The "middle finger salute" is possibly the most widely-used rude gesture we have. It is often associated with road rage incidents, and is handy for instantly turning an argument into a fist fight, no pun intended. But where did it come from? Like many things we take for granted today, it originated with the ancient Greeks.

But 2,500 years ago, the meaning and usage of the middle finger was a bit different. The finger position was a straightforward phallic symbol that could be used for a number of communications. The gesture could be an insult, but was often a proposition or a part of a dirty joke. Greek playwright Aristophanes used it in several of his plays. The attitude was often more playful and ribald than challenging. According to ancient references, it was sometimes used to poke someone, with clear implications.

While the gesture itself is very old, referring to it as "flipping the bird" is much more recent. Get the lowdown on how the middle finger became both obscene and enduring at CNN. Be aware that the article is NSFW, unless you work at CNN. -via Fark

(Image credit: Clemens Stockner)

Give artificial intelligence a creepy idea and the algorithm will make it even creepier than intended. This 1950s-style newsreel tells us about a new amusement park. We expect the overdressed nuclear family having a good time with costumed cartoon characters, but this park has some extra features we're just glad the real world didn't think of back when lawsuits were less of a restraint. Just keep telling yourself it's all fictional. But you know, it might make a good horror movie in the right hands. Not that I'd want to visit Pooky Park, even in the cinema.

Honestly, be warned that this animation is weird and ridiculous and might be disturbing. The basic idea will remind you of the original TV series Squid Game and the uncanny rendering will remind you of the video for the song "Black Hole Sun." At least that's how it struck me. YouTuber Meme Dream Machine is to blame for this abomination. -via Laughing Squid

It's happened many times that an idea of how our world came to be the way it is arose just because someone thought it made sense. Ideas without any evidence are often proved wrong later, but once a theory is widespread, it's hard to take it back. Nineteenth-century lawyer and zoologist Philip Sclater published important work about the animals found in the different regions of the earth. But he was puzzled by lemurs, fossils of which were found in both Madagascar and in India. How does one explain that? Well, there must have been a land bridge at some time in the past. Sclater proposed that there was once a continent in the Indian Ocean he called Lemuria. That sunken continent (sometimes transferred to the pacific Ocean under the name Mu) captured the imagination of all sorts of people, and led to legends, fictional stories, and at least one religion that survives today.

The existence of Lemuria (called Kumari Kandam in Tamil) was disproven by plate tectonics later on. And in a final twist, the lemurs found in India were explained away as well. Read about the rise and fall of the continent of Lemuria at Atlas Obscura. 

(Image credit: Pradeep.doodh)

Biopics and movies about historical events can be wonderful jumping-off points for learning about history, but you can't just depend on them for your history education. Sadly, the blockbuster film version may be the only exposure many folks have to certain historical moments. Historical events are a great well of inspiration for movies, since they are truly original ideas at the time they happened, and the stories cannot be accused of plagiarism or piggybacking. But when a filmmaker takes on a historical project, they still have to fit the story into a feature film length, which means leaving out a lot of context, condensing long sequences, and sometimes taking shortcuts by making up scenes to get an idea across quickly. Nerdstalgic takes us on a tour of the ways true stories get changed for cinema. Those changes don't ruin a good movie, but as far as historical accuracy, we should be aware of them. -via Digg

This image of a Crab-eating macaque in Thailand won Suliman Alatiqi the Best in Show award in the 2023 Ocean Art Underwater Photo Contest. Alatiqi spent two weeks diving near the Phi Phi Islands, and gained the trust of one particular clan of macaques before he could get up close and personal with them. The photograph won first place in the Portrait category as well.

The contest announced first through fourth place winners and honorable mentions in 14 categories. New rules this year restricted the use of AI in post processing for the 12 primary categories to ensure that the photos are 100% real, but also introduced two new categories without such rules, Underwater Digital Art and Underwater Fashion, where such editing can run free. All the photos are amazing, but I was particularly drawn to this one.  

Gabriel Jensen placed fourth in the Portrait category with this image of two fishes. The doctorfish seems to be posing for the picture, as if he's getting his smile right for a selfie, but he's also being eaten by a lizardfish! Jensen likened the image to the "this is fine" meme. Nature is brutal.

