschy by today’s standards, but it was cutting-edge technology in 1912, a mere 33 years after Thomas Edison had invented the electric light bulb.

Ella and all the lifeboat passengers with her survived the sinking of the Titanic. She died in 1942, and left her fortune to Young. But some of her personal possessions apparently went to relatives, which caused some trouble. White's great-grandnephew Brad Williams has listed White's historic cane for auction with Guernsey Auctions. Another of White's great-grandnephews, John Hoving, challenged the auction, saying the cane was stolen from his family in the 1970s. The auction will proceed on July 19. Read about the controversial cane and its history at Atlas Obscura.

(Image Courtesy of liveauctioneers.com)

Apollo 11 launched on July 16, 1969, on its way to the moon. Fifty years later, you can read a million stories about astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins. But there were thousands of people involved in the first moon landing, not all of them employed by NASA. Dave Porter was a Navy seaman, a Gunner’s Mate aboard the U.S.S. Hornet in 1969. The Hornet was charged with retrieving the astronauts from the ocean after they splashed down on return to earth. His son, Dave Porter II, shares his father's story, giving us a different point of view on the mission.  

“Something not a lot of people know is the men on the Hornet trained for weeks retrieving a dummy capsule in preparation for the actual day. When the day arrived, the radio comms to the astronauts were piped through the ship’s intercom so all the sailors could hear. I believe my dad said he saw the “burn in” and the splashdown, though it was overcast that day. The first time he spotted the capsule, it was floating down through the clouds with the parachutes all deployed.

“The crew was ordered to stay below deck when President Nixon came aboard. There was a lot of excitement, with television crews and the captain and officers meeting the president, though my father didn’t get to talk to him directly. However, that night after everything died down, he took a walk to the quarantine. NASA put the astronauts in quarantine because the scientists didn’t know if the astronauts had brought anything back from the moon such as illness or microbes. Turned out, Neil Armstrong was still up and sitting near one of the observation windows. I believe my father said ‘That was a hell of a ride, wasn’t it?’ and Armstrong replied ‘Sure was!’

Porter was also aboard when the Hornet recovered the Apollo 12 crew. Read his story at Collectors Weekly. 

Somehow, a Land Rover gets stuck and has to be pulled out of a pasture by what appears to be the world's first tractor. What is this, opposite day? No, this is Russia. The tractor goes wrong, its winch keeps going, and somehow things get worse. Then we see that the vehicle is not a Land Rover at all, but a Lada with a sticker on the front that says "Land Niver." This video might contains NSFW language, I don't know, since it's in Russian. -via Digg

The headline sounds like a rumor that has been debunked, but it's more complicated than that. When the new foods of the Minnesota State Fair were announced, a curious gimmick called Wingwalker Donut Flight was introduced. They are doughnut holes that you inject with filling yourself, served with syringes of Bavarian cream, chocolate custard, or Minnesota lingonberry jam. Now, many fair foods are traditionally served "on a stick" to make them easier to eat while standing and walking. Filling doughnut holes requires two hands, and possibly three. It's not clear why anyone thought that fairgoers would get excited about preparing their own snacks. The pushback was immediate.

“Incredibly wasteful,” “a gimmick,” and “gross” were some of the comments on the Minnesota State Fair’s Facebook page. Both the environmental impact of single-use plastics and the optics of drug paraphernalia littered on the ground at the fair drew complaints.

An online petition launched last weekend has so far garnered more than 3,000 signatures to “Stop the Minnesota State Fair from allowing Wingwalker Donut to use plastic syringes!”

The vendor withdrew the gimmick, and now doughnut holes will be served with recyclable trays featuring the fillings as dips. You can see the revised list of new foods at the Minnesota State Fair, featuring Cheesy Sriracha Funnel Cake Bites, Irish Whiskey Boneless Wings, and Fried Tacos on-a-Stick, among other extreme treats.  -via TYWKIWDBI

(Image credit: Minnesota State Fair)

You have to love a rock song about cats! "Cat Planet" (打首獄門同好会「猫の惑星」) is performed by  the group Uchikubi Gokumon Doukoukai (打首獄門同好会, translates to Prison Fighting Club). The video was crowd-sourced by fans. Notice how the song goes into heavy metal territory occasionally and the video clips shift to cats acting badly. Commenter Kyzix gives us an English translation of the lyrics:

