We had Conan the Barbarian in 1982, and Conan the Destroyer in 1984, so does anyone want a third Conan movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger? It can be done, thanks to deepfake technology. The Buff Dudes did it, using a version of Arnold's face from different eras to show Conan as an aged king and in the younger flashback scenes. In this story, Conan is defending his throne from all, or at least some, of those kids he spawned when he was younger. They call this a "concept trailer," although it does a better job at making us want to watch the full movie than most trailers. It's more like the early scenes of a film, just setting up the conflict. Alas, it's not a full movie but a fan film. Here's a behind-the-scenes look at how the video was made.



Yeah, this was put together by an astonishingly small crew, but it took them six months. Now we will wait for Schwarzenegger's reaction. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Have you ever wanted to observe an exploding star, but you don't have a telescope? In the 21st century, you don't have to own a telescope to watch it happen.

Just a few days ago, a type II supernova was discovered in the Messier 101 galaxy, also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy (shown above). This supernova has been named SN 2023ixf. In case you are wondering, it is 21 million light-years away, and poses no threat to earth. This is the closest supernova to be observed in the past five years, and the second closest in the past ten years.

Supernova #SN2023ixf in Messier 101, as imaged on a small 115mm refractor in an Indiana backyard.

Direct comparison before the supernova (May 16) and after (May 20), where it's already a brilliant white object dominating this galaxy. #Astrophotography https://t.co/xUNn4r41sa pic.twitter.com/b9oH6vLHcH

— Paul Macklin (@MathCancer) May 22, 2023

The collapse of this giant star will be livestreamed, thanks to The Virtual Telescope Project. The livestream begins at 6:30 PM Eastern Time (22:30 UTC) on May 25  Friday May 26 at YouTube. The project is using 14-inch and 17-inch telescopes in Ceccano, Italy. It will presumably be available to replay after the livestream. It seems a bit strange to call it a livestream, as this explosion happened 21 million years ago- but we are just now receiving the visuals here on earth. If you happen to have a telescope, and live in the Northern Hemisphere, you should be able to find SN 2023ixf in the Ursa Major constellation, in the handle of the Big Dipper. The supernova will be visible for a few more months. -via Metafilter 

Update: The livestream has been delayed by high winds, and will commence on Friday evening at 6:30 PM Eastern Time.

(Image credit: European Space Agency & NASA)

If you recall the sitcom Gilligan's Island, you know that the castaways stranded on a remote island had an awful lot of visitors from the outside world, but those visitors always managed to get away and leave the main cast behind. That was also the fate of Philip Ashton, who was just a teenager when his fishing boat was hijacked by pirates in 1722. He was forced into piracy, then escaped, only to find himself alone on Roatan, a then-uninhabited island off the coast of Honduras. He had no gear, no tools, and no hope for rescue. Over the next couple of years, Ashton was joined twice by other castaways, and once a ship approached, but instead of a rescue, they shot at him!

Ashton finally made it back to civilization, and a book was written about his experience. However, few readers believed it was a true story. Instead, they considered his account a knockoff of another book that had been published just a few years earlier- Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Read the real story of castaway Philip Ashton at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: Jonathan Palombo)

They call this a maze, but in places it resembles a Rube Goldberg contraption, and other parts may remind you of the American Ninja Warrior course. More than anything, this looks like a colorful classic Nintendo game maze. This little guy seems to have fun exploring the ins and outs of this new world as he makes his way through it and back to his normal but luxurious home. He should be used to it; his human partner in crime Mister Hamster makes these kinds of things all the time. You get the idea he only adopted his hamsters as an excuse to buy lots of plastic toys and build huge labyrinths for him. Everyone's got a hobby.

Near the beginning of the video, the hamster puts his hands on what might be a glass cover for this maze. I can see how that would be necessary, but it is the cleanest glass I have ever seen, with no reflections visible anywhere in the video.  -via Boing Boing

Today (Wednesday, May 24) at 3PM Eastern Time, a message will be sent to Earth from Mars. Sure, we are always talking to our robots on Mars, but this is different. It's a science/art/engineering experiment that can involve all of us. The message will be sent from a Mars orbiter belonging to the European Space Agency, and is encoded to simulate what intelligent extraterrestrials might say if they were searching for life in the cosmos, and how they might transmit it. Then the public will get a chance to try to decode it. The project is called A Sign In Space, designed by a team led by Daniela de Paulis, Artist in Residence at the SETI Institute.

