How cool is this automata? Four of them, actually, representing John, Paul, George, and Ringo, all dressed up for the Abbey Road photoshoot. Line them up, and you've recreated the album cover. This is the work of Argentinian artist Daniel Bennan. We don't know much about him because Bennan tells us very little about himself. But we know he's talented and put in a lot of work to make this. It's not the first Beatles automata he's created. Here's one from 2018 of the Fab Four in their earlier days.



These belong in a museum! See more, including his Jimi Hendrix automata, at Instagram. -via Everlasting Blort

An excerpt from Justin E. H. Smith's new book The Internet is Not What You Think It Is compares the internet with communications over distance in the natural world. When elephants stomp, the vibrations can be felt and recognized by elephants miles away. A spider knows what's going on along the length of its web by touch. Even plants release chemical signals to inform other plants of disease, predators, and changing conditions. It's a thought-provoking article, but one anecdote stands out, and made me want to know more. French anarchist Jules Allix promoted an alternative to the telegraph by harnessing the communicative power of nature. That of snails, to be precise.

Allix claimed that snails are particularly well suited to communicate by a magnetism-like force through the ambient medium. Once two snails have copulated with one another, he maintained, they are forever bound to each other by this force, and any change brought about in one of them immediately brings about a corresponding change in the other: an action at a distance.

That led me to an earlier article by the same author about this "snail telegraph." Allix had written about it in detail, although terms like “galvano-magnetico-mineralo-animalo-adamical sympathy” and "pasilalinic sympathetic compasses" made the explanation quite dense. He demonstrated his idea in Paris in 1850. A bunch of snails were sorted into a box with slots that corresponded with each letter of the alphabet. Each snail had a partner it had "bonded with" in an identical box, with the two devices separated by a curtain. When a snail was manipulated (probably meaning poked) at one location, the corresponding snail would react in the other location in a process Allix called “escargotic commotion.” The demonstration was not as successful nor as scientifically rigorous as expected, but was never tried again. Yet the idea lingered in the public's mind for decades thanks to Allix's enthusiasm.  -via Metafilter

Spot the issue with some of this "footage" of the fighting in #Ukraine shown on an Israeli channel pic.twitter.com/77XE4AZ8dC

— Michael A. Horowitz (@michaelh992) March 3, 2022

We have been warned over and over not to believe everything we see, especially when news is dominated by footage from social media, which is the case in the war in Ukraine. There are plenty of iPhone videos of the devastation in Ukraine making their way to network newscasts. See if you can spot the clue that this video shown on an Israeli TV news broadcast might not be real. Yes, that's a TIE fighter, wrecked on the side of the road. If you look closely, you'll see a couple of stormtroopers standing by. The TV station has owned up to the error. Here's a machine translation.

The dis-information surrounding the war also produces embarrassing moments and near-comic errors: Sink from the movie "Star Wars" entered News 13 news from Ukraine. The video was broadcast in the main edition and in the channel's current affairs programs.

The footage was from a 2014 viral video, made to look like those ubiquitous Russian dash cam videos that show something strange happening along the side of the road. This example appears to be deliberate trolling, but we don't know if it was just for fun, or meant to be a warning about disinformation campaigns. The lesson is, don't pass along something unless you've checked it out thoroughly, and that goes double if you're a news broadcaster. -via Fark

People in Asia have been enjoying the effects of caffeine from tea for thousands of years. For most of that time, they ate it as greens or added it to soup and other dishes. Buddhist monks, seeking simpler fare, brewed tea leaves to drink. The switch from tea as a food to treat as a drink was popularized in the 8th century by an entertainer named Lu Yu.

Lu was an orphan raised in a Buddhist monastery, where he was used to tea as a drink. He ran away as a young teenager and "joined the circus," so to speak, by becoming a comedy performer. His talents impressed a governor who took Lu in and helped him get an education. He became influential and well-connected, but never liked food made with tea. It wasn't the tea he disliked, but all the other ingredients. He fervently believed tea was an elixir and should be enjoyed in its purest form. Read how he influenced China to switch to drinking tea instead of eating it at Atlas Obscura. While tea went global as a drink, there are still foods that use tea leaves as an ingredient, and you'll find a recipe at the same link.  

