What is this crowd chanting? TikToker Kegan Stiles gives us nine options; which do you hear? What's really weird is that you can read down the list while listening to the audio, and it sounds like every one of them... except there are nine options, and only eight lines to the chant. When you hear the line you are reading, it's an example of the McGurk Effect. Once you've decided what you are hearing, you can go to the original video to find out what they are really saying. There is a parental warning for explicit lyrics on that one, although I don't understand why. This audio clip illustrates how we often hear what we are primed to hear.  -via Boing Boing

Hear more examples of the McGurk effect here and here.

Every parent is concerned about their kids getting proper nutrition. Vegetables are packed with nutrients, but how can they possibly compete for your child's palate when the competition is breakfast cereals, chicken nuggets, and chips? Food scientists have tackled this problem in many ways, and one experiment may be promising.

Researchers have come up with a new way of getting kids to follow a healthy diet: putting more vegetables on their plate.

Larger portions of veggies resulted in kids chomping down 68 percent more of them on average (an extra 21 grams, or 0.74 ounces per day), in a 4-week experiment involving 67 children aged from 3 to 5.

The research team used broccoli and corn as their test vegetables, doubling the amount served – from 60 grams to 120 grams – to see how this would change the eating behavior of the children.

Of course, there's more involved, including what other foods are served and the proportions on the plate. You can read more about this experiment at Science Alert. In my opinion, anyone will eat vegetables if you sauté them with onions, garlic, and spices, but that's setting them up to never eat vegetables from a school cafeteria. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Angela Sevin)

Shmorby attempts to introduce newbies (meaning children) to the internet. While he wants to paint the web as a fun, useful place, alas, the real internet keeps butting in. Oh yeah, and don't beat yourself up over missing "the internet mascot everyone knows and loves," because the only people who knew Schmorby before last fall were his creators. -via Metafilter

The French have a reputation for romance. While it is a stereotype, it is one that the people of France rarely deny. So it might surprise you to learn that French lovers don't often say "I love you" ("je t'aime"). Oh yeah, they communicate the sentiment in a lot of other ways, but those words don't come easy.

The French don't say, "I love you" because they don't have a verb to express heartfelt sentiments for the people they care about. There is only the verb "aimer", which means both "to like" and "to love". As a result, a French person is not exaggerating when they conjugate "aimer" to explain their relationship to rugby, a warm baguette or the smell of lilacs. Naturally, then, it feels trite and rather mundane to use the same word when describing intense feelings of love for one's newborn baby, a childhood friend or a life partner.

The upshot is that the language is insufficient to express the true depths of love. That sounds sweet, but why don't they come up with words that are sufficient? Maybe because the French know that actions speak louder than words. And there are still plenty of other words that hint at true love, too. Read more at BBC Travel.

When news outlets try to distill a complex story into a short blurb or a 30-second news bite, the details often get distorted. It doesn't help that so many people only read the headlines. The 1994 lawsuit against McDonald's over hot coffee became the ultimate example of a frivolous lawsuit, but when you dig into the details, it is revealed to have been anything but frivolous. LegalEagle explains what really happened. The McDonald's case takes only the first six minutes; afterward there are other cases of "frivolous" lawsuits that were more substantial than they appeared at first glance. -via Digg

Some time in the distant past, African straight-tusked elephants (which were larger than existing elephants) traveled to Sicily when the Mediterranean sea level was low, and then got stranded there. They somehow evolved into dwarf elephants. The first dwarf species on the island was around the size of a Shetland pony! But it went extinct, and then came a slighter larger species which, at 1000 kilograms, was still quite small for an elephant. Fossils from Puntali cave in Sicily give a somewhat confusing timeline for Sicil's elephants, but now mitochondrial DNA has been extracted from a fossil, and its sequencing may yield answers.

It shows that the Puntali elephants were isolated on Sicily at least 175,500 years ago, but potentially as recently as 50,000 years ago.

