Last week, The Beatles won a Grammy award more than 50 years after the band broke up. The award was for Best Music Video, for the song "I'm Only Sleeping," from their 1966 album Revolver (although it was initially on the album Yesterday and Today in the US and Canada, and differed slightly from the UK single). The song, about John Lennon's sleep habits, is notable for a guitar sequence that was recorded backwards.

The music video was created by artist Em Cooper to coincide with the release of the remastered Revolver. Cooper uses an extremely labor-intensive method in work, stop-motion animation on oil paintings. For this video, she painted and then photographed around 1300 oil paintings. Some were painted, photographed, then altered for the next shot, but many were started fresh for a new frame or sequence. The project took months of work, but it paid off well with a Grammy. -via Everlasting Blort

If you think that headline is nonsensical, the original headline of the news story is "Huge goanna winched by crane to safety from Torrumbarry Weir by Goulburn-Murray Water workers." Yes, it's from Australia. A goanna is any of around 70 species of lizard found in Australia. The name came from iguana, which is an unrelated South American lizard. A weir is a short dam that doesn't hold back all the water, but keeps the river above it at a deeper level. The story involves an almost 5-foot goanna who wandered onto a weir, which is not safe. Waterworks employees rescued the goanna by lowering a log by crane down to where the animal sat. The lizard eventually moved into the log, it being the only thing familiar to him. Then they raised the log up with a winch, with the goanna holding on for dear life.

Once the goanna was safe on the riverbank, the workers gave him a large snack of carp, which he finished before wandering off. All's well that ends well, right? While that's where the news story ends, in our imaginations we can see the goanna telling his goanna friends about his epic adventure in which he flies through the air on a log. They don't believe him, but then the part about getting a bucket of carp handed to him gets their attention. The next day, waterworks employees arrive to find three goannas have climbed onto the weir. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Goulburn-Murray Water)

Before the Panama Canal was built, ship captains dreaded passing around the southern tip of South America to go from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, or vice versa. The Drake Passage is the spot where the Antarctic Peninsula comes closest to Chile and Argentina, and the sea here can be terrifyingly turbulent. See, air currents travel west to east, and in the Drake Passage, there's no land mass to slow the wind as it travels completely around the world around Antarctica. Ocean currents also travel east, and the Drake Passage is a chokepoint where a lot of water tries to squeeze through a relatively small opening 600 miles wide and 6,000 feet deep. The deceptively calm surface is very different from the rapidly-moving deeper current until conditions change. Waves can be 50 feet high during storms, tossing boats around like so much flotsam. It has been estimated that more than 10,000 sailors have lost their lives in the Drake Passage.

Commercial ships now go through the Panama Canal, but ships regularly take tourists to the Antarctic Peninsula through the Drake Passage. This route is shorter than those of ships traveling from ocean to ocean. We have modern boats that are built for the conditions, and voyages can be scheduled around the weather forecast. The biggest danger these days is seasickness, because ship captains take the Drake Passage very seriously. Read about the Drake Passage and why it's so dangerous at CNN. -via Damn Interesting

We've seen people juggle in real life, but we've seen it done in cartoons a lot more. Which is more impressive? I've always admired people who could juggle because I could never stay with it long enough to succeed, but I know how hard it is. But in animated scenes, you see amazing feats and beautiful patterns that could never be done in the real world. Jasper Juggles took a deep dive into juggling in animation, and brings us hundreds of examples, from the ridiculously poor attempts to the sublime, in different kinds of animated cartoons, video games, and virtual reality. We who don't juggle rarely notice whether the depiction is realistic or not. The accuracy of animated juggling varies by the method used to create it, whether it's simple drawing, layered animation, rotoscoping, stop motion, or computer-controlled physics. He started this project to call out unrealistic juggling in cartoons, but came to admire the artistry of a good-looking or interesting sequence even if it could never be accomplished in real life. Jasper is collecting more examples of animated juggling all the time, and has made his research available in a spreadsheet plus a growing archive in a gallery of YouTube shorts. -via Metafilter

 

The world's oldest artworks that are familiar to a great number of people are the Paleolithic cave paintings at Lascaux in France. They are thought to be around 17,000 years old. But examples of art have been found that go much further back. The problem with pinpointing the oldest art is the definition of art itself. Deliberate marking patterns in objects that have survived many thousands of years could have a practical purpose, or they could be a form of decoration or communication, either of which could be thought of as art. Archaeologists consider early art to be markings as a symbol representing something else. The problem is how we interpret what was symbolic and what had a practical use.  

