I learned the word antidisestablishmentarianism as a kid because it was fairly easy to learn for a big word. But it's only 28 letters long, far from the longest in the English language. How about 45 letters? Try pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. There are longer words, but they are chemical names that dictionaries don't count. Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is a disease of the lungs caused by inhaling fine dust from quartz or a fine silicate. In real life, doctors call it silicosis. I can't blame them. If you want to pronounce it, it's doable by breaking it into its many Latin parts, pneumo no ultra microscopic silico volcano con iosis. You may think that someone was trying to be funny by slipping "volcano" in the middle, and you'd be right. The word was coined by the then-president of the National Puzzlers' League in 1935. But it turned out to be a useful word for pulmonary doctors, so here we are. And I am thankful for the copy/paste function.
Matching new archological findings with ethnographic records, we can show ritual fireplaces have been in continuous use for at least 12,000 years. https://t.co/PDHqjG8q5L
— The Conversation - Australia + New Zealand (@ConversationEDU) July 2, 2024
Communities and their cultural and religious practices change over time, as conditions change and cultures split or merge with others. Old rituals are lost to time and new practices rise. But a recent discovery in Australia may peg the Aboriginal GunaiKurnai people as having the oldest continuing cultural practices in the world.
Two fireplaces were discovered buried in Cloggs Cave near Buchan, Victoria. These were not fireplaces for cooking or heating; they are very small and each had a custom-cut stick in it. Modern GunaiKurnai elders recognized an ancient ritual for putting a curse on someone, one that is still taught today. Carbon dating of the sticks and other material place one of the fireplaces at around 11,000 years old, and the other at 12,000 years old! The instructions for the ritual were passed down orally for at least 500 generations. Read about this discovery and what it means at the Conversation. -via Strange Company
If all you know about Norse mythology is Thor, Loki, and Odin from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you have a lot more to learn. The many gods of old Norse paganism weren't perfect, just powerful. In addition to the powerful gods, there were also giants, dwarves, elves, and other supernatural beings. They did as they pleased, with no regard for mere humans nor for each other. Their stories weren't written, but passed down through generations by storytelling, until the Scandinavian countries were converted to Christianity by the 12th century. These stories varied among communities until the rise of the Vikings, which led to some consolidation of beliefs. But they weren't written down until after the rise of Christianity, so our understanding of what they actually believed is still fairly superficial.
Of the many stories of old Norse gods, Weird History picks out the most violent tales, having to do with power struggles, wars, and betrayal. An amusing bonus is hearing Tom Blank pronouncing all those ancient Norse names.
Lỗ Mạnh Hùng was only eleven years old when he begin to run into dangerous situations instead of away from them. That was in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in 1967. That's how Hùng became the youngest war photographer ever. He came by his skills honestly, as his father was also a photojournalist. But Hùng was small enough to wiggle his way through a crowd to get the best shot of whatever was happening, and he sold his photos to news organizations for more than enough to support the family during wartime. He made a name for himself by getting the images of the Tet Offensive in 1968.
This gray cat knows exactly what he wants and where to find it. He wasn't all that keen on stopping to pay for his sausage, though. You can imagine him showing off his loot to his friends, and the orange cat doesn't believe him. So for his next caper, he brings his orange buddy along. This time the bin is piled full of sausages, which triggers an orgy of gastronomy right there on the sales floor. Orange cat, being orange, only has one brain cell and really doesn't know what to do with all that bounty.
While you can't really stage a video with cats (they don't take direction well), it's obvious this is not the first time these guys have been in this store. The camera follows them around, and you get the idea that whoever is operating it is enjoying the scene as much as we are. Besides, who puts a bin full of sausages on the floor? Customers are most likely to buy what is at eye level. Which this is, if you are a cat. -via reddit
Americans learn in elementary school that the Continental Army suffered terrible conditions, especially at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777-78. By February, they didn't have enough food nor warm clothing, and influenza swept through the camp. More thorough accounts tell us that the conditions weren't nearly as dire as your fourth grade teacher led you to believe (she was a drama queen), but there were supply line problems, which Washington worked hard to fix.
