If you want to gather data on human nature, the easiest way is to make an online game about it. Data science Ilya Perederiy wants to know if humans can be random on purpose (spoiler: no). In the online game, all you do is press the left and right buttons on your keyboard (or you can touch icons on a touchscreen). Your goal is to fool the algorithm that is predicting your next move based on your previous moves. You can keep up with your progress with the virtual money fund on the left- you get money each time the algorithm is wrong, and you lose money when it correctly predicted your move. There is no clock, so take your time. On the graph I generated, you can see exactly where I gave up trying and started pushing buttons very fast. I kept the algorithm under 50% until about guess #275. Good luck!  -via Digg

The sequel to the prequel of the Harry Potter films came out just a few months ago, and it barely caused a ripple in the pop culture world compared to the previous film, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Diehard Harry Potter fans went to see it, but they apparently didn't rave about it. It seems that The Crimes of Grindenwald was very dark and confusing. That often happens in the second movie of a trilogy, but this is the second movie of a planned 5-movie series. Screen Junkies manages to make the criticism entertaining, though, with this Honest Trailer.     

In 1945, we delivered nuclear bombs by plane. Today, a nuclear arsenal contains ICBMs to deliver nuclear destruction by rocket. In between, one idea for nuclear firepower was to shoot it from a cannon. Engineer Robert M. Schwartz designed the ammunition in 1949, huge 280mm shells with a nuclear tip. Then he had to design a cannon capable of firing them.The result was the M65.  

...to say the M65 was cumbersome is a massive understatement. Weighing around 83 tons tons, it was rather difficult to move, requiring two trucks packing 375 horsepower engines, one truck on each end of the cannon, with the drivers needing to be in constant communication as they drove. The top speed on this setup was a breakneck 35 mph, if the road was straight and reasonably flat.

Its mobility was also limited by the length of the vehicle- about 80 feet- with one soldier, Jim Michalko, recalling that after getting the cannon stuck in a narrow street during transport in Germany, they ended up having to destroy several buildings in order to make necessary turns.

Despite these issues, a well-trained crew of around 5 people could have the cannon ready to fire in around 15 minutes, with the weapon capable of hitting any target within roughly 20 miles with pinpoint accuracy. It likewise only took around 15 minutes to get the cannon back on the road, ready to nuke another target.

The M65 was only fired once, but the resulting film was enough of deterrent to last until better weapons were developed. Read about the M65 at Today I Found Out.

Imagine doing tricks on the unforgiving apparatuses of a skate park, except it's downhill on snow. That's what freeskiing is. In this video, Magnus Granér introduces us to the moves and the skiers at Momentum Ski Camps as they demonstrate the terrifying things they do. At each stunt, you can imagine the worst outcome, like sliding into the rail at a deadly speed.  -via Kottke

One of the internet's most famous cats is Lil Bub, who permanently looks like a kitten with her tiny size, big eyes, short snout, and lack of teeth that causes her tongue to hang out. Lil Bub has osteopetrosis, a rare condition which caused her bones to harden at an early age. She came to the attention of molecular geneticist Dario Lupianez, who wanted to explore Lil Bub's DNA. He, along with colleagues Daniel Ibrahim and Orsolya Symmons, have sequenced the cat's genes and published their findings.

First, they compared her genome with that of a reference cat, then they focused on genes that control bodily functions. Finally, they asked a colleague who specializes in bone disorders which of those are known to cause osteopetrosis. When Lil Bub

That led them to a mutation in a gene called RANK/TNFRSF11A, which has been found in about 15 humans and one mouse - all of whom, the researchers said, share physical similarities with Lil Bub. In X-rays, their bones look deformed and bright white, with little to no marrow cavity. The mouse, like Lil Bub, also was missing teeth, because they can't erupt through bone that hardens too quickly. (Bub can eat just fine, and she runs and jumps thanks to a pulsed electromagnetic field therapy.)

What it all adds up to, the researchers said, is a new case study for an extremely rare disorder - another example of how it can manifest itself and progress. Which means that Lil Bub, viral internet cat, could help doctors better treat human patients whose osteopetrosis stems from the same gene mutation.

