That’s just bonkers, man. The result of one of Banksy’s infamous art world pranks will now be resold at an auction for between £4 million and £6 million, which is more expensive than its initial sale at a Sotheby’s auction in 2018. The artwork, titled Girl With Balloon, self-destructed after it was sold for more than £1 million. After the artwork was shredded and renamed Love is in the Bin, the buyer still went ahead: 

Reflecting its newfound place in art history, estimates for Love is in the Bin have skyrocketed over the last three years, with the upcoming Sotheby’s sale expected to fetch between £4 million and £6 million. (In the past, Banksy has played down speculation that the auction house was in on it all along.)

Even without his trademark pranks, Banksy’s art has been steadily gaining value at auction, with his NHS-dedicated Game Changer image smashing estimates to bring in £14.4 million back in March. His profile has also risen worldwide, leading him to warn fans about a series of unauthorised shows, which have been criticised for containing replicas of his work.

Most recently, Banksy popped up in a series of British seaside towns, creating anonymous installations for his Great British Spraycation.

Image credit: Sotheby’s

This is definitely pleasing to watch. Neil Bromhall posts short, yet mesmerizing time lapses of plants growing and blooming over multiple days. One of the photographer’s latest uploads on his YouTube channel is a pair of one-minute time lapses showing a sunflower opening over ten days. Just like the other plants featured in his work, Bromhall grew his sunflower in a blackened, windowless studio with a grow light serving as artificial sunlight: 

“Plants require periods of day and night for photosynthesis and to stimulate the flowers and leaves to open,” the photographer tells PetaPixel. “I use heaters or coolers and humidifiers to control the studio condition for humidity and temperature. You basically want to recreate the growing conditions where the plants naturally thrive.”

Lighting-wise, Bromhall uses a studio flash to precisely control his exposure regardless of the time of day it is. The grow light grows the plants while the flash illuminates the photos.

“The grow light has a blind that moves over to blocks the grow light just before I take an exposure with the flash,” Bromhall says. “After the frame is taken the blind rolls back. The exposure interval, grow light with blind, and track or rotating head are controlled by a bespoke made control box.”

Bromhall does research into each of his subjects to understand the exact conditions each plant likes to grow in.

“If they are happy, there is a good chance they will grow,” he says.

All hail the researchers who have spent time and effort in translating an 800-year-old passage from the legend of King Arthur. The manuscript, called ‘the Bristol Merlin,’ was fully translated into English. In addition, researchers also analyzed the handwriting and linguistic style of the manuscript. The passage is dated to between 1250 and 1275, and was penned in northern France: 

[...]Though about an English king, the Arthur myth was told and retold in different ways throughout France. The manuscript is not the first document to contain its particular story, which is called the Suite Vulgate du Merlin. Researchers believe the text was initially written around 1225, which means the Bristol Merlin was a fairly contemporary retelling of the story.

Laura Chuhan Campbell, a scholar in medieval literature with a specialty in Old French Merlin texts at Durham University, told Gizmodo that “the medieval Arthurian legends were a bit like the Marvel Universe, in that they constituted a coherent fictional world that had certain rules and a set of well-known characters who appeared and interacted with each other in multiple different stories … This fragment comes from the second volume, which documents the rise of Merlin as Arthur’s advisor, and Arthur’s turbulent early years as king.”

Image credit: Leah Tether

Will modern marvels never cease? Trees are now next in line for replacing the glass in our windows! How is that possible, if wood cannot be as transparent as glass? Well, thanks to research done by Junyong Zhu from the Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) and colleagues from the University of Maryland and University of Colorado, a transparent wood material has been developed: 

Their findings were published in the Journal of Advanced Functional Materials in their paper, “A Clear, Strong, and Thermally Insulated Transparent Wood for Energy Efficient Windows.”

While glass is the most common material used in window construction it comes with a costly economic and ecological price.

Heat easily transfers through glass, especially single pane, and amounts to higher energy bills when it escapes during cold weather and pours in when it’s warm. Glass production in construction also comes with a heavy carbon footprint. Manufacturing emissions are approximately 25,000 metric tons per year.

Transparent wood is created when wood from the fast-growing, low-density balsa tree is treated to a room temperature, oxidizing bath that bleaches it of nearly all visibility. The wood is then penetrated with a synthetic polymer called polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), creating a product that is virtually transparent.

