The day after Labor Day, as if on cue, five houses on my street suddenly have their fall wreathes or other autumn decorations up. Including mine. It's also the perfect day for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to launch their Fall Foliage Prediction Map. The map itself is all green right now, with just a bit of yellow along the Canadian border, but you can change the date with a slider. The image above is the map for the week of October 16. That might be the best time to schedule a drive through the Smokies, but wherever you go, there's a peak week for leaf-peeping.

The site also wants your feedback, with a survey that simply asks you to report the progress of fall foliage of your area today, and this year you'll have the ability to contribute current photographs of the colors you are experiencing in your neck of the woods. This data will help fine-tune next year's map. And there's a lesson in how and why leaves change color from their chlorophyll green to the bright autumn colors underneath produced by beta-carotene, anthocyanins, and flavonols. Plus you'll find a printable coloring book for the kids, and recipes for seasonal treats: pecan pie, moonshine apple pie, and pumpkin spice latte. Bookmark the Fall Foliage Prediction Map so you can plan a weekend getaway to a place that's going to be spectacular.     

The annual Bun Bang Fai Festival is celebrated in northeastern Thailand and in Laos in the run up to the rainy season. Its roots go back to earlier traditional festivals held to pray for abundant rain for the crops. The festival has all the usual stuff: parades, food, concerts, and political speeches, but the big draw centers around a competition of amateur rocketry. In the city of Ubon Ratchathan, the rocketry competition is hosted by professional rocket builder Niyom Butprom and his daughter Tarn. The rocket launches are judged by how high they fly, how long they stay up, and technical issues like a smooth launch and a soft landing. These rocket festivals are held at different dates in different towns, so you could travel to attend more than one every year. Great Big Story went to Ubon Ratchathan to see what this festival is all about. And as you might guess, a good time was had by all. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

You might recall the story of Ellen Sadler, the English girl who became famous for sleeping nine years straight. That was nothing compared to Sweden's Karolina Olsson, who went to bed and woke up 32 years later! Olsson didn't attend school until she was 14 years old, and within a month of beginning classes, she went to bed complaining of a tooth ache. That was in 1876. She stayed there, sleeping, for years without a medical consultation because her family couldn't afford to hire a doctor. The neighbors paid for a doctor visit in 1892, and soon medical specialists were coming to see her. Olsson was hospitalized for a month, but was discharged after she didn't respond to treatment.

Strangely, Olsson's appearance didn't change the way you would expect in a coma patient. Her mother tended to her needs, allegedly force-feeding her two glasses of milk every day for sustenance. Then in 1908, Olsson woke up, and seemed to have no lingering effects of her 32-year sleep, aside from being a 14-year-old in a 46-year-old woman's body. There is one telling fact, though. Olssen's mother died in 1905, and her daily care then fell to her father and the housekeeper. That's when she started losing weight, and was quite emaciated when she came to, echoing the experience of Ellen Sadler. Read the tale of Karolina Olsson at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: Dagens Nyheter)

The subject of Tom Scott's latest video is why TV and video advertising is so loud. But that question isn't even addressed until about five minutes in, because first we have to define our terms. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, whether it makes a sound or not depends on how you define sound. Once you get past that, defining loudness is also pretty subjective. Does it depend on the physical nature of sound waves, like amplitude or frequency? Or is it a matter of what hurts your ears? Sound perception is very subjective. And people can argue about the average sound compression of a 30-second ad as compared to averaging the sound level of a two-hour movie (which has its own issues), but it comes down to advertisers just want to be as loud as possible to make sure you hear them.

When I typed the title Loudness is All in Your Head, I could hear (metaphorically) someone reply, "No, it's in your ears." Whether it happens in your ears or your brain, both places are literally in your head, okay? The last minute of this video is an ad, and it's about as loud as the rest of the video.    

In the 15th century, Tenochtitlan was the largest city in the Americas, with a population of more than 200,000 people, more than most European capitals of the time. The city was built on an island in Lake Texcoco, surrounded by volcanoes, and was expanded with landfill as the city grew. Tenochtitlan served as the capitol of the Aztec Empire until Spanish invaders destroyed it beginning in 1521. Mexico City was built over the ruins, and expanded considerably as the lake was drained.

What was Tenochtitlan like? Thomas Kole spent 18 months digitally recreating the city from documented history and from archaeological findings. Tenochtitlan was laid out in a grid, with sections connected to each other and to the lake shores by causeways, bridges, and canals. The city center contained temples, palaces, and government buildings, surrounded by neighborhoods segregated by class, each with their own marketplaces. Further out were agricultural areas, constantly expanded by filling in the lake with rubble. Kole's images let us see this metropolis from every angle. Most impressive are the overlays with drone images of Mexico City today. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Thomas Kole)

Back in 2003, there was no YouTube, no social media, and no Neatorama (yet). But on September 2, we got a flash animation called Badgers that went so viral it could be used to identify who was on the internet and who wasn't. You could say "Badgers badgers badgers badgers," and if anyone replied with "Mushroom, mushroom," you knew that you had found a kindred spirit. Badgers was made by Mr. Weebl, also known as Jonti Picking. In 2013, he partnered with Brian May to produce a new version called Save The Badger Badger Badger to protest a badger cull in Britain, which became a bona-fide musical hit just in time for the 10th anniversary of the orginal video.  