The truth is that the soldiers of the Continental Army ate pretty good most of the time. The documented rations for troops included a half-pound of beef every day, plus a half-pound of pork. If pork wasn't available, they got a pound and a quarter of beef! They were issued a quart of "good spruce or malt beer or cider." Every day. They were also supplied with bread, vegetables, soup, etc, which you can read about at Cracked, where they compare the revolutionary soldiers' food with the modern barbecues we enjoy today in celebration of their bravery.
Most of what we learned in school about World War II is from this side of the Iron Curtain. What happened in Eastern Bloc countries or Soviet Republics was mostly hidden until the Revolutions of 1989 and the fall of the Soviet Union. By then, plenty of local stories were forgotten or otherwise inaccessible. In 1993, caver Chris Nicola found signs of habitation in some Ukrainian caves, and when he inquired, was told that Jews hid in those caves during the Nazi extermination program. It took ten years, but he found six survivors who told the tale of how their families hid in Verteba Cave and Priest’s Grotto.
In October of 1942, after the Nazis invaded Ukraine, two families hid in Verteba Cave. They were joined by other families later, for a total of 28 people. They shared the space with foxes and bats, and a select few ventured out at night to find supplies. They melted snow and caught water from dripping stalactites to drink. Nazis discovered the cave in 1943, but only a few were captured, because the cave system was full of dark passages. The remaining people moved to Priest’s Grotto, a bigger cave with its own underground water supply. When the Red Army liberated Ukraine in 1944, they were able to come out, but the children who hadn't seen sunlight in year and a half were frightened by the daylight. Read the story of those who hid in Ukrainian caves to survive Hitler's Final Solution at Amusing Planet.
Have you ever been startled when an electric car snuck up on you while you were walking? That happened to me about ten years ago. I was on a sidewalk, but I immediately thought of what would happen if a cat or a kid were in the road. We are just plain used to loud car engines. So auto manufacturers started adding noises to cars, even though they don't need them to function. But when the sound is superfluous to the vehicle's function, those sounds don't have to mimic a combustion engine. What sounds should a car have to be the safest for pedestrians, cyclists, and animals? Car companies are working with audio engineers and sound designers to perfect the sounds of a quiet car for optimum safety while trying not to annoy everyone who hears them. -via Digg
When someone in this day and age tells you to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps," they almost always mean you should work harder to improve your lot. However, the original quote that gave us the phrase can be traced back to 1834, when it was used to mock someone who claimed to have invented the perpetual motion machine. See, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is literally impossible, so the phrase is supposed to refer to an impossible act. The quote has been around so long that people completely misunderstand what it really means.
Another example is the "one bad apple" that you shouldn't judge the rest of the apples by. But the full phrase is "one bad apple spoils the barrel," which is completely opposite of how the phrase is used today. I blame the 1970 song by The Osmonds, where the lyric is "one bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch." But that's just my opinion. Read up on the origins and transformations of ten common quotes that people completely misinterpret at Mental Floss.
More than a decade ago, I still remember quite vividly when my parents and I traveled to Singapore, and we happened upon an old Singaporean man on the street selling ice cream. But it wasn't any old ice cream on cones. It was the ice cream sandwiches which, for anyone who has traveled to Singapore, was quite a popular dessert.
The first time I took a bite of that ice cream sandwich, it felt like heaven especially after a couple of hours walking under the heat of the sun on a summer day in Singapore. I immediately loved the dessert, and I asked my parents for another one because I just couldn't get enough of it.
I can only compare it to that time when I first tried McDonald's Oreo Mcflurry, a day that changed my life forever. It was the first time I discovered the cookies and cream flavor for ice cream being a hot fudge sundae or regular vanilla on a cone guy before that. Since then, I never looked back. When I got a taste of that ice cream sandwich, it was etched into my memory.
I've seen ice cream sandwiches elsewhere, but they just couldn't compare to Singapore's ice cream sandwiches. The wafers, or bread, as well as the signature Magnolia ice cream, just have a distinct taste that will leave a lasting impression on you.
I haven't been to Singapore since then, and so, I'm quite surprised to find out that the Singaporean government has been slowly phasing out street hawkers, which included the numerous Singaporean uncles who sold those ice cream sandwiches on Orchard Road. When once there were 30 ice cream hawkers, now there are only seven.
