Just look what you can do with an oscillating fan and some household junk! Well, maybe not you, exactly, but someone did, and we are trying to figure out why. This might be an art installation of some kind, or it might be someone's lockdown project. While the idea of automating the fun of blowing bubbles seems a bit sad, this weird machine is mesmerizing to watch. The YouTube page has no information and no comments, but they titled this video "Delicate balance." However, nothing is really balanced; it's all held together by clothespins and clamps and weighted to the ground by a cinder block. So.... nothing about it makes any sense at all. This is what the internet was made for. -via reddit

Dhaka muslin was made in Bengal, now Bangladesh, for thousands of years. This fabric was so fine, light, and transparent that it was considered a national treasure. Around 200 years ago, it revolutionized fashion in Europe, as stylish women such as Joséphine Bonaparte and Jane Austen ditched their heavy, wide dresses in favor of the Empire-style muslin chemise, which could be scandalously thin. Dhaka muslin was made by skilled artisans in a 16-step process taken on seperately by villages around the city of Dhaka. The cotton fibers used were so fine that thread counts of 800 to 1200 per square inch could be achieved and the muslin would still appear diaphanously thin. But it's been 100 years now since Dhaka muslin was produced this way. The British Empire killed the industry, artisans turned to other fabrics, and the unique cotton plant that produced the fiber went extinct. An effort is being made to reproduce Dhaka muslin, but they're not quite there yet. Read about Dhaka muslin and what happened to it at BBC Future. -via Nag on the Lake

The point where the Fahrenheit and Centigrade temperature scales meet is -40. Once you get that cold,  a degree here or there makes little difference because you do not want to be out in it. Winter is a lot colder than that in Yakutsk, Russia, the coldest city in the world. The lowest temperature ever recorded in Yakutsk was −64.4 °C (−83.9 °F). It also has the distinction of being the city with the greatest temperature differential, because the short summers can be quite warm. Yakutsk is where cold weather is a way of life for most of the year. If your car isn't in a heated garage, you leave it running all the time. You learn early how to dress for the weather. And when you want to impress people, you do some crazy experiments to show how fast things will freeze.

Kiun B has a bunch of videos about living in Yakutsk, the cold weather, and her Sakha culture.

This is the logo for the Cleveland Browns football team. It is a football helmet; everyone can see that. But if you cropped it in a certain way, as Fox Sports did for the Christmas Day game against Green Bay, you lose that context and it looks like something else.

Christmas thoughts by Megan: At first I was like "WTF is that on the score bug for the Browns? A rabbit using a walker?" and then realized that the helmet blends into the background color. Though, rabbit using a walker is close maybe. *lifts glass* pic.twitter.com/kHRWtCADGt

— Megs (@YankeeMegs) December 25, 2021

The Browns’ logo looks like a chocolate bunny pushing a cart. I’m probably the only one who sees this. 🐇 🏈 pic.twitter.com/5QE8zsn5Wh

— David Tarkington (@davidtark) December 25, 2021

No, you weren't the only one who saw it. Far from it. It's definitely a bunny rabbit, but people are split on whether it is pushing a shopping cart or using a walker. The difference may have to do with one's experience with such devices. This is a prime example of pareidolia, when we see a familiar pattern in an image that is not necessarily there. In the Browns' logo, the cropping took away the most important element of a helmet- it's head shape. The helmet being the same color as the background doesn't help. What was left was a jumble that our brains needed to make sense of. See more of these Tweets at Design Taxi. -via Digg

(Top image credit: Erik Drost)

If you had "raining fish" on your 2021 Bingo card, you can check that one off. The City of Texarkana, Texas posted a notice on Facebook that residents aren't losing their minds; fish really did rain down on the town on Wednesday.

Animal rain is a phenomenon that occurs when small water animals like frogs, crabs, and small fish are swept up in waterspouts or drafts that occur on the surface of the earth. They are then rained down at the same time as the rain.

