We love checking our appearance in the mirror. Isn’t it a brilliant invention, a tool that can let you see what you actually look like? Surprisingly, the mirror has been around for a longer time than one would think. Humans have been interested in seeing their own image since prehistoric times. Some parts of our history suggest that the creation of these objects was a dangerous trade, as Hunker details: 

Yet, the Venetians on the island of Murano gained quite the dangerous reputation for producing quality, highly expensive glass mirrors during the 13th century and beyond.

"The glassmakers at Murano jealously guarded the tricks of their trade, as did the Venetian government; spilling trade secrets was punishable by death, and if a glassmaker dared to leave Murano, their family was sometimes held hostage in attempts to hasten their return," writes Katy Kelleher in her "The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Mirrors" article for Longreads. Later on, in 1547, two Venetian glassmakers were actually assassinated when they tried to move to Germany.

The Venetian glass-making trade was somehow made even more dangerous by the fact that the workers were using toxic materials like mercury. "Workers who inhaled mercury fumes might develop behavioral and personality changes," writes Kelleher, citing that they may suffer from failing kidneys, shaking hands, a loss of memory, depression, and more. Who knew that glass-making could be such a violent, unnerving career?

Image via Hunker 

These filters aren’t there for aesthetics. Meet the Breeze, a mask that would work in any scenario, be it an area with bad air quality, a smoke-filled war zone, or the daily travels during the pandemic. The mask has a naturally cooling outer fabric, and an inner layer made from silver and 24-karat gold. The inner layer instantly destroys any germs that come in contact with it, as Yanko Design details: 

Designed by a videographer who often had to wear masks for hours while working, the Breeze was first and foremost crafted to fit comfortably around your face, letting you wear it for a long time. Its wraparound style allows you to wear it around your head (instead of around your ears), and a velcro fastening system gives you the freedom of wearing it around caps, ponytails, hair-buns, and even turbans. The comfortable fit allows the Breeze to sit on your face almost like a second skin, giving you hours of use without any “mask fatigue”. The mask uses an 80-20 blend of polyester and polyamide to help it regulate temperature. A simple spritz of water on the outside of the mask helps bring its temperature down as you breathe, giving it a cooling effect. The mask comes in variants with and without air-valves. The air-valves direct the flow of air as you breathe, filtering in the air from one side, and out the other, thanks to replaceable N99 filter inserts. This double filtration system makes the mask safe for you as well as the people around you. Both valve and valve-less versions of the mask come with the unique silver+gold mesh layer along with a standard N95 filter lining to trap microparticles and kill microorganisms.

Image via Yanko Design

Well this is a different approach to trimming your hair. If your local salons or barber shops are closed due to the pandemic, you’re probably considering cutting your overgrown locks at home. Micarah Tewers suggests a new method for cutting your hair, and it’s by using nail trimmers. Not exactly the tool I’d use, but seeing her do it makes it a viable option. Will you cut your hair with nail trimmers? 

Mario’s 35th anniversary is coming soon, and with no announcements on the rumored 35th-anniversary remasters, why not celebrate by getting some limited-edition goods? If the PowerA and HORI’s new Nintendo Switch controllers or Mario's new LEGO line are out of your budget, how about some stationery? Nintendo teamed up with German manufacturer UHU to release Mario-themed adhesive products. Handy items like glue sticks, white tack, and correction tapes will have special designs to commemorate the anniversary.

Image via NintendoLife 

Be careful! A Google Drive security flaw in its “manage versions” feature could let attackers swap a legitimate file with malware. The app’s cloud storage reportedly doesn’t check to see if a file is of the same type. For example, a cat photo may be a program in disguise. Users might not know that there’s a problematic file until they’ve installed it, as Engadget detailed: 

Chrome seems to “implicitly trust” the Drive downloads even when other antivirus programs detect something amiss.

The approach could be used for spear phishing attacks that trick users into compromising their systems. You might get a notification of a document update and grab the file without realizing the threat.

Nikoci said he notified Google about the issue, but that it was still unpatched as of August 22nd. We’ve asked Google for comment.

This would mainly be useful for attacking companies that rely on Google Drive for sharing documents, but that’s increasingly common. The description also suggests that this would require a significant change to Drive’s version control. For now, the best solutions may be to use antivirus software and be wary of Google Drive file update alerts, especially if you weren’t expecting them.

