History and science combine to tell the story of how trade exploded when Europeans began crossing the Atlantic to the Americas. We know diseases were traded, with pathogens such as smallpox and measles killing millions of Native Americans who had no immunity to them. It's been conventional wisdom that syphilis traveled the other direction, and the sexually transmitted disease began to infect Europe. But a closer look at the historical record points to the existence of syphilis in Europe hundreds of years before Columbus sailed to the New World.

Paleopathologists have studied remains of European people who displayed the effects of syphilis going back to the 6th century. However, the presence of the bacterium Treponema pallidum cannot be pinpointed. But a new theory that venereal syphilis ran rampant among royalty and the wealthy while non-venereal syphilis plagued the poor finds evidence in, of all things, medieval art. One particular symptom of the disease was depicted in religious artworks, and was apparently well-known enough to be ascribed to sinners and evildoers. Read how this theory comes together at the Conversation.

You know how some of your favorite songs are so familiar that you appreciate them even when played in a completely different way, like a bluegrass version of a Queen song or Guns 'n' Roses played on an accordion? Or anything by Postmodern Jukebox? Then you're going to love this!

Moyun is a Chinese guzheng player who is noted for never showing her face (yes, that's a mask). Here she treats us to a full version of   AC/DC's song "Thunderstruck" on a 21-string guzheng. She covers the guitar, bass, drums, and vocal parts with just two hands and one musical instrument. Moyun has videos of other rock covers, Chinese songs, anime themes, and video game music at her YouTube channel. -via Geeks Are Sexy

The global economy is projected to hit $100 trillion by the end of this year. The United States is the world's fourth largest country by area, and the third largest by population (we surpassed Indonesia), but when it comes to money, the US is where it's at. However, China is expected to move to #1 by 2030. This chart shows us the relative share among nations, grouped by continent. They could have made a pie chart, but some of the slices would be too small to identify. The US has the biggest chunk, followed by China, Japan, and Germany. The "nations" for this visualization are divided up into 191 entities (the UN lists 195), which can be argued over. For example, Puerto Rico is listed, even though it is part of the United States. The data comes from the International Monetary Fund's April 2022 report.

You can see a larger (and enlargeable) chart at Visual Capitalist, where you'll also find charts listing the top 50 and bottom 50 economies in the world. -via Digg

A whistling vessel (huaco silbador) is an ancient type of ceramic art in which water moves between two chambers and produces a bird whistle. There are many that survive from pre-Columbian Central and South America, but they are also being made again today. Even the reproductions are hand made and quite expensive. Steve Mould wanted to look inside to see how they worked, but considering the cost, he used x-ray technology to see inside. To really grasp the way they work, he ended up destroying at least one anyway, but the mechanism, and how it varies from piece to piece, is quite fascinating. The last minute of this video is an ad.

If your town's most famous citizen happened to be a murderous drug dealer, would you put up a statue of him? Maybe not, but what if the tourist draw of that statue could mean important dollars flowing into the local economy? That's a maybe. But then what if it were two statues, and they were a free gift? That might make a difference. And so Albuquerque, New Mexico, is welcoming statues depicting the fictional meth cook Walter White and his partner Jesse Pinkman. Albuquerque received renewed attention when the AMC TV series Breaking Bad became a hit, and has become a mecca for fans of the show, as well as those of the spinoff movie El Camino and the prequel series Better Call Saul. That the city has become associated with methamphetamine seems to be a horse that has already escaped, and there's no shutting the barn door now.

The statues were commissioned by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan in 2019, and will be presented to the city at their official unveiling on July 29th at the Albuquerque Convention Center. Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, who portrayed White and Pinkman, will be there along with Vince Gilligan and the city's mayor. And, we assume, a hoard of Breaking Bad fans.

