When there's a death in the family, you are devastated, and everyone knows it. They rush in to comfort you and help you through your grief. But that's not all you need. You need to know what to do right now, what to expect, and how to legally get their affairs in order, all at a time you are emotionally fragile and confused. The website My Parents Are Dead: What Now? takes you through those steps of getting things done, from moving the body to dealing with mourners to dispersing possessions to settling probate. The skeleton decorating the site is the "self-care skeleton" who has tips at the end of each section for de-stressing a little.
While this guide may seem irrelevant to you now, you should learn these things before you need them. If you haven't already done so, you will someday confront the death of your parents, unless you go first. And that makes the first section, the "to die" list, especially important regarding not only your parents, but you as well. Preparing ahead of time will be a wonderful way to make things easier for your children or other heirs when the time comes. Also, there's nothing like disposing of someone's else's possessions that will inspire you to pare down your own collection of stuff. -via Metafilter
The great Paul Di Filippo of Weird Universe mines the digital bowels of the US Patent Office for bizarre, wonderful, and wonderfully bizarre inventions that never quite made it to mass production. Today, he shares with us this unusual device granted a patent in 1942.
Inventor Benjamin L. Dorsey calls his device the "antiholdup cashier's cage." It appears to be a sealed chamber accessible through a locking revolving door. The cashier controls entry and exit. If a bank robber is able to persuade the cashier to part with money, s/he may not escape with it until the cashier unlocks the chamber.
What are the possible drawbacks? Well, a trapped robber might go all Rorschach on the cashier (NSFW).
Remember back in 1979 when you first saw the movie Alien and were horrified to see that the xenomorph queen had another set of jaws inside her jaws? That is actually pretty common sight in the world of fish, not restricted to the goblin shark we've seen before. Ze Frank introduces us to a variety of fish who appear to turn themselves inside-out to reach out for something good to eat. Nature is metal.
Anyway, that's only the first few minutes of this video. It's actually another edition of Ze Frank's Animal Awards, which this time mostly go to the weird ways of fish, but also include birds and one strangely unlucky frog. As usual for the True Facts series, this video can be considered NSFW. There's also a one-minute skippable ad at the five minute mark. In case you missed them, you can watch the previous editions of Ze Frank's Animal Awards.
Scientists have previously managed to decode words from brain brain wave recordings taken from speech and languages areas of the human brain. Now they have managed to decode music. Patients who have electrodes attached to the surface of their brains were played a song. "Another Brick in the Wall" by Pink Floyd, while their brain waves were monitored. The data from the brain waves were analyzed with the help of artificial intelligence and translated to sound. What came back was muffled, but rhythmic, and the words "All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall" were audible. You can hear that translated sound at the Guardian article. The researchers are convinced that the data would render better sound if more electrodes were used, placed closer together.
What does this mean? The research is intended to find ways to allow those with disabling neurological conditions to communicate using brain waves, which would be a boon to victims of stroke or ALS. Or if you want to look at the dark side, it means that artificial intelligence can read our minds. However, artificial intelligence has yet to learn how to implant electrodes in human brains. -via Damn Interesting
(Image credit: Susan Vickery)
Edward Bulwer-Lytton was a 19th century politician and author who was the first to begin a novel with the line "It was a dark and stormy night..." (the entire twisted sentence is here). In his honor, San Jose State University holds an annual contest challenging writers to come up with the opening line of the worst possible novel. The entire novel, luckily, does not exist. The winners of the 2023 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have been announced. The Grand Prize winner is Maya Pasic of New York City, for this gem.
She was a beautiful woman; more specifically she was the kind of beautiful woman who had an hourlong skincare routine that made her look either ethereal or like a glazed donut, depending on how attracted to her you were.
There are also winners in many varied literary categories, from children's books to Westerns. I was particularly taken with the Fantasy & Horror opening line, by Drew Herman of Midlothian, Virginia.
In obedience to the Thousand-year Mandate of Hawksrealm, following the prophecy of Glenfrik the Morrowsayer, Klagnar and his (thus far) loyal Deathsword Warriors journeyed countless skyturns across the Burning Plains of Hellsplat and the Great Eastern Doomsea to an immense, shining folkshive that more or less resembled Fresno, but with a more genre-appropriate name.
Read the winners in all categories, plus plenty of Dishonorable Mentions, at the Bulwer-Lytton contest site. -via Fark
(Image generated with the Pulp-O-Mizer)
Have you ever seen a tattoo needle up close and personal? They can be scary or reassuring, but Gavin Free and Dan Gruchy, the Slow Mo Guys (previously at Neatorama), take the process a step further by recording a working tattoo gun installing ink in transparent ballistic gel, so we can see macro slow-motion video of what it's doing underneath the skin's surface.
Gav and Dan say they don't have any tattoos because they're not brave. We have seen their videos, and know quite well what ridiculous stunts they pull and what bravery is necessary to do them. But after recording what a tat gun does on a macro level, they are even less likely to get a tattoo in the future. I'm with them. Like I told my kids, "Life has enough pain without paying for more." Their father had plenty of tattoos.
