Eating beaver used to be legal in Minnesota--as well as a popular activity. But, KSMP News reports, that changed last year due to a law addressing the hunting and trapping of beavers. These are regarded as nuisance animals, but the law accidentally made eating beaver meat illegal.
State Senator Steve Green wants to fix this legislative error so that people can get back to the joys of eating beaver. It apparently tastes like beef, but Senator Justin Eichorn prefers to refer to the dish as "nature's chicken nuggets." Their colleagues in the Senate have introduced a bill to re-legalize beaver eating.
In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte arrived in Egypt with his army and a contingent of scholars who wrote about the magnificent monuments they visited. That began a global fascination with the pyramids of ancient Egypt. As the 19th century progressed, more and more tourists made it a point to climb the Great Pyramid of Giza while in Egypt. Some of those pyramid climbers included Mark Twain, Amelia Edwards, and Arthur Conan Doyle, all of whom wrote about their experience. It wasn't an easy climb- 479 feet, or 146 meters over large stones- but it was a once-in-a-lifetime achievement they could brag about for years. Some folks even carved their names in the stones, and the Egyptians didn't mind. Or more accurately, they looked the other way because of the tourism dollars. But eventually they came to see what damage all those tourists were doing to their ancient monuments, and the practice of climbing the pyramids was prohibited in 1930. Some folks got away with it even after that, but today the thought of damaging these ancient structures just for a thrill is horrifying to us. Read about the tourists who climbed the pyramids and see plenty of pictures at Danny Dutch.
No comic book franchise has ever had so many failed attempts at jumping to the silver screen than The Fantastic Four. Will The Fantastic Four: First Steps break that curse? With a cast led by Pedro Pascal as Mr. Fantastic, gorgeous visuals, a '60s vibe, and a bit of humor, it might just be a hit. You can tell by the first teaser that they are leaning into the family theme pretty heavily. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is, of course, an origin story, and is the 37th movie of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It will also be the first of the MCU's "phase six," in case anyone is keeping up with that. We'll meet Reed Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic, Sue Storm, aka the Invisible Woman, Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch, and Ben Grimm, aka The Thing when the movie opens on July 25th, 2025. -via Nag on the Lake
Some precious gems would be boring if they were pure. Both emeralds and rubies in their pure form are colorless, yet we know rubies by their deep red color and emeralds by their rich green. Both colors are caused by a small amount of chromium in the gems, and their differing color has to do with the interaction of chromium with certain crystal structures. In other words, the gemstones' colors are not pigments, but are in the light-absorbing powers of their chemical makeup.
Rubies are composed mostly of the mineral corundum, which in its crystallized form consists of aluminum ions each surrounded by six oxygen ions. Emeralds are made of beryl, which contains beryllium, aluminum, silicon and oxygen. Each aluminum ion is surrounded again by six oxygen ions just like in a ruby, but the beryllium and silicon make the mineral very different. Throw a little chromium into the mix and you can tell rubies from emeralds just by color, because the chromium in emeralds absorbs red light and leaves it looking green. Rubies absorb green light, making its chromium look red. This is explained in much more detail at the Conversation, but they still can't explain why people pay so much for these stones.
How do you improve the Star Wars movies? Don't answer that, because we'd be here all day. But one way would be to make them comedies, and put Jim Carrey into various roles to show us how funny they really could be.
There have been around a dozen Star Wars movies and a few TV series, too. Jim Carrey has appeared in 45 feature films over the past 40 years. How hard would it be to find places where Carrey's nonsense would fit in the Star Wars universe perfectly? If you've ever tried this kind of work, you know that the idea is simple, but the execution is a lot of work. It appears that YouTuber Your_Kryptonite7 knows what he's doing here and has a deft hand at editing. I, for one, would go see every Star Wars movie in the theater once again if they were remade to be comedies. -via Geeks Are Sexy
In 1991, the Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm swept through those suburbs and destroyed more than 3,000 homes. One of them belonged to Bill Wright. His family was okay, and the loss of his house and possessions didn't traumatize him, but the process of rebuilding afterward caused him to think hard about the process of acquiring possessions and life building itself. Within a few years he turned that process into a video game called The Sims.