The question arose with the discovery of a toe bone from a giant deer found in a German cave. The bone has deliberate parallel and perpendicular markings, which appear to be an attempt at artistic expression. However, the bone was dated to 51,000 years ago, before Homo sapiens moved into Europe. The residents of the cave were known to be Neanderthals. It's not the first Neanderthal art discovered, but it does push the timeline back.

There is other evidence that art predates modern man all over the world, including some markings attributed to Homo erectus. But are they art? The problem is interpreting the meaning of these markings. We may never know for sure what those ancient marks were really for. Read about where we are in determining how old art is at LiveScience. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: John Strike for Live Science)

A word to the wise: although I can understand how it would be tempting, if your last name is Bond, do NOT name your son James. But people still do it, and that spells trouble any time your son encounters the police, particularly that one time he neglects to carry an official ID. Hear the stories of several men who learned the hard way that cops do not find it funny that you were named after a fictional British super spy, even when it's the truth.

You can imagine these poor guys have trouble any time they tell anyone their last name, and that's the subject of the award-winning documentary The Other Fellow. Australian filmmaker Matthew Bauer tracked down men from all over the world who share the name James Bond and found out how that name affected their lives for better and for worse. You can see more clips at the film's website, and catch the full documentary on several streaming services.  -via Laughing Squid

Organizers of the 2024 Summer Games have unveiled the medals that will be awarded to winning Olympic athletes in Paris. They will be able to literally take a piece of Paris home with them. The gold, silver, and bronze medals will feature an iron hexagon at the center made from metal salvaged from the Eiffel Tower during its 20th century renovations. Any time metal was replaced in the tower, the original iron was saved for posterity. The medals were designed by French jeweler Chaumet.

The iron hexagons are inlaid with a claw setting, resembling the setting of a precious stone. The outer part of the medals have a starburst pattern to indicate radiance. The reverse will have the image of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. The medals for the Paralympics, which take place after the Olympic games, will feature the same design on the front, but the reverse has a view of the Eiffel tower as seen looking up from underneath. Get a closer look at the medals at CNN. The Paris Olympics will run from July 26 to August 11, 2024.     

What's most important in a pop tune? "It's got a good beat; I can dance to it." So is it any wonder that Van Halen can dance to the groove of "Love Machine" by The Miracles while performing their own song "Unchained"? The latest mashup from Bill McClintock doesn't just have one group singing over the other's music; both the music and vocals are full integrated, and it works. This is as much a dance video as it is a music video. And those stage costumes! There's also a short guest appearance by Ozzy Osbourne as we hear Jake E. Lee's solo from "Bark at the Moon." McClintock calls this song "Unchained Love Machine" by Van Miracles.  

ROWDY TREE BOYS aka the Hopkinsville Goblins! pic.twitter.com/QIlQlQldE4

— 🔜FurSquared DD20 (@ZENOPHRENIC) October 18, 2018

In 1955, a family in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, were besieged by what they considered alien beings with glowing eyes lurking outside of their home. A shotgun blast through a screen window did not deter them, and one even grabbed at a man from the roof. The family managed to escape to the nearest police station and begged for help in their battle against the goblins.

What became known as the Hopkinsville Goblins eventually faded from the public's mind, but became embedded in the files of those who keep up with UFO sightings. One of them was astronomer J. Allen Hynek, who Steven Spielberg consulted when he was making the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The film's title actually came from Hynek. It was he who told the story of the Hopkinsville Gobins to Spielberg, and it struck a chord with him. The idea of a family who grows closer while being threatened by outside forces is a running theme in Spielberg movies, and this was right up his alley. He wrote a treatment about the Hopkinsville incident that John Sayles turned into a script called Night Skies. But elements of the script were changed into what would become E.T.: the Extraterrestrial. Discarded elements from Night Skies were resurrected to become Gremlins, and still others were used in Poltergeist. Read how all this happened at Atlas Obscura.

