Enjoy the Eurythmics hit played by various gadgets and appliances, such as a toaster, printer, electric toothbrushes, and calculators. The steam iron adds both a good hiss and visual effects, but it's the googly eyes that really make the video special. Another cool video from the Device Orchestra. -via reddit

Wasps, which include yellowjackets and hornets, are annoying any time you disturb them or threaten their nests. But in the late summer, they are more likely to approach your picnic or backyard barbecue for no discernible reason and ruin a good time. Just a few weeks before, they left you alone. To understand why, you have to know something about a wasp's life cycle and habits.   

To that hard-working mid-summer wasp, your prosecco luncheons and BBQ beers were a bore, because what she was after was protein. She is a hunter, a worker. In mid-summer, her purpose is to provide her baby siblings with protein. She is a sterile cog in a big superorganismal machine, driven by evolution to pass on her genes by raising siblings. Usually, the protein she hunts is other insects (garden caterpillars or flies). She brings prey to the colony where there are thousands of baby siblings to feed.

She might chew the prey up a little (and perhaps ingest some too) before feeding it directly to a larva, but the bulk of the protein goes to the babies. In return for her hard work, the larva will give her a carbohydrate-rich sugary secretion. This is thought to be the main mode of nutrition for adult worker wasps. Each colony will produce several thousand worker wasps and they are kept very busy for much of the summer feeding these brood; with the drive of a drug addict, they are hooked on the sugary secretions from the lips of their baby siblings.

Then as time passes, those larva turn into pupa, and no longer need to be fed as they turn into adult wasps. As the number of larvae dwindle, the adults look elsewhere for their sugar fix- like your flower garden or the beer that you may be holding. Read more about the cycle of life in a wasp's nest over the summer months at The Conversation.  -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Jerzy Strzelecki)

After the fall of the last imperial dynasty in China, the country fell into a decades-long struggle for a cohesive government. While there were many factions involved, those most likely to succeed were the Nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek, and the Communists. Chiang had help in his rise to power from a man named Du Yuesheng, who you've probably never heard of. For decades, any books about Du were banned in China, and even the mention of his name was forbidden.    

Respectable heads of state rarely admit to keeping company with gangsters. But in April 1927, about 15 years after the collapse of the last imperial dynasty, Chiang Kai-shek and China were at a crossroads. Chiang had followed a murky path to leadership of the Chinese Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang. Although the Kuomintang was rivaled by an assortment of warlords who ruled the provinces as their personal fiefdoms, in Chiang’s mind the greatest obstacle between him and control of that vast and war-torn country was a young Communist Party which, he believed, would soon be nothing but lethal trouble.

So generalissimo Chiang turned to Du Yuesheng of the infamous Green Gang of Shanghai, a criminal brotherhood rooted in equal parts menace and murk. Du was the leader of this criminal enterprise, and the bloated, gleaming international city lived and died by his word. It was the power of death which most interested Chiang that spring. He wanted nothing less than complete power over all of China, and to get it, he was willing to trade the lives of thousands and allow the establishment of a vast narcotics empire. Others might have balked at trading the murder of a few thousand political opponents for this goal, but neither Du nor Chiang felt any such hesitation.

The French and American residents of Shanghai factored into the struggle, as the foreigners preferred order instituted by organized crime to the rise of the masses of oppressed workers, for their own survival. Read the story of drug lord Du Yuesheng and his role in the Shanghai massacre in the latest longform article, or listen to it in a podcast, at Damn Interesting.

In junior high and high school, my class studied one Shakespeare play every year. The only one I recall much about was Macbeth, reserved for seniors, because it was so difficult. "Macbeth doth murder sleep," indeed! Macbeth has long been considered the scariest of Shakespeare's plays, as it contains ghosts, witches, murders, curses, blood, and even walking trees. Productions of Macbeth have been littered with so many accidents and fatalities that it is considered a cursed play, and thespians won't even say its name.

But fans of Macbeth often say its freaky qualities are deeper than just the plot devices and characters. For centuries, people been unsettled by the very language of the play.

Actors and critics have long remarked that when you read Macbeth out loud, it feels like your voice and mouth and brain are doing something ever so slightly wrong. There’s something subconsciously off about the sound of the play, and it spooks people. It’s as if Shakespeare somehow wove a tiny bit of creepiness into every single line. The literary scholar George Walton Williams described the “continuous sense of menace” and “horror” that pervades even seemingly innocuous scenes.

Jonathan Hope and Michael Witmore did an analysis of the language used in Macbeth, down to individual words. Which words were used more than in other Shakespeare plays? How were those words used? They came up with the creepiest word in Macbeth, but it's not one you would have guessed. Then they had to explain why its use made the play so unsettling, which you can read at OneZero. -via Metafilter   

(Photo credit: Ungry Young Man)

"The Elephant's Song" tells the story of Old Bet, the first circus elephant in the United States, related from the perspective of a farm dog. Written by Lynn Tomlinson and Sam Saper, the bouncy blues tune belies the sad story, accompanied by lush award-winning animation by Lynn Tomlinson.