When this old world starts getting you down, as it has for many people since the beginning of the pandemic, maybe you should listen to some wonderful music sung by great kids. Katherine Morris was feeling pretty low when the pandemic isolated everyone, on top of political grievance, economic woes, mass shootings, and climate change. She was already concerned with the rising suicide rate among young people. All that collided with personal setbacks when Morris' barn burned down. So she thought of her favorite "feelgood" song, and a campaign took off that culminated in the above video. It involved Morris, producer Richard Kaufman, Carole King, May Pang, and a bunch of talented young people across the country. Proceeds from the sale of the song will go to the organization Find Your Anchor for suicide prevention, awareness, and education. If you like this video, sent it to someone who could use a lift. -via Metafilter

During the days of the Byzantine Empire, monks who gave up a normal life for their Christian faith sometimes appeared to compete over who could sacrifice the most or even punish themselves the most. Simeon Stylites the Elder was a pioneer in self-deprivation. Born around 390 AD in Syria, he entered monastic life as a teenager. He became an ascetic, going weeks without eating to purify himself. He was so extreme that he was asked to leave the monastery, and went to live a hermit's life alone atop a series of pillars. The first one was three meters tall, but he found taller places to sit and stay. Simeon settled on a pillar that was 15 meters tall and stayed there 37 years! His living space was a platform of about a square meter with a railing of sorts. Simeon was only brought down after his death.

Some of Simeon's followers also tried living up on a pillar, and they became known as stylites, or pillar hermits. The practice lasted until the Middle Ages, at least in its extreme form. Read about Simeon Stylites the Elder and his pillar home at Amusing Planet.

The new space telescope is expected to outshine Hubble by orders of magnitude. The James Webb Space Telescope has been sending back images for some time now, and NASA is ready to start releasing them to the public. The above image is the first to be released, and it shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723. It was revealed today at a White House event.  

This first image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail. Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.

You can see it larger here. NASA, ESA, and CSA will release more images from the first collection on Tuesday during a televised broadcast at 10:30 AM EDT. They will then be available to the public. -via Fark  

(Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI)

The Ulster County (New York) Board of Elections is conducting a design contest for "I Voted" stickers to be given out at this November's election. Of the designs submitted, six finalists between the ages of 13 and 18 are up for a public vote, meaning anyone with an internet connection can vote. So far, the breakaway leader in the voting is a design submitted by 14-year-old Hudson Rowan of Marbletown. And you can see why.

Since the contest page has been passed around on the 'net, the design has gained the nickname Votey McVoteface. As of today, Rowan's design has garnered 93% of the 168,100 votes cast. That's more than the voting age population of Ulster County. This is the second year for the sticker contest, which drew around 500 votes last year. Rowan said he just wanted to be different, and didn't think his design would draw this much attention.

"Well I definitely thought it was unique," John Quigley, the Republican commissioner for the Ulster County Board of Elections, which is running the contest, said about Hudson's entry. "Somebody tweeted, this is how voters feel about politics right now, and I thought it was almost like the best way to summarize it. It sort of is exactly how we all feel about politics right now."

It would be a severe hassle to move to Ulster County in order to vote this fall and receive one of these stickers, but with a little encouragement, the election commission might be persuaded to license the design to other parts of the country. While Rowan's design is outstanding, the other five finalists are all well done. Voting in the contest will continue through the end of July.   

Our cats opened the bathroom cabinet drawer, thereby blocking the bathroom door from opening. I took this picture by sticking my phone under the door. Trying with a hanger to close the drawer so I can open the door. A dog would never do this. pic.twitter.com/BmQ2T6PVdO

— misplaced comma or Julee Balko when I’m an author (@misplacedcomma2) July 9, 2022

Julee Balko has a bathroom with drawers close to the door. Opening a drawer will block the door, which is a great way to keep someone from coming into the bathroom while you are busy in there. But then the cats found out about it. Cats love opening drawers, but I've never known a cat to close one when they are done. This time they did it when no one else was in the bathroom, so the humans have no access to the room. The picture is a little confusing because it points upward from the floor. And there's more.

🤣🤣🤣

— Dianne (she/her) 🌊 (@kdrobbinscat) July 10, 2022

"Cat is now in the drawer which does not help" is a perfect description of 2022.

— Alexandra Samios (@Xanboni) July 10, 2022

It was hours between updates, and Julee's followers were getting restless. But Julee was busy trying to gain access to her bathroom, which you can imagine is a priority. Finally, the news came through.

After an hour of bending hangers, tools, sticks, weird shaped pliers, and basically anything we could shove through the crack of the door we successfully got the drawer closed and door open. Cats were disappointed the game was over. Humans were happy and taped the drawers shut.

