Tom Scott is back out in the road finding weird places to tell us about. Tomorrow Bio is a new cryonics lab in Switzerland. While they store their dead clients at very low temperatures (-196°C), they will tell you that they aren't freezing them. The liquids in the body are replaced with antifreeze, but not the kind you put in your radiator, and the word they use is "vitrify." The dictionary tells us the process of vitrification uses heat and fusion, so they must be talking about something different, although it's not fully explained.

Will this technique work? Will these bodies ever be resuscitated? Most likely not, but the company frames it as a research project instead of a promise. You can't assign numbers to the odds of success in a project like this like you can in a lottery, but like the lottery, your odds of success rise ever so slightly if you buy a ticket.

In order to survive a destination wedding deep in the Guatemalan rainforest, the author must submit to heat, terrain, and a small blood sacrifice https://t.co/Kw43Ct6B4P

— Outside (@outsidemagazine) July 20, 2023

Would you hike for five days into the Guatemalan jungle to the ruins of an ancient Maya pyramid with no facilities in July to watch your friends get married? Melissa Johnson said sure, even though she was ten years older than the other 13 people on the trip. They traveled 60 miles through the lush rainforest and battled high humidity and voracious insects to witness Angela and Suley's nuptials, even though neither of them had any connection with Guatemala. It sounds like a dangerous idea, and it was. Johnson considers herself a brave person, but then she thought about the viruses and parasites transmitted by mosquitos, ticks, and other insects that flourish in Central America. And she was indeed attacked in her sleep, in an episode some might categorize as "too much information." The clandestine wedding was glorious, but then the group decided to take a shortcut back out, without considering how much vegetation had grown over the unused route during the rainy season. It was an adventure you'll be glad you didn't go on, but you can read about it at Outside magazine. -via Nag on the Lake

You might be aware that Vantablack is the blackest color humans have produced. It absorbs up to 99.96 percent of light, but you can't get it because its use is restricted to one artist. But you can buy Musou black paint, which absorbs up to 99.4 percent of light. The effect of either is surreal, as if Photoshop were involved, because we are used to painted surfaces reflecting light. Or any surface for that matter.

James Orgill of The Action Lab had been experimenting with Musou black paint. But then he found that Musou black comes in a fabric, too! So he covered a car in the Musou black fabric called Kiwami, which seems like velvet, except there is no part that shines like velvet, from any angle. At about 2:30 in this video, you get to see a comparison between the fabric and the car's regular black paint. The original paint looks almost light gray! Then he took the car out to show off, both in daylight and at night. I wouldn't want to drive this car in dim twilight without the headlights on. Then he eventually finds out how much light it takes to get a reflection from the car.    

This video is only five minutes long. The rest is an ad. -via Born in Space

The 1975 movie Jaws changed cinema forever by introducing the summer blockbuster. The terrifying shark brought in a ton of money, and later on the story of how the movie was made was almost as good. Director Steven Spielberg, only 27 at the time, had to contend with mechanical sharks that didn't work, and so had to reframe the film and imply shark attacks from the shark's point of view- which just made the movie scarier. The behind-the-scenes chaos became legend and spawned a musical titled Bruce that opened in Seattle last year.  

A different one-act play is scheduled to open on Broadway next month. The Shark is Broken is an obvious title to those who know how Jaws was made, but the play has a different focus. The characters are Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider, and Richard Dreyfuss, the main Jaws actors, together on the fishing boat Orca during the film shoot. Robert Shaw is played by his son Ian Shaw, who looks just like his father and co-wrote the play with Joseph Nixon. The chemistry between the three actors was quite volatile on the Jaws set, friends one minute and clashing chaotically the next.

Alex Brightman, who plays Dreyfuss, tells Broadway Direct’s Paul Art Smith that the production is “really, truly about fathers and sons, a little bit of alcoholism, ego and the trauma that leads us to who we become.” At the same time, Shaw maintains that it’s primarily a comedy. “We dip into the serious elements, but our intention is to entertain,” he tells the AP.

The Shark is Broken did well at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and at the West End in London, and will open at the Golden Theater on Broadway on August 10. Read about the production at Smithsonian.

Forest fires are nothing new, but they are different these days- bigger and more destructive than ever. Before human settlement, forest fires occasionally cleared areas where there was too much of a buildup of organic fuel, mostly wood. Animals learned to escape a forest fire, and some returned to a burned area quite soon- after all, a burned area cannot burn again. One species of marsupial developed an ability to induce its own hibernation during a fire. It would burrow underground and enter a state of torpor until the danger had passed overhead! Other species of animals -as well as plants and microbes- seek out burned areas for the released nutrients in the ash to start the process of renewal.

