The celebration of Christmas is a blend of very old winter solstice traditions and the celebration of Jesus' birth, plus all the music, rich food, parties, and fun that people need in the darkness of winter. Either the fun or the religion have caused the whole thing to be banned in six countries and one well-known community. When Stalin banned the celebration of Christmas in the Soviet Union, he aimed to obliterate the Christian part, but the rest was too much fun, so people moved those traditions to New Year's Day, which continues today. In Germany, the land that gave us the Christmas tree, Adolf Hitler was okay with celebrating Christmas, but it couldn't be about Jesus, because, well, he was Jewish.
Several other countries, at one time or another, were okay with keeping the religious observation, but wanted to do away with the parties and fun and a day off work because those things was either too decadent or too Catholic. Workers in Scotland didn't get December 25th off for hundreds of years -until 1958! Read about seven historic Christmas bans and the reasons behind them at Mental Floss.
Yuki Kojima is a Japanese musician who specializes in the street organ--a hand-cranked instrument that uses bellows to pump air through pipes. I don't think that it takes advanced skill to operate one--it's a sort of music box that uses cardboard segments as a control mechanism. But probably creating the cards is a demanding task worthy of a skilled artisan.
Kojima's YouTube channel has many popular tunes from video games, such as Chrono Trigger and Super Mario Bros. But classic hard rock is my preference and music doesn't get any better than "Thunderstruck" by AC/DC.
-via Laughing Squid
Did you go see Joker: Folie à Deux? If so, that makes you special, because not that many people did. It was a sequel to the critically acclaimed 2019 hit movie Joker. Director Todd Phillips decided to make it a love story and a musical since they got Lady Gaga to sign on, but that wasn't what Joker fans for waiting for. Or anyone else. However, Screen Junkies managed to find a lot more to dislike about Joker: Folie à Deux. Namely, it's boring, depressing, and the most exciting shots from the trailers aren't even in the movie. No wonder it was a box office bomb. The film opened in the US a month ago and was on home video three weeks later after making less than half its expenses back at the box office. But if you still want to see it, be warned that there are spoilers in this Honest Trailer.
Dindin, a guinea pig who lives in Paris, has the same reaction that I do when listening to Claude Debussy's "Clair de Lune." It's incredibly soothing for my skittish soul that is always looking around for predators to avoid and food to eat. Watch him sit on his human's piano and enjoy a private performance.
-via Massimo
Hospitalization is especially stressful for children, which is why children's hospitals search for means to maintain the emotional well-being of their patients. To that end, Glasgow Children's Hospital in Scotland has a "gamer-in-residence" who plays video games with children.
BBC News introduces us to Steven Mair, who is a full-time, professional gamer who wheels gaming consoles into kids' rooms and plays with them. Donations raised by the local community and the gaming industry pay his salary, permitting him to focus on the needs of the children. This program provides social interaction and entertainment to kids in often dire medical conditions.
-via Kottke
This one goes out to all the ketchup lovers out there. Everyone I’ve shared it with either thinks it is awesome or gross. Nothing in between. Also some interesting science stuff happening . . . pic.twitter.com/1hNapN6oRs
— Matthew Dominick (@dominickmatthew) October 23, 2024
Commander Matthew Dominick (USN), an American astronaut on the International Space Station, demonstrates his advanced knowledge of physics by squirting ketchup directly into his mouth. In the absence of Earth-level gravity, the fluid pours into his mouth, then pools into a tower of tomato-y goodness on his chin. Popular Science prudently warns us that this video, once seen, cannot be unseen.
-via Dave Barry
We know that truth is stranger than fiction, and fiction is often influenced by real-world events, because otherwise all our stories would be a simple fight between good and evil where a random farm boy kills the evil emperor or else a prince saves a pretty girl from the the big bad wolf. Some of the most beloved fictional worlds capture our imaginations with strange places, characters, and customs, but also follow some events from history. In a couple, the author admits being influenced by world events, while others are argued over to the point where we don't know if the analogy is intentional or coincidence. And those tie-ins have faded with time.
Five of those novels are: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en, Dune by Frank Herbert, A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. The story of Dorothy visiting Oz is very involved, and may be an analogy for the "free silver" debate of 1896. There are an awful lot of clues that tie Oz to this obscure piece of American history, but it could be a matter of attaching meaning to a series of coincidences, like a conspiracy theorist with a wall full of pictures. Or Baum really could have used "free silver" as an inspiration. Read how all of these stories reflect real world events at Big Think.
(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)
X user Nicole Ruiz shares this photo from the recent New York City Marathon. I'm 99% certain that I have identified the woman and found her on Instagram, but will refrain from naming her as she may prefer to remain private.
Anyway, the lady is an innovator. She wants a boyfriend and offers a QR code that links to her Instagram page. This is the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that helps break out of the glutted dating market. She's direct about what she wants and markets herself in a novel and attention-getting fashion. If I were single, I might try this at an anime fandom convention (although with perhaps different results).
