(Image credit: Lon&Queta)

The ob-weaving spider you see above already had a fully-finished web ready to trap dinner. But it went back and gussied up the place with a lovely geometric pattern anyway. So did this St. Andrew's Cross spider, which was named for this kind of decoration. Charlotte would be proud.

(Image credit: Amos T Fairchild)

Spider of widely-varying species do this. The decoration itself is called stabilimentum, because scientists once thought it was done to make the web more stable. Arachnologists have abandoned that idea, but there's no agreement on why spiders decorate their webs. It could be because they are in a web-building mood and can't stop. Or maybe it makes them look bigger, or conversely, serves as extra camouflage. It could be to attract certain kinds of prey, or even to help the spider regulate its own temperature. Maybe they are showing off for mating purposes. But since this behavior has been observed in different species, they could have different reasons. Its even possible that spiders just like the look. Read about spiders and their stabilimenta at The Ark in Space. -via Everlasting Blort

The Gotthard Base Tunnel runs underneath the Swiss Alps for 35.5 miles. A passenger riding a train through it wouldn't see daylight for 20 minutes straight. Building the tunnel was an amazing feat of engineering that cost about $12 billion US, but saved so much time and energy transporting people and goods through the Alps that it was worth it.  

But with a tunnel so long and so deep, imagine if an accident were to happen in the middle of it. There can be up to 16 trains in the tunnel at a time. What about a fire? The temperature two kilometers below the surface gets up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. You'll be glad to know that there are multiple complex safety systems at work to make sure the trains run quickly and safely, or if not, that experts can respond to any emergency. Tom Scott is impressed, and you will be, too.  

The public radio show This American Life did an episode exploring the theme of whether most people are basically good (or not). The first guest was Jessica Williamson, who, some years ago, made the poster above about a found cat. You've seen the poster, but what you don't know is that in the original version, Williamson included her real phone number. She distributed the poster around her neighborhood, but never thought about someone posting it on the internet. As you can imagine, she got a lot of phone calls.

And then when I started listening to the voicemails, it was kind of like this very unscientific, I would say, social experiment. Because you could really lock the calls into three groups. And the largest group of people were actually very kindly just calling to tell me that it wasn't a cat and that it was a possum.

Williamson estimated that maybe 20% of the calls were playing along with the joke and claimed it was their cat, and another 10% were calling to tell her she is an idiot. Of course, this slice of humanity only involves those who went to the trouble of actually calling the number. You can listen to the eight-minute segment, which includes excerpts of the actual calls she received, or read the transcript here. Or listen to the whole episode if that interests you. -via Metafilter

Imagine yourself as a child turning nine years old. Your birthday party would probably consist of your best friends from school and maybe their siblings. You'd eat cake and play games like musical chairs and then open gifts. It wouldn't be anything at all like a party held 38 years ago today in Manhattan with a star-studded guest list.   

It was October 9, 1984, and Steve Jobs was going to a nine-year-old’s birthday party. He’d been invited just a few hours earlier by journalist David Scheff, who was wrapping up a profile of the Apple Computer wunderkind for Playboy. Jobs was far from the highest-profile guest, however. Walter Cronkite, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Louise Nevelson, John Cage, and singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson were also in attendance. And Yoko Ono, of course—it was her son’s birthday, after all.

Jobs brought a gift for young Sean Lennon: a Macintosh computer. Few people had one in 1984, and anyone who was introduced to Macintosh in the 1980s can tell you how game-changing they were. Andy Warhol was particularly impressed. A last-minute child's birthday gift turned out to be a great way to promote a product to pop culture influencers. See pictures from that birthday party at Vintage Everyday. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: Sailko)

Star Wars has become less humorous over time. Sure, there are still plenty of side characters thrown in to make jokes and sell toys, like droids and porgs, but our heroes have become too perfect to crack wise the way Han Solo did in the original trilogy. Let's go back to the days when main characters could be flawed while also brave and dedicated to the cause. For example, you aren't always going to have someone who knows every language in the galaxy to act as a spy. Your second choice would be someone who can take risks and think on their feet. That may or may not work out as well as you'd wish, but sometimes you don't have a choice. Then you have to rely on luck (also known as plot armor). In this well-made skit, our hero injects comedy into the Star Wars universe by simply being more realistic. This video contains a little NSFW language. -via reddit

Once upon a time, we made things for children that mimicked adult items, like toy dishes and tools, so they could learn to be adults. Now the world is making things that are clearly for adults that enable us to pretend we are children, like Happy Meals, house paint, revamped cartoons, elaborate LEGO sets, and now vodka.

