(Image credit: Ehsan Kamali)

The critically endangered Asiatic cheetah once ranged across many nations from the Arabian peninsula to South Asia. The subspecies Acinonyx jubatus venaticus diverged from African cheetahs somewhere between between 32,000 and 67,000 years ago, according to genetic studies. Rulers in Asia once captured cheetahs to use them as swift hunting dogs. But the cheetah population declined drastically in the 20th century due to habitat loss, hunting, lack of prey, and traffic accidents. The only population of Asiatic cheetahs left in the wild are in Iran, where there are thought to be only nine males and three females left as of last year. 

(Image credit: Azadeh Torkaman)

Cheetahs are notoriously hard to breed in captivity. Attempts to breed the Asiatic cheetah have seen dismal results. The only Asiatic cheetahs born in captivity were three cubs delivered via cesarian section in Tehran, Iran, in 2022. The mother (named Iran) had been rescued from a trafficking situation and was raised in captivity. Iran rejected the cubs, most likely due to the lack of a birth experience, and the cubs had to be hand-fed. Two of the cubs died within their first few weeks. The third, named Pirouz (pictured above) became a symbol of national pride for Iran. However, Pirouz died of kidney failure at the age of ten months.

Reintroducing Cheetahs to India

One response to the drastic decline in Asiatic cheetahs is a program to reintroduce cheetahs to India, where they declared wiped out in the 1950s. Twenty cheetahs from Namibia and South Africa were relocated to Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh over the past year. Since March of 2023, six of the original cheetahs and three cubs have died. None of those cheetahs died by human hands, but one succumbed to malnutrition. Prey animals in the park have declined since the cheetah program was proposed. The others died of infections that may have stemmed from poor species management, and have to do with the fact that African cheetahs are genetically and environmentally different from Asiatic cheetahs. These cheetahs grew in their winter coats just as the rainy season began in India, leading to fungal and parasitic infections taking hold around wounds and tracking collars. Cheetah experts in Namibia and South Africa blame inexperienced veterinarians and project mismanagement. They are offering advice, as they know how fragile cheetah populations can be.  

The cheetah reintroduction program in India has had deleterious effects on the human population, too. The Sahariya people who lived in the forests of Kuno before it became a national park depended on harvesting chir, an expensive fragrant resin, from the forest's salai trees. The Sahariya villagers were relocated from the area that became the national park due to a program to reintroduce the Asiatic lion, which never came to fruition. The villagers kept returning to the forest to harvest chir, but the cheetah reintroduction program has made large swatches of the park completely inaccessible to them.     

The letter X is altogether unnecessary in phonics, and rarely does a word begin with it. But we keep it around because we like it. We end a lot of words with X, and when it's "ex," we begin words with it all the time. It's used to indicate something is wrong in schoolwork. People who can't write their names use an X as a signature. Elon Musk uses it for everything. We leverage its meaning as an unknown with titles such as The X-Files and X-Men and phrases such as "X factor." It's the mathematical use of X for an unknown that lends intrigue to the letter. But how did X become the algebraic symbol for the unknown?

There are several theories for this use of X. Civilizations developed mathematics, geometry, and algebra used different stand-in words for the unknown. Multiple translations may have led the Arabic al-shayun, which means "something," to become an X. These translation stories take different paths. Or it could have been a good supply of the letter X at a printing firm. Read about the different stories of how we got the mathematical X at The Conversation. -via Smithsonian

(Image credit: Lisa Williams)

The US government owns a lot of land, and a lot of buildings. Some are grand federal buildings that house offices and crucial services. Others are just there on federal land, some being used for government business, others not so much. And many are miscellaneous buildings that were unclaimed, abandoned, or taken for taxes owed. Estimates of the number of those buildings range between 120,000 and 400,000, but pinning that down to a more accurate number is difficult, if not impossible. The problem is that those properties are managed by widely different agencies, from five branches of the military to the National Park Service to obscure agencies we don't even know about. Efforts to consolidate the information from all those agencies is like trying to herd cats. Half as Interesting explains why the question of just how many buildings the federal government owns will probably never be answered. The last minute of this video is an ad. -via Digg

The Pentagon has 17.5 miles of corridors and 6.5 million square feet of office space. Those many walls feature tons of photographs and artworks of military subjects produced by military personnel. A painting that can be found on the fifth floor, 10th corridor, D ring, went viral on X a few weeks ago. The chosen subject of this painting brought up profound memories shared by veterans.

The discarded magazine represents the alluring but ultimately shallow representations of the recruiter who convinces the individual to participate in collective debasement.

— B. A. Friedman (@BA_Friedman) June 22, 2023

The painting is titled "Hide Your Head in the Sand." The artist is Harley Copic, an aviation artist with more than 50 paintings hanging in the Pentagon, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, and the Air Force Museum. The Porta-John depicted stood at Tallil Air Base in Iraq in April 2003.