The Sims was a "sandbox" game, which already existed, but it was the first to allow players to create people instead of just architecture and build their daily lives from scratch. Critics expected it to be too boring. Electronic Arts was prepared to see it flop, but crossed their fingers anyway. And The Sims was a runaway hit, becoming the biggest-selling PC game of all time. The Sims has just turned 25 years old, and it's still a hit among both those who first played it a quarter-century ago and those who are just learning about world building. Read how The Sims changed the way we play video games at Smithsonian, and if you're interested, find a ton of links about The Sims at Metafilter.
At 6,288 feet in elevation, Mount Washington in central New Hampshire is the highest point in the northeastern United States. It's quite windy. Back in early January, the observatory on the mountain recorded wind speeds of 142 MPH.
Last weekend, temperatures dropped to -47.2°F. This was a new record for the site, breaking the -35°F record set in 1963. The wind chill was so severe that Mount Washington experienced a nation-wide record low of -108°F.
Two days later, two hikers became lost in chest-deep snow on the mountain. News Center Maine reports that after a 13-hour search, rescue workers were able to extract the hikers and bring them to safety.
The movie Gladiator II came out Thanksgiving week last year, a full 24 years after the original, and might as well have been called Gladiator: The Next Generation. It lacked both the originality of the first movie and Russell Crowe. But audiences flocked to theaters to see it, which proves that after 24 years, you can release the same movie again because no one cares about the first one. They introduced novelty into the story by making some characters and scenarios extra bizarre, whether that's historically accurate or not, because historical accuracy doesn't win awards or sell movie tickets. Besides all that, the highlight of Gladiator II was the villain, played by Denzel Washington, who stole the show for himself. And it has plenty of the violence that audiences crave. Screen Junkies pulls apart Gladiator II so you can decide after all this time whether it's something you might want to watch.
Back in the days when we had a lot of patent medicine but few actual cures, there arose one that was rather well-known even though no one talked about it. Redditor little_pwrlftr moved into a very old house and found Orange Lily vaginal suppositories in her attic. Asking about them online, she got a lot of information, including a link-heavy comment from historian gerardmenfin that tells the story.
Orangne Lily was supposed to cure womb diseases of all kinds, including "leucorrhoea, painful periods, irregularities, cancers in their earlier stages, tumors, displacements, lacerations and all ovarian troubles." Usually a medicine effective against such a broad list of maladies would be rumored to also cure pregnancy, and the product would be used as an abortifacient, although probably without much success.
Orange Lily was invented by Dwight Merriman Coonley in South Bend, Indiana, in the 1880s. It started out as a copy of Orange Blossom suppositories, which contained chlorophyl, starch, glycerine, petrolatum, borax, talc, cocoa, and soap. That doesn't sound like it would help any medical problem. Eventually, Orange Lily would also contain chloretone, which is a brand name for chlorobutanol, which is "a preservative, sedative, hypnotic and weak local anesthetic." In that iteration, Orange Lily may have been somewhat useful against bacteria and fungus, as well as pain. These suppositories were actually available in Canada up into the 1960s!
Several photographs at reddit show us the instructions for use and the testimonials that accompanied this medicine.
Anyone can blow on a deer call. But it takes a master hunter to precisely imitate a stag and thereby summon him from concealment into the sights of the hunter's rifle.
Deer calling is a revered tradition in Germany. Last Friday, the best deer callers gathered in Dortmund. Wearing their traditional hunting garb, they carefully blew into ox horns, snail shells, the dried stems of giant hogweed, and glass cylinders.
When played precisely, the sounds resemble either an old stag searching for a mate, a dominant stag calling to his harem of does, and combat between two rutting stags. The sounds are charmingly melodious.