For the 20th anniversary of Badgers, Picking makes an attempt to give us a new "live action" version, using CGI and motion capture, which is difficult because the original dancers are getting old. But then he is accused of plagiarism. That brings up the question: how far back do dancing badgers really go?

About 70.000 people are stuck in the mud at #BurningMan2023 ⁰
Visitors to the legendary desert festival "Burning Man" in the US state of Nevada are stuck after heavy rains. The rain has turned the desert sand into ankle-deep and viscous mud. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/A9iUkgN4IV

— Vertical52 (@Vertical_52) September 3, 2023

The annual Burning Man Festival began on August 27, and was scheduled to run through Monday. This year, around 73,000 people went out into the Nevada desert to set up camp for the festival, but things aren't going the way they usually do. Normally, the ground is rock hard, but just less than an inch of rain on Friday and Saturday has turned the site into a morass of sticky clay mud. It's hard enough to walk in, but more importantly, vehicles are mired up and blocking the roads. More rain is expected Sunday.

People usually start leaving Burning Man after the traditional giant effigy fire on Saturday night, which has been postponed, but now authorities have closed the roads leading in and out of the site. Only authorized four-wheel drive vehicles are allowed, and only for emergencies. That means no supplies are being brought in, no porta-potties can be serviced, and most attendees cannot go home. Shuttles have been arranged for people who walk five miles out to the town of Gerlach, where the nearest paved road is. That still leaves thousands of people who cannot return rental cars, catch flights, or show up at work Tuesday.

Attendees have been urged to ration their remaining supplies, and ice sales are also now rationed. Organizers are installing temporary cell phone towers and so that people can contact their families and employers. Max Berger has been posting constant updates at TikTok. There are more videos at X (formerly Twitter). And the festival itself has emergency guidelines posted. Despite what you might read on social media, there are no cases of ebola at Burning Man. Trench foot may be another story. -via Boing Boing

With move-in day right around the corner, overpasses all over the Boston area need your help. They need to not be hit by a moving truck on Storrow Drive or Soldiers Field in Boston & Memorial Drive in Cambridge. Plan your move in day route accordingly & watch for the signs! pic.twitter.com/Wkfgcg6Nx3

— MassDCR (@MassDCR) August 23, 2023

We've gotten used to the many accidents at the infamous 11 foot 8 bridge in Durham, North Carolina, even after it was raised a few inches. But it's far from the only can opener bridge in the US, and sometimes these accidents are seasonal. Boston is America's biggest college town. Every August, culminating on Labor Day weekend, thousands of new students move into apartments and dormitories, often bringing their stuff in rental trucks that may be taller than they are aware of.   

In Boston, many of those trucks find themselves on Storrow Drive, a main thoroughfare that has several low-clearance bridges. Trucks and busses are prohibited on Storrow Drive for just this reason, but people coming in from out-of-town for the first time do not realize that until it's too late. Trucks hitting bridges here is quite common, and this phenomena has led to its own term: Storrowing. Could it be that bad? I searched for "Storrow Drive Bridge" on YouTube and got a long list of incidences.



Storrow Drive is not the only road in Boston that has low bridges. You can see why the Massachusetts Department of Conservation & Recreation felt the need to put out public service announcements to warn people traveling to the city. -via Metafilter

If you are a fan of Syfy's extreme disaster movies, you might assume that sharks use the energy of ocean storms to launch themselves at people, all the better to eat them. But Sharknado was fiction, hurricanes are real, and there are dozen of species of sharks living in the ocean. How do they cope with hurricanes?

Sharks normally congregate in shallow waters near the shore where it's warmer and there are plenty of fish to eat. But when a major storm is coming -and they can tell- sharks use the same two strategies humans use: they either evacuate or they hunker down and ride it out. The difference in these decisions seems to depend on the size of the shark. Smaller shark species and juveniles not fully grown tend to head to deeper water, where they stay until several days after the storm has passed. Large sharks tend to stay put, and almost always come out fine on the other end. Maybe they've seen plenty of storms in their lives, and aren't nearly as frightened, just like some older folks on land. But really, it's more likely instinct. Read about sharks and hurricanes, with no disasters involved, at Vox. -via Damn Interesting

There are an awful lot of scientific names that end up seeming like they were coined by 12-year-old boys. Really, you could make a list like this in any of the many scientific disciplines, because some scientists are actually 12-year-old boys at heart. But some really rude-sounding chemical names are caused by translations from other languages, our tendency to mispronounce the spelling we see, or an unfortunate clash between a real person's name and chemical suffixes. I have no idea why someone, somewhere, chose the brand name Fartox.



