If I got a private concert just outside my home, I too would be amazed! Violinist Big Lux played some fin-shaking music in front of two belugas at Connecticut's Mystic Aquarium. The two whales appeared to be entranced as they paid attention to the violinist’s beautiful playing, as they sway their flippers to the beat: 

"We recently had a private performance for Juno, Kela, and Natasha! This type of enrichment is great for animals and humans alike!" the aquarium wrote in the caption.

It actually wasn't the first beluga concert at Mystic Aquarium. Back in July 2011, Juno was filmed "dancing" alongside a mariachi band during a wedding. At the time, a representative from the aquarium, Lindsey Nelson, told a reporter Juno was likely mimicking the band's guitar player—not dancing.

Image screenshot via mysticaquarium

If you’ve played any of the previous iterations of the Ace Attorney series, then you know how over-the-top and sometimes ridiculous the court cases get. From cross-examining a parrot to looking for a Loch Ness Monster, it’s fairly obvious that if these cases made it into a real life court, no one would take it seriously. It’s still fun to play, though! The release of a new addition to the franchise introduces new gameplay concepts for both in and out of the courtroom. PCGamesN enlists the help of Isabel Davies, an associate at media law firm Wiggin to determine if The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles can hold a candle to real life court cases. Check her full analysis here! 

Image credit: Capcom 

Officially released in 2011, it doesn’t come as a surprise that people keep inventing new ways to enjoy Minecraft. YouTuber GrayStillPlays has dedicated an entire series to break the game in different ways. His latest attempt is to raise a horde of axolotls in the game and use them to kill the final boss, the ender dragon:  

A Minecraft axolotl joins his army every 30 seconds, and each one eventually levels up and gains new abilities, they quickly go from being adorable walking fish to frightening monsters, capable of shooting arrows and causing massive explosions with a mere chomp of their tiny teeth. Things get rough when Gray tries to trade with some Piglins for ender pearls, with the axolotls seemingly so thirsty for blood that they start killing everything in sight. But he manages it, and it's genuinely quite awe-inspiring watching how quickly the ender dragon goes down at the end of it all.

Kenyan artist Cyrus Kabiru turns trash into intricately-designed eyewear that will make you second guess whether they were made from recycled materials! His work involves collecting trash from Nairobi and turning it into sculptures, eyeglasses, and bicycles. Kabiru’s aesthetic of part afrofuturist, part diesel-punk bleeds into his artworks: 

When in London, “I get shining metals, even some wire and copper – very colourful trash,” he says. “If it’s plastic we get a very bright plastic. You have unique trash. Very clean.” Airport staff are frequently intrigued by the contents of his luggage. Happily, he says, “I connect with everyone very easily. If you’re a pastor, I’ll connect with you very easily; if you’re gangster, I’ll connect with you very easily.”

Now, his C-Stunners are exhibited all over the world, drawing the interest of creatives and tastemakers from designer and curator Duro Olowu to Yasiin Bey, who visited the artist’s studio in Nairobi. Ever more outlandish and mask-like, they defy any normal conception of eyewear.

A 2017 piece is composed of a flattened coral-blue paraffin lamp base, decorated with long metal eyelashes and a piece of circuit board for the forehead, while another almost entirely obscures the face with a sun-like construction featuring a wire mesh centre radiating white spokes.

Image credit: Cyrus Kabiru/ SMAC Gallery.

The Army Corps of Engineers are planning to build a  $6 billion sea wall in Miami in order to decrease the risk of flooding. While this sea wall seems like a good solution, there’s always the possibility of it being easily torn down by a very strong wave or a hurricane. The proposed six mile wall will leave most of the city unprotected: 

[...] the wall will still trap water inside; and the Corps hasn’t closely studied what the construction of a high sea wall would do to water quality. At the same time, it would block the water views that the city’s economy thrives on.

To protect more of the region without losing Miami’s vibrant character, there are ways to pair the strength of less-obtrusive hardened infrastructure with nature-based “green” solutions. With our colleagues at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and the College of Engineering, we have been designing and testing innovative hybrid solutions.

