Okay, here's something to suck up your entire weekend. Enter some text, and let an online algorithm generate an image for you via artificial intelligence! Cris Valenzuela's online text-to-image generator makes it really simple for non-geeks. The image on the left was my first attempt, when I entered "flying bat." The right image was "flower garden." I'll be generating a lot more today. Read more about it at Digg.
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Ze Frank has a new video in his True Facts series that is both informative and juvenile. Sea worms are quite photogenic for worms, even beautiful, although their lifestyles can make you cringe. Be warned that Ze Frank's phallic innuendos may be NSFW. -via Tastefully Offensive
In 1918, polar explorer Roald Amundsen set off on a research voyage to reach the North Pole via the Northeast Passage, on a ship he'd commissioned and named Maud. The expedition was one disaster after another, but the unfortunate life of the Maud was only getting started.
From Alaska, the idea was to drift the ship over the North Pole, but poor ice conditions ultimately forced Maud south to Seattle to undergo extensive repairs. Once Maud was repaired, rather than try to ice drift again, Amundsen got distracted by the idea of flying an airplane over the North Pole and instead used Maud to haul aircraft to Alaska for the attempt. It never worked out, and by 1925 Amundsen was broke and forced to sell the ship to the Hudson’s Bay Company. The firm rechristened it the Baymaud and used it as a floating warehouse and later a radio station, one of the first in the Arctic, before the ship sank in the pack ice in 1930 in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.
The ship lay at the bottom for 86 years, but has been recovered and has been made into a museum at a port in Norway. Read the story of Amundsen's jinxed ship at Smithsonian.
The Twilight Zone will always be remembered as a creepy, entertaining anthology series that made us think. A story was presented, and then there's a twist that revealed some allegorical truth to ponder. While some viewers just enjoyed the science fiction and horror stories, others reveled in the allegories, which sometimes referred to historical events, but often just revealed something disturbing about human nature. How old you were when you watched a particular episode could vastly affect how you saw it, because everything in the script had more than one meaning if you were able to catch it. Zane Whitener of In Praise of Shadows explains what made The Twilight Zone so special. -via Laughing Squid
The cover story of the September National Geographic magazine is a detailed account of Katie Stubblefield's face transplant. At 21, she's the youngest American to ever receive a facial transplant. Before the transplant, Stubblefield underwent multiple surgeries for years to save and improve her life, but she sustained so much damage that the repairs didn't quite resemble a face. Her story is fascinating, but may be difficult for some because of the graphic images, including the surgery and one picture of the donor's disembodied face. The issues raised in the article are thought-provoking, and may also be disturbing: suicide, drug addiction, health insurance, guns, medical decisions, family caregiving, military experiments, and the ethics of non-lifesaving transplantation. The article at National Geographic traces Stubblefield's life as well as that of her donor, Adrea Schneider, their families, and the groundbreaking surgery itself.
Lots of men go for a hairless head, because it's cooler in hot weather and you don't have to think about how your hair looks. It's also an easy way to hide the fact that you are losing hair. But shaving every day can get old. How about having your head waxed? Wax on, wax off! However, the procedure itself is not the most pleasant way to spend your time, as you can see. I don't know what's being said, but this is the most action I've ever seen in a barber shop. I could readily believe this was a skit from a comedy show. -via Boing Boing
And if you are interested in removing hair from your nostrils with wax, read this review.
As World War II slipped into the Cold War, the US conducted tests of nuclear weapons in the surface, in the air, and underwater. By 1959, scientists were considering underground tests. Government officials regarded such detonations as an experiment to figure out if the Soviets could conduct such tests without us knowing, which would give the Americans a reason not to verify an agreement with them about nuclear testing. Got that? Geologic requirements pointed to the salt domes of Mississippi as a possible site for an underground detonation in 1964. After a couple of false evacuations, the first test occurred on October 22.
To Brenda Foster, “It felt like the Earth just raised up and set back down.”
“The windows on the house were shaking and rattling, and you could see the chimney on the house cracked all the way down,” says Foster, who was a few days shy of her 10th birthday. “That’s about all I remember of that, but I never will forget it.”
In the aftermath, about 400 people filed claims for damages with the government, mostly for cracked plaster or masonry. On Nobles’s father’s farm, eight miles from the blast site, two wells quit working after the blasts. But one man, Horace Burge, found his house was “completely destroyed,” says Nobles, who was friends with Burge’s son.
“It broke everything on the inside of his house, threw the stuff out of his cabinets, and messed his foundation up,” Nobles says.
A second test was conducted two years later. Read about the nukes of Mississippi at Atlas Obscura.
(Image source: Mississippi Department of Archives and History)
Doesn't it just grind your gears when you see people getting nostalgic, or even historical, about the 2000s? Well, the 21st century started 18 years ago, even if it seems like just yesterday. Neatorama has been around for 13 years now. And even if you've been networking with other computer users "online" since the '80s, the real boom in internet usage came about in the 2000s. That's why the Mental Floss gang is taking a trip down memory lane with a look at the internet in the first decade of this century in the latest episode of Scatterbrained.