Thankfully, Singapore's ice cream sandwiches have found a new home, 3,000 kilometers away in Vietnam where a couple have established stalls selling the signature ice cream sandwiches of Singapore. The store, Hawker Star, was founded by Thach Van Thang and his wife, Dang Thi Thanh Hoa, in May 2020, and has since grown to more than 20 outlets throughout Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, and some smaller provinces in Vietnam.
When initially they invested US$50,000, they now earn US$50,000 every month in revenues. Although Vietnam has its own version of ice cream sandwiches, the couple just felt that it lacked a certain punch and so turned to the Singapore treat, which they consider an upgrade to the their local dessert.
With the help of some Singaporean entrepreneurs, they were able to get the business idea off the ground, and with their family friend helping them to become the exclusive distributor of Magnolia's ice cream, the business became a success. So much so that many competitors started to popping up trying to replicate their concept. However, for Thang and Hoa, they focused their competitive advantage on the quality of their product and service.
Even Singaporeans who have traveled to Vietnam and come across Hawker Star have given their stamp of approval to the ice cream sandwich. Vietnamese students who studied in Singapore also found it a pleasant surprise to see that Singapore's ice cream sandwich can now be found at home.
Despite the dwindling numbers of ice cream hawkers in Singapore, it is quite a relief that the culture is being kept alive thousands of miles away from home. And I too would give anything just to have one more taste of that exquisite ice cream sandwich from all those years ago. One day soon perhaps, when I find myself walking down the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, I might just cross paths with that ice cream sandwich again.
Rummage through your medicine cabinet in the bathroom and there's a high chance that you'll see one or several of those orange prescription bottles tucked away in there. I only see these things shown on TV since most of our prescription medicine here come in their original opaque bottles or in blister packs.
And because I've been accustomed to seeing these many times in Western shows, it has been embedded in my mind to think that those orange bottles are for pills. However, it never occurred to me to ask why they are colored orange, or amber to be more specific. Reader's Digest asked Jennifer Bourgeois, a pharmacist and health expert, to get down to the real reason why they are orange.
Bourgeois gives three main reasons why the industry standard for prescription pill bottles is the amber color. First, it's to make sure that they remain effective for as long as possible until their written expiration date. We often see storage instructions on the side of pill bottles saying that we should keep the medicine out of direct sunlight. That's why we usually store them in a medicine cabinet, somewhere dry, cool, and dark, to maintain the potency of the medicine. In the same vein, standard pill bottles are colored amber to protect the pills from UV light.
According to Bourgeois, the color orange functions as a barrier to filter out the UV light, so that even if the medicine accidentally sees the light of day, its effectiveness won't be impacted.
Second, it makes sure that the pills are visible. It would be a lot safer to simply store the pills in their original opaque manufacturer bottles, but then, you would have to open the bottle to make sure that you got the right medicines. So, it's much easier to verify the contents of the bottle if it were translucent. Also, it's much faster to know how much you have left if the bottle were translucent.
Finally, they used the amber color as a standard to make medications recognizable. As I mentioned at the beginning, I knew that orange bottles were for pills because that's what I saw on TV. It's a universally recognized symbol that shows something is a prescription medicine. And so, knowing that, anyone would understand that it should be handled with care and not to be trifled with, or not to be left some place where children can easily access them.
Apart from the distinct orange hue, these pill bottles have one other safety feature, and that's their white cap. This was specially designed by a pediatrician, Henri Breault, along with an engineer in order to ensure that children won't accidentally ingest the medicine and get poisoned by them. So, they invented the child-resistant cap, which uses the "palm and turn" technique to open them. Ever since it was created in 1967, the rate of deaths from poisoning by accidental medication ingestion has decreased by more than 80%.
Of course, just because the orange pill bottles are pretty effective in making sure that our medication is safely stored, we shouldn't neglect taking appropriate measures to store it properly away from the sun and from the reach of children. Usually, storing medicine in a cool, dry place is the recommended practice, however, there are certain medication that need to be stored inside the refrigerator, so it's still best to check with your physician, pharmacist, or the indications on the bottle.
