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)

The movie Blazing Saddles had its premiere on February 7, 1974, meaning it will be 50 years old tomorrow. It was vulgar and outrageous and crossed the line in so many places that it couldn't be made at all today. Mel Brooks battled producers over many scenes, but he won, mainly by ignoring them. The result was what many people who saw Blazing Saddles that year call the funniest movie ever. Brooks took on the project because he was broke and his wife was pregnant, and he turned a newcomer's script about racism in the Old West into a bizarre comedy that made fun of everything and everyone it touched.

Brooks screened the film and Ted Ashley, the chairman of Warner Brothers, told the director, "The farting scene has to go. You can’t punch a horse. You can’t hit an old lady. And you can’t use the ‘N’ word." If Brooks had followed orders and cut 26 scenes, there would be little movie left. Co-writer Richard Pryor was the one who insisted on using the N word. One area where Brooks bowed to the producers was in dropping Pryor and Gig Young from the lead roles due to substance abuse problems, and struck gold with Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder. Read what went on behind the scenes in creating Blazing Saddles at The Independent. -via Digg

Last month, we brought you the story of Zoozve, the moon of Venus. The name was a misunderstanding of an asteroid, described as a quasi-moon, provisionally designated 2002-VE. John Farrier suggested we keep using the name Zoozve, and so did Latif Nasser, who first noticed the name on a child's poster of the solar system. Nasser took the story to Radiolab, and consulted those who make such decisions for the podcast. Not long after, the name Zoozve has become official.

The International Astronomical Union's Working Group on Small Bodies Nomenclature (WGSBN) has adopted the name Zoozve for the asteroid, on page nine of their bulletin issued yesterday. Wikipedia has already updated their entry to reflect the story of the heavenly body's new name.

There are guidelines for naming astronomical objects, and Zoozve works for a satellite because it contains "ve" for Venus. However, as a quasi-satellite, a majority of votes among the WGSBN sufficed. Besides, Zoozve has a great story. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Alex Foster)

The sinking of the RMS Titanic in April of 1912 was shocking, but it was never a mystery. Despite the huge death toll, there were many survivors, and documented communications with other ships, plus that iceberg that was still there after the Titanic was gone. Still, the ship had been called unsinkable, and in the aftermath people started to think there was more to the story than what they had been told in the newspapers. Such a horrible disaster couldn't have simply been a case of a collision with an iceberg! And so the conspiracy theories started.

These theories range from the slightly plausible ideas that only differ from the verified accounts by some small detail to the truly bonkers theories like the one where the ship was a victim of a mummy's curse. Or that it was engineered by J.P. Morgan to eliminate political enemies. Or that the Titanic never sank at all, and the headlines were a hoax. Read up on 10 strange theories about what happened to the Titanic, some that are still believed today, at Mental Floss.

A year ago, we brought you the story of the person who has killed more people than any other. Vasili Blokhin wasn't just a criminal, though, he carried out killings for the Soviet Union. What about non-sanctioned criminals? Today I Found Out has gone back through history to see if the most prolific serial killer could be identified. However, that depends on the exact definition of "serial killer," which is a separate category of murder that does not include single acts that kill many people, like causing a plane crash or mass shootings.

Still, they found quite a few people who might fit the bill, depending on the parameters of what a serial killer is. Cases from further back in history suffer from lack of verifiable facts, and in some cases, we will never know the exact number of people murdered. So instead of crowning the most horrific serial killer, they bring us the stories of two historical killers and four modern serial killers who could be candidates for the nefarious title. The stories are disturbing and gruesome, so the article ends with a couple of uplifting stories to cleanse your brain. Read all of this at Today I Found Out. The article is a transcript of an earlier, and rather long, video.

Think different. #applevisionpro pic.twitter.com/dEALUsntS8

— Dante (@lentinidante) February 2, 2024

Last Friday, Apple began selling its new $3500 Vision Pro spacial computing headset. That same day, Dante Lentini posted a video of himself using the headset while driving a Tesla, presumably with the autopilot feature turned on. The Vision Pro allows you to see what's in front of you at the same time as you see whatever you're computing. How dangerous is this? Apple explicitly warns us not to use the product while driving, and Tesla requires drivers to have their hands on the wheel when using any of their three types of autopilot feature.

The video ends with Lentini appearing to be pulled over by police. However, Lentini told Gizmodo that he was not arrested, that he just pulled over when he saw the police because it would enhance the video. Were any laws broken? The legal code hasn't adapted to autopilot features and virtual reality headsets, but you could always make a case for distracted driving.     

Love those dancing chickens! TikTokker ilgallinaio_special posts videos of his/her chickens dancing to music. They've got the moves, the rhythm, and frankly the avant-garde looks that grab attention. People love them. So does actor and dancer Smac McCreanor, who you've seen before on Neatorama, doing interpretive dancing as various objects being crushed in a hydraulic press. McCreanor saw an opportunity to expand her repertoire and enlisted friends Ardyn Flynt, Malia Baker, and Kristi Griffith to learn those chicken moves with her. Every time they would master the moves of a new chicken video, McCreanor posted the side-by-side at TikTok. The video above is a compilation of their best collaborations with the dancing chickens.