The British distiller Au Vodka, which already produces vodka in various candy and fruit flavors, has launched Au Vodka Bubblegum, which not only tastes like bubblegum, it changes color from blue to purple when you add a mixer. Dilute it enough and it becomes pink! Au Vodka is not the first to sell a color-changing liquor- Empress 1908 Gin, which went viral in the summer, does the same for gin lovers.

Both liquors contain extracts of the butterfly pea flower, a plant that is already pretty adult. The flower acts as a litmus test by changing color according to the acidity of its surroundings. Its original blue color will turn purple or pink when a citrus mixer such as lemonade or grapefruit juice is added. Mixing these cocktails in front of an audience is a pretty neat bar trick. However, no floor show will get me to drink bubblegum flavored vodka.

While Au Vodka is promoting their bubblegum liquor on Twitter, it is nowhere to be found on their website. They must have sold out their entire inventory. Maybe they'll make more.

(Image credit: Au Vodka)

Dragons are large mythical reptiles that are found all over the world. Well, the myths are found all over the world, anyway. Strangely, medieval naturalists were writing about and describing dragons for hundreds of years before they realized these animals did not exist. So where did the idea of dragons come from? Possibly from Homer's Iliad.

Six passages mention the drakon, a creature that, from the context, is clearly a snake. Homer didn’t seem to be referring to any specific type of snake and neither did Aristotle, whose fourth-century BCE History of Animals noted that the eagle eats drakons.

That explains the name, but how did Homer's snakes become winged monsters that breathed fire? That took some time, and came about because of assumptions, miscommunications, and the inability of writers to distinguish fact from fiction. Read some of the steps in the long process of turning snakes into dragons at Jstor Daily.  -via Strange Company

The bar has been raised again. Tom BetGeorge always puts on terrific holiday light shows- we've been featuring his work for a decade now. His hobby of choreographing his Halloween and Christmas light displays led him to start his own business, and he's always looking out for new technology to impress the neighbors. For Halloween 2022, that includes an army of computer-controlled drones! They fly as far as 400 feet above the house (meaning they now need multiple cameras to record it all, including a drone camera). Also, BetGeorge and his family have moved from Tracy to a new house in Linden, California, with more room for the light shows. This year's sequence features a Stranger Things theme and music from Metallica, plus Ghostbusters. The combination of sequenced lights, video projection, and drones is truly over-the-top.

After the show, we get to see how big their new place is as they set the drones. And that solar array means they shouldn't worry about powering the lights. -via reddit

(Image credit: Daniel Mennerich)

If you've read Washington Irving's story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, or if you've seen any of the five movie adaptations or numerous television versions, you are familiar with the terrifying Headless Horseman. And isn't Sleepy Hollow just the perfect name for a horror story setting? I case you didn't know, Sleepy Hollow is a real place in New York state. The village of Sleepy Hollow has embraced the fame that Irving's story brought.

(Image credit: Adam Jones)

October is the best time to visit Sleepy Hollow, as the leaves are at their peak, and also because that's when Sleepy Hollow puts on its best haunted village act. You'll want to be there for the annual Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze, open through November 20, featuring more than 7,000 illuminated Jack O’Lanterns. Or hear a reading of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow at the Tarrytown house that Irving lived in.  

(Image credit: SurFeRGiRL30)

That's just the beginning of the wonders of Sleepy Hollow. You can visit any time of the year and see the places that inspired Irving's story, sites that figured in American history, the lovingly preserved downtown, and the many memorials to Irving and his iconic Headless Horseman. See what Sleepy Hollow has to offer visitors at Halloween and year-round at Messy Nessy Chic.

