We see extraterrestrials in movies all the time. They may look odd, but they are usually around the size and shape of a human, and most of the time they speak English. Science can't tell us (yet) what real aliens might look like, so how would we even know if something we find on an exoplanet someday might be living, or even evidence that it once lived?   

One thing that sets life apart from nonlife is its apparent design. Living things, from the simplest bacteria to the great redwoods, have vast numbers of intricate parts working together to make the organism function. Think of your hands, heart, spleen, mitochondria, cilia, neurons, toenails – all collaborating in synchrony to help you navigate, eat, think and survive. The most beautiful natural rock formations lack even a tiny fraction of the myriad parts of a single bacterial cell that coordinate to help it divide and reproduce.

This design comes from natural selection, which would not necessarily depend on DNA as it does on Earth. But life must adapt to changing conditions one way or another, or it won't last long enough to develop a design. Read the requirements of life and how to recognize them at Aeon.

(Image credit: Helen Cooper/Cambridge University)

This is an educational video from Tom Scott, who explains some of the production methods used in music videos while demonstrating them. It's unsettling because we are not used to seeing those effects without music. You may not have even realized you were seeing them in music videos. You might not even watch music videos. But you'll get a kick out of what goes on behind the scenes. -via reddit

You might think plants just stand still, rooted in place. This clip from BBC Earth uses both stop-motion and slow-motion to show that isn't so. Balsam plants develop seed pods that mature into a delicate tension, so that the slightest touch will cause the panels to curl up in and hurl seeds far away. The exploding seed pods are also the sole diet of the netted carpet moth caterpillar. These moths are rare, and you can see why in the video. -via TYWKIWDBI

I already have so many regrets pic.twitter.com/0hraBtq9MK

— High Witch of the Rio DeLaWare (@EldritchGirl) October 14, 2018

One of life's great pleasures is introducing someone new to a pop culture phenomenon you know and love. The movie Alien is almost 40 years old now, so it's hard to recall the emotions, the surprise, and the terror you felt watching it the first time. Witness @EldritchGirl's reaction as she watched the movie and live tweeted her experience.

So

Let me get this straight

Cain wakes up from having an alien stuck to his face and down his throat and... and everyone is just going to sit and have lunch? Like nothing happened?

— High Witch of the Rio DeLaWare (@EldritchGirl) October 14, 2018

When Alien hit theaters in 1979, we had no idea what to expect. @EldritchGirl isn't quite that clueless, but her Tweets take us back in time. A discussion at Metafilter dissects the difference between watching Alien then and watching it now.

An interesting thing about Alien is how brilliantly cast it is. Of course we know who Sigourney Weaver is, but no one had any idea in 1979. Harry Dean Stanton, Yaphet Kotto and Ian Holm were at that time just That-Guys (as in "Hey, isn't it that guy who was in...?") and John Hurt and Tom Skerritt little more than slightly more prominent That-Guys.

So it looks to us like a science fiction B-movie, featuring actors we kind of recognise.

Our expectations of the form tell us that Skerritt is the hero and Hurt the sidekick, so when they're taken out almost immediately, in terms of genre we literally have no idea what's going on. In 1979, at least.

And, of course, none of the actors puts a foot wrong - the other expectation of the SF B-movie is that the script is unreadable, performed by actors who are barely capable of reading it, yet here's an entire cast who are capable of turning what's essentially a queue of victims into living people (although we're never sure to have the most sympathy with, because our expectations have been swept out from under us, so we spend our time worrying about the cat, who is, ironically, the only creature on the ship that's in no danger at all).

I can see why. It was really good. And now never again.

— High Witch of the Rio DeLaWare (@EldritchGirl) October 14, 2018

Tuesday is the 225th anniversary of the beheading of Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution, nine months after her husband King Louis XVI. The monarchy had been teetering on the edge of disaster for quite some time. In fact, the royal family had been making preparations to escape France for years.

In March 1791, Marie Antoinette — then France’s capricious and controversial monarch — spent an evening packing up her jewels with her lady-in-waiting. With the French Revolution underway, the queen sent a number of precious gems off to Brussels, where she and the king planned to flee.

“The jewels made it, but unfortunately, she did not,” Daniela Mascetti, chairman of jewelry at Sotheby’s Europe tells The Post. Three months later, the royal family was captured on their way out of France and imprisoned. Only one of them — the teenage princess, Marie-Thérèse — would ever leave the country again.

