The YouTuber behind the Brick Experiment Channel designed and built a remote-control LEGO car to see how it would climb obstacles. The first iteration of that car is here, but it wasn't good enough. In this video, he adds another joint to the chassis and puts it into situations you just know the car cannot climb out of. But it does. The vehicle design is quite impressive, but his skills at controlling the movements are amazing. -via reddit

Competitive athletes face a constant conundrum in many sports. Gaining weight can give you more energy, muscle, and endurance. But losing weight can put you in a different competition class, which can make the difference between winning and losing. For women athletes, there's also the extra pressure of keeping their weight down for appearances. Looking chubby or masculine can be brutal when you're in the the media spotlight. Coaches and athletes alike have long bought into the "leaner is better" idea. But there's a cost to dieting while training for a sport. Nutritionist Christel Dunshea-Mooij became concerned about New Zealand women's rowing team after the 2016 Olympics. They were in danger of RED-S, or Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport.

In 2018, Dunshea-Mooij tested the female rowers to find out their energy availability, which she describes as "the energy available to the body - from food - after the costs of exercise have been accounted for." So what's left over to run your body for the day.

The athletes made a food diary to see how many calories they were consuming, used their watches to calculate their energy expenditure, and had DEXA scans to determine their fat-free mass.

“When we saw the data, we were shocked,” Dunshea-Mooij admits.

She drew up a risk model based on the IOC consensus statement on RED-S, with three coloured zones - red for high risk, orange for moderate risk, and green for low risk of RED-S. "Only one of our females was in the green,” she says.

RED-S can cause issues with bone density, fertility, immunity, and metabolic and cardiovascular function. (Most of the rowers had "excellent bone density", also measured by the DEXA scan.)

Dunshea-Mooij worked with the rowers' coaches to turn things around. This not only meant eating more, but changing how the athletes thought about eating.

Jackie Kiddle, the current world champion in the lightweight double sculls, was also in the orange after the original testing.

As a lightweight athlete, the change in fuelling was a big shift, she says. “It used to be you ate less to stay a lightweight. But to be able to see I could eat a lot more and then train harder - and stay at the same weight - was eye-opening. It made a huge difference to the way I trained, because I could work harder.”

The change in their training diets led to four Olympic medals won by female boats in various rowing events. In fact, rowing was New Zealand's most successful sport in Tokyo. Read how they did at Newsroom. -via Metafilter

If you post a grainy, out-of-focus picture the internet, people will accuse you taking it with a potato instead of a camera. So when I heard of the Potato Photographer of the Year competition, I assumed it was a joke. It is not a joke, and it is exactly what it says: a photo competition for pictures of potatoes. The overall winner is William Ropp, for the artwork you see above, entitled "Fish and Chips."

“There's something extremely wonderful and weird about this work. The amalgamation of vegetables and animals creates a strange portrait of the everyday food we consume. The fact that the image was taken on a polaroid camera with just a flashlight is of great credit to the photographer's skill.” Amy D’Agorne

I particularly like this image by Steve Caplin, which he says was made with Potatoshop. It came in fifth in the competition. Not all those that placed in the final results are artworks, though- there are plenty of straightforward but lovely photos of potatoes in one form or another. See all the top photos here.

-via Nag on the Lake

If you're going to be breaking into houses, lifting large bags of cash at the bank, or running from the police, you've got to be in shape! It take training to be a thief! Two anonymous and ridiculously sterotypical criminals put in their time at the gym, where onlookers are fairly bemused. -via Laughing Squid

Larrimah is a small town in the Northern Territory at the terminus of the North Australia Railway. How small is it? It had a population of 13 people, including 70-year-old Paddy Moriarty, who spent most of his time drinking beer at the Pink Panther pub.  

Paddy took his place at the bar, filled with bric-a-brac and kitsch Australiana. On any given day, Paddy chatted with regulars and tourists who stopped by to have a drink or a bite to eat, or to get a glimpse of the croc. Some Larrimah residents would describe Paddy himself as an attraction at the pub, spinning yarns from his time on the ranches and greeting arriving tourists with a hearty, “G’day folks, where ya from?”

And so it was on that sweltering day, December 16, 2017, that Paddy sat down to nurse a series of cold XXXX Golds in his koozie — beers, it turned out, that would be his last. Paddy Moriarty and his dog were about to vanish without a trace, kicking off an investigation that would turn the town upside down and spark international media coverage. Initial concern for his wellbeing soon gave way to darker rumors of murder.

In this town — now down to 12 residents — everyone was a possible suspect.

Since no trace of Paddy nor his dog were ever found, the case was considered a murder. The clues were scant, but Paddy's history involved a menagerie with a crocodile, meat pies, a poisoned garden, and roadkill kangaroos. Was it the jealous bartender? Was it the tea house owner who feuded with Paddy for years? Was it the reclusive gardener she depended on for protection? Read the story of the missing man from Larrimah at Medium. -via Damn Interesting

You start to watch this film, and you'll say, "Hey! This isn't stop-motion animation! This is a stunt skiing video!" Well, why not both? The guys are doing their thing in real time, but the environment around them animates to fill their need for speed -and height! It's an experimental film from Swiss filmmaker Sämi Ortlieb and his fun-loving friends. You can read more about this project here. -via Digg

For every film produced by a major Hollywood studio, there are several that didn't get made. Sometimes it's just a rejected idea, sometimes a film lingers in development hell for years, and sometimes the project burns through millions of dollars before being abandoned. We often don't even find out why a movie doesn't get made. But quite a few of these unfinished projects became legends anyway.