Edgar Allan Poe is known as a horror author, but he wrote about quite a range of subjects. His works included gothic romance, science fiction, and poetry, and he is credited with inventing the detective fiction genre. But all his stories were imbued with melancholy and existential dread of one kind or another. That may be because that's what he knew. His life story was filled with sadness, despite achieving literary fame. The life story of Edgar Allan Poe reads like a character he might have created: dark, bleak, and mysterious. This short animated version illustrates that pretty well. -via Nag on the Lake

Near the spot where Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma meet, just off Route 66, lies a four-mile road they call the Devil's Promenade. This is where a glowing light has been reported to appear in the night since 1881. There used to be a town there called Hornet, and the light is called the Hornet Spook Light. Documented sightings have described the light as small as an egg or as large as a washtub. It comes in various colors, and sometimes moves or changes shape. Sightings are relatively few and far between, but plenty of living people have seen it.

What could cause such a mysterious light? Some think it comes from the headlights of cars on the highway, but others say Route 66 is too far away. And headlights weren't a thing around there in 1881. Others blame swamp gas or a wandering spirit. The Army Corps of Engineers calls it a "mysterious light of unknown origin". Read about the Hornet Spook Light at BBC Travel. -via Damn Interesting

A challenge you can't resist! Or at least I couldn't. Turn your head away as each song starts and see if you can name that tune before you look at the title onscreen. Describing the Bugs Bunny scene doesn't count.  

I thought I would do better than I did. I knew some, and couldn't bring up the name of others. When composers just give their compositions numbers instead of unique names, it's hard to commit them to memory. But there were a few I don't think I've ever even heard before. I could identify the Nokia ringtone, but I didn't know it was based on an existing song. If you enjoyed that, here's round two.



I could name more of them in the second round. How did you do?

A Finnish cruise line bought a ship in 1980 and named it the Viking Sally. Its first six years as a cruise ship were uneventful, but in 1986, a man met two strangers in a bar, and was brutally murdered in his cabin later that night. Police found the perpetrator, who later escaped from prison and murdered again. In 1987, two passengers were sleeping on the deck when they were attacked. They were taken to a hospital where one of them died of his injuries. It was 30 years before the perpetrator was discovered, but he was never convicted.

Was the Viking Sally cursed? The ship was sold and renamed, but it was the same boat that ran into a massive storm in 1994 and sank, killing 852 people. It was the second worst European maritime disaster outside of war, only surpassed by the Titanic. Only 137 people survived. Read the story of the Viking Sally at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Mark Markefelt)

The fast-moving, action-packed animated short A Brief Disagreement by Steve Cutts (previously at Neatorama) is basically about two cavemen fighting -"mankind's favourite pastime" as the YouTube description puts it. They begin with rocks and progress to clubs, and get their friends to join in. Their weapons get ever more sophisticated, but their feelings toward each other are stuck in a stubborn battle where the goal is winning at any cost. I suppose that's why they remain cavemen, even armed with today's high-tech killing machines. -via Laughing Squid

The top websites in the world are Google, YouTube, and Facebook. It's been like that for years. But what if you eliminated those, and ranked websites within nations? Then you'd end up learning something new about the world. Hostinger did just that. In fact, they eliminated all search engines, since they are a "middle man" to get you to other websites. They also eliminated porn sites, which are now ranked fourth and fifth globally. After that, we find out that Wikipedia is the top websites in 43 countries, which is very believable. But not the US! Americans like to buy things, so Amazon is at the top. Reddit is the go-to website in Canada, New Zealand, and the Philippines. You might not know Delfi; it is a news site based in Estonia that operates in Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian, Polish, and English.

You can see and enlarge the world map greatly here. Then you'll find some interesting data, like how Blogspot is number one in Bolivia, 9GAG is tops in Nicaraugua, and IMDb is the most popular website in Liberia. Hostinger also has maps for the top news sites, banking sites, and food sites around the world (DoorDash beats all recipe sites in the US). You can see the global reach of websites that were eliminated at Open.Trends. Data is not available from every country in the world. -via Metafilter