Here's a game in which you can compete with your friends (or enemies) and they'll never even know it. Pickaball is an animated digital pinball machine with no flipper controls, so I guess it's really a ball run. Name the balls in the upper right with a comma between each. It starts you out with three balls, but you can add a bunch of names if you like. 

I don't know how the initial rankings are determined, although I'd guess it's random. They change quickly as the balls fall, and the list keeps up with who gets through the finish line in what order. This could be a way of deciding the order of play for a game, or who has to take the trash out, or any number of decisions between a group of people. Or you can play it for fun, to see what weird icon your characters get and to root for one of them to win. Full disclosure: I played with the same three names until I finally won. -via Boing Boing 

A ridiculous premise makes a great story. Swedish engineer and musician Mattias Krantz got a wild hair and decided he was going to teach an octopus how to play the piano. He went to the seafood market and selected a likely student. He named the octopus Takoyaki, which is a snack made of fried octopus, or Tako for short. Krantz set up an aquarium and became friends with Tako, then realized he had no idea what he was doing. How do you teach an octopus to play piano?

It was a matter of getting to know the octopus. Then Krantz had to design a piano that harnessed Tako's abilities and interests. He had to remake the piano over and over as he learned what worked and what didn't, in a process that took six months. For a creature with eight arms, Tako is no Rachmaninoff, or even Victor Borge, but he can play his weird custom instrument and seems to enjoy it. The video is 18 minutes long, but you will fall in love with Tako, and Krantz's learning process is rather amusing (with plenty of F-bombs). -via Metafilter 

The Triftbrücke, or Trift Bridge, is the longest pedestrian suspension bridge in the Swiss Alps. It is 560 feet (170 meters) long, and is 330 feet (100 meters) above the valley at the midpoint. It was first built in 2004 to allow workers to access a hydroelectric power plant. Beforehand, folks just walked across the Trift Glacier, but it has receded. This scary walking bridge turned out to be popular with hikers, though, and then sightseers, so it was rebuilt in 2009 to be more sturdy. It looks like a rope bridge, but it's made of steel cables with an attached wooden floor. Yes, it still sways in the wind. 

Getting to the Trift Bridge is quite an undertaking. You could walk up the mountain, which takes a couple of hours, or you can take a cable car. From there, it's still a 90 minute hike to the bridge. Once across the bridge, what then? You walk back across the bridge, then 90 minutes back to the cable car. But 20,000 people a year consider it a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Read about this bridge and see plenty of scary pictures at Kuriositas. 

(Image credit: alessandro valerio) 

Are the insects of the family Gerridae land animals or marine animals? That may be a silly question, because water walkers, or water striders, are both. They live on the surface of water, walking around like that's not a miracle. And they aren't the only insects that can do it. Moving around on the surface of the water is not something they can learn, they have to be built for it. Springtails not only walk on water, but they jump from the water like it's a solid surface, and sometimes give us a gymnastics demonstration while doing it. 

It's all in the science of fluid dynamics, which these bugs understand better than most humans. Ze Frank doesn't mind to explain it to us, long with his usual poking fun at the critters when they get a little awkward. This video is more educational and SFW than most of his True Facts series.

Journalism has changed a lot in the past 150 years, but one thing is still true today: most people only read the headlines, and the rest stop somewhere along the way. On November 9, 1874, readers were astonished by a full page story in the New York Herald that described a catastrophe at the Central Park Zoo in Manhattan. A rhinoceros had broken out of its enclosure and proceeded to destroy other pens, freeing all kinds of animals. The wild beasts moved into city streets, and had killed 49 people and injured hundreds of others!

Panic spread through the city when people read the paper. Schools closed, and people rushed to get their children safely inside. Only when they were hunkered down at home did some finally finish reading the story. The last paragraph revealed that the entire account was fiction, to make a point about zoo safety. That did not go over well. Read about the panic and the fallout that came afterward at Fishwrap. -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: Shadow Ayush)

If you recall the story of the demon core, you already know how ghastly it is. If you don't, well, you're about to find out. The demon core was a ball of plutonium that killed two scientists, one of them only 24 years old. Despite the name, it wasn't personal; that's just what plutonium does. In the 1940s, nuclear scientists knew how dangerous radioactive materials could be, and that's how the US developed those first nuclear bombs that ended World War II. But despite this knowledge, and the safety protocols around nuclear experimentation (inadequate as they were), these scientists took risks led to their drawn out and agonizing deaths.   