2. Superman Lives

The names attached to this would-be Superman movie have made it notorious among film fans. Tim Burton was set to direct, with Nicolas Cage starring as the title hero and Kevin Smith co-writing the script. The project was eventually killed, but not before the studio burned $30 million on it. The most that survives of it today is test footage of Cage in the iconic suit.

16. Sylvester Stallone’s Poe

Prior to his days as an action star, Sylvester Stallone came close to portraying a literary icon. Stallone had planned to write and star in an Edgar Allan Poe biopic—titled Poe—early in his film career. He eventually accepted that he wasn’t the right person to play the macabre writer, but he got far enough to do some costume tests.

Read about many other movies that got off the ground somewhat but never made it into a theater at Mental Floss.

Have you ever thought about taking up cartooning? Or maybe you already do, but would like to expand your horizons. The Center for Carton Studies is offering a free One-Week Cartooning Workout, a free, self-directed course in stretching your creativity and making your cartoons better. The exercises for each day provide structure and tips without judgement or competition. You can even space the days out or spend several days on each exercise, if you prefer. Spoiler: there are actually eight days.

"The awful comic you make is always going to be better than the perfect comic you never make."  -Inky Soloman, CSS Legend

Even if you've never considered making cartoons or comics, this could be a fun way to stretch your brain. And who knows, you might change your mind and take up a new creative outlet!

-via Metafilter

The word "jumbo," meaning big, didn't exist before the elephant named Jumbo. He was a star in his day, although he did not live the kind of life an elephant should. Tufts University has the biography of the world's most famous elephant. Actually, this is more than a biography, because Jumbo had quite a story even after he died.  -via Kottke

Polish javelin thrower Maria Andrejczyk had a hard road to the 2020 Olympics. She just missed the medal cutoff in Rio in 2016, suffered an injury in 2017, was diagnosed with cancer in 2018, but fought her way back. In Tokyo, Andrejczyk won the silver medal.

On Wednesday, Andrejczyk posted on her Facebook page that she came across the fundraiser for 8-month-old Miłoszek Małysa, who had a serious heart defect and needed surgery, and she decided to auction off her lone Olympic medal to help raise money for his surgery.

That was last week, and the auction is now over. Read how it turned out at ESPN. -via Nag on the Lake

Get ready for heavy metal harp! Harpist Emily Hopkins got the heaviest distortion pedal she could find, normally for guitars, and used it with her harps. The resulting sound is like an electric guitar, but still different because of the way a harp is played. Hopkins tries different tunes with different settings, producing sounds ranging from rock 'n' roll to summoning demons from the depths of hell. -via reddit

Since 2014, a cat named Horatio has been the face of the Centre County Library & Historical Museum in Bellefonte, Centre Hall, and Philipsburg, Pennsylvania. Horatio is their Caturday star, dressing up as movie characters and literary icons in order to promote the library's books and programs. Horatio's owner, Lisa Shaffer, makes all the costumes that Horatio so patiently wears.



Of course, you will recognize the nod to Carol Burnett's greatest skit ever.



Horatio always looks like he's really enjoying his photo shoots. Bored Panda made a gallery of Horatio's 100 best pictures, or if you have the patience to look through years of them, you can see them all at Instagram.

Even though we never thought about it before, we all already know in our hearts how to recognize the soon-to-be-victim in a movie. It's when Alasdair Beckett-King (previously) puts all the clues together that we realize how easy that determination really is. That said, you may have to watch this short sequence twice to connect the first character with the last character. -via Laughing Squid

The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for 2021 has drawn to a close. Since 1982, the contest has been run by now-retired Professor Scott Rice of San Jose State University, in order to challenge writers and would-be writers to come up with the opening sentence to the world's worst novel. It's a tribute to author Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, once a widely-read author, now mostly known for the contest that bears his name. The winners have been announced. The Grand Prize goes to Stu Duval of Auckland, New Zealand.

A lecherous sunrise flaunted itself over a flatulent sea, ripping the obsidian bodice of night asunder with its rapacious fingers of gold, thus exposing her dusky bosom to the dawn’s ogling stare.

David Hynes of Bromma, Sweden, won the Grand Panjamdrum's Special Award.  

Victor Frankenstein admired his masterpiece stretched out on the lab slab; it was almost human, OK, no conscience or social awareness, and not too bright, but a little plastic surgery to hide the scars and bolts, maybe a spray tan and a hairdo, and this guy could run for President!

Read the winners in the categories of Adventure, Children's & Young Adult Literature, Crime & Detective, Dark & Stormy, Fantasy & Horror, Historical Fiction, Purple Prose, Romance, Science Fiction, Vile Puns, Western, and Odious Outliers, plus dishonorable mentions in each, at the contest site.

After hearing the requests for years, Disney is launching the first official Star Wars anime series. Star Wars: Visions is not canon, however. It's an experimental anthology series in which seven Japanese animation studios have free rein to tell nine stories. They range in the Star Wars timeline from before The Phantom Menace to after The Rise of Skywalker.

While purists say you should watch anime in Japanese to catch the inflections of the original voice artists (subtitles are fine), you will also have the option to see the English dub (featuring many well-known Western actors), so here's that trailer.



Star Wars: Visions will begin streaming on Disney+ on September 22. Read a description of each episode at Inverse.