Can John Green distinguish Dr Pepper from other similar drinks just by taste? I certainly couldn't, as I dislike carbonation and I also avoid sugar and cold drinks. I do like sassafras tea, although it's hard to get these days. The first time I drank Dr Pepper, I thought it tasted like a mix of a root beer and a cola. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Cola is cola, but the distinctive taste of Dr Pepper has been copied, with varying levels of success, by just about every soft drink producer we have. Dr Pepper is supposed to be a blend of 23 flavors that only three people are privy to, and not all that many guess sassafras as I do. The company says, however, that there is no prune juice in the drink, as was rumored.   

The last minute of the video is an ad for Dr Pepper socks, which are sold for charity. Be warned the rest of this video could send you running for the insulin.  -via Metafilter

The history of human flight is often presented as if the whole idea only occurred to us in the late 19th century, and then the race was on, which the Wright Brothers won when they flew an airplane on December 17, 1903. But there were pioneers of flight hundreds of years earlier, with some successes like hot air balloons and gliders. Yet there were many more failures.

Albrecht Berblinger was one such pioneer in the early 1800s. A tailor by trade, he devoted all his spare time and money to developing flight. He invented what was essentially a hang glider, which he demonstrated in front of royalty in 1811 on the banks of the Danube River in Ulm, Germany. Berblinger knew something was wrong, and hesitated. But the crowd would not stand for him to back out, and the demonstration was a horrible failure. Berblinger's reputation was ruined. However, modern engineers say that his flying machine was soundly designed, and should have worked. Read the story of Berblinger's flight and why it failed at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: Draughtsman/Zeichner)

Nuclear waste products are bad news wherever we put it. But wouldn't it be safer for humans if we got it as far away as possible? Sure, but that's not as easy as it may sound. Kurzgesagt explains why we haven't done it already. First, it would be expensive and we don't have the infrastructure. We might be able to overcome those mundane problems in the future, opening up several scenarios for launching nuclear waste into space. But in every one of those scenarios, the danger involved is terrifying.

The first scenario I thought of is one they don't even address. We launch nuclear waste into deep space, and it is eventually intercepted by extraterrestrials. Their response would be, "You spent years and billions of dollars on space exploration and this is what you send us? This means war!"

This video is 9.5 minutes long; the rest is an ad.

A notice from the National Park Service falls somewhere in between "preaching to the choir" and the Streisand Effect. There is probably a better idiom that I can't think of right now. The Sonoran Desert toad, also called the Colorado River toad, lives in the western US and northern Mexico. Its skin glands secrete toxins, as the park service tells us: 

These toads have prominent parotoid glands that secrete a potent toxin. It can make you sick if you handle the frog or get the poison in your mouth. As we say with most things you come across in a national park, whether it be a banana slug, unfamiliar mushroom, or a large toad with glowing eyes in the dead of night, please refrain from licking. Thank you. Toot!

The "toot" is from the toad's call, described as a low pitched toot. The Facebook post has gone viral for its odd warning, as if droves of people would normally try to lick a toad in its natural habitat. But CNN tells us that the toxin the toad exudes is a powerful psychedelic that causes "euphoria and strong auditory hallucinations." So we know who the warning is for, but those who would deliberately lick a toad in the forest for its psychedelic effects now know what to look for.  

The rest of us cringe at the idea of handling a wild animal, much less licking its skin. The real value in the warning is for parents, to keep children from trying to pet toads -or any wild animal, for that matter.

(Image credit: Wildfeuer)

They taught us that animals can be divided into warm-blooded or cold-blooded categories, depending on whether they generate their own heat or depend on the sun to provide it. But it turns out that the divide is not so clear, and that different species have varying methods for staying warm enough to thrive. While many animals can be described as one or another, there are also many species that fall somewhere between, which tells us that heat-generating strategies are really a spectrum. Or maybe not, because the word "spectrum" suggests a straight line of gradients, while animal species are really all over the chart.   

This video is only 2:40 in length. The rest is an ad. -via Geeks Are Sexy

The City hall in Perth, Scotland, is being transformed into a museum. City officials launched an online poll to come up with a name for the museum, and more than 450 people submitted their ideas. When the dust settled, you would expect that Museumy McMuseumface would be the winner, but that's not the case.

