The new movie The Woman King opens this weekend in the US. It stars Viola Davis as General Nanisca, the leader of the Agojie, an army of women in the West African kingdom of Dahomey. The film is set in 1820, when Dahomey was under the rule of King Ghezo, played by John Boyega. The fictionalized movie is inspired by real people and real events, but are amalgams in a condensed story.  

The Agojie arose in the 17th century, when women were trained to become elephant hunters. The group was elevated to palace guards, and then warriors. They were considered third-tier wives of the king are were therefore prohibited from other relationships. Dahomey differed from surrounding countries in that they kept a standing army ready even when not at war. The Agojie served alongside male warriors until Dahomey was defeated by French colonial forces in the 19th century.  

The movie concerns a battle with a historical enemy in which Nanisca and her troops fight to prevent people from falling into the slave trade, but the focus is primarily on one small part of Dahomey's history. The historical Dahomey had many enemies and grew wealthy from the slave trade. Read the real story of the fierce and fearless Agojie at Smithsonian.

The 32nd First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony was held last night. These are prizes awarded by the Annals of Improbable Research for scientific and other breakthroughs that make people laugh, and then make them think. For example, a study on how eating ice cream helps a side effect of cancer treatment may seem odd, but it may well improve the lives of some folks. The development of a moose crash test dummy is funny but useful. A study of enemas depicted on ancient pottery is just plain fun. And while the idea that random luck has more to do with success than talent may be obvious to some of us, it's good to have a research paper handy in an argument.

Continue reading to see the complete 2022 winners list, with links to the research papers.

Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney (now starring in Welcome to Wrexham, about their Welsh football club) both turned 45 years old and got their first colonoscopies. That's pretty normal for people who have health insurance. But Reynolds lost a bet and had to fulfill his pledge to share his colonoscopy with the world. Katie Couric must be very happy that now she's not the only celebrity to be seen undergoing such an, er, intimate procedure. However, we won't see anything traumatic. The kicker is that even though McElhenney won that bet (by learning to speak Welsh), he also showed his colonoscopy because he thought he could somehow outdo Reynold's procedure in one way or another. The upshot is that a colonoscopy is pretty simple, and there are drugs. This is all in support of the organization Lead From Behind, where you can find out more about colon cancer prevention. -via Laughing Squid

Magic tricks, as far as we know, go back to the era of the Roman Empire. The "cup and balls" trick may even have been the first. It was used to to confuse observers, and take their money if they bet on their own ability to keep up with the ball. Maybe they could, but it was being moved from cup to cup anyway. Eventually, such tricks and illusions split into two paths: one for scamming people and the other for entertainment. The entertainment path could bring great fame, and it was legal besides. Later, even that path split between those who convinced the audience that their magic was supernatural and those who emphasized the skill of illusion. Along the way, the most famous magicians put their own spin on the art and became legends. Learn some tidbits about how magic became what it is today, and meet some of the more famous of its practitioners at Mental Floss. You can also listen to the list of fun facts in a video at the same link.

Just a few years ago, you would have laughed at the idea of sedimentary rocks on Mars. Now, we have photographic evidence, thanks to one of the robot residents of that planet. NASA's Perseverance rover explored an area called Jezero Crater, where a mighty river once flowed billions of years ago. The landscape image was generated from 1,118 pictures and comprises 2.5 billion pixels. We can't see them all in a video, but that's enough so that we can get a zoomed-in look at Betty's Rock, Skinner Ridge, and Hogwallow Flats. Perseverance is storing rock and soil samples that NASA plans on picking up and bringing back to earth sometime. The idea that it can transmit such gorgeous photos millions of miles back to earth is already mind blowing. And Jezero Crater is just a tiny piece of a big planet to explore. On a side note, you have to wonder how you get on the NASA committee that names these landmarks. Who is Betty? And how did they come up with Hogwallow Flats? Read more about this video at digitaltrends. -via Damn Interesting

You thought that house cats sleep a lot. Well, they do, at a little over 12 hours a day, or more than half their time. But a koala spends 21 hours out of every day asleep! Giulia De Amicis created a large graphic that details how different animals (mostly mammals) sleep, from the koala to the elephant, which only sleeps a couple of hours a day. The data is from the Sleep Foundation. What is amazing is that there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason for some species needing so much more sleep than others.