The post asked residents to leave pictures of any fish they found in the comments. There are over four hundreds comments. As you can imagine, a lot of them are jokes, but some show small fish, or fish parts, found in lawns around town.

We've seen phenomena like this before, when frogs, worms, snails, or other critters manage to fall from the sky. That time it rained meat in Kentucky was the strangest. For now, we can just take flying fish for what they are. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: The City of Texarkana, Texas)

The illusion shown above is called "The Phantom Queen." It took a lot of work to make it perfect, but that work paid off as the illusion by Matt Pritchard was crowned the Best Illusion of the Year in the annual contest held by the Neural Correlate Society. Check out the illusion that won second place below. Don't read the description until after you've seen the video.  



Michael A. Cohen of Amherst College/MIT created "The Changing Room Illusion" to illustrate how we don't notice changes if they are gradual enough. Yeah, like watching kids grow up.

Those who have been following this contest over the years may be surprised that Japanese mathematician Kokichi Sugihara did not win the top prize this year, as he has so many times before. Sugihara hasn't retired; one of his illusions made the top ten. You can see all the top ten finalists for the 2021 competition at the contest site. -via Gizmodo

Anytime you go to Twitter and see Betty White trending, you get a feeling in the pit of your stomach. Then you see that she's trending for something she said or because her birthday is coming up. But today the feeling was real. Betty White has passed away, just a few weeks before she would have turned 100 years old. White began her career in radio at a very young age, and became a television icon, starring in Hollywood on Television, Life with Elizabeth, The Betty White Show, Password (and other game shows), The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mama's Family, The Golden Girls, The Bold and the Beautiful, Boston Legal, and Hot in Cleveland, plus a host of other appearances. You can see a retrospective of her career in pictures here.

this betty white scene from golden girls still never fails to make me happy, 30+ years later. betty improvised most of the story and bea and rue couldn’t help but lose their composure and slip out of character. RIP to a comedy queen. pic.twitter.com/uQ0N9jTWE9

— joe (@jxeker) December 31, 2021

Tributes are popping up all over the web. Betty White was 99.

No one wants to hear about an engine failing when you're flying. What could possibly go wrong? But within the first minute of this video, we are assured that it's not all that serious. It's a good thing that commercial aircraft have two engines! Here they explain a little more about aircraft engines, but as far as the question in the title goes, it all depends on the aircraft. At least it can fly far enough to get to an airport and land. Now, if you're flying with a single-engine plane, you've got plenty to fret about if you lose an engine. -via Digg

The New Year holiday is unique in that it revolves around time itself. All we are really celebrating is a change of date or a new calendar, but we've made it symbolically a holiday of hope and renewal. Not that there's anything wrong with that. One of the traditions of celebrating on New Years Eve is counting down the seconds until the clock strikes midnight. Before the 20th century, bells would ring at midnight and  celebrants would cheer, but the actual countdown is more recent than you might suspect. The first New Years Eve countdown was on radio in 1957, and it was only in 1979 that the crowd at Times Square began to chant along with the countdown!

No one ever really thought about counting down the seconds to an event until nuclear detonations and the space race came along. Those two subjects illustrate how countdowns ranged from despair to celebration in their history. Read how the New Year countdown evolved and became a tradition at Smithsonian.

When your goth phase isn't just a phase, but a total lifestyle, you might think about buying a house in Lincoln, Illinois. It has two bedrooms and two baths, on a quiet street in a nice neighborhood, room for the kids to play, and it's black. All black. And not just the outside.

The living room, kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms, and laundry room are black. There are a few gray appliances and some white accents, but that's just to keep you from getting lost. There's a freestanding three-car garage, and it's black, too.

