Sometimes a crazy idea is just what you need. Vita and Mauro take in foster cats, often cats with special needs. Sebastian came to them as a kitten through the Little Lion Foundation. He had an old injury that left him walking all wrong, so wrong that he wore holes in his skin. They thought he would have to have his leg amputated, but veterinary care, therapy, and patience did a lot for Sebastian. When keeping his leg was assured, Sebastian started his swimming lessons and learned to dog paddle (the backstroke would be asking too much of him). Surprisingly, the kitten took to water sports better than you would expect. Swimming allowed Sebastian to get a lot of exercise and leg movement without having to bear weight on his paws, and that kind of therapy paid off big time. You can keep up with Sebastian and Vita and Mauro's other foster cats at Instagram.

The post title sounds like science fiction meets Captain Obvious, but this is real. Brain implants, or brain-computer interfaces, can help disabled people move prosthetic limbs with their intentions, and paralyzed people without speech can speak through a computer by intending to speak. But with improved technology, we find that the parts of the brain that are used to attempt speech are very close to the parts of the brain that produce our inner dialogue, meaning our thoughts. How would someone using this technology to communicate maintain the privacy of their own thoughts? The interfaces we have now are not good at reading inner thoughts, but they will get better, and the ethical issues need to be addressed now.  

One way to separate the intention to speak from one's inner dialogue would be to improve the technology, and researchers are working on that. Another way that is already being tried is to use a "password" that the user would think of before activating intentional communication. You can see how this might have its own problems- it's akin to telling someone to not think about an elephant. Read about the attempts to assure privacy as well as communication for those using brain-computer interfaces at Ars Technica. As you would guess, the comments are full of worst case scenarios.

We were amazed at the tiny but expansive apartment that engineer Xing Zhilei of Xing's World built for different sized pets. He didn't stop there. The challenges get bigger, and he keeps building. Now he has a working miniature subway train for his cats! 

The subway is quite large, although not large enough for human comfort, as you can see from the clips of the family working on it. It travels smoothly at a safe speed, has doors with motion sensors that automatically open, and even a working escalator. Notice both the train and the station have doors, aligned so the cats cannot get underneath the train. You have to wonder how long the rail line is- around the house, with one stop maybe? The cats, who are used to unique new experiences, were quite game to take a ride. See more miniature pet sized projects at the YouTube channel.  -via Boing Boing 

Everyone knows the song, but no one knows the lyrics. The supernatural sitcom Bewitched debuted in 1964 with an animated opening sequence by Hanna-Barbera and a jazzy theme song by composer Jack Keller. Keller collaborated with lyricist Howard Greenfield, but the words Greenfield wrote for the song were dropped in favor of an orchestral arrangement. Bewitched was the second-highest rated TV show in its first year, and the producers of the show thought about using a lyrical version for the second season, but that would have cost money. You have to pay singers, and they already had the orchestra version.  

Greenfield got his day, however, when singers outside of TV recorded the song, such as Steve Lawrence and Peggy Lee. The lyrical version could have become a hit if either of them had ever released it as a single. Read the lyrics and the story behind the Bewitched theme song at Cracked. 

Blahaj wakes up in the middle of the night because he's hungry, and his snacks are all gone. What to do? Waffle House is open 24/7, so he gathers his toys and goes for a waffle. But he's there at 3 AM for the "bad time," and you know what that means. Or maybe you don't. The exact time varies by location, but that's when the bars must legally close, and patrons who don't want to go home gravitate to the only business still open. And that's when the real action starts. 

After watching this charming animation by Atoga, I checked to see if AI was involved, so I clicked "more." Apparently he used Creative Commons images from a great variety of sources, and credited them all! He animated them with Blender software, and created the music himself.  In case you are wondering why the shark is named Blahaj, here's your answer.  -via Metafilter 

In 2016, two cemeteries that were being excavated in France gave up human remains from between 4300 and 4150 BCE. That puts them in the Neolithic era, toward the end of the Stone Age. Some of the mass graves showed evidence of overkill- crushed bones, smashed skulls, and completely missing limbs. Other graves showed no signs of such brutality. These two sites are the oldest European cemeteries that show such destruction during mass killings or desecration shortly afterward, which must be a sign of war.  