The examples I've brought here are honestly tame compared to some of them. I have researched this very subject in the distant past, and some of these are new to me. Since then, either new chemicals have been named, or rude modern slang has made old chemical names much funnier.  



Incidentally, it's pronounced "FYOO-sit-all." But we've seen the fake medicine meme with a very similar name, so that's not the first pronunciation to pop into our heads. You can see 15 rude, crude, and socially unacceptable chemicals and the stories behind their names (when they are known) at Cracked.  

When it's time to get up, you better get up and going. The Human Car Wash will make sure you are awake and have your morning coffee even before you get out of bed! If that sounds pleasant, divest yourself of that idea, because this chain reaction gadget gets you out of bed by making your desire to sleep in just too hazardous to risk. It's the latest convoluted nonsense from Joseph Herscher of Joseph's Machines (previously at Neatorama). We don't know how many times he was injured getting this sequence to work- you'll have to join Patreon to see that. Herscher then gets scrubbed clean and dressed in a sequence that's not strictly a chain reaction, but is tripped just by walking through, like going through a car wash. That part is SFW because he keeps his Valentine undershorts on. It all happens in just two minutes. -via Geeks are Sexy

The Philippines became self-governing in 1935, but their former colonizer the United States didn't recognize that until 1946. After World War II, the nations remained allies, but a communist insurgent group called Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon, or Hukbalahap (Huk for short), who formed to fight the Japanese, fought for control of the Philippines.  

The Americans appointed Lieutenant Colonel Edward Lansdale of the CIA to conduct operations against the Huks, which included psychological warfare. Lansdalen was charged with clearing one area of Huks in order to protect withdrawing American troops and their sympathizers, so he leveraged the legend of the aswang, a shapeshifting, human-animal hybrid vampire. This involved seeding the area with rumors of a curse and the threat of a vampire attack to come. The operation culminated in a staged vampire attack, complete with puncture holes in the victim's neck! Read how they pulled that off, and what happened afterward, at Mental Floss.       

(Image credit: Scary Side of Earth)

We love our dogs and cats, and we want to save the tiger, but the world is full of strange and weird creatures we should know more about. First up, the maned wolf, which isn't a wolf, and looks like a fox on horse legs, and it eats mostly vegetables! That's just the beginning of an entertaining introduction to some strange creatures from Mamadou Ndiaye. That's the internet zoologist Mamadou Ndiaye, not the basketball player Mamadou Ndiaye, or the other basketball player Mamadou Ndiaye. It's a pretty common name.  

Anyway, this video tells us what we really want to know about raccoon dogs, fossas, bush dogs, and the cookie cutter shark (which is both tiny and terrifying). Be sure to stay with this long enough to hear what the clouded leopard says, since it can't purr like small cats and can't roar like big cats. It's more of a whiny meow, which you wouldn't expect to hear in the rainforest. -via Boing Boing

The La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles is a treasure trove of information about prehistoric California. Thousands of animals over time were trapped and then preserved in the pits, seemingly for us to study, but so far only one human has been found. Scientists are able to date these remains of extinct species by carbon dating. And they can date the tar itself by its layers of pollen and charcoal trapped as the tar solidified.

The lack of human remains doesn't mean people weren't there- they just learned to avoid the tar. Evidence of humans shows that they were indeed in southern California, with a steep rise in population around 13,200 years ago. That's when the charcoal layers became more frequent in the timeline, suggesting that human campfires got out of control, or else they purposefully set wildfires to chase animals out for the hunt. Then about 12,900 years ago, many large mammal species suddenly vanished from the fossil record. Could they have been driven out, or driven extinct, by human-caused wildfires? The area was suffering from drought already, which would have both weakened the animals and made the forests more susceptible to fire. Just as Southern California suffers from drought affecting a huge population of humans today.   -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Cullen Townsend, Natural History Museum)

Jellyfish are ancient creatures that have no brain, are almost all water, and many of them are transparent -often beautifully so. You'd think such an animal would be harmless, but no. They sting, and even worse, they multiply like crazy. Out-of-control jellyfish blooms are becoming more and more of a problem. In nature, that's usually because something else is out of balance. In this case, it's because the jelly's natural predator is suffering from declining populations. That's the sea turtle. There's a reason that it's illegal to disturb sea turtle nests or hatchlings. They suffer enough from trash in the ocean. Mariela Pajuelo and Javier Antonio Quinones put together this TED-Ed lesson to warn us about the importance of the leatherback sea turtles who are not afraid to swim with the jellies. They are keeping the oceans from turning into a morass of jellyfish goo.