See all the winners at the contest website, with links to the story behind each. -via Everlasting Blort

We really don't know much about the real Arthur, but if he was real, he wasn't a king but rather a fourth-century warrior who was a hero to the Britons. As time goes by, heroes get elevated, in this case to a king and a legend. The story of Arthur was written and re-written over centuries to include other well-known legends, such as that of the round table, the knights who each had their own powers like MCU characters, the Holy Grail, the affair between Lancelot and Guinevere, and most of all, that sword. There are actually two swords, Excalibur and Caliburn, one from a stone and the other from the Lady in the Lake, even though strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. All of these stories may have come from some grain of truth that turned into a good story and then became folded into the Arthurian saga as it was resurrected again and again. Arthurian legends are like Katamari Damacy, the game where the further you roll, the more stuff you pick up along the way. You can't keep a good story down.   

The Trolley Problem is a thought experiment in ethics. A runaway trolley is on course to kill several people. You can throw a switch to divert the trolley down another track so it will only kill one person. If you throw the switch, you will cause less harm, but you've still killed a person. If you don't throw the switch, you can consider yourself blameless but more people will die. Mastodon user sidereal gives us the lowdown on how it should really be handled.

This actually comes from railroad workers talking in comments on a fb group. I just made the meme for them.

They were like "those trolley memes are stupid, we have to do this in our railyard like once a week when some intermodal runs loose."

Kudos to the railroad engineers who figured this out long ago, and not to the train robbers who used the scheme to rob passengers. While this explains the trolley example, it does not answer the ethical dilemma at the heart of the question. It just means we really need to come up with a new way to illustrate it. Or not, because the Trolley Problem scenario already asks us to assume a bunch of weird factors, like people being tied to two railroad tracks, and the subject knowing how to switch the tracks. And if you have enough time to consider the implications instead of panicking, why not just untie those people? Here's how a two-year-old solves the problem. I'm glad we had real railroad engineers on it long ago. -via Metafilter

Grand Traverse County: Body-cam footage captures daring ice rescue by MSP Motor Carrier Officer Kammeron Bennetts with the help of the victim’s dog Ruby. Great team work and well done! https://t.co/uTblTv3bhV pic.twitter.com/NDKKHZnysu

— MSP Seventh District (@mspnorthernmi) January 18, 2024

We don't deserve dogs, but we are grateful to have them. Last week, a 65-year-old man fell through the ice on Arbutus Lake in Michigan. A witness called 911 immediately and an officer responded right away, equipped with rescue equipment and a body cam. The ice was too thin to support the officer, but the victim had his dog Ruby with him.

Ruby responded to instructions from her master and the officer, and began to play the most important game of fetch in her life, bringing a rope and a rescue disc to the victim. Ruby is not a trained rescue dog, but her actions allowed the officer and an assisting firefighter to drag the man across the thin ice to safety. He was taken to a hospital, treated, and released. We have no doubts that Ruby was treated to a steak dinner when all was said and done. That's a good dog. -via Boing Boing

On January 22, 1984, Apple placed an ad during the Super Bowl (yes, the Super Bowl used to be in January) that recreated a scene from George Orwell's book 1984. That got our attention. It was an ad for their new computer called a Macintosh, which was made available two days afterward. It took users by surprise by offering a usability experience that we all take for granted forty years later.

I got my first used Mac a couple of years later. My family already had a Commodore 64 and an Apple II, and they were a lot of hassle for a little fun. The Mac's screen was small, and there were no colors. Besides, it was awfully expensive for a used computer. But once the guy who was selling it showed me how to use it in about 30 seconds, there was no turning back. You had to be there to understand what a game changer the Macintosh was for users. Read what the Macintosh did to home computing, to mark its 40th anniversary, at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Mark Mathosian)

The marker above has only small excerpts of a speech that has since been called Eulogy of the Dog. It was delivered by attorney George G. Vest in 1870 during a lawsuit over a dog that had been killed. It was, in fact, the fourth trial of a lawsuit between the dog's owner and his brother-in-law over who shot his favorite hunting dog Old Drum. The biggest dispute in the lawsuit was over the amount of damages one should be paid for the loss of a dog. What is the life of a dog worth? During closing arguments, Vest delivered an emotional justification that swayed the jury and no doubt drew a few tears in the courtroom. It has since been published and republished, and led to the erection of two monuments to Old Drum in addition to the historical marker. You should read the statement in full, as well as the story of Old Drum's death and the lawsuits that followed, and then go hug your loyal dog. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Carldaniel)

For five years, we watched Walter White try to keep his meth manufacturing business a secret from his wife, his son, the police, and most importantly, from his brother-in-law the DEA agent on the TV show Breaking Bad. A big part of the show's allure was seeing his panic at the many close calls and wondering how long he was going to get away with his secret double life. But what if he hadn't put so much effort into not getting caught? The series would have been much shorter, but probably a whole lot funnier.

