When communities are abandoned, nature moves in and takes over. We've seen it happen all over the world, for different reasons, in Montserrat, Pripyat, Gagnon, Centralia, and the many Western mining towns that dried up after the ore played out. Mold moves in and weakens structures. Plants put down roots and tear buildings apart. Insects build nests. Animals soon follow, and before you know it, you've got a wilderness.

This video looks at how nature moves in when people move out. Their main example is Doodletown, New York, which was overtaken by Bear Mountain State Park. Doodletown reached its population peak in the 1920s, with about 350 people. About that time, the push to expand the state park began, and Doodletown homes were bought up by the goverment. Wooden buildings were deliberately dismantled, but stone foundations were left in place. The last building standing was a school made of stone, left in place as a shelter for hikers, but after too many incidents of vandalism left it dangerously damaged, it was demolished in 1980. -via Nag on the Lake

When I saw the headline at Cracked, "4 Debts That Really Should Have Been Forgiven," I immediately thought of Haiti. That story is not included, as this list is focused on things you probably don't already know about. They are pretty bad. First off, around 240 Dutch people who had been imprisoned in concentration camps during World War II returned home to Amsterdam to find bills for rent that had not been paid since they were arrested! And not just for the remainder of the lease, it was for the entire time they were gone. Those homes had meanwhile been empty, occupied by Nazis, or else were destroyed by bombs. And the landlord was the Dutch government, so you'd think they would have been aware of the situation. Strangely, some tenants paid their bills, and the situation wasn't corrected until 2015. Read that story, and three others that may leave your blood boiling, at Cracked.

(Image credit: Nationaal Archief)

Everyone has an anthroponym, but that's okay. It's just a big word for your name. The problem is how they come and go out of style. I recall hearing about someone naming their baby Layla around 1971 and even then I felt for the child, because she'd never be able to hide her age. The same for Shania and Daenerys. Silly me, although my name is not that common, even I have a name that came and went and only belongs to women my age (people just don't name their daughters "Miss" anymore). Dr. Erica Brozovsky (previously at Neatorama) explains why names become fashionable and then not. Both my daughters unintentionally ended up with very common names for their age group, even though I decided on a name for my youngest 30 years earlier. But hey, in 100 years or so, your anthroponym may come back into style! I personally know a family with a newborn named Mabel, and it seems perfect for her.

Remember back in the 1970s and '80s when you played Asteroids, Galaga, Missile Command, and Space Fury for hours? Here's a browser game from Pixeljam that will put you back into those days when graphics were simple and you didn't have to learn any fantasy history or consult maps or create a character to get started. Utopia Must Fall is an old-fashioned shoot-em-up in which you must protect your city from invading aliens, falling boulders, and bombs. There are nukes, too. After the first round, you can upgrade the physics of the game a little to improve your kill rate, or else launch a new strategy. The vector graphics are simple, but still attractive in all their neon glory. When was the last time you played a game on a black background?

In the first run through, I only managed to protect the population of London for three days, but I had a lot of fun doing it, and that's the whole purpose of a game, isn't it? Sorry, London. The browser game is just a demo for a full version that will be released in the next couple of months.  -via Metafilter

PS: If the game asks for a password, it is CEASEFIRE.

Earth gets heat from the sun, but also from its hot, molten core. The heat underneath keeps our surface active, with masses of land and sea moving against each other and reshuffling, a process called plate tectonic. The plates of land that move about on the planet's surface shift over time, giving us mountains, oceans, volcanoes, and earthquakes with their gradual but sometimes violent movement. This system as a whole creates living ecosystems and keeps certain gasses and minerals moving up and down through the atmosphere, surface, water, and deep underground. The effect as a whole is that of a thermostat, in a delicate balance that keeps the surface temperature in a range that supports all life.

But what if our world were static, with no plate tectonics? Then it would be more like Venus. A theory about that planet says that perpetual volcanic activity threw so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the higher temperatures caused the oceans to boil away, leaving the planet too hot and dry to sustain any kind of life. Once a planet's water is gone, there's no getting it back. But earth is a geologically active planet, otherwise we couldn't live here. Read up on how that works at Atlas Obscura. 

