Javier Báez.
El Mago.
The Magician. pic.twitter.com/yZX7HgUFCU

— Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) May 27, 2021

The Pirates infielders were not on their game Thursday. There were two outs in the third inning when Javier Báez of the Cubs got a hit. First baseman Will Craig only had to tag the base, but he did not. The rest of the play needs a Yakety Sax soundtrack! See it from different angles here. If you don't know how baseball works, here's a layman's explanation. 

The Cubs ended up beating the Pirates 5-3. This video induced Mefites to reminisce about the dumbest play they remember from their Little League games.   

A lot of us spend out whole lives trying to figure out what to do with our lives. Meanwhile, we are growing up, working to make a living, and looking forward to retirement. Sometimes you need to step back and look at your life from another perspective. Kurzgesagt isn't going to tell you what you should do with your life, but they have some statistics to help you understand how important your time really is. -via Kottke

Do you ever wonder about that one glove you can never find? Redditor Brunson21 spotted a clear case of cat burglary. Esme may have sad memories of when she was a kitten and lost her mittens. With neighbors turning their backs on their gardening gloves for a minute, Esme captured her prey and brought it home. Her owner was not pleased.

The cat owner is making a valiant attempt to reunite the stolen gloves with their rightful owners. But Esme is not unique. Wherever you live, remember to bring your gloves in every time you take a break from yard work.  

Here's a really unique way to tour the United States from a different perspective. If a drop of rain fell anywhere in the US you choose, what path would it take to the ocean? River Runner will show you! I dropped a raindrop in Kentucky and followed it downstream through hills, farmland, cities, and around numerous bends to the Ohio River and into the Mississippi River. Since I live on a river bank, I then went back in and found my home and the path that water takes.   

Explore the waterways of America with this cool application, but keep in mind there are a few places in the US where a raindrop will not make it to the ocean. -via Metafilter

A survey of 2000 Americans finds that the "average person" thinks they can survive 16 days in the wilderness. The survey, conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Avocado Green Mattress, does not give the percentage of people who make such a claim, but we might assume that a majority of respondents claim a survival time of at least that long. We also don't know if the survey defined wilderness at all, which is important. "Wilderness" can be the Appalachian Trail, the Yukon, or Death Valley. However, the same survey found that only 17% of respondents felt "very confident" in their ability to start a fire with flint. There seems to be a disconnect here. Other results show that people don't know as much about nature as they think they do.

While over half the poll (52%) are confident in their ability to identify different types of plants and trees, researchers put that to the test and discovered many weren’t quite as knowledgeable as they claimed. Only a quarter of respondents could identify a black oak leaf, while just 35 percent correctly spotted poison ivy when seeing it in a photo.

As a lifelong enemy of the poison ivy vine, I find that appalling. I hope the 65% never find themselves answering the call of nature in the woods and looking for something to use for toilet paper. Read more results from the survey at StudyFinds. -via Fark

Enjoy this amazing lip-sync performance by The Divas In Drag Italian Opera Company. The company is only two guys, who were bored during lockdown and created this video. From their "about" page:

ARE YOU A REAL OPERA COMPANY?

We're as much a real opera company as Maria Callas was a nuclear physicist... not at all.

-via Boing Boing

The slimy, smelly, gelatinous goop called "sea snot" comes and goes in normal times, but now it is seriously gumming up the works in the ocean waters around Turkey, affecting swimming, fishing, and more importantly, killing the plants and animals of the delicate ecosystem.  

The stuff, unofficially and disgustingly known as “sea snot,” was first recorded on the Sea of Marmara in 2007. But there’s more of it now than there has ever been before. For the past six months, it’s spread in a thick, beige layer across the normally deep blue waters.

“I have been traveling here for 15 years and there used to be (snot) at some times,” Burak Yenilmez, who works on a ship, told the Daily Sabah. “But it is worse this year. It is such a dirty sight, and it stinks.”

The strange goo, made of dead overgrown phytoplankton, forms when nutrient-rich water remains still and calm during prolonged periods of heat. Experts think the nutrients came from wastewater, such as untreated sewage, getting dumped into the sea.

The invasion is attributed to climate change and pollution. Read more about sea snot and its effects at Earther.

(Image credit: Annaleida)

Ooh, neat, a vintage toy with a self-contained marble run! But that's just the beginning of this compilation of kinetic artworks, each offering a new twist, like intricate shapes, multiple paths, clever return mechanisms, bells and whistles, and motorized returns. These aren't antiques. LittleBall Creations hand-solders amazing marble run sculptures out of copper wiring, which gives them a lovely vintage look, but it's the clever designs that get us hooked. If these were for sale... we couldn't afford them. See more of LittleBall Creations' sculptures at Colossal. -via Everlasting Blort

This is the worst acronym I’ve ever seen in my life. I laugh at a different bit every time pic.twitter.com/s3ymAN4IU9

— roxannat (@NicLiamo) May 23, 2021

According to Wikipedia, an acronym is "a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase," which this is not. The purpose of this sign is presumably to be a mnemonic device, or a shortcut for remembering things, which it is also not. One commenter came up with much more sensible wording in eight seconds.