Image via Endgadget

An AI designed by Heron Systems defeated a human F-16 fighter pilot in a VR trial system. This situation seems a bit too close to The Terminator. At  DARPA’s AlphaDogfight Trial, the AI was able to defeat the pilot with significant handicaps in place, like not being allowed to improve using information learned from its previous competition rounds, disabling its collision detection systems, and restricting weapons to only the aircraft's nose cannon, as Input magazine details: 

Heron System’s AI system used what’s known as deep reinforcement learning, which allows algorithms to quickly try out problem-solving options in a virtual environment to approach something akin to understanding. We’re using the term “akin to understanding,” because really we’re too terrified to type out what it really is — that robots can pilot F-16’s now, and are more than capable at it than any of us.

“I think what we’re seeing today is the beginning of something I’m going to call human-machine symbiosis,” DARPA’s director of its Strategic Technology Office told Defense One. “Let’s think about the human sitting in the cockpit, being flown by one of these AI algorithms as truly being one weapon system, where the human is focusing on what the human does best [like higher-order strategic thinking] and the AI is doing what the AI does best.”

Image via Input magazine 

You can now check the progress of NASA’s new Mars Rover, Perseverance as it travels to Mars. NASA has launched a free online tool that lets anyone monitor Perseverance’s journey in real time. You can also see the nearest celestial body to the spacecraft at any given moment! The Mars 2020 rover will arrive in February 2021, so people can monitor its journey for a few more months, as Slash Gear details: 

Using this new NASA tool, anyone can see the rover on its journey, nearby objects like the 81p Wild 2 comet, and the paths these various space bodies are taking. Clicking through an object will enable viewers to get additional information on each satellite, comet, planet, and moon.

In addition to the direct view of the rover, users can also zoom out to view the wider region around the rover, including the orbit of each nearby planet and comet. Of course, this is all a visualization — you can’t actually see the rover itself in real-time, only its journey and its digital representation from NASA’s team.

Image via Slash Gear

Well, these gas canisters do store alcohol, just a different kind. A number of artists on Etsy are repurposing jerry cans as alcohol cabinets. Some of these mini-bars have wooden dividers or elastic straps to keep your drinks organized. Now you can store your favorite drinks (and some glasses too)! 

image via The Awesomer 

Would you place your plates and glasses in some squishy shelves? These foam shelves might look supple at first glance, but they can store objects as well as the regular ones. Dutch designer Dewi van de Klomp used foam rubber for his Soft Cabinets, a project that uses various materials found around the house that can be repurposed. Dezeen has more details: 

Drawn to the unique texture, colour and shape of the foam, van de Klomp started to experiment with using it to make a series of objects in an attempt to show the material's "poetic side".

"The foam is a relatively overlooked material even though everybody knows it," said the designer. "With the soft cabinets I aim to increase its perceived value."

The foam furniture collection comprises a series of shelves in different shapes and sizes that take on new forms depending on their contents, bending and warping as books, magazines, plates or glasses are slotted inside.

While some sit flush to the ground, others stand on legs that have been slid over a metal frame attached to the wall that the cabinet is placed up against.

Some of the shelves are held in place on the wall by a series of "pins" within the cut-outs in the foam, while others are left to lean on their sides. The more objects placed inside the shelves, the more they sag.

Image via Dezeen

UK-based artist Sew Beautiful’s attention to detail and talent can be seen through her embroidery. The artist creates breathtaking landscapes using only needle and thread. From stunning flower fields, waterfalls, and forests, her picturesque artworks are marvels to look at! You can really tell that she spent a long time on these pieces.

image via Bored Panda

Lego bricks are now more accessible to children with vision impairment! Lego’s new collection, Braille Bricks, are designed to help kids with vision problems to develop new skills and learn the Braille writing system. The special bricks are now available in Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, UK and the USA. The company aims to launch them in more countries by early 2021, as IGN details: 

LEGO plans to account for "eleven languages across twenty countries" by early 2021 and has prepared a website full of suggested activities for how children and educators can use LEGO Braille Bricks to learn the writing system.

Each toolkit will have "300+ LEGO Braille Bricks covering the full alphabet in the chosen language, numbers 0-9, and select mathematical symbols and punctuation marks." The famous LEGO studs have been moulded so that they correspond to the Braille alphabet, with the appropriate letters and symbols marked on the bricks so that they can be used in collaboration with sighted players as well.