Bub's extra toes are caused by a different mutation that shows she is related to the Hemingway cats. Read about the little cat with an important genome at Inforum. -via Boing Boing

In 2016, the UK decided to leave the EU, but British politicians are having a hard time coming up with a plan, despite the target date of March 29, 2019. Americans are already confused about the kingdom that is four countries, and the European Union that has many countries and acts like one -sometimes. CGP Grey has an update and discloses that the problem is Northern Ireland. A second video goes further into the Brexit negotiations, and it shows us how the EU is more complicated than you realized.



Is that clear?

While generations of inmates at Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in San Francisco dreamed of tunneling out, there were existing tunnels underneath them al the time -as well as buildings and even ammunition. The island was the site of a military fort in the early 1800s. By the time of the Civil war, it was converted into a military prison, then became a federal prison in 1934. Now, archaeological science has determined that instead of a straight conversion, the prison was simply built on top of the military fort.  

So as not to disturb the land by digging, archaeologists used ground-penetrating radar and terrestrial laser scans in conjunction with historical maps and photographs. Below the prison recreation yard, they found fully buried structures, underground ammunition magazines and tunnels. Historians believe when the prison was built, workers elected to simply build over existing structures, rather than take the time and money to demolish them.

This technology is allowing researchers to see into the past without disturbing it. The implications are enormous for future dig-less excavations. Read more about the Alcatraz discovery at the San Francisco Chronicle. -via Mental Floss

(Image credit: National Park Service/GGNRA)

You can gain a lot of traction by replacing your vehicle's wheels with saw blades, but at what cost? Sawing through the ice? Lauri and Anni Vuohensilta put heavy-duty circular saw blades on their Subaru and took it out on a frozen lake. How long can they drive without cutting themselves a drowning hole? From the looks of it, not very long. Contains NSFW language. "Yeah, I think we have, for a break, we have to think about things, and then we start to drive." -via Laughing Squid

The year 1963 was at the height of the Cold War. The US and the Soviet Union were in a space race and a nuclear arms race. Most of Eastern Europe was behind the Iron Curtain. Then on July 26, an earthquake hit. The city of Skopje, Macedonia, then a part of Yugoslavia, was a shambles, with a thousand people dead, many times that injured, and 75% of its buildings ruined.  

By the time the earthquake — whose tremors were felt as far away as Sofia, Bulgaria, and Thessaloniki, Greece — was over, between 150,000 and 200,000 people were left homeless. The Macedonian capital, a provincial outpost of stately socialist structures and lingering Ottoman traces in the Vardar River valley, was decimated. “When the wind blew, windows and chunks of masonry would come tumbling down from the abandoned buildings of the city,” wrote Dennison Rusinow, an American researcher with the Institute of Current World Affairs who arrived in Skopje 10 days later, “and the dust rose chokingly again, smelling of death where death still lay undiscovered.”

But in the aftermath of the tragedy, something marvelous happened: the world came together to help. More than 80 countries sent emergency workers, medical facilities, relief funds, and ultimately architects and city planners to rebuild Skopje. Read about that effort at Ozy. 

The simple idea of a roasted onion should be enough to interest you, but this recipe is brought to you in the entertaining style of Jon Townsend (previously at Neatorama). It's more than just a recipe; it's a taste of history that goes down real smoothly, like a finely roasted onion.  

Oh sure, we know that archetypal characters get used over and over in stories. Anyone can see that Merlin, Dumbledore, Gandalf, and Obi-Wan all serve the same role in moving the plot along. Every sitcom family has a wacky neighbor, like Urkel, Wilson, Kramer, and Barney Fife. But sometimes the characters are much more alike than that.



However, some pairs of characters have traits and backstories that are from either the writer's possibly unconscious influence on each other -or else from The Twilight Zone.



You might be surprised at how characters from movies and TV line up with each other, even when they are from very different types of stories. Ywo of the characters were even played by the same actor. See all 20 Pictofacts at Cracked.