Outside of mammals, sleep gets even weirder. Birds can sleep with half their brain while the other half is awake, so some of them can even sleep while flying. Snakes sleep with their eyes open, because they don't have eyelids. No wonder this data is limited to mammals, since sleep in other types of animals is really hard to study. You can see the graphic in a larger size at Moss and Fog. -via Nag on the Lake 

2022-08-10 06:38:49

TEMP F............62.6°
HUMIDITY..........94%
WIND MPH..........2.2
WIND DIR..........N
PRECIP IN.........0.0https://t.co/djkLU6BquE pic.twitter.com/M6Tye8cQIq

— Marcel & Co. (@Chickens) August 10, 2022

What if a flock of free-range chickens decided to share their selfies with the world on their own blog? Well, these chickens are birdbrains, so they had a little help getting set up. Technogeek Jacob Bijani and photographer Noah Kalina set up a camera on the chickens' stomping grounds, along with a motion sensor, flash, and a Raspberry Pi, all in waterproof shielding "at the request of Marcel the Rooster." From there, it's all automatic. The photos are immediately uploaded to the website and to Twitter.   

2022-08-22 19:21:19

TEMP F............70.0°
HUMIDITY..........90%
WIND MPH..........6.9
WIND DIR..........SE
PRECIP IN.........0.04https://t.co/VJZ5rhp2qi

BUY NOW: https://t.co/VNVIwtxrJD pic.twitter.com/n2s9JxwCK9

— Marcel & Co. (@Chickens) August 23, 2022

Some of the pictures are portrait quality, some are group shots, and many are chicken parts. Some are chickens clearly mooning the camera. And it's not just chickens. Deer are particularly good at tripping the cameras, but you'll also see raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, birds, and the rare but surprising human. Many of the photos are available as NFTs. See them all at Chicken Photos. -via Everlasting Blort

For the first time since 2019, Ottawa Comiccon returned this past weekend. More than 40,000 people headed to the EY Centre in Ottawa to celebrate the convention's return. Cosplayers, some who had been waiting three years to show off their stuff, were all over, and Geeks Are Sexy was there to document them. The participants were in a dancing mood, so here are some of them gettin' down to "Struttin'" by Thumpasaurus. This is just a tiny sample of the awesome costumes that were on display, so you'll want to check out the photo gallery from Ottawa Comiccon 2022 at Geeks Are Sexy. I hear there may also be other videos to come. A good time was had by all.

Saturday Night Live will kick off its 48th season on October first. When the show first began back in 1975, we got used to the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, who were a relatively stable group,* at least after Bill Murray replaced Chevy Chase. But then in the fifth season, they all disappeared and made way for a new group of up-and-coming comics. Since then, there have been cast members rotating in and out for various lengths of time. Who has stayed with Saturday Night Live the longest? That title goes to Keenan Thompson, who has been there for 19 of the 47 seasons so far, and will be there this fall as well. No one else comes close to that tenure, and only two other cast members have lasted more than a dozen years. In the early days of SNL, cast members would leave to pursue movie stardom, but now they know how risky that is and manage to squeeze those projects into the summer hiatus. Six cast members were there for nine seasons, but one is still on the show, so will move up on the list when the new season begins. Mental Floss has a list of the 15 cast members with the longest tenure on Saturday Night Live, with a video of their best work for each of them.

*Maybe not so stable as individuals.

"The official Palace beekeeper, John Chapple, 79, told MailOnline how he travelled to Buckingham Palace and Clarence House on Friday following news of The Queen’s death to carry out the superstitious ritual," telling the bees QE2 had died.https://t.co/7ZnRefH9NX

— Dirt Doctor (@HowardGarrett) September 10, 2022

There are many rituals and traditions surrounding the death of a monarch, and they are now being carried out in the UK following the death of Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday. That includes one that goes back hundreds of years, but is pretty obscure these days. On Friday, 79-year-old John Chapple, the royal beekeeper, went around to all the royal beehives and broke the news to the bees.