This then allowed the team to estimate that the elephants shrank in size by up to 200kg per generation, shedding 8,000kg to reach just 15% the size of the straight-tusked elephant within 40 generations.

'We have produced a range of realistic evolutionary scenarios,' explains Victoria. 'I would not be surprised if evolutionary rates were even higher than our highest estimate, but only new data on Sicilian and other southern European material will refine this further.'

Read more about the research on dwarf elephant DNA at the British Natural History Museum. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: James St. John)

Victory in warfare often goes to the entity that develops the most horrendous weapons, as we all learned in 1945. But mysterious but horrifying weapons that you wouldn't expect abound in history. In the 7th century, Byzantine warfare included the use of what appears to be a flamethrower! This weapon was called Greek fire.

The chief method of deploying Greek fire was by projection through a tube called a siphōn, which was placed aboard ships or on siege engines called cheirosiphōnes. A handheld portable siphōn was also invented that is the earliest analogue to a modern flamethrower. Byzantine military manuals also give mention of Greek fire filled jars, caltrops wrapped with tow soaked in the substance, and cranes called gerania that would pour Greek fire onto enemy ships.

The Byzantines ascribed the discovery of Greek fire to “divine intervention”, for which the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogennetos (AD 945–959) would later account in his book De Administrando Imperio to never reveal the secrets of its composition, as it was “shown and revealed by an angel to the great and holy first Christian emperor Constantine” and that the angel bound him “not to prepare this fire but for Christians, and only in the imperial city.”

There are accounts of what went into Greek fire, but they must have not been too helpful, because the technology was eventually lost. Read about Geek fire at Heritage Daily. -via Strange Company

This chart is a work of art. I hope multiple people got paid well to make it and I hope they get hit by a bus pic.twitter.com/XS6aWwwj7P

— Katelyn Gadd (@antumbral) June 24, 2021

Charts and graphs can be wonderful for breaking down information and showing trends over time, but only if they are constructed in a way that people can understand. On TV, the viewer only has a short period of time to grab that information, but when you take a screenshot, you see that there are many things wrong with this graph. Mefite Stark takes a stab at listing them.

1. The y-axis doesn't start at zero
2. The y-axis isn't labelled correctly (it should be % of Adults who report that they think violent crime is a problem)
3. The gaps between the data points on the x-axis are not representative of the gaps between the dates
4. The margin of error is not highlighted on the chart's data points
5. Straight lines between the data points imply a steady trend which may or may not be the case
6. In my opinion the most amazing weirdness is that the x-axis dates go from right to left!

Someone else mentioned that the x-axis is labeled in alphabetical order. Andy Baio took the information and made a much better chart.

Wait so it isn't even for actual violent crime? Just adults who THINK there's a violent crime problem?????

— Crim Lust (@Cr1ms0n_lus7) June 25, 2021

This is far from unique, though, as many media outlets rely on their graphics departments (or maybe an intern) to make charts instead of data scientists. You can go down the rabbit hole and see plenty of confusing or misleading information in charts here, here, and here. In fact, there are so many ways to make a bad chart that several sites are dedicated to explaining and shaming them. See more terrible charts archived at Bad Visualizations, WTF Visualizations, and the subreddit Data Is Ugly.  -via Metafilter

It is commonly thought that Homo sapiens came from Africa and Neanderthals evolved in Europe. However, a discovery in Israel appears to put both human species in the same location in the Levant. An archaeological dig started in 2012 at Nesher Ramla, and has yielded human remain in which a skull fragment appears to be Homo sapiens, while the jawbone sports Neanderthal features. Dental anthropologist Rachel Sarig says the discovery may force us into a new interpretation of human evolution.

Sarig’s paper describes the physical characteristics of the remains from Nesher Ramla, and the other paper describes the stone tools found at the site. The bones were compared to other members of the genus Homo using 3D morphometrics—basically, the researchers created a dataset of points in three dimensions and looked at how similar or dissimilar the skull fragment, jawbone, and teeth were from those of other humans. They also dated the specimen to between 140,000 and 120,000 years old, which would mean it lived at the same time as Homo sapiens in the area.