Every enlistee in all branches of the US military is very aware of the vast gap between everyday warriors and the officer class, but all who have been deployed over the last 30-something years have used such facilities. Copic's iconic rendition is the symbol that brings service members and officers together. 

Within a forward-deployed Porta-John’s steamy confines, the scalding stillness of which can make an exterior 125-degree Iraq afternoon feel, at least momentarily upon exiting, like a fall evening in Montana, rank counts for nothing.

The irony is that this painting is in the Pentagon, among the hallowed halls that most enlisted members rarely penetrate. If prints were available, they would sell better than Copic's other artworks, and then be respectfully framed and displayed in veterans' bathrooms across the nation. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: B. A. Friedman)

The Device Orchestra (previously at Neatorama) has gone wireless. Well, I would suppose that electric toothbrushes are already wireless (mine is) and the only other gadget participating in this song is a credit card reader, but it now runs on batteries. In this video, the trio takes on the classic song "Thunderstruck" by AC/DC. What I want to know is how this guy gets those googly eyes to stay on the toothbrushes when they are vibrating, I mean, rockin' so hard.  

We've heard versions of "Thunderstruck" played on cellos, on the Korean gayageum, on the Chinese guzheng, and sung by a baby. You can even do a folk dance to it. I'm kind of enamored with the Finnish bluegrass version. You could say it's a universal song. -via Geeks are Sexy

The word "dinosaur" was coined in 1840, and it wasn't long before the general public was fascinated by the extinct creatures. This popularity was mainly the work of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, an artist and naturalist who sculpted dinosaurs for the Crystal Palace dinosaur display in London in 1851. In 1868, Hawkins was commissioned to make more dinosaurs for the proposed Paleozoic Museum in New York City. Hawkins set up a workshop in new York and went to work, which included new research from Drexel University on the latest fossil discoveries.

But before the Paleozoic Museum was ready for the public, political reorganization led to a new board of directors for Central Park. Hawkins was fired, and was never paid for the work he had done. Then in 1871, an order went out for the "old barn, shed, and structures at that place" (meaning Central Park) to be removed. Instead of just being removed, Hawkins' workshop was destroyed, along with all his dinosaur models, smashed to smithereens. The remains were reportedly either buried or dumped into the pond at the park. For 150 years, the destruction of the dinosaur models was blamed on Boss Tweed, the corrupt politician who controlled New York City. At least that's you'd think by reading the sensational newspaper stories of the time. But it wasn't Tweed who gave the orders to get rid of the museum. Read the real story of the short-lived Paleozoic Museum at Atlas Obscura.  -via Strange Company

It's not always great to be the king. Sure, you have wealth and power, but it comes at a cost. When you look at the many kings and queens in history, they may have had cushy lives compared to their subjects, but they also had to contend with people who were jealous of what they had, or hated them for what they did. Many were killed by enemy kingdoms, citizen uprisings, or those who had a way to take the crown themselves. It was a lucky monarch who died simply from the lack of modern medical knowledge. But in a few royal deaths, the monarch's status actually impeded medical care, as when one young ruler could have been saved by an amputation to stop infection, but his surgeons were each afraid to take responsibility in case something went wrong. And then there are those whose deaths were so weird, they came to be legends. Some of them might even be true!   

Research on psychopathology mostly addresses criminal psychopaths and how we might identify such people. But that research is expanding, because it's very possible, even common, for a psychopath to be law-abiding and hide their psychopathic tendencies, possibly through their entire lives. Psychopathology can be a spectrum, with serial killers on one end, and people who will never be diagnosed on the other end.

But that's not all that is new in the research. Psychopathic tendencies not only vary by degree, but by dimensions. The traditional models measure traits of meanness and disinhibition. A new trait has been added to the mix, a spectrum called boldness, defined as "a mix of social dominance, emotional resiliency and venturesomeness." Research shows that people with psychopathic traits measured along this axis can be very successful in their careers or business, especially if they have some control over their mean and uninhibited behavior. In fact, some recruiters actively seek candidates that show psychopathic tendencies to fill job positions. Read about how psychopathic traits can lead to success at Smithsonian.

You may have learned that the universe is expanding, or maybe it's not. Not that it really matters to people like you and me, because it's already bigger than our minds can comprehend, and may as well be infinite. Toby Lockerbie, also known as Epic Spaceman, is thinking about the Milky Way. It's a tiny part of the universe, but in human terms, it's all there is. In this visualization, he shrinks the Milky Way to the size of the United States, since that's a size we Americans can understand. He also shrinks himself to narrate. While that's pretty mind-blowing in itself, the video is lovely and quite poetic as it explains the relative spaces between very big things. Plus there's a coda at the end to make us feel better about being so small. While we may be small, he assures us that we are far from insignificant. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Back in the 1970s, there were as few as 200 golden lion tamarins in the wild. That's when efforts began to save the South American primate. Though still an endangered species, the population of the tamarin species in Brazil and other parts of the Atlantic Forest has rebounded to around 4,800 in a recent survey. The Golden Lion Tamarin Association in Brazil tells us that three factors are helping the tamarins.