If everything goes right, the message will be intercepted by three institutes: the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array in California, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, and the Medicina Radio Astronomical Station observatory in Italy. It will take 16 minutes to receive the message from Mars. You can observe the project unfold live at YouTube. If the message is successfully received, it will be made available to the public for crowdsourced decoding. If you can decipher it, you are invited to upload your text, files, or links here. I don't see anything about a prize for decoding the message, or even for being the first to do it, but what an accomplishment that would be! Bragging rights forever. Read more about the project at Gizmodo. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: SETI Institute)

There are plenty of reasons why we wear shoes. Some think it's a matter of civilization or fashion. But there's also hot sand and pavement, the danger of stepping on LEGO bricks, glass, or bees (a particular childhood memory of mine), and of course the fact that it gets cold in the winter. When I was young, it only took two weeks or so every spring to build the callouses I needed to walk on gravel or hot pavement, but as an adult I mostly wear sandals. Should we all just ditch shoes and go barefoot? SciShow goes over the research that says yes, at least for children and maybe for athletes. The rest of us would probably do well to kick off our shoes and feel the air on our feet more often, if just for the psychological boost. But make sure you are up-to-date on your tetanus shot. This video is only five minutes long; the rest is an ad. -via Digg

There is no activity on earth that people will not turn into a competition eventually. The Sheep to Shawl competition at the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival took place earlier this month. In this contest, teams of five people have three hours to shear a sheep, card and spin the wool, and weave it into a shawl. The teams have names like the Quaker Bakers, the Fidget Spinners, and Mutton but Trouble. The teams are judged on their speed and the quality of the finished work, but also on their teamwork, theme, and costumes. The 2023 competition also had something rare- an all high school team from a fiber arts class. That hasn't happened in Maryland since the 1970s, which gives us a clue as to how long this has been going on.  

NPR talked to the competitors about what the Sheep to Shawl contest is all about. The secret to success is finding a sheep that doesn't have much lanolin, since they do not have time to wash it out. Spinning is much easier with wool from a less-greasy sheep. Maryland isn't unique; Sheep to Shawl competitions can be found across the US, wherever sheep are raised. -via Boing Boing

Apple TV+'s new movie Killers of the Flower Moon received a nine-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival Saturday. The film will not be released in the US until October, the perfect time to build Oscar buzz.

Killers of the Flower Moon tells the story of the Osage Indian murders. In a bit of cosmic karma, Native Americans who had been forcibly relocated to a reservation in Oklahoma discovered oil reserves in 1897 and the Osage people grew wealthy. By the 1920s, that oil was increasingly valuable, and more than 60 Osage of all ages were murdered or died under mysterious circumstances, with their wealth inherited by white relatives or assigned guardians. Eventually, the FBI investigated.

Director Martin Scorsese tells the story from two perspectives: an overview of the history of the FBI, and a more intimate focus on two historical characters, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his wife Mollie Kyle Burkhart (Lily Gladstone). This approach resulted in 206-minute movie- that's three hours and 26 minutes long! The viewers at Cannes didn't seem to mind. Killers of the Flower Moon certainly has star power. Besides DiCaprio and Gladstone, the cast includes Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, Brendan Fraser, and John Lithgow. Digg has a roundup of review highlights, with links to full reviews. DiCaprio and Gladstone are particularly singled out for praise.

Since the producers of Killers of the Flower Moon did not fictionalize the character's names, reading the historical account of the Osage murders will reveal spoilers for the somewhat-mysterious teaser trailer, but it only made me want to see the movie more.

The Nez Perce War of 1877 was the last great Indian war in which the US Army, protecting encroaching white settlers, pursued the Nez Perce people from Oregon, through Idaho, and into Montana before finally defeating them. The war began with the Nez Perce having the upper hand in several attacks and battles that gave their few warriors a reputation as terrifying fighters led by the military genius Heinmot Tooyalalkekt, also known as Chief Joseph. When the Nez Perce, represented by Chief Joseph,  surrendered in October of 1877, it was the culmination of a riveting war that people in the eastern US had been following avidly in the papers.

But the newspaper accounts only told one side of the story. The actual war followed decades of negotiations and broken treaties between the US and the Nez Perce. The US had a fundamental and possibly deliberate misunderstanding of the Nez Perce- they weren't one nation, but a network of bands of people, and none of them spoke for all of them. Chief Joseph was one of several chiefs, but it fell to him to communicate their final surrender to the army. The early victories of the Nez Perce had more to do with the US military's ignorance of how their culture worked, plus some major blunders, and the local civilians who did more harm than good. Meanwhile, Chief Joseph was more concerned with the safety of the women and children of his people than with military victories. Read how the war unfolded from the perspective of the Nez Perce in a chronicle at Damn Interesting. You can also listen to it in podcast form.

We live in a world that offers an amazing array of consumer goods. Thanks to the internet, our range of choice is wider than ever before because now we can order consumer goods from not only out-of-town vendors, but from all around the world. That's not always a good thing, because we can become confused or even paralyzed by the prospect of making the wrong selection. It's not only online stores, but online reviews and rankings of goods that can cause confusion -not to mention a serious commitment of time. And who's to say which reviews and rankings are valid?

An article at the New York Times (non-paywalled here) describes the phenomena of people who do endless online research to make sure they are buying the absolute best toaster before making their purchase. These people are called maximizers, as opposed to others who look around for a "good enough" deal on a toaster and are called satisficers (a word that combines satisfy and suffice). Of course, legitimate concerns over what we can afford will impact our decision-making style. I used a toaster as an example, but this phenomenon can apply to everything from groceries to college choice to dating sites to real estate.  