This video from SciShow tells the story in a matter-of-fact way, but focuses specifically on the science underneath the danger. Savannah Geary explains the difference between uranium and plutonium down to the atomic level, and why plutonium is super spicy, meaning dangerous. And yet the research these scientists were doing was dedicated to making it more dangerous. There have been a lot of nuclear accidents since then, but the name demon core still haunts the world of nuclear science. There's a 45-second skippable ad at 8:00. 

Everyone knows that Superman is a refugee from the doomed planet Krypton, raised by earthlings Ma and Pa Kent, who taught him to use his super powers for the benefit of earth. I almost said "truth, justice, and the American way," but we know that was added later. Yeah, Superman is the hero he always was, since that first comic was released in 1938. 

But by the time Action Comics introduced Superman, Jerry Siegel had been working on the character for years. In early versions, he was an unwilling victim of a mad scientist who gave him strange and varied powers. The earliest version had him using those powers in a malicious way. The character went through several iterations, once as a time traveler, as Siegel collaborated with artists he knew before Superman had a name and a backstory. You can learn about those unpublished early versions of the Man of Steel in a 45-minute podcast at The Comics Code, or read a succinct account of the highlights at Boing Boing. 

You may have heard about elective surgery some people have to lengthen their legs in order to be taller. That's the kind of story that makes it into the news. But medical intervention to lengthen bones is not new, and it's sometimes necessary for health. If one leg is longer than the other, that can lead to other bones being misaligned, or a curved backbone. And lots of pain. This video doesn't go into the ethics of elective leg-lengthening surgery, but rather gives us a tutorial on how it's done. 

Leg lengthening relies on the way our bones heal by themselves when broken. The real trick is to keep the bone perfectly straight and healing properly. Developments in this kind of surgery over the past century have made it possible for more people to finally have aligned legs to walk on. This TED-Ed lesson from Jason Shih Hoellwarth tells the story in all its gory detail. 

Every one knows the best way to solve a complex mystery is to hang pictures and newspaper clippings on a wall and connect them with string to show the relationship between each item. At least that's true according to the movies. That familiar scene is called String Theory, and it's there to show you how widespread and complex a hidden conspiracy can be to an experienced professional investigator. On the other hand, it is also used to reveal the compulsions of a serial killer or the insane obsessions of a conspiracy theorist.

Shawn Gilmore has compiled an archive of Narrative String Theory scenes from movies, TV, comedy, books, animation, advertising, comics, art, and even the news. There are 1308 entries so far, including a scene from the documentary The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping shown at the top, and the parody that became a meme from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, above. Just when you are impressed with how many of them there are, you realize that there's a second page with the previous 900 entries. -via Metafilter 

(Warning: the first link is from TV Tropes)

You've been told all your life not to put metal into a microwave. What's the worst that can happen? The possibility of uncontrollable microwave arcing could damage your appliance, and that's enough to keep most of us from trying it out. But what if the consequences are more serious than we've been told?  This guy wrapped his potato in aluminum foil, as we've all done, but then placed it in the microwave. Instead of melting the machine, it becomes a uniquely powerful energy generator, so powerful that it calls extraterrestrials to come and take it. 

The guy is initially terrified of the situation he has unleashed, but eventually we find that he's sort of into it and joins in the mission to retrieve the potato. The bizarre adventure unwinds wordlessly in this action video from Buttered Side Down. The moral of the story is: always read the directions thoroughly. -via The Awesomer 

Modern technology (IVF, donor eggs and sperm, surrogacy, and chemistry that can temporarily reverse menopause) has led us to ponder questions that we never had to confront before. What makes a parent? Is it a genetic link, the act of giving birth, the people who live with and raise a child, the person who paid for all the above to happen, or something else hidden in the Byzantine laws that have hastily grown up around these new technologies? 