Disney's The Lion King is turning 30 years old this year. The simple story based loosely on Shakespeare's Hamlet tugged at our heartstrings and became an instant classic. The beloved film has become so familiar to us that we tend to forget that the voices behind the animated characters belonged to some of the biggest stars of the time. Thomas H. Smith tracked down footage from various sources to bring us a side-by-side look at the voice actors behind The Lion King with the movie scenes of their iconic dialogue and songs. Those actors include Jeremy Irons, James Earl Jones, Robert Guillaume, Rowan Atkinson, Whoopi Goldberg, Cheech Marin, Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, and others, as well as the wonderful singers who worked on the movie. Some of the clips are from the original recording sessions, while some are from recreations, as those actors were obliged to revisit the experience many times. -via Laughing Squid

Geeks Are Sexy posted this comic from Alzward's Corner. You can see that the host is offended by his dinner guest adding A1 steak sauce to a steak he put a lot of effort into preparing. It's a pretty straightforward scenario, but on the site's Facebook page, everyone and their brother registered their opinion. Some sided with the cook, who went out of his way make sure the steak was perfect when he served it. Some sided with the guest, because everyone has their own tastes, and who are we to tell them they are wrong? And of course, there were those who wondered where the steak sauce came from anyway. Did the host have it on the table? Did the guest bring it with him? But the heart of the matter was illustrated by a thread involving two Facebook members, both named Michael, who spent all day arguing with each other about a steak that neither one could eat. The very persistence of the Michaels was so impressive that Geeks reached out to them and reposted their argument in full on the main site, so you can see how they stubbornly held on long after their spat devolved into insults. This is our modern world, where two people who have never met and probably never will fight to the finish over whose opinion is more valid.

Influence for the sake of influence is much older than the internet, but the global reach of the world wide web makes it not only more satisfying, but brings more people to the competition. We know that some of the most pernicious conspiracy theories were dreamed up in forums like 4chan just to impress other members when they gained a broader reach. Another case of influence for influence's sake is the coining of new slang words. Yes, young folks are still trying to make "fetch" happen.

This is particularly noticeable on TikTok, where you may encounter an explosion of terms you've never heard before. Some will catch on, but most won't, and they all seem like they are trying too hard. But imagine if you were the first person to say "crunchy Mom" or "on fleek" or "orange peel theory" and then other people started using it, and eventually you hear it on the evening news. You'll get influence points from those who know you well, but no money and no recognition once those words spread beyond your inner circle. But it doesn't matter, you have the satisfaction of influence. Read about the heated competition to influence language with "trendbait" at Vox.

You've probably heard the term "suicide by cop," in which people deliberately cause a situation in which the police shoot them, and police are trained to shoot to kill. They want to commit suicide but can't, so they get someone else to do the deed for them. Wanting to die implies some mental health issue, but it doesn't mean the person is irrational. In the 17th and 18th centuries, some folks rationalized that suicide was a more dangerous sin than murder, since you won't have time to repent, so they committed murder in order to be executed for that murder. That idea was even canon in the Lutheran faith. The premeditation in this concept should make that loophole moot, but that's what happened. People even planned their crime according to the expected type of execution that was sure to follow. That's one trend we are glad was extinguished by a change in the law. Strangely, the word "suicide" is censored in this video, but "suicidal" isn't.

When you first encounter Edvard Munch's most famous painting, The Scream, you focus on the person screaming. But what's going on in the background? Is that wavy technicolor sky something he observed, or something he imagined?

Munch painted four version of The Scream between 1893 and 1910. Those who've studied Munch's work have connected it with his 1892 diary entry in which he described his feeling of angst at seeing "The flaming clouds like blood and swords".  The passage could be from his imagination, but it could also be a real meteorological phenomenon he witnessed. Maybe it was a spectacular burst of sunset color caused by a volcanic eruption, maybe the 1892 eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Awu, or more likely the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. But in 2017, three Norwegian researchers offered a theory involving nacreous clouds, that only happen during rare and very particular weather conditions.

You can see the resemblance, right? Read about nacreous clouds and The Scream at Mental Floss.

(Cloud image credit: Cepstral)

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took this picture with its High Resolution Imaging Experiment camera (HIRISE) from about 166 miles above the planet. It shows an area called Aeolis Planum where rivers once flowed billions of years ago, when Mars had an atmosphere. The planet dried up when that atmosphere was stripped away, although water still exists in ice form at the poles. But wait- this picture doesn't look like river channels at all. It looks like those lines are jutting out of the ground!

This happened because the ancient rivers had rocks of all sizes flowing with the water. When the banks overflowed, the rivers would dump smaller sand and silt over the sides, but the heavier gravel and larger rocks remained in the channel. Once the rivers dried up, the silt and sand blew away from the banks, leaving a ridge of larger rocks in place where the river had been. So they are ridges now, but are evidence of ancient rivers. Scientists call these "inverted channels."

Read more about the image and the orbiter that took it at Mashable.

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)