Honestly, even if you love the look, this could be dangerous for someone whose eyesight is not as sharp as it used to be. There should be a warning against anyone prone to seasonal affective disorder as well. But I also imagine that it would be easy to invite people over, since everyone in town knows where the black house is. See a lot more pictures of this real estate listing at Zillow. -via Fark

This horse head is now in the the custody of the Sanxingdui Museum in Guanghan City, Sichuan Province, China. It was excavated from the Sanxingdui archaeological site, and is estimated to be over 3,000 years old. But it looks quite modern, doesn't it? In fact, it looks downright familiar. What does it remind you of? Commenters at reddit suggested Donkey from Shrek, Quickdraw McGraw, and Marty the Zebra. I personally thought of Jar Jar Binks, but I've seen way too much Star Wars. The consensus is that ancient Chinese craftsmen were really into Disney/Pixar characters. Or maybe our modern age animations are just another step in a long lineage of amusing art. It's not the only stylized Sanxingdui relic that resembles modern pop culture characters.

In Alaska, you may have some special needs that you need a special pickup truck for. Instead of buying a whole new vehicle, there's usually a way to make what you need. Now, This particular design must have a purpose. You think? It's possible that this is the only way they could figure out how to get it on the road again after some unfortunate accident. It's well worth waiting through the first ten seconds to catch a first glimpse, but that will not prepare you for the majesty of the entire truck. This vehicle was spotted in Wasilla in October. The guy filming should have chased it down, because everyone wants to ask, "Why?" -via Digg

If you didn't get a new calendar for Christmas, you're probably going to buy one this week. And while you're jotting down birthdays and anniversaries on it, you might also want to mark the eclipses and planetary alignments that will occur in 2022.

There will be two, count 'em, two total lunar eclipses available to viewers in the US. The first one, on the night of May 15-16, will be visible from all 48 contiguous states -unless the clouds move in where you are. The second, on November 8, will occur at night the west coast and during daylight on the east coast. There will also be an alignment of six planets on June 24, which is an excuse to buy a telescope or at least find a community event with telescopes. Read more about these events, and see the entire schedule for meteor showers and full moons, at WABC.  -via Fark

Drinking games have been with us since ancient times, because they are a somewhat socially acceptable way of getting completely wasted without having to admit that's what you intended in the fist place. An added bonus is seeing your friends get way drunker than they intended. And with New Year's Eve coming up, you might want some ideas for giving an international flavor to your party. The scariest drinking game I could think of is darts, but that really falls under the heading of "pub sport." Almost as dangerous is the German drinking game called Hammerschlagen.

You start the game off by having players hammer a nail into a tree stump until it stands on its own. Then each person raises the hammer above their head and tries to smash the nail all the way in … using the edge end. Every time you fail, you must drink.

Good thing that alcohol increases your dexterity and coordination (it's why police give you awards for driving after having a few); otherwise, some might consider this game irresponsible and dangerous.

Read up on 15 drinking games from various areas of history and geography at Cracked. Do not attempt any of these games unless you have made arrangements for a designated driver or overnight accommodations.  

The annual list of foreign objects that required medical intervention to remove from human bodies is out. Honestly, finding our previous posts for such lists was as easy as searching for the word "orifices" (they are now tagged). Every year, Barry Petchesky gathers medical reports from all over as detailed in the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s database of emergency room visits to compile the list, which is broken down by orifice from the top down. All details are verbatim from the report. Here's a sample from the throat section, which is always dominated by children.

“INHALED A SEWING NEEDLE IN A PLASTIC TUBE WITH A STRING ATTACHED WHEN TRYING TO USE IT AS A BLOWDART”

“PER MOM SHE WAS LOOKING FOR HER CAR REMOTE & SAID OUT LOUD ‘WHERE IS THE BATTERY THAT GOES IN HERE’  PT REPLIED, ‘I ATE IT’”

“SWALLOWED A PENNY BECAUSE SHE SAYS SHE IS A ‘HUMAN PIGGY BANK’”

The reports of objects stuck in other orifices get cringier as they go, so be warned that some of the cases may cause sympathetic pain or bring up mental images that are NSFW. The 2021 list is here. -via Fark