(Image credit: USGS)

We've spent more than 100 years illuminating the darkness with electricity. Over time, those electrical systems got bigger and more automatic. Randall Munroe's What If series (previously at Neatorama) received the question, "If all humans died, when would the last light go out?" To answer the question, Munroe completely ignored the theoretical scenario of our demise and got straight to the lights. It comes down to the power source, since some are more automatic than others. Those relying on fuel delivery will go out first, but some kind of artificial lights will last for way longer than you might think. And then we must consider what we mean by "artificial lights." Enriched nuclear fuel gives off a light even though we don't use that light for everyday (or every night) activities. Commenters brought up even more lights, like the Voyager space probes, which have manmade lights, although they are not on earth. There's also the burning coal seams like in Centralia, Pennsylvania, which are natural, but were ignited by human activity. They can burn for thousands of years, but whether you term them as manmade or artificial lights is a matter of semantics.

There are some references in this video you might want to look up, like the Radium Girls, the future of nuclear danger, and Tom Scott. The Rhode Island sign is reference a previous What If video.

Submarine technology is older than you probably think. Cornelius Drebbel built one for the King of England in 1620! Early submarines were successful until they weren't, and the bottom of the ocean is not a good place for the preservation of a wooden submarine. American school children learn about the H. L. Hunley, an ironclad Confederate submarine that sank a Union ship, but was ultimately a failure because all the crew members on each of its three missions died. The sunken Hunley was found in 1970 and raised in 2000. But it is still not the oldest existing submarine.

That would be the Brandtaucher, shown above. This iron submarine was Germany's first, built by Wilhelm Bauer in 1850. It was 28 feet long and weighed 70,000 pounds. Believe it or not, it was powered by two men on a tread wheel! The Brandtaucher wasn't any more successful than earlier submarines, and sank during its first demonstration. However, Bauer learned from his mistakes and went on to design better submarines for the German military. Read about the Brandtaucher, the oldest existing submarine, at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: Jan Rehschuh)

Leonard Solomon has made a career out of building and performing on his own musical instruments. We've featured videos of his bottle organ and his oomphalapompatronium in previous video. In this video, he demonstrates that 21st century music, too, can easily be played on his weird instruments. Listen as he recreates Skrillex's 2010 song "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" on his instrument called a squijeeblion. It produces sounds that range from a nice melody to a foghorn fart to a crying beagle, and you better believe the bass drop is there, too. EDM will never be the same, although you can't really call it that, since this song was played with no MIDI involved. Also, the squijeeblion is powered by air, with both breath and bellows. Too bad you can't go down to the music shop and pick up your own squijeeblion. -via Metafilter, you'll find lots more of Solomon's music linked.  

The Knights Templar was an order of wealthy and pious warriors who fought in the crusades. The order existed for 200 years, and their legend lives on in documentation and in imagery. One of the most mysterious examples of that imagery is the Templar seal, used to stamp and identify correspondence sealed with wax. The stamp, pictured above, shows two knights sharing one horse. What is the significance of this symbol?

The symbol has been interpreted in many ways. It could signify the Templar's vow of poverty, portraying knights having to share a steed. Or it could mean brotherhood, as in carrying each other. Or it could be a symbolic representation Christ being with them. Or it could be a subtle indication of homosexuality. Or possibly a combination of any of these, or something that no one has considered before. To really know, you'd have to ask a Knight of the Templar order, and they've been gone for more than 800 years. Read about the seal of the Knights Templar and how it has been interpreted at the Conversation.

(Image credit: Hinterkappelen)

One of the funnier lines in the 1974 movie Young Frankenstein was when Igor (Marty Feldman) told Dr. Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) to "Walk this way." He didn't mean the direction, he meant the style. "No, walk THIS way!" A few months later, the song "Walk This Way" by Aerosmith was a hit. My friends and I would dance to it, and walk like Igor during the chorus. Yeah, it was funny. It turns out the song was actually named after that line in that movie! The music came first, then guitarist Brad Whitford saw Young Frankenstein and found the line so funny he insisted on using it for the song. Steven Tyler wrote the rest of the lyrics around the phrase. If that's not wild enough, wait until you find out exactly who inspired the song "Dude Looks Like a Lady."