Barnaby Dixon (previously at Neatorama) puts his unique hand puppet artistry to work. This fluorescent puppet he calls "creepy face" has a tiny screen for a mouth that shows Dixon's vocal work in real time. The song is his version of "Nightcall" by Kavinsky.

You may notice that the puppet is in a similar part of the screen whenever the vocoder is heard, shifting his weight slightly between phrases. This is because I'm using my thumb to play the chords :D

-via Digg

There have been several types of people who made a living by looking for dead bodies. Today we have homicide detectives. In the past, there were the thieves who found the dead to be easy marks, the grave robbers who wanted buried treasure, and the resurrectionists, who would sell corpses to medical schools. Another group in the 19th century looked for bodies in a perfectly legal manner, because these were the remains of the missing. For each body found in the area of Niagara Falls, they would receive a bounty. An 1895 newspaper article explains why local fishermen would hunt for "floaters."  

What makes this possible is the fact that there are two nations on the two banks of the Niagara river. In the towns along the river on both sides there are coroners, and it is the rivalry among these coroners that creates the demand for floaters and makes them a marketable commodity. The coroners receive their pay by fees, so much for every inquest, and are naturally anxious to learn of any new cases.

The annual number of cases is large, so large that a number of men exists on what they make in picking up floaters.

The falls have always been a favorite spot for suicides, and many a mysterious disappearance has been solved long after by the finding of a floater in the Niagara river which is identified as the missing one. Nearly every body that is drowned off the shores at Buffalo eventually finds its way to the falls, and once over the brink of the precipice it is soon picked up by some of these floater hunters.

Read about the men who searched for floaters at Strange Ago. -via Strange Company

It's time for that annual tradition, in which the fan channel Game On! Minnesota names its Minnesota State High School All Hockey Hair Team. High school hockey players across the state have been working hard on their flow all year long vying to be named to this illustrious team. The 2019 team is the tenth edition of this notable list. The video starts with "the year in hair," then names the top ten players with hockey hair. A coach is named, too, then you'll learn about the Hendrickson Foundation, which promotes hockey for the disabled. That is followed by a look at quite a few of the other Minnesota players with luscious flow. Do not miss the short glimpse of Grady.

See the Minnesota State High School All Hockey Hair Team from previous years.

It would be animal abuse to take your dog mountain climbing in Nepal. This is not that kind of story. An expedition to climb the summit of Baruntse, a 23,389-foot peak, found themselves in the company of a 45-pound stray dog that appeared to be a cross between a Tibetan mastiff and a Himalayan sheepdog. At each base camp, the team tried to leave her behind, but she always caught up with them, and became the first dog to reach the summit of Baruntse.   

Mera embedded with a team from the Kathmandu-based Summit Climb, led by Seattle-based mountain guide Don Wargowsky, in the tenth day of its monthlong expedition. The group had seen her a few days before in the Nepalese town of Kare, but she seemed aloof. The team members were descending from a successful summit of Mera Peak (21,247 feet), the first mountain they had climbed on their trip before heading to Baruntse, and were just above the fixed lines at around 17,500 feet when Mera (you can see how the humans decided on her name) came bounding toward them. She passed about 30 climbers on the way up, all of whom could’ve been persuaded to give her food or attention, but she crossed a glacier with a crevasse and beelined it for Wargowsky.

From that point on, the two were inseparable. He gave her a sleeping pad and jacket for a bed nest, and in return she fashioned herself into the ideal tent partner for three weeks: quiet, cuddly, agreeable, and with a small stomach. “One morning we got wind so bad it ripped the anchors off the tent, picked it up, and moved it a few feet,” Wargowsky recalls. “She just woke up, looked at me, and went back to sleep.”

Mera very quickly became the team’s mascot.

In the end, only one of Wargowsky's clients made it to the summit, along with Wargowsky, the Sherpas, and Mera. Read about the extraordinary dog at Outside Online. Read Don Wargowsky's personal account of Mera's climb here.  -via Metafilter 

(Image credit: Don Wargowsky)