More than 60% of respondents voted for a name they believed encompassed both the history of the building and the stories of the community.

That was Perth Museum.

While it seems like a wasted opportunity to those far away, Perth residents are happy with the results. While the name campaign was waged online, one thinks that maybe the actual voting was limited to those with a local address. Now that's the way to run a serious internet naming poll. Perth Museum in the old City Hall will open in 2024. -via reddit

(Image credit: Perth and Kinross Council)

Shomphole Wilderness Camp is a private getaway to nature in Kenya's Rift Valley. Wildlife photographer Will Burrard-Lucas (previously at Neatorama) is one of their favorite visitors. He teamed up with camp management to build a watering hole for wildlife in the very dry valley. For Burrard-Lucas, it was an opportunity to make taking pictures of animals easier for himself and for other visiting photographers.

The process involved not only digging a pond, but running five kilometers of pipe to supply the water. They also erected a relatively luxurious hide for photographers, with beds and a toilet, so they can observe creatures who came by without being seen. There is also carefully-designed lighting for nighttime water hole photography. When the project was ready, it didn't take long for wildlife to show up. Read about the project and enjoy the lovely images that resulted at Burrard-Lucas' blog. -via Digg

Imagine taking the most terrifying novel of existential horror that was made into a classic movie monster franchise, and make it into ... no big deal. Here, Dr. Frankenstein encounters the corpse he put together and reanimated and they just have an everyday conversation. Trent Lenkarski and Joel Haver (previously at Neatorama) appear to have turned the camera on while they were free-associating and then rotoscoped it into a Frankenstein movie. This was for some Halloween project, which Lenkarski admits is late. That's the wages of procrastination. It's still worth your time for the recipes. -via reddit

#IdahoDidYouKnow In 1928, Idaho became the first state in the nation to feature a graphic on a license plate by proudly displaying an impressive Idaho potato that filled the entire plate. pic.twitter.com/g1ii2TGWfB

— Idaho Commerce (@IdahoCommerce) July 16, 2019

Every state wants to have a distinctive license plate design for their vehicles. Trying to be different, however, can backfire, as several states have learned the hard way. In 1928, Idaho decided to feature a potato, the state's biggest cash crop, on their plates. A large, long, tan potato was embossed right on the otherwise green plate with the numbers inside. Idaho residents thought it was ugly, and they didn't feel like advertising potatoes on their cars, so the design only lasted a year. Tourists kept stealing them anyway. Strangely, they tried such advertising again, going with the slogan "world famous potatoes" in 1948, and since 1957, they've said "famous potatoes."

This is just one of several stories about license plate failures from different states you can read about at Smithsonian.

Not included: last year's Ohio plate design.

We've all learned an amazing amount about viruses, immunity, and vaccines over the last two years, thanks to COVID-19. Even if you are are up-to-date with the latest COVID vaccine, you still need to get a flu shot, because influenza mutates like any widespread virus, and different strains come around every year. Some years the flu shot is more effective than others, because they are designed to battle whichever strain our health experts predict will be big that year, and they aren't always right. Keep in mind that "just the flu" is not a thing, because influenza is highly contagious and it's dangerous for many people. But what if we were to develop a flu shot that fights any possible strain of influenza? Immunologists are working on different ways to tackle flu viruses no matter how they have mutated, as explained in this TED-Ed lesson. And now any time I hear the word hemagglutinin, I will think of Napoleon Bonaparte. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Some time in the 1980s, an unknown artist started leaving tiles embedded in asphalt roads. These tiles were later determined to be made of mostly linoleum and tar, and they were first left in Philadelphia, then in cities across the US, and in four South American cities. There are hundreds of these Toynbee Tiles, as they are called, with cryptic word jumbles on them like the one you see above. The words are thought to have derived mainly from the works of historian Arnold Toynbee and from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. What do they mean? And who put them there?

We don't know when the tiles were laid, if they are still being made, or how many there are that haven't been discovered. As for the artist, there have been investigations over the years, and a full-length documentary has been made about the search. There are a lot of clues, but no definitive answer yet. Read about the Toynbee Tiles and the mystery that surrounds them at Messy Nessy Chic.