New technology allows archaeologists to learn more from these bones. Studying the isotopes in the remains can give us a clue as to where these people were from and where they had traveled. The bones that were smashed were of people that did not live in the local area, determined by coparing the isotopes of those who were buried one at a time. A new study offers a couple of scenarios of what might have happened to them more than 6,000 years ago. Read about the recent discoveries at Mental Floss. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Fanny Chenal, INRAP) 

What do the words woodchuck, cockroach, hangnail, and catty corner have in common? They are examples of folk etymology. You might think that these words have some origin story that has to do with the meaning of their segments, but no. They are all derived from non-English languages, and got renamed because of the way the original words sounded instead of having any common meaning. Groundhog, which is the same animal as a woodchuck, really is derived from ground and hog. Linguist Dr. Erica Brozovsky (previously at Neatorama) explains what happened to create these English words and plenty of other examples. It's just a matter of "I can't pronounce your name, so I will call you something that sounds close that I can pronounce." Folk etymology occurs in other languages, too. That's how we ended up with a Mexican city named after a cow horn without an interesting story behind it. 

Russia's far east, an area that Americans call Siberia (although the traditional Siberia is bigger), is a vast area with very few people. How few? Fewer than eight million people. Compare that to London, the small dot on the left, which has more than eight million. New York City also has more than eight million people in the city limits (23 million in the combined metro statistical area). 

Siberia's reputation in the West is that of Stalin's exiles, when millions of people were sent to the far east for political or genocidal reasons. Most of them either died or left when they got the chance. But the far east has been losing people steadily even in the 21st century.   

I once flew over east Russia, and although it took forever, I never saw any evidence of a city or manmade infrastructure. The landscape, however, is both majestic and frightening. Why is there so much empty land in this area? Yes, it's cold, but there are many other reasons, both geographical and historical, laid out in a post at Brilliant Maps. -via Nag on the Lake 

I once asked a talented friend if she could teach me to sing. She determined that I have a problem changing smoothly from the lower register to the soprano or falsetto register. Maybe I should have tried yodeling, which involves rapidly moving from one to the other, but it didn't matter as I can't carry a tune anyway and she gave up on me.  

Yodeling has a long tradition in Switzerland, where a yodel can be heard from one Alpine mountaintop to another. Great Big Story went to the Alps to talk to people about yodeling. In this video we learn of its origins, continued popularity, and the nuts and bolts of how to yodel from Melanie of the famous Swiss band Oesch die Dritten. They also take us to Jodlerfest Altstätten, a yodeling festival that draws world-class yodelers. It was difficult, but our host finally found some yodelers and fans who speak English. -via Laughing Squid 

Ta Prohm is a Buddhist temple complex in Ankhor, the ancient capital of the Kmer Empire in what is now Cambodia. It was built in the 12th century and flourished until the 15th century, when it was abandoned. The buildings of Ta Prohm feature many reliefs carved in stone that depict people, animals, deities, and mythological creatures. One of these carvings, shown above, appears to be of a stegosaurus! 

Well, a stegosaurus is what it looks like to modern eyes, due to the row of plates that grow out of the animal's back. But is this a case of seeing something that isn't there? The head is too large for a stegosaurus, and it doesn't have a thagomizer. There has been plenty of speculation about what the artist meant to portray hundreds of years ago. Is there a mythological animal that looked like this? Did the Kmer people reconstruct fossils long before Western scientists? Some see it as proof that humans and dinosaurs existed together. Read about the Ta Prohm stegosaurus at Amusing Planet. The last picture in the article will make it clear why the carving looks the way it does. 