The case of MaryBeth Lewis combines all these questions. When her children grew up, she wanted more, and gave birth to her 13th child at the age of 62. But she still wanted more. For the next pregnancy, she used frozen embryos created with purchased sperm and eggs and a surrogate mother. But she didn't tell her husband Bob, and instead signed his name on the legal contracts. Twins were born in October of 2023, when Lewis was 66. By then, her scheme had started to unravel, and the twins were sent to foster parents, who still have them two years later and want to adopt them. Lewis was charged with felony fraud, yet she went to court to gain custody of the twins. The question is, who do those children belong to? Read the story in this gripping account at the New York Times, or at the Internet Archive. -via Damn Interesting 

(Unrelated image credit: MultipleParent) 

They say that practice makes perfect. More recently, we've all heard that to become really good at something, you need to put in 10,000 hours of practice. Unless you spend all day practicing, that's a lot of years. So not only is the "rule" discouraging, it doesn't really make sense. Quite a few people are very good at something when they are still young, and others change directions completely at an advanced age and then show amazing talent. In this TED-Ed lesson, David Epstein explains that you don't have to devote yourself to a certain activity from childhood in order to become really good at it. Sometimes it takes a bit of experimenting to find out where your talents lie, or what your passion is. If you find something you are excited about doing, practice doesn't feel like work. And if you begin to feel at home with what you are doing, who is counting those hours? We can't all be world famous for our talents, but we can all be good at something.  

Many of us were raised to clean our plates and never waste food. Then as struggling adults, we took advantage of free food and got our money's worth at buffets. The habit of always filling up often leads to obesity or disordered eating and a lifestyle of yo-yo dieting. Contrast this with the Japanese philosophy of eating called hara hachi bu, which encourages us to eat until we are around 80% full. That idea resets our conception of satiety and staves off indigestion. 

While the 80% rule is what you hear most about this philosophy, hara hachi bu involves much more. It is about developing a balanced relationship with food in which we slow down, enjoy eating, and choose more nutrititous things to eat. That means being more aware of what we consume instead of just how much. Hara hachi bu has been shown to be effective in weight loss, but it's not a diet. Rather, it's a long term way of eating that leads to long term health benefits. Read up on hara hachi bu and seven tips for trying it out at the Conversation. -via Real Clear Science

(Image credit: MIKI Yoshihito) 

I once worked as a restaurant bartender, but the reason I got the job was because I spoke fluent English, and could communicate with customers when needed. My language skills came in handy that one time we had a fire. I also had to be there for the local health department inspections, otherwise no one would understand what needed to be fixed. 

Restaurants are inspected by various government agencies, depending on the state or even local regulations. These inspections are crucial to make sure the restaurant meets standards for safe food storage, handling, and cooking, plus sanitation standards for the business as a whole. The results of these inspections can be posted as a percentage, a grade, or some other scale. If the results are bad enough, the restaurant will be shut down until conditions improve. But how are we to interpret passing grades that vary from one place to another? Weird History Food takes us through the system so we can understand what we are getting into a little better.  

It's always been expensive to be poor. In Victorian England, if you couldn't afford accommodations, you could sleep outside, but in rainy and/or cold weather, you could pay for a spot inside for a penny (which was worth more 200 years ago). In a city establishment called a doss house, just providing a roof brought in cash from hundreds of itinerant laborers and homeless people. For a penny, though, you didn't get the luxury of sleeping. That would buy you a spot to sit on a bench overnight, called a "penny sit-up." 

Double the price and you had a "two-penny hangover." This meant a spot on a bench, and a rope to keep you from falling on the floor when you fell asleep. It also meant a rude awakening when your time was up, because that's when the rope was untied. Or if you were to spend four cents for a night, you could really get a good night's rest -in a wooden box on the floor. This was called a "four-penny coffin." Read about the cost of existing in these doss houses and see pictures at Amusing Planet.