KC and the Sunshine Band was big in the disco era because their music, while not all that lyrically profound, was infinitely danceable. Their 1975 song "That's the Way (I Like It)" topped the Billboard chart twice and became an international hit. It would be easy to mash it up with another hit song, but which one?
DJ Cummerbund went on tour with KC and the Sunshine Band a couple of years ago (yes, they are still working) and had plenty of time to contemplate this mashup. He didn't want to decide between the many songs that could be set to that classic disco beat, so he used all of them. That's why this mashup is credited to Everybody and the Sunshine Band. He isn't kidding about everybody. The singing comes from such diverse musicians as Aerosmith, Dolly Parton, Nine Inch Nails, Hall and Oates, Crazytown, System of a Down, TLC, Bon Jovi, Coolio, and a few other artists who might really surprise you. This is the one song you should save for your daily dance workout, because you won't be bored. -via Laughing Squid
When you see a face where there is no face, you'd prefer it to look a little more cheerful than this, wouldn't you? This image wasn't generated by artificial intelligence, nor was it Photoshopped; it was taken from the air above Antarctica. You can see it on Google Earth. Is it the face of an alien or a demon? Redditor Technical_Captain_15 tells us the face resembles "Ahriman, the cold satanic force of materialism and nihilism." See the illustration here. Most commenters said it's pareidolia, which is the tendency for humans to see faces where there is no face. This is a snowy mountainside with crevasses where the eyes and mouth would be, and that makes it a face for humans, who have a vested interest in recognizing faces. But if it's not a face, it's a surely anguished snowy mountainside. See several pictures and the discussion at reddit. -via Geeks Are Sexy
Taylor and J.T. are middle school students, the age when boys are flooded with testosterone and are still easily impressed by what they see on TV and the internet. When the screen says "Don't try this at home," that registers as a challenge instead of a plain English command. Their attempts to recreate a stunt they saw in a video land them in "Xtremesylvania," a place that belongs only to those who take insane risks. But is Xtremesylvania a version of the afterlife, or a dream, or is it a hallucination spurred by a concussion? Is it real or imaginary, or maybe just a plot device? Your opinion will change as you watch the story unfold.
Charlie Hankin (previously at Neatorama) brings us the short film Xtremesylvania to get a look inside what young men go through trying to prove themselves to the world, to their own self, and to their peers. -via the Awesomer
It's been some time since the end of the Cold War, and memories of always expecting a nuclear Armageddon are fading, possibly too fast for our actual safety. Even for those who recall those days, there are certain signs, literally, of the preparations made by our government for the unthinkable. Even far-flung agencies like the Department of Transportation made plans for what happens after the bombs drop.
In the 1961 edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, a catalog of official road signs, you'll find plenty of familiar signs, but you'll also find some signs that may be confusing. Once you know what they're for, it may send a shiver up your spine. For example, the sign in the image above was to be deployed in case of a nuclear war. It was to designate that you are driving through a radioactive area. Read the story behind the sign and those of others at The Autopian. -via Metafilter
When a TV series is very good, you expect it to be renewed for a second, third, or fifteenth season, and sometimes the quality suffers in later seasons. But there are also series that were perfect despite being short, or more likely because they were short. Andor is so critically acclaimed that it could easily be renewed for several seasons, but the second season will be its last, because it's a prequel and will eventually run into the timeline of the movie it spun off from. The classic 1970s British show Fawlty Towers only had 12 episodes in total, because each episode was so painstakingly constructed that it could take four months to get it ready to air. The Queen's Gambit was a complete story told in seven TV episodes, which we used to call a miniseries. And believe it or not, there have been a couple of great shows that were canceled quickly. All these really shouldn't be compared to each other, but as a list, they serve as a recommendation for something you can binge on without committing too much of your future. Read a list of 21 short-lived but perfect TV series at Cracked. There are video clips.