-Thanks Sam!

It is with great sadness that we learned of the death of Charlie Watts on Tuesday. The stylish Rolling Stones drummer was 80 years old, and had planned on playing the arena circuit with the band this fall, up until just a few weeks before his death. With tributes rolling in from all corners, people are sharing a particular anecdote they've heard over the years about Watts punching Mick Jagger in the face in Amsterdam in 1984. Hardly anyone gets all the details right from memory, so Vulture reprinted the story from the book Sympathy for the Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters.  

This is the most famous Charlie Watts story. It is a very good story, and true — you cannot beat the Charlie Watts right hook. It’s like being hit by a freight train. Think about him playing “Rip This Joint” on the side of your skull, and you begin to get the idea.

These were bad times for the Rolling Stones. Keith had finally gotten clean, and while Mick had been doing a championship job holding things together with a world-class junkie as his second, by the time they come out the other side, he is convinced the Rolling Stones are his band, and the last thing in the world he wants is to cede control to a cleaned-up junkie guitar player now capable of sharing the decision making. What’s more, heels are dug deep into the argument that will define the confusion of their work for years: Mick wants to make a trendy pop record heavy on dance music, and Keith wants to stick to their roots and drive the guitars into the earth. Blues, reggae, rock’n’roll, whatever, just no tricks. He doesn’t care what the kids are listening to — he cares about what the Rolling Stones do best. The situation only gets worse when Mick decides he needs a solo career.

But that's just the setup. You can read the whole thing as it happened at Vulture. 

pic.twitter.com/YUR6lckf8k

— Keith Richards (@officialKeef) August 24, 2021

Chicago in the 19th century had a problem. The city treated the Chicago River as a waste-disposal system, carrying sewage, garbage, and dead animals away to Lake Michigan. The problem was that the city also drew its fresh water from the lake. Engineer Ellis Sylvester Chesbrough tackled the problem by moving the city's intake valve further out in the lake. Separating the intake from the mouth of the river was a temporary fix, because how far away is far enough?

It was once again Chesbrough who came to the city’s rescue. Chesbrough proposed an audacious plan—reverse the flow of the river away from Lake Michigan. Chesbrough’s outrageous plan worked like this: just west of Chicago River lies a barely perceptible ridge called the Chicago Portage, that separates the drainage basin of the Great Lakes from that of the Mississippi River. Rainfall on the west of this divide flows naturally towards the Des Plaines River, which moves southward to converges with the Kankakee River to form the Illinois River, a tributary of the Mississippi. Any rainfall on the east of the divide flows into the Great Lakes. Chesbrough thought that if a canal could be dug through this divide and made it deeper than the water level of the Chicago river and the lake, gravity would cause the Chicago River’s stinky water to flow backward away from Lake Michigan.

The plan was massive and took years to complete. And it worked! Chicago no longer had to worry about sewage in their drinking water, because it was going into the Mississippi River instead. Which was now a problem for every settlement along the Mississippi, including St. Louis. Read the story of Chicago's scheme to deal with wastewater at Amusing Planet.

Taking on-site pictures and video of sports events is a pretty prestigious assignment among photographers, but it can be dangerous! This supercut shows that occasionally a cameraman will stick his lens in the wrong place, but most of it involves being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Access has its hazards. -via Digg

Monowi, Nebraska, is the smallest incorporated town in the United States, with a population of one person. You read about it here quite a few years ago. Elsie Eiler has been the mayor and sole resident since 2004, when her husband Rudy died. So when Eiler read the results of the 2020 census, the information on her town came as quite a surprise.

The U.S. Census Bureau was reporting Monowi’s population had exploded by 100% and was now home to two people, according to 2020 results it recently released.

“Well, then someone’s been hiding from me, and there’s nowhere to live but my house,” Elise Eiler said Wednesday. “But if you find out who he is, let me know?”

His name is Noise, and he was created by an algorithm to try to protect Eiler’s personal information. Monowi didn’t add another resident to its population, but the Census Bureau did.

“What you’re seeing there is the noise we add to the data so you can’t figure out who is living there,” a Census spokeswoman said. “It protects the privacy of the respondent and the confidentiality of the data they provide.”

It's a bit late to protect Eiler's privacy, as she is well-known for running her small town as she sees fit. She's not alone, so to speak, as the nearby town of Gross went from a population of two to three, unbeknownst to the couple who live there by themselves. Read about the Census Bureau's algorithm that alters the reports we see, called disclosure avoidance, at the Lincoln Journal-Star. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Andrew Filer)

The ninth, or possibly tenth, movie in the Fast & Furious franchise is called simply F9, or sometimes F9: The Fast Saga, or maybe Fast & Furious 9. At any rate, that's so many movies that the main cast has wandered far from the world they inhabited in the first film, yet they continue to use the same action movie tropes to reel in an audience. Screen Junkies is well aware of this, and so they had plenty of material for this Honest Trailer.

