Magnets, how do they work? Here they are not so much working as playing. YouTuber Magnetic Games built a seven-note scale using magnets and the resonance they provide when they repel each other. After tuning the screws, he plays a couple of songs you will recognize. I'm not all that sure what he's doing in the second half of the video, but it looks like a lot of fun. But you're just wondering where you can get a big bag of magnets to play with. At the YouTube page, there's a list of them linked to their product pages. You have to wonder how much trouble they cause for the shipper.  -via Nag on the Lake

Steam-powered boats revolutionized trade and travel on American rivers in the 1800s, but they were dangerous. The wooden boats were powered by huge boilers that tended to explode. But new technology is something to get excited about, and any human endeavor will eventually turn into a competition, so steamboat races became a thing. These races were an ego trip for the boat captains, a way to advertise for boat owners, a new sport for gamblers, and something to do for spectators.

During competitions, the boilers on these steamboats would be pushed to their breaking point, which could spell disaster for all involved, especially passengers aboard at the time. The first steamboat race in 1811 didn't see any explosions or deaths, but the boats crashed into each other. Then in 1852, a steamboat boiler exploded during a race and 80 people died. Still, the story seemed to only add excitement to the races, which continued to be held on rivers far and wide, drawing millions in wagers. Read about the era of steamboat races at Smithsonian.  -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Library of Congress)

The stereotype of Southern cooking is that it covers a lot of sins by adding butter, because everything's better with butter. Well, it's true, but you can also say that about French cooking. Deep-frying stuff in batter is typical of the South, yet it's also popular in plenty of other parts of the US. Casseroles are not limited to the South, either, as they are very common in the Midwest and in the Mormon corridor. So what really epitomizes Southern cooking?

To me, raised in a border state, it's the casual attitude towards measurements. I learned a few family recipes growing up, but I gradually altered them past the point of recognition. Then I doubled them to feed a big family. Then I got into the habit of using what I have rather than what I'd have to run out to get. By the time my kids were old enough to ask me for those familiar recipes, it was hard to go through my usual sequence and describe what ingredients and how much of them I use. That's the heart of Southern cooking. You ask for the recipes you love from Mama or Grandma or the nice lady at the church, and they will write them down for you... at least the parts they recall. Grandma doesn't cook anymore and is a bit forgetful, Mama never measured anything, and that church lady doesn't want you to outshine her in cooking. So even if you follow the recipe, you'll have to suffer a crushing blow to your ego in your first failures, then experiment with that recipe by adding a good amount of butter.    

The horror film The Pope's Exorcist, starring Russell Crowe, is currently in theaters, and has drawn mixed reviews for different reasons. The International Association of Exorcists is upset that the film "distorts and falsifies" the reality of exorcism. The movie is a fictionalized account based on the association's founder, Father Gabriele Amorth, who became the assistant to the the chief exorcist of the diocese of Rome in 1986, and then succeeded him as chief. Amorth wrote a couple of books about his experiences as an exorcist, which inspired the movie. The priest claimed to have performed 70,000 exorcisms, although that includes multiple rituals performed on the same person. Amorth also claimed that the vast majority of cases in which he was approached for help involved mental illness instead of possession. Amorth's life (he died in 2016) was not a horror story, at least entirely. Read about the real man behind the movie at Smithsonian. 

For those who have seen The Pope's Exorcist, History vs. Hollywood breaks down the incidents portrayed in the film and compares them to incidents from history and from Amorth's books.

You will be forgiven for thinking this is a stage effect from a Rammstein concert. It's not, but they might be inspired by this incident.

Disneyland has a show called Fantasmic! in which Mickey Mouse must save the day when Maleficent (the villain from Sleeping Beauty) turns into a 45-foot tall fire-breathing dragon. But during the last show on Saturday night, something went awry and the entire animatronic dragon caught fire! 



All cast members and guests were evacuated from the area, and fire and rescue extinguished the fire. No one was injured. Disneyland has temporarily suspended all fire effects in their shows pending an investigation. The same show at Walt Disney World in Florida will continue with fire effects.  -via reddit

If you come at the king, you should do it while he's on the toilet. It happened in Game of Thrones, and there are historical precedents. It makes sense, since one is most vulnerable when relieving oneself, and that's the time a powerful man is most likely to be completely alone.