Image credit: USDA Forest Service

Unsurprisingly, people had a way to get drunk even during ancient times! Archaeologists found ancient pots with traces of beer along with two skeletons in China. The discovery is now evidence that regardless of the travels of the nomadic hunter-gatherers in southern China and their small amount of rice, they were able to create alcohol: 

The ancient pots were discovered in a platform mound, which was surrounded by a human-made ditch, based on ongoing excavations at Qiaotou. No residential structures were found at the site. The mound contained two human skeletons and multiple pottery pits with high-quality pottery vessels. As the study reports, these artifacts are probably some of “the earliest known painted pottery in the world.” No pottery of this kind has been found at any other sites dating to this time period.The research team analyzed different types of pottery found at Qiaotou. Some of the pottery vessels were small and similar in size to drinking vessels used today, and to those found in other parts of the world. Seven of the 20 vessels, appeared to be long-necked Hu pots, which were used to drink alcohol in the later historical periods.

Image credit: Leping Jiang

Can I finally play Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones on my Switch? Who knows! Nintendo is rumored to start providing GameBoy and Game Boy Color titles to the Nintendo Switch Online, its subscription service for the latest console. There are no specific number of new titles that will be added to the 100-plus NES and SNES games, as the Verge details: 

But it makes a lot of sense that Nintendo would ramp up more classic content, particularly now that the Switch is well into its life and Nintendo is watching its competitors capitalize on remakes, remasters and next-gen patches that make older games look better and give their new consoles some extra life.

For a while, we were wondering if Nintendo would continue going down the NES Classic and SNES Classic route, releasing cute limited-edition miniature USB versions of its Game Boy or Nintendo 64 with preloaded games on board, too. But the Game Boy’s 30th anniversary came and went without a miniature Game Boy, and now we’re in the midst of a global chip shortage. I’d love to see more opportunities to let new gamers in on old classics, and not just in terms of remakes like Link’s Awakening (originally on Game Boy, Game Boy Color).

Here’s hoping for Game Boy Advance, too, because folks playing the new Metroid Dread deserve to play its amazing prequel Metroid Fusion, and some of the best Fire Emblem games ever made came out there. Oh, and Golden Sun. Eurogamer does say other consoles beyond Game Boy and Game Boy Color may be “on the cards.”

Amusingly, Nintendo offered this official statement: “We have nothing to announce on this topic.”

Image credit: Ravi Palwe

Researchers managed to finally determine the famous artist’s height. Well, an approximation at least. While his artworks are huge and gigantic (in terms of both impact and actual height), his stature can only compare. I’m short too, so that’s totally fine! A new study published in the September 2021 issue of the Anthropologie examined footwear believed to have belonged to Michelangelo. 

From the pair of leather shoes and a single leather slipper, researchers from the Forensic Anthropology, Paleopathology, and Bioarchaeology Research Center in Italy determined that Michelangelo was five feet two inches tall: 

It’s worth pointing out, of course, that by the standards of his day—the 15th and 16th centuries—Michelangelo’s height would not have been out of the norm. And, according to the article’s authors, forensic anthropologist Elena Varotto and paleopathologist ​​Francesco Galassi, the measurement squares, roughly, with Giorgio Vasari’s own account of the artist in his indispensable series of Renaissance-era biographies The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550).

Vasari describes Michelangelo as being of “middle height, wide across the shoulders, but the rest of his body in good proportion.” He was a “very healthy man, thin and muscular,” Vasari wrote. 

Varotto and Galassi’s speculation is just that, though. Michelangelo’s remains, located at the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, have never been exhumed and studied. There’s also the possibility that the three shoes belonged to a relative of Michelangelo’s rather than to the artist himself.

image credit: the Casa Buonarroti Museum

When you see a flock of birds fly up in the sky, have you ever wondered how they know where they are going? If humans have difficulty in navigating short distances on foot, what more if they were on air and without the aid of technology? The lack of technological assistance makes bird flight much more interesting. AmazeLab looks into the avian’s sky navigation and the established explanation for their flight. 

-via Flipboard 

Image credit: Alvaro Pinot

Game development is difficult. It’s a long and tedious process, and there are some cases where the games that developers pour their heart and soul into won’t even be put on the shelves for consumption. For Fast Company tech editor Harry McCracken however, things were a little different. The once teenage TRS-80 enthusiast and hobbyist created a text adventure called Arctic Adventure published in The Captain ‘80 Book of Basic Adventures. His game got published, which was great! Unfortunately, the code was broken. McCracken only took 40 years to find and fix the error: 

Having never received a copy of the book his code was published in and not having kept a copy of the code for himself, McCracken spent the next four decades or so doing non-Arctic Adventure related things.

Thanks to internet archivists, however, he recently acquired a copy of The Captain ‘80 Book of Basic Adventures, and with the help of a TRS-80 emulator for his iPad, managed to type in his code and get the game up and running. Only it wasn’t quite running.