In 1872, the Yellowstone Act created the world's first national park. This act has been celebrated as a great stepping stone to conserving the natural beauty of the US. When considering the act, Congress discussed the impact such a large federal acquisition would have on white settlers in the area. John Taffe of Nebraska brought up the question of how it would impact the Sioux reservation. The other legislators just shrugged the question off. They didn't consider Native Americans to be any impediment to taking the land. Henry Dawes of Massachusetts replied,

“The Indians can no more live [in Yellowstone],” he told Taffe, “than they can upon the precipitous sides of the Yosemite valley.” To Dawes and almost all of his fellow legislators, potential Lakota land claims and the long-standing use of Yellowstone as a thoroughfare by Shoshone, Bannock, Crow, Flathead and Nez Perce peoples did not matter.

That didn't sit right with Sitting Bull (Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake), the prominent leader of the Lakota and advocate for their allied nations who lived in the Western states. They were already concerned with the building of the Northern Pacific railroad through their land, bringing a rush of gold miners and settlers and endangering the buffalo herds they depended on. The tensions between the US and the Lakota over rights to the land sparked a five-year war which included the Battle of Little Big Horn.

The Native American objections to Yellowstone National Park have been mostly excluded from American history, but 150 years later, the National Park Service plans to include exhibits at the park to explain how the birth of the park shaped Lakota history. Read the story at Smithsonian.

Since the pandemic hit two years ago, we've gotten used to seeing first-run movies at home on our TVs, computers, or even our phones. Why even bother going to a theater anymore? A movie has to have something worth the hassle of getting out and being around strangers to see it on a big screen. Considering which movies we ventured out to see in 2021, that appears to be action movies, specifically superhero movies.

Evan Puschak posits that there's another reason to see movies on a big screen: faces. A closeup of a character played by a good actor can be epic. But we are in danger of losing that type of movie, and indeed those talented actors, when we shun going to theaters. -via Nag on the Lake

That photo... Again, compare this cinematically absurd theatrical setup to Zelenskyy's selfie shots in the middle of his people. Putin is dangerously guided by fear, in many ways. pic.twitter.com/Fdodz6Gjgo

— Oliver Reichenstein (@reichenstein) February 27, 2022

Russian president Vladimir Putin has been photographed meeting with various people at either end of a long, long table, leading to plenty of humorous internet memes. Is it covid paranoia or a power play? Probably both, but the end result is ridicule. Tables like these are meant to seat a lot of people, whether for dining or for meetings. When one person is isolated way at the end, it is symbolic of power, wealth, or estrangement.

New Putin table from IKEA, presented by @me_too pic.twitter.com/0wd48j7P7h

— Darth Putin (@DarthPutinKGB) February 15, 2022

The term "cinematically absurd" means a lot. The image of a long table with few people has been used over and over in movies to illustrate a supervillain's power, as explained at Mel magazine. It is such a recognizable symbol that it is used mainly for parody today. Continue reading to see some examples.

Any history of ice cream will be incomplete, because it's so old and hard to define. The Chinese ate a frozen snack made of milk and rice that had been frozen in the snow about 200 BCE. During the Tang Dynasty, the earliest known flavored ice cream was made with flour, water buffalo milk, and camphor (yum!). Centuries later, the Persians were the first to add sugar to frozen treats. But in the summer or in the tropics, frozen desserts were restricted to the rich, as ice had to be transported from far away.

Ice cream really took off when flavorings from the Americas became available: chocolate, vanilla, and molasses. A revolution came when Augustus Jackson, a free Black man who worked as a chef at the White House between 1817 and 1837, developed a method of making ice cream by adding salt to ice in order to freeze the cream. He didn't patent the ice cream maker, but it made homemade ice cream possible. Read about the evolution of ice cream from snow to Rocky Road at Readers Digest.

See also: The history of the ice cream cone, the ice cream truck, and popsicles.

