Sadly, it’s not a robot alien. Aww. The flying car, called KleinVision AirCar, can transform from a land vehicle to an air vehicle in less than three minutes! Watch the video to see how the car transforms. It’s like magic!
(via Flipboard)
Image screenshot via Flipboard
The Windsor Ruins, located in the tiny town of Port Gibson, Mississippi, is one of the most sought after sites, frequented by locals and tourists. The site, which consists of just twenty-three Corinthian columns, is believed to be haunted by the ghost of a Union soldier who was killed on the property, as Only In Your State details:
Smith Coffee Daniell II, Windsor’s owner, is also said to haunt the grounds. According to one report, a visitor saw a man in period clothing, assumed it was a re-enactor, and approached to ask some questions about Windsor. However, as he got close, the “re-enactor” turned toward the man, smiled, and faded away.
The strange happenings don’t end there, though. It’s said that on some nights, sounds of a long-ago party can be heard.
Image via Only In Your State
Israeli artist Michal Levy, who has synesthesia, created a short animation set to different classical pieces, such as Bach’s ‘Prelude in C Major’, and Coltrane’s ‘Giant Steps.’ Levy saw the “rollicking notes” of Coltrane’s Giant Steps as a “kinetic, cascading cityscape built from colourful blocks of sound” and was able to visualize it. Levy then created the short animation ‘Dance of Harmony’ to show what she sees when she hears Bach’s ‘Prelude in C Major,’ as Open Culture details:
During a maternity leave, working with her friend, animator Hagai Azaz, she set herself the challenge of showing, as she describes it, “the cascading flow of emotion, to make the feeling contagious, by using only color, the basic shape of circles, and minimalist motion, assigning to each musical chord the visual elements that correspond to it synaesthetically.”
It is fascinating to compare Levy’s descriptions of her condition with those of other famous synesthetes like Vladimir Nabokov and, especially Kandinsky, who in essence first showed the world what music looks like, thereby giving art a new visual language. Levy calls her synesthesia art, an “emotional voyage of harmony,” and includes in her visualization of Bach’s famous prelude an “unexpected elegiac sidebar of love and loss,” Maria Popova writes. Read Levy’s full description of Dance of Harmony here and learn more about the “extraordinary sensory condition called synesthesia” here.
Image via Open Culture
We think that life in outer space is nothing but a faraway dream. However, there are some humans who live in outer space thanks to the International Space Station (ISS). The ISS hovers over Earth and gives life support to people who are working in space every day since November 2, 2000. National Geographic details the long history of life and work on the ISS. Check the full piece here.
image via National Geographic
Raimond Kiveris, a software engineer at Google Research created an open-source map that displays the changes to city streetscapes over a period of time. The map displays historically-accurate changes in any U.S. city dating back to 1800. The map can also show the cities in both a bird’s eye view and a pedestrian-level view, as FastCompany details:
The map, called “rǝ,” is a project Kiveris has led through his research into artificial intelligence and machine learning at Google. Though still in a very early form, the map is functional enough to offer a glimpse of what someone would have seen on a city street decades in the past.
The map was created using historical fire insurance maps, a rich source of information for the built environment that includes precise information about building ages, sizes, heights, roof shapes, and even materials. The map creates simplified 3D models of these buildings, and the time slider allows a user to see, for example, Washington, D.C.’s Dupont Circle nearly devoid of buildings in the 1870s and almost fully developed in the 1920s.
Kiveris wants the map to do more than model buildings over time. He and his team created it as an open-source project so that people such as librarians and map enthusiasts can contribute their own historical sources to add detail. It can even integrate photographs of buildings, using deep learning to analyze images and augment the blocky 3D models with architectural details.
Image via FastCompany
This cat just wanted a tasty treat while it’s outside! Well, its owner tried their best helping, sure, by tapping the ice where the desired fish was trapped. Watch the short video of a cat trying to get a carp out of the ice. I’m sure it wasn’t able to get the carp. Hopefully its owner gave it a treat when they got home!