Marie-Thérèse recovered her mother's jewels and never had them altered or reset. Now the collection is on tour, and in New York until October 16. Sotheby's will have them up for auction in November 12 in Geneva during the auction of Royal Jewels from the Bourbon Parma Family. Read the story of the jewels at the New York Post and see more pictures at Sotheby's. -via Fark

(Image credit: Sotheby's)

Ignoramusky is back, with a new compilation of the smartest, clumsiest, and funniest Russian cats around! Bonus: Many of the clips are enhanced with appropriate musical soundtracks.

Today, Eartha Kitt is most known for her songs "C'est si bon" and "Santa Baby" and her turn as Catwoman on the Batman TV series. But her first recording, and her first hit, was "Uska Dara," which she learned and performed while working in Istanbul. Kitt had already toured Europe as a member of the Katherine Dunham Company, and developed a nightclub act in Paris. She then spent some time in Turkey.

This was the Istanbul Eartha encountered in 1951: a shaky but vibrant, regenerative place; a place that had gone about the business of reinventing itself as arts capital of a post–Ottoman Empire, new Turkish republic. World War II was over by then, the Cold War freshly hatched, and Turkey was fast becoming an American ally. President Truman had recently cemented this alliance through the Truman Doctrine, announcing generous Cold War support to both Turkey and Greece. And so politically there was an alliance, and culturally there were the beginnings of one, too. The Katherine Dunham dance troupe’s tour, for instance, was funded by the U.S. government, part of an American effort to introduce jazz and blues to Turkey.

Eartha heard “Üsküdar’a Gider İken” for the first time at an Istanbul bar. The wife of a Turkish naval officer taught her the words, helped her with pronunciation, and Eartha began performing the song solo at Kervansaray, a new club in the city’s business district that catered mostly to men. By all accounts, when young Eartha entertained, it was a performance of self-possessed female sexuality, and I wonder what it must have been like for her to be on that Turkish stage. What did it mean for a teenage black woman to be starting her career in a place so linked to U.S. Cold War imperialism, a place deeply segregated along lines of gender, a place so racially flat? What was it like for her to entertain Muslim men who, until fairly recently, had been under Ottoman rule, their women under lock and veil? Did the men rise, clapping until their palms stung? Did they avert their eyes, in accordance with Islamic law?

Read about Eartha Kitt's sojourn in Istanbul in an essay at The Paris Review. -via Nag on the Lake

At the height off the Beatles' fame, an urban legend arose that Paul McCartney had died in 1966 and was replaced by a lookalike. It was nonsense, as Paul outlived half the Beatles and is still working at age 76. But if it did happen, how might it have played out?

In this short film by George Moore, Paul died during a drug-fueled night in the Lake District. John is worried about the fate of the Beatles, and George is obsessed with burying the body on the mountaintop. Contains NSFW language. -via Metafilter

Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales was the granddaughter of King George III, and the only confirmed child of the Prince of Wales who eventually became King George IV. Charlotte was second in line for the monarchy her entire life. Sadly, that life was cut short when she died in childbirth at age 21.

Charlotte’s pregnancy was the subject of the most intense public interest. Betting shops quickly set up a book on what sex the child would be. Economists calculated that the birth of a princess would raise the stock market by 2.5%; the birth of a prince would raise it 6%.

The mum to be Charlotte spent her time quietly, however, spending much time sitting for a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence. She ate heavily and got little exercise; when her medical team began prenatal care in August 1817, they put her on a strict diet, hoping to reduce the size of the child she was carrying. The diet and occasional bleeding they subjected her to seemed to weaken Charlotte and did little to reduce her weight.

Charlotte's labor lasted for more than two days before she gave birth to a stillborn boy. An article from author Julia Herdman looks at the medical practices of the day, and how Charlotte might have been saved if her accoucheur (a male midwife) and the doctor called to assist had made different choices in her care. -via Strange Company

Someone in Savannah, Georgia, put googly eyes on the city's statue of Revolutionary War general Nathanael Greene. The city responded by venting its outrage on Facebook.

Who did this?! Someone placed googly eyes on our historic #NathanaelGreene statue in #JohnsonSquare. It may look funny but harming our historic monuments and public property is no laughing matter, in fact, it's a crime.

But indeed, it is a laughing matter, as you no doubt got a kick out of the picture. Savannah police are treating it as a trespassing instead of vandalism, since no harm was done to the statue. The comments at the Facebook post are priceless. Read more on the story at Buzzfeed.

(Image credit: City of Savannah Government)

You know the Pallas's cat as the fluffy, twitchy, rare wildcat of Central Asia. This video takes a deep dive into what makes the Pallas's cat different from other cats, like their genetic lineage, their round pupils, and their adaptations for living in difficult remote environments. Plus, we get to see plenty of manul footage, which is worth the price of admission by itself.