(Image credit: Harald Hoyer) 

It would have been easy to completely miss the fact that there is another new movie based on H. G. Wells's 1898 novel The War of the Worlds. The 2025 film War of the Worlds is the eighth film based on that novel, not to mention the infamous 1938 radio play by Orson Welles, or the TV shows, or other adaptations. The new movie is only available on Amazon Prime, and I never heard of it until everyone and his brother (including mine) saw it and can't stop talking about how awful it is. Screen Junkies counts the reasons in this Honest Trailer, so you can stop listening to less eloquent screeds.  

The hero is played by Ice Cube, a government surveillance expert who is confined to his cubicle and watches aliens attack earth through his screens. He has a family, who all happen to be involved in earth-changing events. The whole movie is claustrophobic, because it was conceived during the pandemic, as if we want to relive that. And it may strike you as an 89-minute ad for Amazon. Doomed to be a classic.  

Carbonated beverages got their start in pharmacies, because pharmacies were great at combining chemicals, whether it was for refreshment or medicinal use or both. In fact, pharmacies offered the earliest soda fountains. Cincinnati, Ohio, was the site of the Eclectic Medical Institute, a pioneer in pharmacy. It was in that city that the nectar soda was developed, and served as a side story to the history of cream soda.  

While cream soda was flavored with vanilla, it was too sweet for some people, so nectar soda added the flavor of bitter almond to counteract the sweetness. This unique flavor was tinted pink to distinguish it from other sodas, as it mimicked the color of bitter almond flowers. Nectar sodas were so popular they were served at pharmacies, soda fountains, ice cream shops, and candy stores across Cincinnati. It spread to other cities, although the only other place it took permanent root was New Orleans. Read about nectar soda at Gastro Obscura.  

How far can a tire roll when you throw it off a sand dune? The group called Tuk South did just that, and they were ready with a drone to follow it on its adventures. As the tire goes on and on, you have time to contemplate the meaning of all this. Where is this? The description only says that this is one of the tallest sand dunes on earth. How far did the tire roll? Did they go get it? I wouldn't bother. The drone can come back on its own, but let's think about that drone for a minute. It has remarkable range from the controller. Did it have enough power to get back? With live streaming, you don't have to retrieve a drone to have the footage. And after you think all that, you think, goodness, that tire is still rolling.

This may remind you of the movie Rubber that starred a tire going on a murderous rampage. Except the tire above is no villain, but a hero for its perseverance, determination, and sense of adventure. -via Memo of the Air 

(Image credit: Benreis)

It's no wonder there are so many old German folk songs about linden trees. For more than a thousand years, people in German communities used a linden tree as a gathering place. They were even the site of public dances. Then someone got the idea to build a dance floor around a linden tree. If you train the lower side branches outward, you will have a support for an elevated dance floor. But then you built supports for it anyway, because they were quite popular. Those side branches grew upward to provide shade for the dancers. This is a Tanzlinde, or a dancing tree. The plural is Tanzlinden, because Germany still has a few of these charming arboral structures, some hundreds or even a thousand years old. 

(Image credit: Benreis) 

See and read about Tanzlinden in Sachsenbrunn, Effeltrich, Galenbecker, Gößweinstein, Limmersdorf, Peesten (shown above), and in Schenklengsfeld, where the linden tree is 1265 years old! -via Metafilter 

New, creative ideas in cinema often come from merging two genres. The movie Good Boy is about a dog, but it's a horror film. A guy inherits his grandfather's farm house and moves in with his loyal dog Indy (you know where that name came from). Indy detects malevolent forces before the guy does, as dogs will. It's the first horror film shown from the dog's point of view.  

Indy (the dog's real name as well as the character) belongs to Good Boy director Ben Leonberg. That's how we have that archival footage of him growing up in the beginning of this trailer. We aren't shown much of the horrors. Good Boy got positive reviews at SXSW last spring, and is at 95% among movie critics at Rotten Tomatoes. The one question everyone has is Does the Dog Die? No definite answer so far, but I can't imagine the reviews would be so good if Indy doesn't make it out alive. Good Boy will open in theaters October 3rd. -via Geeks Are Sexy