About three dozen farmers are participating in a program to increase the tamarins' habitat area. One of those farmers, Ayrton Violento, has converted part of his farm to native fruit trees and he also has a nursery to provide trees to others in the reforestation program. Violento happily reported seeing more tamarin families living on his farm in recent years.

Between 2014 and 2019, the tamarin population dropped by more than a thousand individuals due to a yellow fever outbreak. Hundreds of tamarins were inocculated with a vaccine derived from the human yellow fever vaccine, and the outbreak subsided.

Also, the illegal pet trade was rampant in the 1960s, but strict enforcement against poachers has alleviated the problem, at least for tamarins. Read the details of this good news about the golden lion tamarinds of Brazil at ABC. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Pierre5018)

When a public restroom is this luxurious, you may want to just move in and stay! This sight in Nanjing, China, is the first part you see when you walk into the restroom at the very upscale Deji Plaza shopping mall. The hallway shown leads to a huge lounge packed with comfy seating. From there, you can move into the men's restroom, the women's restroom, a nursing lounge, or a medical room. Both the men's and women's restrooms also have a dressing room. The seven-room facility was designed by Shanghai-based firm X+Living. Notice the plants in the walls, the glossy flooring, and the light fixtures in the shapes of flowers and bees. The facilities are completely accessible, with room for wheelchairs, movable railing, and bidets. All rooms offer wireless phone charging and call buttons for assistance. I read no mention of an entrance fee. See the fancy fixtures and other details in a series of pictures at Architectural Digest. -via Moss and Fog

(Image credit: SFAP)

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You might have the cutest pet in history, but things can go wrong when you try to take a picture, because animals don't like to sit still and pose for you. They don't like to smile on command, and they can be downright creepy looking, caught on one frame while in motion. For example, Stanley doesn't always look like Slenderman's dog.

(Image credit: Energylegs23)

And sometimes you have no idea what's going on until you get a good look at the picture you took. The cat below was just looking out the window, and the photographer had no idea there was something looking back, until she saw what the flash illuminated.

(Image credit: elliotgranath)

But these animals have nothin' on Pixel. He always looks like that.

(Image credit: Pixel and Sophie)

Check out a gallery of 50 pet pictures that show how weird and creepy they can be at times, from oddly funny to downright terrifying, in a ranked list at Bored Panda.

Alfred Hitchcock always kept us in suspense with eerie stories of all kinds. He was particularly careful to craft his favorite characters, those evil villains. You might suspect at times that Hitch wanted to step into the role of the villain himself. In the short film Master of Suspense, he does just that. This is not artificial intelligence messing with the classics, this is Hitchcock himself, acting suspicious as he always did. Fabrice Mathieu (previously at Neatorama) edited down the relevant bits from the cameos Hitchcock made in more than thirty different films, and added some creative cutting and pasting. A new soundtrack by Bernard Herrmann ties it all together into a coherent narrative.   

Master of Suspense also features Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Jimmy Stewart, Janet Leigh, Gregory Peck, and some other stars you might recognize. As in many of Hitchcock's films, a train plays a big part.

-Thanks, Fabrice!

Carl Scheele was an 18th century chemist who had some amazing accomplishments. He discovered oxygen, for instance. He also isolated and identified a slew of other elements, including molybdenum, tungsten, barium, hydrogen, and chlorine, plus a bunch of organic acids. But almost 300 years later, Scheele's name is known best for a pigment he developed called Scheele's Green, which became quite popular, especially in wallpaper. It was loaded with arsenic, however, which was released into the air when fungus consumed the wallpaper.

Scheele himself had a habit of studying his elements and compounds by sniffing them and tasting them, and ended up furthering our knowledge of how dangerous these chemicals can be. When he died at age 43, the cause of death was determined to be mercury poisoning. It probably didn't help that he had, over time, consumed a fair amount of arsenic, chlorine, and other heavy metals along the way. Scheele is only one of five scientists whose work ended up either killing them or making their lives miserable, tragically chronicled at Cracked.   

Update: To be fair, Cracked's list could be described as "four scientists who brought destruction upon themselves, and one who brought destruction on everyone." However, Geoduck pointed out that the fifth, Thomas Midgley, was indeed killed by his own invention. Thanks, Geoduck!

You may have seen a visual comparison of the Titanic (the biggest ship of its time) with a modern cruise ship to show how enormous cruise ships have become. You also have to understand they are two different kinds of ships, with different purposes, and that's why they are built that way and look nothing alike. In fact, ocean cruises started out as a new idea that sprung up to keep ocean liners earning money in the off season, and grew substantially when people started traveling by plane. Not only were ocean liners refurbished to cruise, but new ships were designed specifically to make money on cruises alone. Today, cruise ships are pretty much modern resorts in one crowded building that happen to float. But at least you can tell people you've been to the Bahamas without having to drive or find a pit stop on the way. Vox takes us from luxury ocean liners to modern cruise ships and explains why they are so different.