I’d say this offer is a steal even in a non-pandemic timeline, but if you have the opportunity, maybe this offer will be of interest to you! Travel company Booking.com is offering $50 weekend-long stays — to represent the unity of the 50 states — at 10 select hotels in culturally rich neighborhoods as part of its America Is for Everyone campaign. Clients who take advantage of the promo will be able to experience the destinations with a “custom-designed and safety-first itinerary” in order to “enjoy authentic meals, historical tours, and more unforgettable experiences,” as Travel and Leisure details:
The destinations include hotels in the Vietnamese neighborhood of Factors Row in New Orleans; Little Ethiopia in Silver Spring, Maryland; Greektown in Tarpon Spring, Florida; Germantown in Frankenmuth, Michigan; the Dutch area of Oak Harbor, Washington; Little Haiti in Miami; Little India in Jersey City, New Jersey; the Mexican Cultural District in Denver; the Japanese area of Honolulu; and the Danish Village in Solvang, California.
“In these challenging times, it’s important to remember that it’s the diverse backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives representing so much of the world that have made this country what it is today,” Booking.com’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer, Arjan Dijk, said in a statement. “We hope the ‘America Is For Everyone’ experiences help quench Americans' collective curiosity and inspire travelers to seek out new experiences they may not have realized existed so close to home.”
Image via Travel and Leisure
The Omega pants by Graphene-X is made of a three-layer fabric that’s stretchable, waterproof, and destruction-proof. That’s right, destruction-proof! Graphene, hailed as the world’s strongest material, is integrated into the fabric. The material helps the Omega pants show less wear and tear, as Yanko Design details:
You could take an abrasive pad or sandpaper to it and where most tactical clothing show signs of failure, the Omega ends up looking like nothing ever happened to it. The pants’ construction further enables this durability, with knee-panels, a reinforced crotch, and taped seams to hold the stitching together even after a rough day. The Graphene pants are naturally anti-microbial too, which means they need less frequent washing than your regular pair of pants, and the fabric comes treated with a water-repellent coating too, allowing it to never get stained or wet if you jump into a muddy creek or accidentally drop coffee on it.
Image via Yanko Design
Pelagornithids are a group of ancient avians that can be described as the largest flying birds of all time. These humongous birds had a wingspan of 20 feet, and were capable of soaring across seas. Paleontologists were able to identify the birds’ capabilities by comparing a pair of remains of related birds, as the Smithsonian Magazine details:
During the 1980s, University of California Berkeley paleontologist Peter Kloess says, scientists searching for Antarctic fossils found some delicate bird bones—a jaw and part of a foot from an ancient bird—on Seymour Island. Those bones then made a long journey to California, but their story was only just starting.
The jaw and foot bone were just two of a huge collection kept at the University of California Riverside. In 2003, however, the more than 10,000 fossils of the Riverside collection were transferred to the University of California Museum of Paleontology at the Berkeley campus, the bird bones among them. And they stood out. “Bony-toothed jaws are rare in the vertebrate record,” senior museum scientist Pat Holroyd says. “When you see one, you remember it and mentally file it away for later.”
The bird jaw, which came from a rock formation laid down over 37 million years ago, looks almost like a woodcutting tool rather than a bone. The jaw has a series of large and small spikes, outgrowths of the beak that have a passing resemblance to teeth. On a living animal, the points would have been covered in keratin and given the bird a sinister saw-toothed smile. That feature immediately identified the jaw as belonging to a pelagornithid, also known as bony-toothed birds that have a very long fossil record. The oldest pelagornithids evolved about 56 million years ago, and the most recent flew through the skies about two million years ago. Their fossils are found all over the world.
Image via the Smithsonian Magazine
A 90-year-old-woman was always observing gym workouts from the gym near her apartment. Tessa Sollom Williams spectates from 7 a.m to 7 p.m. Sometimes, she even tries to copy the moves of people who were working out at the gym. Hearing about Sollom Williams, the gym that she has been observing every day decided to paint a mural to honor her and any onlookers that may be watching their fitness classes from afar, as the Washington Post details:
“I see them doing such hard exercises. My goodness me!” said Sollom Williams, who was born in London and in her youth was a professional ballerina for 15 years.