After five or six tedious typing sessions on my iPad, I had Arctic Adventure restored to digital form. That was when I made an alarming discovery: As printed in the Captain ‘80 book, the game wasn’t just unwinnable but unplayable. It turned out that it had a 1981 typo that consisted of a single missing “0" in a character string. It was so fundamental a glitch that it rendered the game’s command of the English language inoperable. You couldn’t GET SHOVEL, let alone complete the adventure (The object is to get back to your base).

McCracken has no idea how the typo occurred. Maybe it was something he did that the book editors didn’t catch. Maybe it was a printing error. Whatever the case, it doesn’t matter now. Arctic Adventure is restored and playable in your web browser via a browser-based TRS-80 emulator on McCracken’s website.

Image credit: Harry McCracken

No, this is not a weird euphemism. It’s an aircraft shaped like a behind, or a peach if you’re feeling ...conservative. The concept is definitely bizarre, though. Meet the Airlander 10, an airship that is designated for commercial use with Swedish air travel company OceanSky. The company aims to use this bootyful aircraft for recreating Roald Amundsen's airship expedition to the North Pole. 

Aside from its current purpose, people on the Internet are having fun with this plane, noticing that the world’s largest aircraft resembles a giant backside. Can’t unsee it? You’re welcome! 

See the Airlander 10 in all its glory below. 

image credit: Associated Press

Image credit: Hybrid Air Vehicles

I wish this existed when I was required to memorize the periodic table of elements! Software engineer Keith Enevoldsen designed a periodic table that illustrates how we see or interact with the different elements in our everyday lives. The new table, called “The Periodic Table of Elements, in Pictures,” manages to provide a lot of information without overwhelming its viewer: 

“The table is color-coded to show the chemical groupings,” he explains. “Small symbols pack in additional information: solid/liquid/gas, color of element, common in the human body, common in the earth’s crust, magnetic metals, noble metals, radioactive, and rare or never found in nature.”

Image credit: Keith Enevoldsen

Look, animals are cute. They’re also in a league of their own. Animals have their own thing, and sometimes we humans cannot understand or comprehend what they’re doing, and you know what, that’s okay. We can just laugh it off or take a photo and post it on the Internet for fun. That is exactly what Doggo Taxi does! The Instagram account shares random animal photos with no context at all. Some of them are funny, and some of them just make you ask: ‘what in the world happened here?’ Bored Panda compiled 50 photos from that account. Check it here! 

Image credit: doggo_taxi

Time to sharpen up your Smash Bros. skills! Zen Family Dental in Ashland, Massachusetts is offering a rare promotion that lets Smash Bros. players claim a ‘free dental clean’ if they beat its resident dentist, Dr. Tej A. Shah in a match. I wonder who Dr. Shah mains? Is it Dr. Mario? Maybe it’s one of the newest DLC additions, Sephiroth! According to NintendoLife, the dentist’s favorite game is Final Fantasy. 

Image credit: Nintendo 

This holds major Studio Ghibli vibes! Indonesian wildlife photographer Ajar Setiadi takes photographs of frogs that live in his garden. His images reveal the fascinating behavior these amphibians exhibit. Setiadi treats the animals as pets, letting them frolic in his garden as he watches them play with the flowers. According to the photographer, capturing their small moments on camera is a miracle: 

In one image, a frog in the rain holds up a leaf like an umbrella, and in another, two frogs appear to dance together. There’s one image in particular that stands out as the most charming, though: Setiadi managed to capture two frogs huddling together, sheltering from the rain under a flower umbrella. Frogs are social creatures, and this emotional image looks just like a loved-up couple or two friends who are looking out for one another during the rainstorm. Setiadi commented on the sweet scene: “I could only get a few frames because this moment can't be repeated.”

Check out Setiadi’s frog images below and find more from his portfolio on Instagram. When he’s not photographing frogs, he’s capturing the intimate lives of insects, birds, and reptiles.

Image credit: Ajar Setiadi 

Photographer Garcia de Marina uses ordinary objects to express the emotions we cannot say in words. The photographer is interested in the symbolism these everyday objects can provide, and how their intended meaning can change if they are matched with random elements. Garcia doesn’t provide any title or description for his works, leaving the interpretation entirely to the viewer: 

I look for surprise by joining two distant objects with a different symbolic charge; also with the decontextualization and manipulation of the object. Through these tools, these pieces of our daily life are ‘denatured’, to give them a new meaning.

I don’t give titles to photos, because that would condition an initial interpretation and reduce the weight of what I’m trying to achieve, which is a dialogue between the work and viewer.

I think my work is on the path between sculpture and photography. Without this manipulation or previous preparation, I would not have the object, and without the photographic capture, I could not capture it for its visualization.

Image credit: García de Marina