A change came about when people began fighting forest fires instead of letting them burn. The result was a massive buildup of fuel, which makes modern uncontrollable wildfires much more dangerous and destructive. But still, nature is adapting. Read about the animal kingdom's strategies for dealing with inevitable wildfires at Vox. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: U.S. Forest Service- Pacific Northwest Region)

In a post about Attila the Hun, I mentioned that Genghis Khan's life was much better documented. But that only goes so far. After the Khan had conquered almost all of Asia and parts of Europe, he wished for privacy in death. He died in the year 1227, in August, but the news wasn't made public for some time, lest it interfere with the Mongols' current battle campaign. No one knows the cause of death, although contemporary accounts make some wild and differing claims. His funeral procession took his body back to Mongolia where extreme care was taken to keep his burial place a secret. It's been said that witnesses were executed, and then the executioners were also killed.

Mongolia, China, Russia, and Kazakhstan have all claimed to be the site of Genghis Khan's tomb. However, we know that the sacred mountain in Mongolia called Burkhan Khaldun was an inspiration to him in his younger days, when his name was Temüjin. He had asked to be buried on the mountain a few times during his life. After the Khan's death, a 93-square-mile (240 square kilometers) area around Burkhan Khaldun called Khan Khentii was declared a "taboo zone" and stayed that way for seven centuries. It was fairly inaccessible anyway, but trespassers were killed. The exception was Genghis Khan's family. Khan Khentii eventually fell under Soviet rule, then Mongolian rule, and now its a UNESCO World Heritage site, but it's still not exactly open to the public. Read about this mysterious plot of land and its history at Atlas Obscura.

When the US government launched the Manhattan Project during World War II, they went all out to recruit the best scientists available. That's how they found J. Robert Oppenheimer and named him to head the secret laboratory at Los Alamos. And that's why there's a movie about him now. But there's still more to the story. The untold account involves a scientist you may know who was right there in New Mexico already. Alternative Cuts is not afraid to tell the story of how Walter White lent his expertise to the making of the atomic bomb, quite enthusiastically, as it turns out. We still haven't figured out why he insisted on bringing along his dimwitted assistant Jesse Pinkman, though. White was omitted from the history books because he's shy and really didn't want the publicity. Enjoy this clever mashup of the movie Oppenheimer with the erstwhile TV series Breaking Bad. -via Laughing Squid 

There's a reason we have a prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The past was full of cruelty, and unusual was only limited by one's imagination. Here's a punishment that wasn't all that cruel, as we would view it now, but it sure was unusual. In Florence, Italy, during the Rennaissance, the Bargello was the building that housed prisoners. If a detainee were to escape, or skip bail, they would add a new fresco to the wall of the Bargello in the image of that person. It wasn't like a mugshot for identification, but a pittura infamante, a punishment in itself, because they would paint the perpetrator in a humiliating way, often hanging upside-down. The face must be recognizable, but often had a silly expression. And details could be added for extra embarrassment, like a defecating dog in the background.

This kind of punishment really only affected elite perpetrators with status, because such humiliation could hurt their social standing or even their business connections. Artists didn't want to do these punitive portraits, because they didn't want to offend their wealthy patrons. But Botticelli painted one, and possibly Leonardo da Vinci, too. Hardly any of these images survive today, as the wall was painted over and over. Read what we know about these pittura infamante at Jstor. -via Strange Company

Denali, in Alaska, is the tallest mountain in the United States. In 1906, Frederick Cook claimed to have reached the summit, which would make him the first to do so. However, no one believed him, especially after his photographic proof was identified as a different location (Cook later claimed to have been the first man to reach the North Pole). Alaskan miner Thomas Lloyd was skeptical about Cook's claims and said he could do better than Cook. The bartender replied,  

"Tom, you are too old and too fat to climb to the top of Denali."

There's nothing that will light a fire under a man like someone telling him he can't do something. And that was the beginning of the Sourdough Expedition of 1910, in which four guys with no climbing experience went up Denali and lived to tell about it. But if a movie were to be made about the expedition, it would be a comedy, as David Friedman of Ironic Sans explains. See, no one believed any of the four had reached the summit, and they had plenty of reasons to be skeptical. -via Laughing Squid

We cover the most popular baby names in the US every year, and have also tracked the popularity of names over time, and you rarely learn anything you didn't already know. In a few years, schools will have to find a way to tell all the Liams and Olivias apart. But when you look around the world, you are in for some surprises. You could probably guess that Mary and its many variations is the top name of choice for girls in the most nations, and Muhammad with a few spelling variation is the top name for boys in more countries than any other. But look closer. I have never met anyone named Isla, which is the number one name for girls in Australia and New Zealand. Is it new? The top baby girl name in Israel is Avigayil, which might be pronounced like Abigail, or maybe not. The most popular name in Japan for boys is Aoi. Does anyone know the proper pronunciation for that?