“The Nesher Ramla fossils certainly complicate a straightforward evolutionary story, which traditionally hinged on exclusive occupation of the Levant by either Neanderthals or Homo sapiens,” said Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History who was unaffiliated with the recent papers. “Instead, there may be multiple species around at the same time, sometimes interbreeding, learning from one another and sharing in their cultural behaviors.”

That would certainly be a new way to look at human history. Read more about the research at Gizmodo.

There is some speculation that the human remains may be a previously unknown species that was a common ancestor of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, instead of a hybrid of the two. 

(Image credit: Tel Aviv University)

In 1818, a British writer who published under the name "H" wrote an article for The Pocket Magazine in which he predicted the future of the United States. He (assuming it was a man) placed his musings 500 years into the future. It's only been 200 years, but some of them have come strangely true. For instance, Americans traveled to the moon, but some citizens didn't believe it. However, the method of getting there wasn't quite the way it really happened.

Baltimore, December 1, 2318.—“As many of our readers in distant parts of the country have doubted whether the voyage to the moon ever did take place, we do again assure them, upon our veracity, that the information was literally correct. This aerial journey must indeed appear to many who hear of it as a most extraordinary undertaking; particularly when it is recollected, that in the dark ages of English credulity, it was imagined that tubes two hundred and forty thousand miles in length, besides being exposed to many other insuperable objections, would break with their own weight. Yet such were the tubes used by our adventurers, and such were absolutely necessary to supply them with air from the dense atmosphere of our earth. At the period to which we allude, when every science was fettered with the adamantine chains of system, it was also thought impossible for goose-quill, or any other wings, to be of service where the air was so rare as to offer no resistance. This idea the undertaking of now under consideration has fully disproved; for, after the wonders one goose his quill has performed, what must we not expect from the labours of a number united […]

Other predictions in the article referred to automated doctors, the miracle of temperature control in the home, and the discovery of an unlimited liquid fuel coming from the earth. Read these predictions from 200 years ago at Reynolds's News and Miscellany. -via Strange Company

The US birth rate dropped by 4% during the pandemic, but it's a baby boom for the Tran family of Orange County, California. The Tran triplets, Gina, Nina, and Victoria, are all pregnant at once! The  three women were born just minutes apart, 35 years ago, and now are sharing commiseration, maternity clothes, and an obstetrician.

“I’m actually the oldest by four minutes and I’m having a girl, and her name is Leighton Grace,” Gina said.

“I’m in the middle by four minutes and I’m having a boy, and his name is Hendrix Paul,” Nina said.

“I’m the youngest by four minutes and then eight minutes, and having a boy,” Victoria said. “His name is Zaden Seth.”

The three births are expected in July, August, and November. Read more at CBS. -via Fark

(Image credit: The Tran Family)

Summer holidays are the time for putting away candy in favor of fresh fruit and ice cream, and for moving the cooking outdoors because the kitchen gets too hot. If your perfect cookout includes grilling a nice steak, you might want to learn a bit of the science behind the process. Meat scientists are willing to share what they've learned about grilling steak. First, they advise us on what to look for when selecting steaks at the butcher shop.  

The biggest influence on the final flavor of that steak, though, is how you cook it. Flavorwise, cooking meat accomplishes two things. First, the heat of the grill breaks the meat’s fatty acids into smaller molecules that are more volatile — that is, more likely to become airborne. These volatiles are responsible for the steak’s aroma, which accounts for the majority of its flavor. Molecules called aldehydes, ketones and alcohols among that breakdown mix are what we perceive as distinctively beefy.

The second way that cooking builds flavor is through browning, a process that chemists call the Maillard reaction. This is a fantastically complex process in which amino acids and traces of sugars in the meat react at high temperatures to kick off a cascade of chemical changes that result in many different volatile end products. Most important of these are molecules called pyrazines and furans, which contribute the roasty, nutty flavors that steak aficionados crave. The longer and hotter the cooking, the deeper into the Maillard reaction you go and the more of these desirable end products you get — until eventually, the meat starts to char, producing undesirable bitter, burnt flavors.