A couple of years ago, we told you about a 17th-century grave unearthed in Poland that was explicitly rigged to prevent a vampire from coming back to life. The burial of a young woman saw her foot shackled and a sickle placed across her neck, ready to cut upon the slightest raising of her head.
But those efforts were eventually proved to be in vain. In the two years since, she has risen from her grave, with the help of archaeologists, and her face has been brought back to life by forensic artists. While her name has been lost, she is called Zosia by locals and scientists. DNA analysis and the objects she was buried with tell us a little about her status. While she appears to be from a well-to-do family, she suffered from one or more physical conditions that may had led to her vampire reputation. -via Boing Boing
On reddit, /u/Otherwise_Finger_166 asks what this symbol means. One joker suggests, "This side up," but the black triangle actually designates an important location called William Shatner's Seat.
The New York Post explains that it is from this location that aircraft crew can get the best view of the wing and thereby assess its condition. The presence of ice could necessitate a change of plans.
Why is it named after William Shatner? Before Star Trek, Shatner starred in a 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone titled "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet." Shatner is an aircraft passenger sitting over the wing who sees a creature tearing up the plane. Prudent aircraft designers have clearly learned from that episode how important it is to get the best view of the wings.
-via Massimo
The fabric arts are, nowadays, a mostly feminine space. But they don't have to be. There is a space for men to carve out, sometimes literally, and artist Brochet shows us the way. His Instagram page is filled with astonishingly vivid creations in yarn with an emphasis on weapons and the gore that they create.
You want a brain ripped from its braincase? Brochet can provide. How about a bow and arrow? According to this video, they actually work.
Most recently, Brochet made this chainsaw and boomstick set for a realistic Army of Darkness costume that secured him and his companion a Best Couples Costume award at a cosplay competition. Ash would be proud to go into battle with them.
The properties of a solid include its consistent volume and shape. A liquid, on the other hand, has a consistent volume, but takes on the shape of its container. A gas takes both the shape and volume of its container. As you can see from the image above, cats take the shape of their container, whether it's a box or a fish bowl, so therefore cats are liquid. It's been proven in an Ig Nobel prize-winning study.
But why are cats this way? What makes them so flexible that they can flow through fenceposts and floor cracks, and curl up in an impossibly small serving dish? It's all in their bones. A cat's skeleton, whether it's a house cat or a cheetah, has several anomalies that make it different from other mammals. Read about a cat's weirdly flexible skeleton at Inverse, and you'll wonder why other animal species haven't developed these keys to flexibility. Cats may be more alien than liquid. -via Damn Interesting
During the space race of the mid-20th century, the US and the Soviet Union were in a hurry to launch rockets into space, and eventually human pilots. The US sent up fruit flies, then mice and monkeys to test whether such a trip would be survivable. The Soviets sent dogs. But it wasn't just a Cold War project. The French wanted to go to space, too. In 1963, a cat named Félicette became the first and only cat in space, launched in a French rocket for a 10-minute suborbital flight, which she survived.
Not that Félicette was thrilled by the experience. She underwent all the unpleasant tasks that astronauts later went through to be chosen for space flight, without understanding the purpose. She was fitted with brain electrodes for the trip. She sustained more than 9Gs at launch. And that wasn't the worst of it. But Félicette was a hero to scientists studying the possibilities of space travel. Stefan Chin tells her story for SciShow.
There was a time when Americans didn't find out about the crazy things going on in our government until many years afterward, because everyone involved wanted to present a veneer of respectability. But we know that government officials are only human, and Hollywood has always been willing to fill in the blanks to entertain us. Political movies have been with us as long as movies themselves, and the comedies are the ones we remember best. If you want to decompress from reality before voting, or after voting, for that matter, you might want to check out a list of the twenty greatest political comedies at Cracked, and then watch one or two.
These movies go back as far as 1933, and include foreign films, musicals, rom-coms, satires, and even a documentary while still tickling your funny bone. Some I had forgotten about, and there are a couple I haven't even seen. I'll always have a soft spot for the 1993 movie Dave, starring Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver. And Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator from 1940 was very moving while still making us laugh. Check out the list and let us know which one is your favorite.
When we think about animal camouflage, it's about the animal's appearance looking like its background so that it blends in. But there's a lot more to it than that. Camouflage effects, or nature's illusions, work as a combination of the way an animal looks and the way it is perceived by whatever it's hiding from. We might see a tiger and say, how is that camouflage? But if the cat's prey doesn't perceive colors the way we do, well, that just means we aren't a tiger's natural prey.
The science of perception is uncovering many different methods we use to sort and interpret the signals coming into our eyes and brain by studying the ways we can be fooled by those signals. Perception is an amazingly complex process that we use surprisingly well without understanding it. Animals think about it even less, but use it to survive. That's the way of natural selection- whatever works, in both perception and appearance, will become more common for those creatures who survive long enough to pass on their genes. It's only humans who survived and thrived long enough to study the details. This video is eleven minutes long; the rest is promotional. -via Laughing Squid