Image credit: Ashley Satanosky (Unsplash)

Here’s a guide for your future state-hopping! Man vs. Beast created a map that shows the most dangerous animal in each state. Using the data collected by the CDC, the map actually displays surprising results. For example, deer are the deadliest animals in all of the United States. One would expect that the most dangerous animals in the U.S. would be the ones with sharp teeth, like wolves or snakes. Well, while deer do not have sharp teeth or talons, they harm people in other ways: 

[...]The majority of deer-related human deaths were actually car accidents where the animal appeared seemingly out of nowhere in the middle of the road, causing drivers to lose control of their vehicles.

Looking at the chart above, we can make a similar case for our runner-up deadliest animals: the bees, wasps, and hornets. Though these stinging insects are poisonous, the small amount of toxins that they pump out through their stingers are not enough to cause more than painful swelling in a typical human. However, those with allergies to these poisons can find these stings to be fatal, often needing immediate medical attention or an EpiPen to prevent the worst. 

Photo: Man vs. Beast

Look closely, there’s an owl perched in front of that tree. Amateur photographer James S. Batuigas was looking for a great grey owl when he spotted one that blended with the bark of a tree. The 45-year-old Canada resident drove for five hours before he spotted one: 

The color and pattern of the owl’s plumage matched the tree it was sitting on so well that the photographer says he would have completely missed seeing the owl there if it hadn’t turned its head to look at him.

The great grey owl (Strix nebulosa) is the world’s largest owl species in terms of length, which can reach 33 inches (84cm). Found across the Northern Hemisphere, the owl can be recognized by the white collar (often called its “bow tie”) found under its face.

Image credit: James S. Batuigas

Red. It’s the color red. Stanley Kubrick utilizes specific color palettes in all of his color films. From 2001: A Space Odyssey to Eyes Wide Shut, he uses different colors to show various states of being. For his horror film The Shining, Kubrick seems to have picked the color red-- as it was more than prominent throughout the film. The color becomes the harbinger of doom, as Looper details: 

[...]As utilized by Kubrick in "The Shining," red becomes a harbinger of impending doom permeating every almost corner of the cursed Overlook as if blood itself were seeping through the haunted structure's every crevice.

The culmination of that dramatic color palette is depicted in one of the film's most iconic scenes, when blood literally spills through the bright red doors of an elevator. As unforgettable as that scene is, the color is far more integral from a narrative standpoint in "The Shining" in the men's room of the hotel bar, where the walls are painted a vibrant red. That is, after all, where many believe Jack fully gives over to the blood-lusting spirits within the hotel and possibly those already within himself.

The next time you're sitting down to endure another blood-curdling screening of "The Shining," see how much red you can spot before, ya know, the red stuff really starts to flow.

image credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

They almost blend into the paintings! Photographer Stefan Draschan’s ongoing project, titled People Matching Artworks, features museum visitors who accidentally match with the paintings displayed. It could be someone’s hair, jacket, hat, or dress-- once they step and admire a certain artwork that sort of coordinates with their outfit, it’s a snap! My Modern Met has more details: 

People Matching Artworks is the epitome of patience. Though some of these pictures look staged, they are rather the result of Draschan staking a spot in a museum and waiting for the right person to stroll by. It’s a secretive take on museum doppelgängers—a lighthearted activity in which people are actively posing with an artwork that resembles them. Draschan’s project, in contrast, depicts the quiet beauty of looking, and it emphasizes how the act of getting dressed is an opportunity to be your own work of art.

Draschan chronicles his series on Tumblr and Instagram, where he also reveals where the museums that he visits. So, if you’re local to institutions in Paris, Vienna, or Berlin, be on the lookout for Draschan and his camera!

Image credit: Stefan Draschan 

In a surprising and touching turn of events, a woman has managed to convince a bankrupt zoo to give her a bear cub! Veronika Dichka lives in Novosibirsk, Siberia, with her pet bear named Archie. Dichka adopted Archie when he was just a cub after she learned that the bear would have no place to stay after the local zoo in North Siberia closed down: 