(Image credit: Peachyeung316)

Turn the closed captions on before watching this video. The Dayton Off Road & Outdoor Expo was held this past weekend in Wilmington, Ohio. It has nothing to do with Star Wars or pop culture, but Luke Skywalker was there. Or rather, Fluke Skywalker, who looks a lot like Mark Hammill and makes appearances to benefit children's charities. He will even officiate your wedding! (Hammill calls him a "lukealike.") Anyway, Skywalker met Robert at the expo, and knew just how to communicate. He even signs "May the Force be with you." -via Digg

The Carnival season ends at midnight tonight, with the start of Lent. In the days leading up to the Christian tradition of fasting, celebrations of excess take place all over the world. In Oruro, Bolivia, it's the Carnaval de Oruro. The festival itself pre-dates the arrival of Europeans, but took on Christian traditions over time. The festival features a parade of more than 28,000 dancers and over 10,000 musicians, which takes about 20 hours to complete. Since the city of Oruro is set 12,000 feet high in the Andes, performing in the parade is quite a physical challenge!



Carnaval de Oruro also involves an elaborate dance called the Diablada, or Dance of the Devils. It illustrates a battle between good and evil, or more specifically, a battle between Satan and his minions and the archangel Michael. You can guess who wins in the end. Read more about Carnaval de Oruro and see gorgeous pictures at Atlas Obscura.

You remember Charlotte's Web, the 1952 book that made us all cry about a spider. Oops, spoilers. Even if you haven't read the book, you've probably seen the 1973 animated movie or the 2006 live-action movie. Author E.B. White took a lot of liberties with reality to make a charming book about talking barnyard animals, featuring a spider who could spell words out in her web. What you might find even more unbelievable is that it's based on real life. The farm was a real farm. Wilbur the pig is based on an actual piglet that White loved dearly. Even Charlotte was a real spider, although White only saw her once. But saving her egg sac was a true story. White himself was the hero of that episode.

When he was getting ready to go to New York City for the winter, he decided to take the egg sack with him. He cut it down with a razor blade and put it in a candy box with holes punched in the top. Then he left the box on top of his bureau in his New York bedroom. Soon enough, the egg sack hatched and baby spiders emerged from the box.

Read the rest of that story and nine more about the truth behind the book Charlotte's Web at Mental Floss.

Imagine that just getting to your workplace involved scooting along the face of a rock cliff, hanging onto a chain for dear life. Fighting traffic doesn't seem too bad compared to that! But that's exactly why the Elie Chainwalk was developed, to help fishermen get to their boats in Fife, Scotland. Maybe they have a road by now, but the chain walk is still there, and Tom Scott tries it out so we don't have to. It doesn't look all that difficult going down to the beach. It's even faster if you let go of the chain! But climbing back up, working against gravity, seems quite a bit harder. And if you let go climbing back up, well, you'll either have to start over again, or they'll have to call a helicopter ambulance to come get you.

The Elie Chainwalk is an optional part of the Fife Coastal Path, and should only be used during low tide.

In March of 1980, Mount St. Helens was showing signs of activity such as earthquakes, gas vents, and small eruptions. The mountain was closed off to visitors. That didn't stop Robert Rogers, who had spent his whole life going to places he shouldn't have. He spent that spring exploring Mount St. Helens, bringing back samples for scientists, who didn't ask too many questions. On May 18, the day the top of Mount St. Helens blew off in a huge eruption, Rogers was on the mountainside, getting ready to climb the summit with Francisco Valenzuela, another climber he'd met the night before. Rogers had encountered quite a few other people on the mountain. Some were authorized to be there; some weren't. Some made it back alive, others didn't.

When the eruption happened, Rogers jumped into his car, but became disoriented and took a wrong turn. Both he and Valenzuela drove off the road in a panic, and when they got back on the road, Rogers insisted on going back to their campsite to find a roll of film. All the while, the ash in the air got thicker. Read the story of the serial trespasser who couldn't leave Mount St. Helens alone at Damn Interesting. You can also listen to the story in a podcast at the same link.

(Image credit: Jmkdouglas)

A "useless machine" is one in which you turn it on, and all it does is turn itself off. They can be pretty funny, and the early internet was full of videos about them. We've posted them here before, both plain and fancy, and even political. This one is a bit more dramatic than the simple box that turns itself off. In fact, it has its own personality!

YouTuber fritend1 shares pictures of the inner workings, and the Arduino code that makes it work. -via Fark