She now lives alone at an assisted-living facility, and observing the outdoor fitness classes has been her sole source of motivation and entertainment during the pandemic.
“I never miss it,” she said, adding that she gives her daughter an update on the classes during their daily phone calls.
Watching the training sessions has had such a significant impact on Sollom Williams that her daughter felt compelled to write an email to the Balance Gym at Thomas Circle to thank them.
“Her worst days are rain days and she worries if your members are okay and getting their exercise,” she continued. “I hope you can share with your members that they have given an elderly lady much joy in seeing them embrace health and life.”
For the gym staff, the unexpected email was a bright spot after months of coronavirus-induced business challenges.
“It made our day. It was very timely and much-needed,” said Maier, 39, co-chief executive and part-owner of the gym, explaining membership has dwindled and times have been tough.
Image via the Washington Post
Sometimes the ‘inspirational quotes’ we see all over social media sites can be annoying. From the daily ‘good quotes’ your relatives may share on Facebook to the different motivational words from famous people you see in other sites. Do they always hit you and motivate you for the rest of the day, or do they just annoy you with how cliche they are? Well, if you’re annoyed, here’s a new set of quotes that may give you a laugh: pessimistic quotes. BoredPanda lists some few of these ‘unspirational’ quotes from Instagram. Check the full piece here.
Image via BoredPanda
We’re used to enjoying our favorite cup of tea using tea bags (which are honestly messy, especially when it’s time to throw them in the bin), but did you know that there are other options to enjoy a hot cup of tea? These Pique tea crystals are a less messy alternative:
Now let me explain: at first glance, Pique’s tea crystals definitely look a lot like those influencer-endorsed tummy tea products that never seem to leave your Instagram feed. However, what makes these tea crystals truly unique is the cold-brewing process used to create them, as brewing whole-leaf tea at low temperatures, for longer durations of time, supposedly preserves the active compounds found in tea at maximum potential, according to the brand website.
And yes, the easy-to-use factor of these tea bags is definitely worth writing home about, as they instantly dissolve into water at any temperature, whether it’s ice cold or piping hot. This makes it a major win for iced-tea fanatics (like yours truly), as whipping up some unsweetened iced vanilla rooibos tea only took me a matter of seconds instead of waiting for it to steep.
In short, Pique’s innovative crystals are definitely a must-see for tea drinkers who are looking to skip out on both the longer steeping times, and annoying messes associated with traditional tea bags.
Image via The Daily Beast
Don’t worry, the cat didn’t lose its life. Rescuers were ready to catch the orange cat in their arms as it jumped from a burning second story window in Harlem, New York. I’m surprised that the cat was willing to jump straight down even if there was a chance that the rescuers wouldn’t be able to catch it. Way to go, little cat!
(via Flipboard)
Image screenshot via Flipboard
Did you know that there was a female pharaoh who ruled ancient Egypt? You may have seen her mentioned in passing, but it was never fully explained in the articles that I’ve read as to how this female pharaoh rose to power, and why her legacy was almost erased from history. Thankfully, Watcher’s Puppet History delves deeper into her story and history. I can’t believe who was behind her legacy’s disappearance!
The dwelling looks like a mechanical gear from afar. We’re used to seeing cube or rectangular shaped buildings that we forget that it’s possible to build impressive structures in different shapes. This two-storey home south of Lisbon, called Casa Trevo, has three circular patios and triangular-shaped indoor spaces, as Plain Magazine details:
The patio’s semi-open columns support a series of multi-level floor slabs which lead to and hold up the amazing rooftop lap pool.
Possessing a sense of autonomy and monumentality, the dwelling subverts the perception of its scale while creating a dialogue between nature and architecture. “It exudes a solid impression of mass while revealing little of its inside,” the studio says. “The house produces its own introverted world facing the sun, with private yet mutable spaces rendered intermittently by Lisbon’s brash light.”
Image via Plain Magazine