Veronika said of her incredible relationship with the bear Archie in an Instagram post: "Archie sees me as a member of his family. We share food, he sleeps in my arms and when he's afraid and hides behind me. We rescued him from the bankrupt zoo but we cannot release him into the wild because he has lived in captivity all his life. Archie spends every day with us and is madly in love with the water. He really likes it when I take him to new places, so this session where we went fishing together was a real pleasure for him! "

image: fishing_veronika/Instagram

The map in the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is massive. Because it is designed as an open world game, it has to hold vast landscapes for the player to explore. But how would Hyrule look outside the game’s engine? Well, one Minecraft player has decided to test whether they could rebuild the entire map from Nintendo’s modern classic as a playable Minecraft survival map: 

Creator Dinaeh has been posting progress shots on Reddit, and the overall topography of the map is looking very close to the original. The project is being built with the WorldPainter tool at 1:2 scale, and Dineah intends to work with other creators to build shrines and ruins to populate the map. And yes, a playable version is intended to be released – eventually.

Dineah has posted some detailed shots of both the Gerudo Highlands and Hebra Mountains, and the latter in particular is instantly recognisable. That little grassy clearing ahead of the monstrous, snowy climb toward the encounter with Naydra created a big impression in Breath of the Wild, and it looks just as cool here, as you can see in the image above.

Image via PCGamesN 

How can we solve our current environmental problems? Aside from considering the practices of big time companies, the best chance we have at starting change is from our own homes. To reverse the existential threat, a recent report by the intergovernmental science-policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services (IPBES) recommended that we listen to Indigenous people and learn from the local community. Also, we could learn their relationship with the natural world, and get some ideas on how to solve or prevent major environmental disasters.

In relation to these recommendations raised by the IPBES, the Conversation’s Siobhan Maderson shared the lessons she learned from beekeepers, who are very in tune with their environment and would do their part in making sure the bees thrive in their environment. Check the full piece here!

Image credit: wikimedia commons 

Megaripples are large ripple-like features that have wavelengths greater than one meter or a ripple height greater than ten centimeters. These geological sand waves are also called subaqueous dunes. The largest known megaripples were found hidden deep under Louisiana, and experts believe that they were formed after the asteroid crash that killed the non-avian dinosaurs, as Space details: 

The 52-foot-tall (16 meters) megaripples are about 5,000 feet (1,500 m) under the Iatt Lake area, in north central Louisiana, and date to the end of the Cretaceous period 66 million years ago, when that part of the state was underwater, the researchers said. The megaripples' size and orientation suggest that they formed after the giant space rock, known as the Chicxulub asteroid, slammed into the Yucatán Peninsula, leading to the Chicxulub impact tsunami, whose waves then rushed into shallower waters and created the megaripple marks on the seafloor, the researchers said. 

The occurrence of "ripples of that size means something very big had to disturb the water column," study lead researcher Gary Kinsland, a professor in the School of Geosciences at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, told Live Science. "This is just further evidence that the Chicxulub impact ended the Cretaceous period."

Image credit: wikimedia commons 

Well, we can achieve professional-looking images without equipment or experience! Thanks to new features continuously added and upgraded to our handy smartphones and different applications that help us edit and enhance our photographs, we can make our photos magazine-worthy. Hell, we can now capture a decent image of different celestial bodies in our night sky, from the Milky Way to further galaxies and constellations without expensive equipment. PetaPixel lists the available applications and techniques to produce good images using our smartphones; check the full piece here! 

Image credit: Alyn Wallace 

Uh, surprise? Amateur astronomer Kai Ly discovered a new moon for the planet Jupiter. Ly managed to identify the new moon by scanning datasets from 2003. While new moons are being discovered periodically, the hobbyist also managed to identify and recover 5 lost Jovian moons: 

Ly started examining images taken in February, 2003, in early June of this year. While they initially tracked 3 potential moons, there wasn't enough data to recover 2 of them. They were able to confirm that the third, designated EJc0061, was bound to Jupiter. In all 76 observations gathered from an observation period spanning 15.26 years was enough for Ly to conclude that the orbit of this new moon was secured for decades.

This new moon, discovered by Ly, may have company in the coming years. Last year, Edward Ashton, Matthew Beaudoin, and Brett J. Gladman spotted around 4 dozen objects, as small as 800 meters, in Jupiter's orbit. While they didn't prove these objects were Jovian moons, the group suggests that there is a possibility of up to 600 satellites. The development of more sophisticated telescopes in the coming years will help astronomers confirm these possibilities.

Image credit: NASA