Take the story of poor Jaromír, who was briefly the duke of Bohemia twice in the 11th century. Jaromír's older brother Boleslaus III was duke before him, and was quite paranoid about his younger brothers' ambitions. He had Jaromír castrated and exiled. That really set off the family squabbles, and Jaromír and his younger brother Oldřich spent the rest of their lives trying to take the dukedom from Boleslaus, each other, and the forces of the king of Poland. Jaromír was ultimately blinded on orders from Oldřich and imprisoned, where he was speared through one night while on the toilet.

Read that story and those of four other rulers who were offed while doing their business at Amusing Planet. It's not always good to be the king.

The idea of robots is not new, but making one work is fairly recent. In 1938, we had no transistors and certainly no microchips, and digital communication was a far away dream. Cutting edge technology was when Westinghouse figured out how to send commands to electronic machines over telephone lines by coded pulses. Strangely, Westinghouse built that feature into demonstration robot bodies in the 1920s. But they were nothing compared to the humanoid robot that the company debuted in 1938 at the 1939 World's Fair in New York City.

Elektro the robot was a wonder to all who saw him. He was able to perform 26 human actions ("tricks") including walking, talking, counting, blowing up balloons, and smoking a cigarette. Elektro made quite a splash and was was taken out on the road after World War II to promote Westinghouse products. He was even in a movie in the '50s. You might wonder how a robot did all that without transistors or microchips. He wasn't a person inside a costume, but there was a lot of what we today might call mechanical shenanigans going on inside. However, even if all Elektro's abilities were explained to the audience at the World's Fair, they would still be impressed. Read how Elektro really worked at Today I Found Out.

Glioblastoma is the most common type of brain cancer, and the odds of surviving it are abysmal. Only 6.8% of patients make it to five years after treatment. Surgery is difficult because the fast-growing tumors are hard to extricate completely from the brain without damaging the brain itself. Delivering medicines to the brain is a problem due to the blood-brain barrier. But a new innovation in treatment is showing promise. In a recent trial, it proved to be 100% effective in lab mice.

What researchers have done is mix two anti-cancer drugs in a solution that turns to gel. When surgery is performed to remove a brain tumor, the gel is placed into the tumor cavity. It then infuses into the crevasses of the brain and doesn't flush away as quickly as a liquid would.

The mice not only survived, but when tumors were later introduced into treated mice, they were able to fend off the brain cancer on their own. It will take a lot more research to determine whether this treatment is safe for humans, and the next step is testing it in higher-order animals. Read about the experimental gel and its astonishing performance at Gizmodo.

(Image credit: Rama)

Switzerland is a small country draped over some tall mountains, yet it has developed ways to pack all kinds of modern infrastructure in with Swiss engineering and multiple uses of the land.

Now, airports and military air bases need quite a bit of room and flat ground for runways, which is at a premium in Switzerland. So they built Meiringen Air Base in 1941 in an Alpine valley that had civilian roads running through it. The highways run right across the runways! Yeah, there's a system in place to keep everyone safe. The planes have the right of way on takeoff, because they can close the highway crossing, but automobile traffic has the right of way for landings, since a plane can circle until they can close and clear the highway crossings.

Most air bases are closed to the general public, but it can't be done here, so people come from all over the world to watch the military aircraft take off and land at Meiringen. Tom Scott added some more information at the YouTube page, explaining that the planes aren't stored in hangars here. They are parked in caverns in the hillsides! The Swiss know a thing or two about saving space.

Video calls helped friends and families fight loneliness during the pandemic. Parrots normally live in flocks, so would video calls help them feel less lonely? That was the subject of an experiment by Dr. Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas of the University of Glasgow and her team. The researchers studied 18 pet parrots who were taught to use a tablet. They learned really quickly. The parrots would ring a bell when they wanted to make a call, and then select a bird to call from a menu of images. The birds made 147 calls during the study, and engaged in social behaviors while on calls. The researchers studied more than 1,000 hours of video of the interactions, and the bird's owners filled out forms on each call. It turns out that the birds that made the most calls ended up being the most popular, and were chosen by other birds more often! Read about the study at The Guardian. You can also watch a video presentation of the research at YouTube (skip to 3:20 to watch the birds do it). -via Metafilter

The European Space Agency (ESA) held a contest to come up with drink recipes in honor of their launch of a space probe called "Juice" that will explore Jupiter's moons looking for signs of life. The wonderfully imaginative entries ranged from iced coffee with swirls like Jupiter's surface to color-changing drinks to a drink topped with cotton candy.