Letter Solver did research in each country's native language to dig up the data from available sources. Not all sources were for the same time period, but priority was given to the most recent data when identified. See world maps of the most popular baby names (you can click to enlarge them), and a chart that lists each country where data was available. -via Digg

John Koopman spent 25 years as a journalist, including time embedded with a Marine unit in the Iraq War. Then he was laid off as newspapers started to decline. He turned to managing strip clubs, then spent some time ferrying marijuana over state lines, or as he calls it "a modern bootlegger." One of his friends was a marijuana dealer from high school onward. Another friend spent years as a sex worker. He tells their stories, and his, with an emphasis on why they took on those jobs. The three main reasons are: 1. these activities pay significantly better than anything else they could have done, 2. you are your own boss instead of punching a clock and taking orders from someone else, and 3. the danger provides a thrill that makes one feel truly alive. There are definite drawbacks, especially in the case of the prostitute, who had low self-esteem and hated the job. Read the stories of all three people in an essay at LitHub. -via Damn Interesting

A blogger at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica recently told us about their food supplies during winter. He's been there a while now and knows his way around the station, so he's sharing pictures he's taken of the many signs posted at the facility.

Some of the signs are the kind that you might see at any industrial workplace. But there are many unique messages, too. People not only work there, but do all their eating, sleeping, and recreation there as well. And since the population is transient, the signs are necessary for new people arriving who don't know all the quirks of the station. Some are quite ominous. Does anyone know what this one might mean?

One sign is merely a label on a drawer that says THREE HUGE WRENCHES AND A MICROMETER, which will inspire you to sing a bit of a well-known Beck song. You'd have to open the drawer to see what was actually in there, and he did. Many of the signs have been there for years. When you are only spending a short time in an extreme environment, it's often better to warn people so they don't all make the same mistakes, and easier to label a problem than to fix it. See the extensive collection of signs posted all over the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station at brr. -via Metafilter

This video contains NSFW language. Last year, Ryan Reynolds made a video of his own colonoscopy experience (without any invasive images) to promote screening for colon cancer. This year, he enlisted Terry Crews to undergo a colonoscopy and make a public account of the procedure for the organization Lead From Behind. Crews arrived at his appointment as United States President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho, the character he played in the 2006 film Idiocracy. Crews stayed in character even under anesthesia! Reynolds said,

We applaud President Camacho for his bravery — and also idiocy.

The fictional future president is running a low-key comedy campaign for the presidency in the 2024 election. So far, it only surfaces to promote something, such as the SXSW festival earlier this year and now the campaign to encourage people to get a colonoscopy. Everyone should have a colonoscopy performed after turning 45, or even before then if you have symptoms.

An excavation site at Wittenham Clumps in Oxfordshire, UK, is thought to have been the home of a wealthy Roman family who lived there during the Iron Age, around the second century CE. One of the more surprising finds was the skeletal remains of a very short dog- only 20 centimeters, or eight inches tall. Yet it had a long backbone. The villa where it was found was a farm, with livestock and working animals. Small dogs were bred in this period for hunting, but this particular specimen had bowed legs and was more likely kept as a pet. Could it have been the runt of the litter, but saved by its cuteness? The artist's depiction above sure looks like a dachshund (notice the foot in the background for scale), but that breed was developed hundreds of years later in Germany for hunting purposes. However, it could be that the phrase "get a long little doggie" had meaning long before the breed was perfected. Read more about this discovery at BBC. -via Fark

(Image credit: DigVentures)

It's long been a fact of life that if we are lucky enough to grow old, our hair will either turn gray or fall out. Or both. In recent years, the stigma of having gray hair is not as dire as it used to be, and gray hair has become kind of chic among young people. This shift ironically coincides with new research that shows why hair turns gray, and how we can stop it from doing so. Further medical research shows that hair that has already turned gray can, in some cases, start to grow in color again.

Fortunately, most people already know a shortcut to covering gray hair, or changing one's hair color completely. It comes in a bottle and you can even do it at home, as I have off and on since I was a teenager. Now that my hair is partially white, I have expanded my palette to include a range of shockingly unnatural hues. But I can see the value in this research, as it contributes to our understanding of how our bodies work at the cellular level. -via Geeks Are Sexy