"Telling the Bees" is a custom explained in a previous post that was once both a common courtesy to household members who toiled to provide food for the family, and a superstition to keep bad things from happening. Chapple went to beehives at Buckingham Palace and at Clarence House, tied a black ribbon around each hive, and explained to the bees in each hive that the queen had passed on, and that their new master is King Charles III. He assured the bees that they will be treated well. Chapple hopes to be the one who continues to care for them. Read more about the royal beekeeper and his duties at The Daily Mail. -via Boing Boing 

I thought, from seeing the official trailer, that Thor: Love and Thunder would be a fun movie. It made a lot of money, but both critics and audiences were a bit meh about it. Now we have an Honest Trailer to explain to us what the movie is really like. Thor: Love and Thunder is apparently one joke after another, which took away from any serious aspect of the story. You really can't make a laugh-fest out of cancer. The funny bits made the previous movie Thor: Ragnarok special, so they put twice as many jokes into Thor: Love and Thunder. In filmmaking, that doesn't always work. Screen Junkies has some other criticisms of the movie, too. And if you just wanted to see Thor naked, well, you'll get most of that in this Honest Trailer.

The Bird Photographer of the Year is Norwegian photographer Erlend Haarberg, who won the top prize for the image above, titled Rock Ptarmigan Flight. It also won the Birds in the Environment category. Haarberg gets $5,000 in addition to the title. Of course, he's not the only photographer to take home honors in the Bird Photographer of the Year competition. Below is the winner of the Portraits category, a male sage grouse in full mating display captured by American Ly Dang. What female sage grouse wouldn't be impressed?   



Other categories are Best Portfolio, Attention to Detail, Bird Behaviour, Birds in Flight, Black and White, Urban Birds, and Creative Imagery. There were also awards for younger age groups, and a special Conservation Award. You can see the amazing winners and runners-up in each category at the competition gallery. The 2023 contest is already open, so get your binoculars and cameras ready. -via Digg

Artists from across the country moved to San Francisco in the 1960s to be part of the scene, but Mari Tepper was already part of the scene, having been born there. She was designing posters for rock concerts even before graduating from high school. Those concert posters are well-known among collectors, but Tepper had a wide repertoire that included newspaper illustrations, bread sculpture, comics, and social justice artworks.

In the spring of 1967, Tepper designed a black-and-white poster for a concert at California Hall, her figures rendered almost as silhouettes against a black background. That summer, she produced a poster for the Haight’s own Straight Theater, and in October she drew and lettered two posters for shows featuring Big Brother and the Holding Company and Quicksilver Messenger Service, one being a benefit for the newly formed Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, the second featuring a hippie’s Holy Grail lineup at Winterland—in addition to Big Brother and Quicksilver, the Grateful Dead played a set.

But Tepper’s most acclaimed poster of 1967 bore no legendary band names, focusing instead on a preoccupation of the times that was even more important than music—sex. Little wonder then that today Tepper is still best known for her “Hallelujah the Pill!!” mandala, which depicts a quintet of brilliantly hued couples demonstrating various sexual positions. Not surprisingly, this psychedelicized update of tantric sex sold tens of thousands of copies in headshops around the country. But as with her work as a high-school student for the Committee, and her later Haight-Ashbury postcards, Tepper saw nary a dime.

Read about Mari Tepper's unique life and career, including the uncomfortable story of designing the “Hallelujah the Pill!!” and of growing up too fast and too alone, at Collectors Weekly.

How much helium does it take to lift a person? About 70,000 liters. In case you wondered how much helium it took to lift the house in the movie Up, or Larry Walters' or Kent Couch's lawn chairs. But you, too, can float around with a helium balloon in a safe manner, thanks to a French company called Aéroplume. Their balloons are set up in an old blimp hangar so there's no chance of flying off into the wild blue yonder. The helium balloons make you relatively weightless, so you get to experience the feeling of  flying without a plane. How cool is that?

The comments under this video explore the difference between Tom getting the heebie-jeebies walking above the Royal Albert Hall with his apparent calm while strapped onto a balloon. The strapping itself may be reassuring, and the explanation of the worst that could happen probably makes a big difference.

J.R.R. Tolkien published The Hobbit in 1937, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy in the 1950s. But he spent the years from 1914 to his death in 1973 building and refining his fictional universe called Middle-Earth, including original languages and a history covering many thousands of years. He left behind reams of unpublished stories, along with research and notes on Middle-Earth. The story that became the new Amazon Prime TV series Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is part of that rich unpublished history. It takes place as the First Age moves to the Second Age and concerns an island called Númenor (The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place during the Third Age).

Tolkien's writings on Númenor will be published in November in a book titled The Fall of Númenor. The inspiration for it came to Tolkien suddenly in 1936. Smithsonian has a brief overview of the story of Númenor and how it fits into the mythology of Middle-Earth, and then takes a deep dive into the historical forces that inspired Tolkien's story.