The inside of the kotatsu belongs to a cat
The spot in front of the heater belongs to a cat
The tops of clothes belongs to a cat
The inside of a cardboard box belongs to a cat
The top of a lid covering hot water in the bath belongs to a cat
Your side when you’re asleep in bed belongs to a cat
Even the top of your hands typing on a keyboard belongs to a cat
Your lap when you sit down belongs to a cat

Even if I’m cold, even if it bothers me
If it’s good for the cat, there’s no problem
Such is the shape of continuing love

Definitely, definitely, into this world
We are creatures fated to be born and live to love cats
Definitely, definitely, this planet of ours
revolves so that it can support the life of cats

We are living on this planet inhabited by cats
We are living on this planet inhabited by cats
We are living on this planet inhabited by cats
We are living on this planet inhabited by cats

I won’t be mad even if they scratch the sofa
I won’t be mad even if they rip up the shoji
I won’t be mad even if they roll out all the toilet paper
I won’t be mad even if they break into the cupboard and rummage around
I won’t be mad, I won’t be mad

Even if my house is destroyed, even if I go into bankruptcy
If the cat is happy, there’s no problem
Sacrifices for love know no limit

Definitely, definitely, into this world
We are creatures fated to be born and live to love cats
Definitely, definitely, this planet of ours
revolves so that it can support the life of cats
Rather, rather, this planet of ours
Should just revolve so cats can live happily
Definitely, definitely, from the moment we are born
we are fated to live life loving you

We are living on this planet inhabited by cats
We are living on this planet inhabited by cats
We are drowning in love on this planet inhabited by cats
We are living on this planet inhabited by cats

We are born, on this planet of cats

-via Metafilter

Tinkerers have been trying to recreate animated beings with mechanical technology for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Automatons were an early version of a robot, powered by wind-up springs or flywheels. Jacques de Vaucanson made one in 1739 that caused a sensation: the Digesting Duck. It was an artificial duck, and people came out of the woodwork to see it.

Once wound up, it waddled around, drank water, played in water with its bill, and even quacked just like a real duck.

But Vaucanson’s greatest feat was designing the duck to eat a piece of corn, digest it, and poop it out.

Real corn. Real poop. Fake duck.

You know what they say: if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it might be a robot. Read about the Digesting Duck at Weird Historian. -via Strange Company

Sunday was Bastille Day, a commemoration of the storming of the military prison in Paris during the French Revolution. The traditional parade in Paris featured something new- a man flying on a hoverboard (called a flyboard) above the parade, wielding a rifle.

According to The Guardian, its rider was Franky Zapata, a French inventor and former jet ski champion who has been showing off the flyboard for a few years now. Zapata actually set a new Guinness World Record for farthest hoverboard flight on the flyboard in 2016.

A good time was had by all. -via Mashable

People remember the flavors of Jell-O from their childhood differently, depending on who you talk to. Yes, there was a coffee flavored Jell-O. And tomato, and blackberry, and chocolate, and celery, and cola, and imitation apple. You may be tempted to call BS on some of those flavors, but there's proof. RetroRuth at Mid-Century Menu (previously at Neatorama) has been working on a Jell-O timeline for quite a while, to definitely pin down when these flavors were introduced. Check out the timeline and the stories of bygone Jell-O at Mid-Century Menu. -via Metafilter

Every name of every country has a story behind it, but if you look closely, those stories begin to resemble each other. Most country names fall into one of four categories:

    a directional description of the country
    a feature of the land
    a tribe name
    an important person, most likely a man

There are plenty of examples from each category, some older than others, and some imposed by outsiders. Under the category of countries named after a feature of the land, you'll find these.

It’s not clear which explorer named Costa Rica (“the rich coast”), but one account suggests it was Christopher Columbus, who saw indigenous people wearing gold and didn’t realize it was imported. The Spanish gave Honduras its name, meaning “depth” or “deep water,” and they also named Barbados, or “bearded ones,” allegedly after the great banyan tree found there, ficus citrifolia, because of their long aerial roots.

Sierra Leone is thought to have been named “lion mountains” by the Portuguese, probably a reference to the roaring sound of thunder in the hills above Freetown, not actual lions. Singapore means “lion city,” and the lion head is a national symbol. But there aren’t any known lions in Singapore. According to legend the Sumatran prince Sang Nila Utama was hunting in Singapore and came across an animal he thought was a lion, “singa” in Malay, and gave the name Singa Pura to the island he was on.

There are plenty more stories of country names for each category, and a special category for those that don't fit into them, at Quartz. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: Quartz/Thu-Huong Ha)