Footwear
Alarms
Lenses
Lavatory
Supports

Now that wasn't so hard, was it? -via Fark

Bully Maguire is an entire genre of internet videos that set Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker into various worlds other than Spider-Man. The latest entry is a genius Mork mix of Maguire answering Steve Harvey's questions on the game show Family Feud. This works better than it has any right to. -via reddit

Israeli archaeologists Yonatan Adler and Omri Lernau teamed up to glean insights into fish remains that were found among the relics of ancient Judea. The kinds of fish the residents ate during that time give us a glimpse into how kashrut, or Jewish dietary law, was adopted by the communities.

Now, in a study published today in the journal Tel Aviv, the pair reveals that ancient Judeans, in a period that spans throughout much of the first millennium B.C., enjoyed a diet that didn’t fully adhere to Jewish kosher laws. According to the study, archaeologists have found the remains of three non-kosher species in the two ancients Judean settlements—the Kingdom of Israel in the region’s north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. Judah residents in particular ate a lot of catfish. These findings help scientists and historians build a more complete picture of how the ancient Judean cultures developed and adopted these rules.

According to rabbinic tradition, Moses, the most important prophet in Judaism, received the commandments that outlined how to live life as a Jew sometime around the 13th century B.C. Scholars don’t know exactly when these rules and practices were written down into the Torah, but in his upcoming book, Adler argues that evidence for its observance does not appear until the Hasmonean period that lasted from 140 B.C. to 37 B.C. And the point in history at which Judean citizens adopted the dietary rules prescribed in Torah into their lifestyles, essentially becoming kosher, is also not certain.

Besides not knowing when the rules of keeping kosher were written down, we don't know when they became accessible to the masses, who were largely illiterate. But the story of the remains found in archaeological digs may help scientists figure that out. Read more about the research at Smithsonian.

The UK government's space program began in 1952, and has always emphasized unmanned flight, mainly to launch satellites. But decades earlier, there was a private entity called the British Interplanetary Society that advocated for manned space travel. In the 1940s, they even produced a space suit for intrepid travelers to wear while collecting moon rocks! It looks bonkers, considering what came afterward, but was quite clever for its time. By the way, the British Interplanetary Society is still going strong.

You probably know a dog or cat who waits eagerly by their food bowl, or even passes up steak for their everyday dog or cat food. That's because the pet food business is very competitive, and companies go above and beyond the call of complete nutrition to make their kibble and gushy noms taste good to the consumer.

Many animals rely heavily on smell to navigate the world around them, and this is often the main sense that's targeted. While human noses contain around 50 million olfactory receptors, cats have 67 million, rabbits have 100 million and dogs have around 220 million. On the other hand, their sense of taste is generally less discriminating than ours – our relatively high density of taste receptors is thought to have evolved to help us cope with our diverse omnivorous diets.

The catch is that appealing to animals that find the smell of roadkill, sweaty socks, and vomit utterly enchanting – as carnivorous pets often do – while not making their human companions feel violently ill, is extremely tricky. "There is a slight paradox there, because the smells that cats particularly but also dogs seem to like are often the opposite of what humans like," says Logan.

There is no one secret ingredient that makes dogs drool over dog food, or cats caterwaul over cat food, but rather a whole library of additives that appeal to the cat or dog palate. Read about them, and the history of pet food, at BBC Future. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Flickr user bambe1964)

The guy from The Action Lab just blew our minds. Fumed silica is a desiccant, meaning it can keep things dry. It can even make water droplets hydrophobic! So what if you put those hydrophobic water droplets in a blender? The first thing you might think of is that this could be an amazing money-making toy, but alas, fumed silica is not healthy for the lungs. The video above is just the most amazing minute of this full presentation.

-via reddit

Bette Nesmith Graham’s story illustrates how business is supposed to work: identify a need, figure out how to fill that need, and profit. However, being a single mother with no high school diploma and no business connections in the 1950s meant doing it the hard way. After her divorce, Bette Nesmith got a job at Texas Bank and Trust, where she was mostly a typist.

Though Graham wasn’t a great typist, she eventually rose to the position of executive secretary — then the highest job available to the bank’s female employees.

At the time, IBM had just come out with a new line of electric typewriters that were faster than previous models and used carbon film ribbons.

But as Graham soon learned, the invention had several downsides:

    The sensitive keypad lent itself to more typographical errors.
    The carbon ribbons made these errors impossible to erase without leaving smudges all over the paper.

Graham had to find a way to fix her numerous typos. Soon, an idea struck.

Read how Graham invented Liquid Paper, and then manufactured and marketed it herself at the Hustle. -via Nag on the Lake