The Queen of Soul has passed. Aretha Franklin died of pancreatic cancer this morning at her home in Detroit. Born into a musical family, she began singing professionally as a teenager in the 1960s, and eventually recorded music in a variety of genres: pop, soul, jazz, gospel, blues, and even opera. According to the New York Times,
Ms. Franklin had a grandly celebrated career. She placed more than 100 singles in the Billboard charts, including 17 Top 10 pop singles and 20 No. 1 R&B hits. She received 18 competitive Grammy Awards, along with a lifetime achievement award in 1994. She was the first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in 1987, its second year. She sang at the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009, at pre-inauguration concerts for Jimmy Carter in 1977 and Bill Clinton in 1993, and at both the Democratic National Convention and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral in 1968.
Franklin was an inspiration to generations of singers, and continued recording into her 70s. Aretha Franklin was 76.
Most of us know the Red Baron from the Peanuts comic, or maybe the song that was inspired by Snoopy's imaginary adventures as a World War I flying ace. But Manfred von Richthofen was a real German flying ace during World War I. Simon Whistler of Today I Found Out tells us his story.
Car repairs can be expensive, as anyone who owns a car knows. But with such high bills at stake, we are scared of the prospect of paying for repairs we don't need, or in other words, getting ripped off by mechanics because we don't know as much about our vehicles as they do. The good news is that most mechanics are not out to cheat you. They are out to build a reputation and a loyal customer base. But the few that take the opportunity to wring extra money out of a car owner are enough to scare all of us. If you aren't inclined to learn car repair yourself, you should at least know what red flags to look for at a car repair shop.
Scare tactics can be a big, billowing red flag — especially if they’re accompanied by a long list of repairs or an expensive price tag. If the mechanic says you shouldn’t even drive the car home, or you’re fortunate it’s still running, or you’re lucky to be alive, or whatever, you might be reasonably suspicious, especially if you’re the type who services your ride fairly regularly.
The caveat in these instances, though, is for people who don’t regularly service their car. When that car finally develops a problem, or they need to take it in for something, there’s — duh — a greater chance that something major might actually be seriously wrong. “If you haven’t done anything to your car in two years, it probably is dangerous to drive!” Ibbotson points out. “I know people who don’t do anything to their car, and then 18 things are broken, and they go, ‘Why does it cost so much money to fix?’”
Mel magazine has more tips on how to deal with car repairs so you don't end up paying for repairs you don't really need. -via Digg
NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe on Sunday, heading toward the sun. It will take seven years to get there, and if the air conditioning system holds out, it will get as close as 3.8 million miles from the sun. It's also supposed to eventually become the fastest-moving object ever made by man. I'm impressed. Learn more about the mission at the Parker Solar Probe's blog. https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/parker-solar-probe -via The Kid Should See This
In August of 1968, the biggest band in the world released their biggest song ever. That was 50 years ago.
“Hey Jude” skyrocketed to the top of the singles charts in the United States and Great Britain in 1968. After an August 26 U.S. release, it immediately arrived in the Top Ten and sat atop Billboard’s Hot 100 for nine consecutive weeks, making it the most successful single recorded by the most prosperous band in history. The single sold more than 5 million copies worldwide in six months and 7.5 million over four years. It performed more spectacularly on the charts than any other single between 1959 and 1977. It was also the first release on the Beatles’ own record label—Apple.
This year, after McCartney’s surprise appearance in the Liverpool pub with Corden, “Hey Jude” joined two new McCartney tunes as well as five other Beatles numbers on Billboard’s Hot Rock Songs list. During the week of June 28, 5,000 people downloaded the song.
Read about the inspiration for the song, how John Lennon misinterpreted it, the recording session that Paul McCartney called "magic," how it resonated with audiences in a chaotic year, and the lasting legacy of "Hey Jude" at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: National Museum of American History)
English is a weird language, in that the written version consists of letters and phonemes that we pronounce many different ways, depending on the context. It takes years for a child, hearing nothing but spoken English, to master it orally, then many more years to master reading it. But what if pronunciation rules were internally consistent? In this video, Aaron Alon gradually applies consistent pronunciation to vowels until it doesn't sound like English at all. -via Nag on the Lake
In The Incredibles, Edna Mode yelled "No capes!" But she was being practical, because capes are just not safe for animated superheroes. That doesn't mean they aren't cool. Capes are in no way limited to superheroes, either. Vampires wear them. So does royalty. And historical figures, futuristic aliens, and drag queens. Oh yeah, and some superheroes. But most of all, capes in film grace the shoulders of fashionable and exciting women.
If you read this list and ask “why is [ICONIC CAPE] missing?!?!?!,” it’s probably because it was worn by a dude. Sorry.
Still, how iconic a cape is does factor into its ranking on this list. So does how good it looks, how it contributes to the characterization of its wearer, and how it is wielded by its wearer, and a certain… well, let’s just call it je ne cape quoi.
The capes are not numbered, and may or may not be in rank order. A couple of the pictures may be NSFW. See and read about them at Film School Rejects. -via Metafilter
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