Mental Floss takes a deep dive into the origins and meanings of 25 hit songs that you never really thought about, many of which changed considerably between the inspiration and the finished product. You can also listen to the list in the form of a video at the same link.  

Theodore Roosevelt was America's 26th president, after raising cattle in North Dakota, fighting in the Spanish-American War, and serving as governor of New York, among other adventures. Many legendary but true tales are told about Teddy, including the one in which the Teddy bear was named for him. But there are always more. I have written about Roosevelt several times, and one even I hadn't heard of happened sometime around 1884.

Roosevelt entered a bar in Montana and saw that one guy was so drunk he had already shot the clock on the wall three times. Holding two guns, he mocked Roosevelt for wearing glasses and ordered him to fix drinks. Roosevelt managed to convince the drunk fellow that he was no danger, then punched him good, knocking the guy unconscious to the cheers of everyone in the saloon. The drunk left town and never came back. When Roosevelt told the story in his autobiography, he included a lot more details. You can read that one and five other true stories that show just how fearless Roosevelt was, at Cracked.

Drug lord Gustavo Fring (played by Giancarlo Esposito) made quite an impression as the toughest of tough guys on Breaking Bad. He managed to bluff his way through and survive many attempts on his life during the series with style and menace, so (spoiler coming) when he was eventually assassinated by a nonverbal colleague in a wheelchair, we were doubly shocked. What kept him alive through so much mayhem? Plot armor, produced by the character's popularity. By the time Fring actually died, we were all convinced he would be around forever. YouTuber Alternative Cuts (previously at Neatorama) spent two months editing together a video illustration of how bulletproof Fring really was. He confidently steps into danger, brought by all the badasses from Breaking Bad, then by other movie characters who shoot to kill. The walk gets longer and longer as every cinematic killer, no matter how ridiculous, is thrown at him. That's one tough character. -via Geeks Are Sexy

We all know about the ridiculous varying pronunciations of cough, tough, bough, through, and though, which are all spelled alike but cannot be made to rhyme successfully. It's just one of the many ways that English is thoroughly weird, and very hard to master if it's not a language you learned in early childhood. How did English spelling get this way? To begin with, English is a mishmash of other languages, constantly changing over the centuries. Ever tried to read something in Old English? When the spoken language began to be a printed language, there was no authority over spelling, like a bureau of language standards. Words were spelled whatever way the printer wanted, usually to give some idea of how they were pronounced. But pronunciation changes over time and place, and the printed word, for the most part, stays the same. That's why we can still read Shakespeare, but we are probably not using the same word pronunciation. -via Laughing Squid

What period of history is most like the early internet? It had to be the medieval era, when the only books were hand-copied by bored monks and no one knew how to read anyway. No one knew what an elephant looked like, either, but you only needed paint to give it a try. There were so many jokes illustrated in pictures that you have to wonder about the ones they told.

No one appreciates those things more than Matt Ponesse, history professor at Ohio Dominican University. At Instagram, he's medievalistmatt, who gives us a glimpse into the way things were back then with a dose of laughs.

Looking through his gallery of memes can suck up the rest of your day. And always check the captions for more pithy remarks and the source of each image, which sometimes even includes the year. I may have learned a little about medieval history along the way. I bet Ponesse's classes are a blast. -via Boing Boing

The Great Lakes of the US and Canada are the world's largest freshwater ecosystem in the world, and those who manage it have been battling invasive Asian carp for 50 years, to the point that migrating fish must go through gates and be sorted or rejected by species. But as conservationists are starting to win the battle against carp, they are confronted with a growing number of goldfish in the lakes. They started out as discarded pets, but in the wild, they grow to enormous size and reproduce like no one's business. They displace native species and wreck the ecosystem.  

Goldfish are commonly a beloved family pet, but when they outgrow their tank or otherwise must be discarded, people understandably don't want to take the easy way out, like, say, feeding it to the cat. Flushing a goldfish seems cruel, and does not guarantee their death. To solve this dilemma, the Erie Zoo launched the Last Chance Lagoon, a place to "retire" pet goldfish without releasing them into the wild. The zoo has taken in 52 pet goldfish. That doesn't seem like much, but it may inspire other communities to launch similar programs to keep goldfish out of public waterways.