(Image credit: Justin Duerr via Toynbee Idea)

If you think a mortgage is onerous today, the terms of early mortgages were downright frightful. While the concept has its origins in Persia thousands of years ago, the Romans refined it and took the idea to Britain. There, the terms for borrowing to buy land were varied and always in favor of the creditor. In some cases, the lender would use the collateral property to generate income which paid for the loan. In other cases, the borrower made payments. Whether the borrower got any use of the land at all during this time was on a case-by-case basis, so land loans were often more like a layaway program. But if the lender decided to demand full payment at any time, the borrower might be completely out of luck and lose his entire investment! It's no wonder mortgages weren't all that popular until they were further refined in the United States. Read the history of the mortgage at The Conversation.  -via Damn Interesting

You've heard of the Irish goodbye, which is where you leave a party without telling anyone. It's not really Irish, and it was most likely universally developed to avoid the Midwest goodbye. In this skit from Charlie Berens (previously at Neatorama), the Midwest goodbye starts with "Welp, I spose..." and morphs into a never-ending horror of epic proportions.

Use this as a lesson. If you are planning to visit the Midwest for the holidays, it's always good to be prepared for what you will encounter. If conversation starts to lag during a gathering, all you have to do is act like you're leaving, and suddenly everyone has something important to tell you about. But you have to time it just right- always indicate your exit at least an hour before you need to be somewhere else. Now, if someone insists you take home some leftover glorified rice, I can't help you. -via reddit

Us surface dwellers don't usually have to think twice about what lurks below, but what would we find if we did? https://t.co/MeKzzePDng

— Atlas Obscura (@atlasobscura) November 4, 2022

When London's sewer system was built in the mid-19th century, it was a infrastructure wonder, leaving the city cleaner and safer, and was designed to accommodate the city's growth. Then the city grew much larger than anyone predicted, and modern living presents problems for a sewer system that no one could have foreseen. The monster in the sewer these days is the fatberg. When calcium-rich water meets fats or oil (including some soaps), it will solidify. A chunk gets caught on a corroded pipe or a piece of trash, and other chunks join it. The growing fatberg captures wet wipes, menstrual products, and other items of trash as it grows. Eventually, the mass will restrict or totally clog even the largest sewer pipes.

On any given night, there may be hundreds of workers battling dozens of fatbergs in London's sewers. They use high-power water jets, vacuums, shovels, pickaxes, and sometimes even their hands. It's dirty, dark, and dangerous work, but someone's gotta do it. Read about the ongoing battle against fatbergs at Atlas Obscura.

Alright. Okay. My long-dead grandpa Milt’s unfinished stained glass menorah piece. It’s been in my basement workshop for literal years now. I keep not tackling the job of picking up where he left off. I want to get past that block. pic.twitter.com/wMUOfItsDt

— Corvidae of Reckoning (@joshmillard) October 18, 2022

Artist Josh Millard started exploring the art of stained glass in recent years. When his parents heard, they asked if he'd like to have his late grandfather's stained glass supplies. Millard didn't even know his grandfather did stained glass, but Milt Millard had apparently taken it up later in life. In those supplies was an unfinished project- a large menorah. Millard thought about it for three years, and then plunged into finishing it.

This project was intimidating to me for a few reasons: the unusual creative and ethical prospect of finishing someone's work posthumously; the feeling that any attempt to finish the work would involve first the irreversible decision to destroy a (however damaged and unfinished) existing family artifact; and the sheer logistical complexity of picking up someone else's design and fabrication mid-stream.

But Dad liked the idea of me finishing it.  And I imagine Grandpa would have as well.  And preserving it indefinitely in bad shape in my basement where no one would ever see it again wasn't really much of a life for the existing artifact.

So the only difficulties left were: literally everything else.  All the logistical and creative problems of adapting someone's unfinished work.  

Millard Tweeted the project as it went along. His account is much more than a DIY project. Along the way, he grapples with handling and manipulating a fragile family artifact and design decisions for a two-person collaboration in which one artist is silent. Altogether, it makes a beautiful story. And the finished work is beautiful, too.

 

You can follow the process of completing the menorah at Twitter or more easily at Threadreader. -via Metafilter