In this fantasy version of Breaking Bad from Alternative Cuts, White not only doesn't care about anyone finding out what he's been doing, no one in the cast cares about gun safety or road safety, either -or anything else for that matter. It's chaotic, but you have to admire the editing that made it possible. Do not miss the driving lesson sequence. -via reddit

Jeff Raw runs a construction company in Atlanta. He bought a vacant lot with no utilities, and ordered a water meter in 2022. The meter was installed, but there was no water line to the property yet. A month later, Raw got a water bill for $8,899, indicating he used 305,184 gallons of water. After five months, the water bill totaled $29,669.43, but there was still no water line. Raw asked for an inspection, and the water department came and found no leak and still no water line. When the water line was finally installed for the new house, the monthly bill sank to $13.12 for a month. But Raw was expected to pay the entire bill of almost $30,000 for around a million gallons of water.

Board Chair Clifford Ice said there are only three options: use of water, loss of water, or theft of water.

I can think of other options: error in installing the meter, error in the billing department, or embezzlement. I'm sure there are other possibilities. There was no evidence of flowing water found, and no one noticed anything that could be attributed to theft. Raw appealed to a higher-up at the Department of Watershed Management, and received an admission that the bill was due to a leak caused by the utility. But then the utility appealed that ruling, and suddenly Raw is on the hook for the bill again anyway! Read how all this came about in a news report. -via Fark

Unrelated image credit: Infrogmation)

Some countries are more addicted to the internet than others. Smartick crunched the data and tell us that people in South Africa lead the world in screen time, spending an average of 9 hours and 38 minutes looking at their devices. That's followed by Brazil in second place and the Philippines in third. Argentina and Colombia round out the top five, also spending more than nine hours a day on average looking at screens.

Amateurs. My desktop pops up occasionally to tell me how much screen time I use, and it's usually 13 to 14 hours. That's because I work online, use my desktop as a TV, and I live alone. Besides, I don't know how they can tell; I'm up and down from my desk constantly, doing other things that wouldn't last long enough for a machine to determine that it's downtime. You can see the above map in a much larger size at Smartnick. They also have graphics that break down screen time by device, whether it's desktop or mobile. I use my phone as mostly just a phone, so I'm only looking at the screen when I'm showing someone photographs. I don't know why watching a TV isn't considered "screen time," especially since so many people get their movies and shows via internet. -via Digg

U.S. President William McKinley was shot in the abdomen at close range in 1901. He was rushed to a clinic where gynecological surgeon Matthew Mann operated on McKinley's wound. The president died eight days later from necrotizing pancreatitis due to infection. Afterward, Dr. Herman Matzinger did a thorough autopsy to determine whether McKinley died from the gunshot wound or the botched surgery, or from some weird theories like the assassin used poison or bacteria on the bullet. He concluded that the gunshot caused the president's death.

More than a century later, Dr. Matzinger's notes from the autopsy were found by his family and were put up on auction earlier this month. They reveal how Matzinger came to conclusions in his report, and revealed the lengths he went to in studying the president's infection. He grew cultures of the bacteria from McKinley's body and injected them into several rabbits and one dog! That experiment was unknown until the discovery of Matzinger's documents. Read about the assassination, the autopsy, and the animal experiments at LiveScience. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Achille Beltrame)

Wherever he goes, Ed People asks folks to show him what their favorite dance moves are. Many are glad to oblige, and then he learns to do them alongside his teacher. You can see a ton of these videos at his YouTube channel. This video is a "best of" compilation, in which people show him salsa, swing, ballet, and waltz dances, trendy dances to contemporary music, dances they do with their family, and traditional dances from cultures all over the world. It's a great way to make friends, showing your interest in something that brings people joy in so many different ways.  -via Nag on the Lake