We put up scarecrows to keep birds out of our gardens, which varying results, but how do you keep birds away from airports? That's pretty important, because a flock, or even one bird in the right place, can bring down a plane. LED technology that allows us to animate signs gives us a leg up, as new research shows. 

In an effort to come up with a more effective strategy, a team of scientists from Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the University of Rennes, with some help from the Airbus corporation, applied their knowledge of avian physiology to the problem. By exploiting the powerful visual system of raptors—a group of birds that includes eagles, falcons, and hawks—the scientists were able to devise an optical illusion that effectively dissuades these birds from loitering around airports—and it looks suspiciously like a pair of googly eyes. These findings were published this week in PLoS One.

The research presented birds with eight images, half of them animated, plus a plain sign as a control, and found that simple googly eyes that grow larger scared the birds off so well that they wouldn't return to the area, even after five weeks! Nothing else came close to deterring them. You can read the research paper at PLoS One, or the short version at Gizmodo. 

(Image credit: Anthony Boigné)

The smells mentioned in Star Wars are not exactly the things you'd want your home to smell like: the inside of a tauntaun, the garbage compactor, a walking carpet. But if you are into that sort of thing, Merchoid is now offering candles scented like your memories of the Star Wars original trilogy. You can buy sets of five candles from each movie, or a set of all 15. The limited edition version comes with an engraved plinth on which to display them. The scents are:

        Wookie: Ever wondered what a walking carpet smells like?
        Bantha Milk: Love the smell of bantha milk in the morning?
        Trash Compactor: Find out what was very nearly the last smell Luke, Leia and Han ever experienced
        X-wing Cockpit: Perfect for playthroughs of Battlefront’s aerial combat
        Cantina: Eau de scum and villainy
        Lightsaber Duel: Do you prefer the smell of the dark side or the light side?
        Han Solo Carbonite: This smell is all Leia had to remember Han for a long time
        Millenium Falcon: She may not look much, but she’s got it where it counts (the smell)
        Inside of a Tauntaun: Thought it smelt bad on the outside? You’ve experienced nothing yet!
        Yoda’s Cooking Pot: Yoda’s legendary Force powers are only eclipsed by his cooking skills. Smell it for yourself!
        Rancor: The only way to smell a Rancor without ending up its lunch
        Sarlaac Pit: Add a new dimension to your favourite ROTJ scene
        Jabba’ Palace: Admit it, you’ve always wondered what Jabba smells like
        Ewok: Do they smell as cute as they look? Let’s find out!
        Death Star Destroyed: The sweet smell of rebellion

Check out the selection here. Mind you, they are not cheap. -via Geeks Are Sexy

As Halloween approaches, it's time for scary stories. People are scared of spiders, but Lucas the Spider knows better. So what is Lucas afraid of? Listen to him tell a story of the scariest thing he can think of.

See more of Lucas' adventures in other videos.

Parents have a lot of things to teach children and relatively little time to do it. Most of us are just making it up as we go along, anyway. Everyone has a story about that one time that the kid outsmarted us, like the kid who kept his room clean by living in the hallway, or completely misunderstood the point, or even stories of totally unforeseen circumstances, like the father who auditioned for his daughter's high school play in order to demonstrate that failure is okay and then won a leading role. An askreddit thread has a treasure trove of those stories. 

One of my 5 year old twins was still having occasional accidents because she would get so caught up in playing/doing something else that she just wouldn't go and would pee her pants. To combat this we would give her a special prize of some variety when she wouldn't have an accident. This, in turn, caused her twin sister to START having accidents so she could get prizes for not having accidents (even though she was fine on this front beforehand.) We had to rethink our methods.          -KyleRichXV

Not a parent, but as a child I noticed my sister was writing her name on the walls when she was drawing on them with crayon. Taking on the role of Helpful Big Sister, I informed her if she was going to graffiti things she shouldn't write her name and give herself away.

A few weeks later, she was carving patterns into the wooden desk in the study and carved my name into it instead.         -frozennie

Coworker of mine was trying to teach her kid the "don't talk with your mouth full" rule. Instead, the kid just spits out their food when they want to talk.

Children are the absolute masters of malicious compliance.          -MisterCrispy

Read a book that suggested you ask your kid what an appropriate punishment for misbehaving would be and then carry it out. 6 yo son pinched his brother or something, so we asked what an appropriate punishment would be. He said “pluck out my eyeballs and throw me over a cliff?”. We didn't follow through. And stopped reading parenting books.          -Mungobrick

Lifehacker has a roundup of the best stories, and you can read them all in the reddit thread. -via Metafilter

Oh yeah, there are more stories in the comments at Lifehacker and Metafilter. Feel free to add yours here.