— misplaced comma or Julee Balko when I’m an author (@misplacedcomma2) July 10, 2022

And they all lived happily ever after. The lesson is: cats provide us opportunities for sharing tense moments and laughs, so let's always document their shenanigans and celebrate them for it. -via Fark

The words Mountain Dew immediately conjure up the image of the highly-caffeinated fluorescent yellow soft drink consumed by video gamers and Kentuckians. But the term "mountain dew" was around a long, long time before the soda was launched in the late 1940s. It meant illegal corn liquor, or moonshine. Except in the British Isles, where it was the name of two brands of Scotch whisky. The makers of the carbonated soft drink Mountain Dew dealt with some confusion between their drink and moonshine to the point where a raid was conducted on a Mom-and-Pop business that was distributing legitimate Mountain Dew syrup in 1951. There was even talk of changing Mountain Dew's name to avoid the mistake.

However, when Pepsi bought Mountain Dew in 1964, the company went whole hog in embracing the soft drink's hillbilly roots and the name that evoked high-octane homemade liquor. That advertising built a juggernaut out of the soda pop. Read how that happened at Mel magazine.

There are so many different kinds of cheese that anyone looking at the selection in a grocery store might think that it takes skill and generations of experience, not to mention specialized equipment, to make it. That may be true with ripened and aged cheeses, but people have been making soft cheeses at home for thousands of years, particularly cottage cheese. I thought about making cottage cheese some years back, but the very old recipe I had included the phrase "hang the cheese somewhere that the cat can't reach it," and knew the project was beyond me. But I might try this mozzarella recipe.

Yes, making actual cheese at home can be simple! Justine Doiron walks us through the process of producing homemade mozzarella cheese. The video is an overview to give you an idea of how much easier it is than you ever imagined cheese-making to be. When you decide you want to do it yourself, the recipe is in text at Doiron's blog, Justine Snacks. -via Nag on the Lake

Ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down!

We all know the song, and probably played the game as preschoolers, in which children hold hands and march around in a circle until falling down together at the end, invariably in giggles. It was just nonsensical fun! But if you look at the lyrics closely, you might start to see how it might be talking about a virulent disease, the kind that gives you rosy red blotches and eventually kills. Even the pocket full of posies may refer to a nosegay to fight the stench of miasma, or a home remedy to ward off disease. What does the historical record say?

The history of the song proves that the theory is bunk. All one has to do is look at the lyrics of many earlier versions of the same children's chant, written down as far back as a hundred years before the lyrics we know today. Read about the evolution of "Ring Around the Rosie" and what it really means at Today I Found Out.

In the early 18th century, it was difficult to impress people into handing over money for entertainment. Still, there were people willing to risk life and limb in the name of show business. The "Flying Man" act became popular in England for a short period. A man would climb to the top of a building, tower, or church steeple, where a rope was secured to the ground somewhere. After warming up the crowd with acrobatics, he would climb onto the rope and "fly" down it. The man wore a breastplate with a groove that was supposed to keep him on the rope. As he flew down, he would continue to entertain, firing pistols, blowing a trumpet, or using some other device to draw attention. You can see how the Flying Man act fit into the range of aerialist skills like performing on a tightrope or the flying trapeze -for a while.

A 1733 newspaper account tells of one such act that included a donkey that went down a rope and killed a girl and injured other people! The Flying Man in this incident was not named, but a look at the lives of several who became famous doing it tells us why the stunt died out. It was because so many of the performers were killed trying it. Read about the Flying Men and their gruesome deaths at Singular Discoveries. -via Strange Company

We humans think we are so much smarter than cats. But cats have just managed to fool humans into thinking so. They trained us to feed them, shelter them, and clean up their mess for nothing in return but a little entertainment. And when we aren't looking, they do exactly as they please. Who am I kidding? They do exactly as they please even when we are looking! 

Redditor foflexity was eating outside with his family, and the cat was annoying, so he put the cat in the shed. This tomcat has stolen food before. It didn't take long for the cat to escape. Putting the cat back into the shed was not working, so foflexity set up a camera to see how the cat was getting out.

See? cats don't need opposable thumbs to conquer the world. They just need to be smart enough to figure out how a mechanism works. It looks like foflexity's cat is that smart. -via Laughing Squid