Chile is so long that you can visualize it bending to the curvature of the earth. It's so long that if it were placed in Europe, it would reach from the top of Norway down to the north coast of Africa. The country's climate reflects the same orientation, except backwards. At the bottom, it's very close to Antarctica, and in the north you'll find hot desert. There's also a temperate rainforest in the middle, which is where people actually live. Those people speak a version of Spanish that Spanish-speakers from other places can't understand. What makes Chile so different in so many ways?
The short answer is the Andes mountain range. But those mountains, placed where they are, come with a story behind them and a lot of geographical effects that might surprise you. Chile's climate is affected by both the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic. The mountains left cultural effects of their own. And the main population of Chile is boxed in on four sides by mountains, ocean, desert, and cold. Tomas Pueyo explains why Chile is so different in so many ways because of where it is at Uncharted Territories. -via Metafilter
We saw the finalists a couple of months ago, and now the awards are in. The winners of the Comedy Pet Photography Awards have been announced! The overall winner is Sarah Haskell for the image above, titled Not Just For Cats. Or at least that's what Haskell's dog Hector thought, but he didn't make it all the way through. This photo also won in the dog category. The cat category was won by the picture below, titled Cat in a trap like Super Mario by Kenichi Morinaga.
I see a theme developing, but not all the award-winning photos were of self-trapped animals. The People's Choice winner is titled Tarzan by Kazutoshi Ono.
There are plenty more winners in the different categories, plus highly commended photos as well, that you can see in a gallery at the contest site. They do this every year, so never pass up an opportunity to take pictures of your pets, lest you'll catch them doing something funny. -via Digg
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F hits theaters this weekend. It is the fourth installment of the Beverly Hills Cop franchise that started in 1984. Eddie Murphy returns as Axel Foley, a Detroit police officer who is transported to a different culture in Los Angeles. So Screen Junkies goes back forty years to the movie that started it all. Warning: revisiting the original may ruin the new movie for you. We won't know until someone actually sees it.
In 1984, Eddie Murphy was already quite popular from Saturday Night Live, his standup act, and a couple of movie roles. Beverly Hills Cop was his first as the solo star, and became the biggest movie of 1984, spending 14 weeks at #1. This video makes us remember why. Beverly Hills Cop made Murphy a superstar. The two sequels, from 1987 and 1994, couldn't hold a candle to the original. While Honest Trailers are usually pretty devastating, the parts they pick on in this one are honestly funny.
Although AI has been very popular over the past decade, and even more within the past five years, it still has its limitations. McDonald's US experimented with using AI to take orders for customers in their drive-thrus since 2021, and they have decided to pull the plug on the test this coming July. They will be removing their AI drive-thrus on July 27.
I have seen how ChatGPT is capable of voice recognition almost with 100% accuracy, if not 100% accuracy, no matter how people pronounce words or whether they have an accent. However, it's different when you're simply dictating a message that you want to send to a family member, a friend, or your spouse, or if you just want to make a note without having to type it. Then, AI will probably suffice. However, for a business like McDonald's, accuracy is the top priority since making a mistake means a lot of disgruntled and dissatisfied customers. It will cost them billions.
So, perhaps that's one of the reasons why they've decided to axe their AI drive-thrus. Initially though, they had considered these as a success with an 85% order accuracy. But 15% is still a lot, given how many people order at McDonald's every single day. Just some examples of order shenanigans include giving a customer cream packet instead of "no caramel" on their sundae.
According to the memo sent out by McDonald's US, they will continue to stay in partnership with IBM from whom they got the AI machines for their drive-thrus. The main challenge according to that memo was that the technology from IBM had trouble interpreting different accents and dialects. And given the massive ramifications that a single mistake would translate in terms of the bottom line, it's no surprise that McDonald's decided to ditch it after just three years of experimenting.
This just goes to show that AI will definitely not replace human beings any time soon, as one of the primary roles or functions that human beings still excel at much more than any computer or AI is communication and interpretation of the messages being given. Despite the great strides that AI technology has had, it still doesn't compare to humans' language ability, creativity, spatial understanding, and deductive reasoning.