Note the passionate dedication to mimicking the chickens' moves accurately. Also notice the hairstyles and accessories that allow these dancers to look even more like the chickens whose roles they are taking. Even the facial expressions are spot-on! -via Boing Boing

Have you ever heard someone say they're coming down with the epizootic? It meant they had some illness that could be a cold or flu but they didn't know, and epizootic was a funny word to say. All these years later, I found out that epizootic, which I've always heard pronounced with a "zoo" in the middle, is a real word that is pronounced epizo-otic. It refers to an epidemic among animals.

The slang use of the word probably dates back to 1872, when an equine influenza spread rapidly among cities in the eastern US and millions of horses suffered. This was a disaster because everything was transported by horse power, from travelers to milk to firefighters. The lack of working horses brought New York, Chicago, Boston, and other cities to a near-standstill. While only about 1% of affected horses died from the disease, many more died from being worked while sick or from pneumonia that develops after the infection clears. Learn more about the epizootic of 1872 at Jstor Daily.  -via Strange Company

Iceberg flipping over revealing very old blue ice.
byu/lpomoeaBatatas ininterestingasfuck

What we are seeing here is a glacier moving along a channel and breaking off pieces that become icebergs. The ice is much deeper than it first appears. One large chunk breaks off and then slowly flips. We can see that the ice is bluer the deeper it goes, but when the bottom side finally surfaces, we see how blue it really is. And that's really, really blue, like artificial raspberry flavor in a bomb pop. The location of this glacier isn't posted, but some redditors think it's Grey Glacier moving over Grey Lake in southern Chile.

Why is the bottom so blue? That part is where the ice is the oldest and most compressed and the air bubbles are squeezed out, so it contains more actual water than the whiter parts on top. Water in large quantities is blue. You'll find a more detailed explanation at Wikipedia. If your local lake or pond is green instead, that's because of the things that live in it.  -via reddit

What's a decipoint? It's the place where ten different geographical boundaries meet. I live within a rock's throw of a tripoint, where three counties meet, but you can't really stand on it because it's in a river. You know about Four Corners, the only spot in the US where four states meet at one point, called a quadripoint. There is only one place in the world where the boundaries of ten geographical units meet, and that is at the summit of Mt. Etna in Sicily.

Although Etna is an active volcano, there are plenty of towns surrounding it due to the fertility of the land. Ten municipalities draw their boundaries, or city limits as Americans say, up to the top of the mountain. Two more municipalities reach almost to the summit, as you can see in a map at the linked article. Why did they draw their borders like that? Well, if your town was that close to one of the world's most famous volcanoes, you would, too. After all, Etna is a big tourist draw. It erupts occasionally, and the lava flow is as liable to run down into one town as it is the others. Since they share the risks as well as the fertile soil and the tourists, that's how it ended up. Read more about the strange boundary lines leading to Etna at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: BenAveling)

When you jump on this trampoline, you are getting some real altitude! And you don't even have to jump that high. Actor, model, and adventurer Jay Alvarrez thought it would be cool to take some friends up in a hot air balloon with a trampoline suspended underneath. And jump on it. Sure, it looks scary to you and me, but these friends are all skydivers, and they are all equipped with parachutes along with cameras. There's a videographer suspended from the edge of the balloon, but who's taking his picture? Oh yeah, must be a drone. This kind of thing would be so much fun if it weren't for the sheer terror that almost everyone else on earth would feel. The only casualty of this stunt is the soccer ball, and you have to imagine that someone down there on earth gave it a good home. -via Born in Space

It's nice to get a romantic Valentine's Day card, but it's extra special to get one that shows how your significant other went the extra mile to acknowledge your personality, preference, or passion. Show how much you've been paying attention to what they like by getting a pop culture Valentine card from artist PJ McQuade! Or maybe it's a matter of shared interests, so you can bond over your mutual admiration for a particular entertainment franchise. Or then again, you can do like I did at Christmas and send your whole family a random assortment of his cards and confound them to no end. At least you'll get a phone call out of it.

The top picture shows a range of pop culture Valentines, and the second picture shows what's inside. You'll find everything from Twin Peaks to Anchorman to Lord of the Rings to Jaws to Curb Your Enthusiasm. Get your orders in now at McQuade's Etsy store Castle McQuade, and make your Valentine feel special.  

The sound of a dial-up modem scared us when we first heard it, then as we became used to it, it turned into an annoyance. Harsh and dissonant, we did not miss it a bit when we upgraded to various kinds of broadband internet connections. But then years went by, and the only place you heard that sound was in "young people don't know these things" listicles, which just made us feel old. Yeah, I'm speaking for myself.      

Jonny Wilson, also known as Eclectic Method (previously at Neatorama), took the grating yet nostalgic sound of a dial-up connection and made it into "Dial Up Modem Song," which may get stuck in your head. If you did the Rate-a-Record segment at American Bandstand, you'd say "It has a great beat and it's easy to dance to." You have to admit, it's the best that noise has ever sounded. -via Laughing Squid