Read what science has to say about the way you prepare steak at Smithsonian.

Kevin Parry has entertained us with all kinds of stop-motions videos. In a followup to his fruits and vegetables video, he zooms into the inner structures of tropical fruits, some you may not be familiar with (there's a list in the top comment here). But the best part is after the fruits, where we get to see how it's done. And that's where it becomes clear why Parry didn't treat the coconut the same way as the other fruits. -via Kottke

Erstwhile Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein once wrote a romance novel, but that was totally non-controversial compared to his later literary adventure. As the supreme ruler of his nation, Saddam indulged his whims without the input of Islamic theologians, as in the time he commissioned a copy of the Qur’an to be written with his own blood!  

The dictator had recently re-embraced his Islamic faith after his son, Uday Hussein, narrowly survived an assassination attempt on December 12, 1996. In an official letter published in 2000, Saddam explained that the book was intended as thanks to God for bringing him safely through many ‘conspiracies and dangers’ throughout his long political career: “My life has been full of dangers in which I should have lost a lot of blood…but since I have bled only a little, I asked somebody to write God’s words with my blood in gratitude.”

To write the book, Saddam commissioned calligrapher Abbas Shakir Joody al-Baghdadi. Over the next two years a nurse drew a total of 27 litres of Saddam’s blood and delivered it to al-Baghdadi, who after treating it with chemicals to stabilize it, used the liquid to write out the 114 chapters and 6000 verses of the Islamic holy book. Completed in 2000, the finished book runs 605 pages and is written in lettering two centimetres in height with borders decorated in intricate blue, red, and black designs.

Saddam is no more, but the blood Qur’an remains, and presents quite a paradox. While the book and its contents are holy to Muslims, human blood is considered unclean, so what is the status of this particular copy? And is it really Saddam's blood -or that of someone else? The calligrapher al-Baghdadi refuses to discuss the project to this day. Read about the blood Qur’an and what it means at Today I Found Out.

Bored Panda culled some entertaining stories from the subreddit I Don't Work Here Lady. They vary greatly, but all involve someone who completely misunderstood the role of a stranger. In one of them, redditor Billiam201 recalled how he got a new phone number in a new town and discovered it once belonged to a business. The business owner had dropped one phone line, but still had the number on the receipts he gave to customers. That led to many callers who thought Billiam201 worked for that business, so he found and confronted the owner.

"You guys are still giving out my home phone number on your receipts."
"Yeah. So?"
"Well, f*****g stop it. It's been at least a year since you haven't had that number. At least cross it out or something."
"That's a pain in the ass, I'm not making my employees do that."
"So you're the manager?"
"I'm the owner."
"So let me see if I have this right. You, what was your name again?"
Let's call him Fred.
"You, Fred have decided that it's too inconvenient to cross my home phone number off of your receipts, so you're just going to keep giving it out?"
"Yup. What are you gonna do? Sue me?"

He didn't sue, but what he did was much more satisfying. Most of the stories involve bullies getting their comeuppance, but a few are wholesomely sweet. Like the time redditor somethingwithatwo2 had a guy get in his car thinking it was a taxi. He was going that way anyway, so he played along.  

We drove off together and he peered out the window, smiling.

He said "You taxis are much quicker these days! Ah it's a beautiful day for a train ride, don't you think?"

He looked at me, still with this big smile and said:

"I'm Jerry, lovely to meet you. I'm meeting my friend for breakfast today! I'm so excited. I haven't been on the train in years. All my friends have passed on and I don't really need to go out of town. Well, not until I made a new friend recently. It's funny how life goes isn't it? An old codger like me with a breakfast date! Can you imagine."

You could easily spend an hour reading all thirty wonderful stories posted at Bored Panda, even if you have to bookmark it to get to all of them.