The winning drink, called Europa Geology, came from grad student Margherita Gagnoni. The drink's appearance resembles a cross section of the moon Europa, from its rocky core to its ice crust. It even contains a bit of life, in the form of blue Spirulina algae! However, you can substitute blue food coloring if you don't have Spirulina.

All 70 non-alcoholic drinks can be seen in an online recipe book. They are rich in imagination, and juice, of course. I can't say how they taste, but they are all pretty. Read about the contest, the "mocktails," and the Juice space probe at Atlas Obscura. 

In this sweet little story, a guy (Mr. Butter, we find out) wants ice cream but he can't catch the ice cream truck. It also appears that he will never encounter that ice cream truck again. So he decides to make some at home. The wordless story is already pretty surreal by then, but when the ice cream starts to make noise, his life changes completely and forever. You could compare this to the story of Frankenstein, but this is ice cream. If you want to look deeper into the moral implications, it's that we have to live with our choices, and learn to resist temptation, no matter what form it comes in. But it's much easier to just ponder how bizarre the imagination can be. This video is from YouTuber Buttered Side Down, who has plenty of other weird animations.  -via Laughing Squid

Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass noticed they had a lot of food-themed song titles, and decided to put them together for their sixth album, Whipped Cream & Other Delights. Photographer Peter Whorf had a vision for the album cover, and hired Dolores Erickson for a photoshoot in which she appeared to be covered with whipped cream (actually shaving cream, except for the fluff on her head). When Whorf presented the images to the band, Alpert thought they were too racy and would never go over. When Erickson saw them months later, she was appalled, and hid them from her husband.

But the band decided to use one of the pictures, and the album Whipped Cream & Other Delights sold six million copies. The only hit single from the album was "A Taste of Honey," which peaked at #7 in the US, but everyone wanted the full album when they saw the cover. Read the story of the picture that sold the album and became a classic at Vintage Everyday. -via Strange Company

As a bonus, continue reading to see some of the recreations and parodies of the album cover I found while looking for an illustration for this post.

Don Powell and his wife moved into a new home in Orchard Lake, Michigan five years ago. They ordered a custom-made mailbox that is larger than a standard mailbox and resembles their home with windows and everything. It even has a solar powered interior light. Cool huh? But it got much cooler last August, when Powell opened the mailbox to find two dolls and a note that said, “We’ve decided to live here. Mary and Shelley.” They were sitting on a miniature couch.

Powell asked his neighbors, but no one admits knowing anything about the dolls. He left the dolls in the mailbox, because there is still plenty of room for mail. Later on, the dolls collected more miniature furniture and accessories, including a dog, Halloween decorations, and a Christmas tree. At some point, the dolls' cousin Shirley moved in to recuperate from a broken leg. Powell has been documenting the dolls' shenanigans on his Nextdoor neighborhood group, and keeping the other members enthralled with the saga. Read the full story and see more pictures at Hometown Life. -via Metafilter
 
(Image credit: Don Powell)

In the Star Wars TV series The Mandalorian, the catch phrase is "This is the way." The words were uttered 24 times during the first season and 11 times during season two, so we already knew that's just what Mandalorians say. But that wasn't enough for Disney/Lucasfilm, who are obviously wanting to make every Star Wars fan use it as a greeting. During season three, there are 187 instances of "This is the way." Auralnauts took notice, and also saw how it was almost always said it in a particularly rhythmic way, just perfect for an electronic slow march beat mashup. The total count for the series so far is 222, but there is a bonus clip at the end where it might be another instance. This could be today's earworm; apologies in advance.   

I had cultivated a habit over the past few years of responding to "May the Force be with you" with "And also with you." I will be changing that now, to "This is the way." -via Laughing Squid