The research tells us that maximizers often do make the best choices, but that doesn't necessarily leave them happy, as they can feel anxiety over possibly making the wrong choice before the purchase. After the purchase that anxiety may continue as regret, because there might have been a better option after all. Satisficers are more likely to buy the first thing that meets all their personal criteria, and will save time and cognitive energy by not worrying about their decision once it's made. People rarely fall completely into one category or the other. Most of us will devote way more time and energy into researching large decisions like a new house than small ones like tonight's restaurant. Yet there are folks who will spend so much time reviewing restaurants that they forget to go to dinner.  

The discussion at Metafilter makes it clear that many of us are checking listicles and reviews mainly to avoid buying crap that will fall apart before the purchase is justified, because there is an awful lot of subpar goods for sale in our modern throwaway society.   

(Image credit: Masod Shahrestani)

A shake table is not where you pick up your milkshake, nor is it furniture for a strip club. The shake table at the University of California San Diego is a stretch of ground intricately engineered to simulate various forms and strengths of earthquakes. Underground pressure pipes are constantly upgraded to cause different kinds of tremors so their effects can be studied. Tom Scott visited the shake table at UCSD to talk to the engineers and find out how it works. Then he went back to witness a test of a ten-story building with innovative architectural features designed to withstand an earthquake. So you can see that it has to be extremely strong, plus it must have plenty of redundant safety features for the sake of the engineers who work there and for the expensive items they test. Not to mention, the shake table itself has to survive the work it does.   

The above picture is from the Instagram account Cooking for Bae, the title of which is a joke about inexperienced young people trying to make impressive meals for someone they love even though they don't know how to cook. The person who drained their macaroni, like it said on the package, obviously never bothered to watch their mother do it when they were a child. Nor did they ever learn about food safety. Macaroni and cheese isn't that difficult to make, but they have examples of inexperienced cooks jazzing it up with strawberries, avocado, and mint-vanillla milk. Those are three different cooks. Other abominations are clearly from school lunch rooms, restaurants, stoned experiments, or even a grocery store.

More macaroni! This person apparently picked up the wrong paper packet when making mac and cheese, and then decided to go ahead and use the cheese packet for a hot drink. The pasta is most likely a loss, but that drink, if made with real milk, might make up for it. Bored Panda has a ranked list of 30 of the best deranged cooking attempts from the Instagram account. Beware, there are some pictures of food that no one can confidently identify.  

Even the most outlandish legends and cryptids may be traced to real experiences that made a good story for someone somewhere. A good story tends to get larger with each telling, and details are added when different people try to translate them or pass those stories down to younger people who have less context. We are familiar with medieval artists who tried to draw exotic beasts from nothing but an oral description. That same transformation could happen to any strange sighting when the witness and the artist are different people. As we gain more knowledge about the ancient world, we find more analogues to our modern legends, like the drop bear. A string of unreliable narrators can easily transform a natural phenomena that no one understands into a fantastic fairy tale. Weird History take a look at a whole string of mythical creatures, from cyclops to vampires to unicorns, and ties them to plausible natural but misunderstood origins.

Orcas, also called killer whales, have sunk three sailboats off the Iberian coast since 2020, the latest on May 4th. They've also attacked numerous boats without sinking them. Such attacks involve several orcas, and the younger ones appear to be imitating the behavior of older orcas. In many of these attacks, the orcas approach the rudder of the boat, which they bite, bend, or break, and then lose interest when the boat stops moving forward. You could call these interactions rare, as the orcas only attack about 1% of boats in the area, but since 2020, that's 500 cases.

Scientists suspect the behavior started with a female known as White Gladis, who may have had a traumatic experience with a boat. Orcas are very social, and new behaviors can spread quickly among the population. And that population is rather small- the last census of Iberian orcas in 2011 found only 39 individuals. That subpopulation is listed as critically endangered. Five hundred boat attacks by such a small number of orcas is concerning. While the behavior was quickly spread among the orcas, experts don't know if it's just something fun they've learned to do, or if it may be a malicious and deliberate way for sea creatures to inflict harm on the human ocean interlopers. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: NOAA)

A drop bear is a cryptid that Australians love to warn tourists about. They resemble koalas, but are super vicious. A drop bear will hide in a tree until an unsuspecting person walks underneath and then drop onto them and rip them apart. Or at least that's the story. I don't understand why they try to scare tourists like that, since people visiting Australia from elsewhere are all primed to believe every living creature there is trying to kill you already.  

But there were once real drop bears. Like koalas, they were not bears, but marsupials. The genus called Nimbadon roamed the rainforests of southern Australia 15 million years ago, during the Middle Miocene Epoch. Nimbadon looked somewhat like a wombat, but grew to be 70 kilograms (154 pounds)! While they were first considered something like a "marsupial sheep," scientists have determined that these creatures lived in the trees, slung underneath branches like sloths. Occasionally, a Nimbadon would fall out of a tree, just like a drop bear. They know this because some Nimbadons fell out of trees and into caves, where their remains were found 15 million years later.

That's wild enough, but the article about prehistoric drop bears also mentions crocodiles that climbed trees. Now that would make a great legend! -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Peter Schouten)