LEGO Braille Bricks toolkits will be distributed for free to "select institutions, schools and services catering to the education of children with visual impairment" as they roll out around the world in the coming months.

image via IGN

If you’re familiar with the Les Miserables musical, then you’ve probably caught wind of fans who don’t like Russell Crowe’s portrayal of Inspector Javert in the movie adaptation. His portrayal was so poorly received that he had to defend his singing chops on social media. I’m not gonna lie, watching the musical and then watching the movie made me dislike Crowe’s singing. With the movie adaptation hitting Netflix soon, more people will have a chance to share their opinions, as Polygon details: 

Crowe is admittedly a strange choice to star in a musical. His voice is a little gruff, rather than clarion in the way that’s generally expected on Broadway. Listening to previous well-known Javerts — Roger Allam, Terrence Mann, Philip Quast, Norm Lewis — makes that distinction clear. Their voices are clearly distinguishable from each other, but all of them possess a broad, open quality, unburdened by the gravelliness of Crowe’s voice.

intimidating more because he’s a big guy with rough edges, and less because he possesses the kind of laser precision that Mann brings to the part. It makes Javert’s eventual crisis and breakdown particularly compelling. Crowe acquits himself best in “Javert’s Suicide,” as the tremulous quality of his voice when he’s pushed to the edges of his range works in harmony with his character’s uncertainty — and to his credit, he nails his high notes.

That’s the quality I find most crucial to judging Crowe’s performance as commendable: He hits all his notes at the right times. 

Image via Polygon 

Maps are helpful tools that let us navigate to unknown places, or get information about other areas that we aren’t that familiar with. They exist in different forms, and some are more difficult to understand than others. This one however, is just horrible. The map is well-constructed, and the information is easy to understand, but it's just very scary. Anthony Fauci, the head of  the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases released a map that shows emerging diseases that pose a threat to our health, as Gizmodo details: 

The paper, released over the weekend as a preprint in the journal Cell (meaning it may be revised before its final publication), is intended to lay out the environmental and human factors that led to covid-19 erupting on the world stage in late 2019. Fauci’s co-author is David Morens, senior scientific advisor at Office of the Director at NIAID. It’s an educational read, delving into how newly emerging diseases like covid-19 and familiar enemies like influenza can become so dangerous to humankind.

Image via Gizmodo

The oldest vertebrate tracks were discovered in the Grand Canyon after a cliff collapsed in the park. The fossil footprints were about 313 million years old. The footprints were hidden in plain sight until geology professor Allan Krill noticed them during a hike, as News Observer detailed: 

“These are by far the oldest vertebrate tracks in Grand Canyon, which is known for its abundant fossil tracks” Stephen Rowland, a paleontologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said in the news release. “More significantly, they are among the oldest tracks on Earth of shelled-egg-laying animals, such as reptiles, and the earliest evidence of vertebrate animals walking in sand dunes.”

Researchers said the footprints show two separate animals passing on the slope of a sand dune, which is significant because of the “distinct arrangement of footprints.”

Image via wikimedia commons

The tools and technology that help us today didn’t just come out of nowhere- it has to start from, well, somewhere. Someone would have a problem that needs to be solved, and people then start finding ways to solve that problem through research and development. This was the case for the asthma inhaler. Pharmacologist George L. Maison was asked by her daughter why her medicine for asthma wasn’t available in a spray can. Maison, as the president of Riker Laboratories, assigned chemist Irving Porush to try and create a medicine that would be available in a spray-like can, as The Smithsonian details: 

At the time, Riker was owned by Rexall Drugs, which did indeed manufacture hairspray. Borrowing expertise on propellants and aerosols from the cosmetics technicians down the hall, and using a recently patented metering valve capable of delivering precise amounts of atomized liquid, Porush created the first metered-dose inhaler (MDI) in just two months. By March 1956, the Food and Drug Administration had approved two new aerosol drugs for asthma, as well as Porush’s device for delivering them.

“It was a game changer,” says Stephen Stein, a scientist at Kindeva Drug Delivery (a descendant of Riker Labs) and co-author of a recent history of therapeutic aerosols.

Today, sales of pharmaceutical inhalers exceed $36 billion globally each year, and the device has puffed its way into medical history, improving the lives of millions: More than 2,000 people around the world use one every second.

Image via The Smithsonian