Dutch master Johannes Vermeer painted his Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window in the late 1650s. For about 250 years, it has been in the custody of the museum Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, Germany. We now know that the wall behind the girl has a large picture of Cupid! The existence of the painting within the painting was revealed by x-ray in 1979, but it wasn't known at the time whether Vermeer himself covered it up or not.  

But when a major restoration project began in May 2017, conservators discovered that the paint on the wall in the background of the painting, covering the naked Cupid, had in fact been added by another person. When layers of varnish from the 19th century began to be removed from the painting, the conservators discovered that the “solubility properties” of the paint in the central section of the wall were different to those elsewhere in the painting.

Following further investigations, including tests in an archaeometry laboratory, it was discovered that layers of binding agent and a layer of dirt existed between the image of Cupid and the overpainting. The conservators concluded that several decades would have passed between the completion of one layer and the addition of the next and therefore concluded that Vermeer could not have painted over the Cupid himself.

The restoration is now complete, and the painting will soon go on exhibit. Read the saga of the hidden Cupid at The Art Newspaper. -via Kottke

12 frames of stop motion animation I made using knitting! Process video out now as well! 🐑 pic.twitter.com/zFUR5G7Ulg

— Chloe Lemay (@chloe_glow) August 10, 2021

Chloe Lemay is a professional animator and a yarn crafter as well! This sequence of sheep jumping over a fence is the result of hand-knitting. Don't try counting them, because you might fall asleep. But do turn the sound on. Here you can see how she made the video.

Lemay first drew the cartoon, then pixelated each frame on graph paper, then knitted a dozen squares by the pattern for each one. Did they end up on a sweater? No, but they sure made a cool wall hanging!



-via Nag on the Lake

While the rest of the world is turning off lights to save energy, the Orkney Islands are producing so much clean renewable energy that they don't know what to do with it! To be honest, there are plenty of things they can do with it, but the necessary infrastructure is not quite there yet, so they are looking in many different directions to keep from wasting it. The obstacle, of course, is money. Sadly, according to an Orkney resident in the comments, one thing the power companies haven't considered is dropping the price of electricity for local residents, so they still burn coal and oil to heat their homes, if they don't have their own turbine.

The village of Trasmoz, Spain, has only a few dozen year-round residents, but it's a mecca for thousands of people who take part in their witchcraft festival every July. Or visit their sorcery museum any time of the year. Trasmoz is a cursed village, and has taken that status to heart, becoming the Spanish equivalent of Salem, Massachusetts.

Its unorthodox past goes back to a series of squabbles that began more than 700 years ago. At the time, Trasmoz was a prosperous community of Christians, Jews and Arabs with a powerful adversary: the neighbouring monastery of Veruela.

A quarrel between the two over whether villagers could fell trees in the area for firewood came to a head in 1252, leading the monastery’s abbot to demand that Trasmoz be excommunicated from the Catholic church. “One could call it a tantrum,” said Ruiz.

I didn't know a town could be excommunicated. But that was only the beginning. Another dispute 250 years later saw the abbot put a curse on the town. The villagers mainly shrugged and went on with their lives. Afterward, Trasmoz's reputation provided a handy cover for crimes, such as counterfeiting and even murder. But when other Spanish villages began to use local themed festivals to draw tourists, Trasmoz knew what it had to do. Read about the cursed village of Trasmoz at The Guardian. 

During her life in New England, Emily Dickinson was better known for her baking than she was for her poetry. One of her recipes, for black cake, or Caribbean Christmas cake, was scribbled on a note that is now in the hands of Harvard University’s Houghton Library, and it has become a tradition in recent years for Dickinson fans to bake it for her birthday in December.

A relative of British fruit cake, black cake depends on the sugar English colonizers forced the Indigenous and African people they enslaved to produce. The Caribbean version of the cake usually includes rum and either molasses or burnt sugar, also known as browning, a bitter liquid that results from scalding white sugar over a high flame. “You can taste the slight bitterness at the back of your throat,” says Canadian poet M. nourbeSe philip, who wrote an essay on Dickinson’s black cake. For many Caribbean families, preparing the cake is a joyful annual tradition. philip watched her mother bake the cake growing up in Trinidad and Tobago. After she immigrated to Canada, her mother shipped her a homemade black cake every year.

The recipe and its ingredients were likely brought to New England from the Caribbean along the horrific triangular trade. Dickinson’s version uses molasses and swaps the rum out for brandy. Both Dickinson’s and Caribbean recipes are dense with dried fruit, including raisins, currants, and candied citron in Dickinson’s case. And they’re fragrant with nutmeg, cinnamon, and mace, brought to the Caribbean by colonizers from the spice coasts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Malabar.

Dickinson's recipe calls for 19 eggs and will feed an army, but there is also a scaled down version with more accessible ingredients. The article at Atlas Obscura has more, though, as it looks at what is revealed about Emily Dickinson by the recipes, notes, and letters she left behind.