This video has a sponsor message from 8:20 to 9:30. The rest of the video after that is outtakes. -via reddit
John F. Kennedy inspired the US to reach for the moon (ahead of the Soviets). But he wasn't the only 1960 presidential candidate who was interested in space. Gabriel Green threw his hat into the ring that year because aliens from outer space told him that he should. He described the aliens as human-shaped, but standing seven to nine feet tall. They were from the Alpha Centauri system and had already set up civilizations on Mars, Saturn, and Venus. Green said they could have conquered Earth in a few minutes, but were too ethical to do so. Instead, they would advise Green when he became president.
Now, we know that Green did not win the 1960 presidential race. In fact, he dropped out before election day, after which he claimed that aliens were advising President Kennedy. Green ran for senate in 1962, and for president again in 1972, when he got onto the Universal Party ticket. Read about Gabriel Green and his quest to bring peace and harmony to the world with the help of space aliens at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: Unknown)
Merve Mersinligil and her new husband Viktor Szontagh had just arrived in Kruger National Park in South Africa for their honeymoon. The first animal they saw was a leopard on the side of the road. Further along, they were slowed by a troop of around 50 baboons who kept sitting in the road. Well, duh, that's where the shade of the tree is. Mersinligil mused that maybe they should warn the baboons of the leopard they saw down the road, but just then the leopard showed up!
That's where we get a lesson in the value of living in a community. Every baboon knew their duty. The mothers ran with their babies, while the biggest males followed their leader and swooped in to attack the leopard! There is strength in numbers, and after all, they were fighting to protect their families. The leopard managed to get away, but he was lucky he wasn't torn to pieces by the angry baboons. It was an interesting beginning for a honeymoon. -via Digg
— Insane Plot Twists (@bad2sentence) August 10, 2023
The X account Insane Plot Twists collects memorable instances of two-sentence horror stories. They come mainly from the subreddit 2SentenceHorror, but also from other sources.
— Insane Plot Twists (@bad2sentence) April 5, 2023
The ones drawn from real life are the scariest.
— Insane Plot Twists (@bad2sentence) June 2, 2023
— Insane Plot Twists (@bad2sentence) April 23, 2023
— Insane Plot Twists (@bad2sentence) April 12, 2023
And sometimes they're just silly, but worth a couple seconds of your time.
— Insane Plot Twists (@bad2sentence) August 9, 2023
Those are the good ones. Quite a few have been taken to X (the website formerly known as Twitter) because they are the type of horror story that a seven-year-old might attempt, but those can be charming in their own way. You might enjoy running through the account to see which ones are truly scary, and which ones make no sense at all. Be aware that many contain NSFW text. -via Boing Boing
TikTok celebrity Brodie Moss was out in his transparent kayak with several cameras when he saw a surprising sight. A whale tail breached the surface in front of him and then... just stood there. He'd never seen such a thing, and frankly, neither have most of us. Sticking a camera underwater, he sees that the humpback whale is just floating upside down, airing out her tail. We can assume it's a female, as her calf was there, too.
This is not an unknown behavior. It's called tail sailing, and it's been seen by others, but no one knows why whales do it. There are many possibilities. It could be a good position for resting, or it may be a way to warm up or cool down, since the tail has a lot of vascular activity. While the term tail sailing is pretty cool, there's no way it's used for propulsion considering the size of a whale compared to its tail. Incidents of tail sailing have been observed all over the world, and can last as long as 12 minutes. Read more about tail sailing at ScienceAlert. -via Damn Interesting
When I was young, I thought this banjo-playing comedian on TV must be old because he had gray hair. But Steve Martin started going gray at a young age, and he was completely gray by age 32. By then, he'd already performed magic at Disneyland, written for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, had a standup act, and had won The Dating Game. Born on August 14, 1945, Steve Martin is still going strong and celebrating his 78th birthday today.
Martin has a long resume, with a slew of memorable characters: the Wild and Crazy Guy, King Tut, Navin Johnson, Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr, and others. He's also branched out in many directions. He is a member of the Grammy-winning band the Steep Canyon Rangers, who still tour. He became a father at age 67. He's an avid birdwatcher and art collector. And Martin now stars in his first TV series, Only Murders in the Building, with his longtime friend Martin Short. Read 78 bits of trivia on Steve Martin's long showbiz career at Cracked. The list includes plenty of videos.
Tシャツをパタパタする装置を作りました。 pic.twitter.com/Jq1Rpr0T9T
— カズヤシバタ(KAZUYA SHIBATA) (@seevua) August 14, 2023
It's been a few months since I've seen a daily high temperature under 100°F. I need to cool down and Kazuya Shibata has a solution to my problem. Well, one of them.
You can flap your shirt with your hand, but this exercise itself gets tiring and no one should exercise in this heat. So Shibata made this Arduino-controlled device that hooks onto the front of his pants. A magnet holds the shirt front in place and lever arms push the shirt back and forth. This is the sort of forward-thinking leadership that we need in technology today.
-via Massimo
The UK is full of quaint festivals that feature weird traditions from hundreds of years ago. The Gloucester cheese roll comes to mind. But the tradition of throwing pennies to the masses in Honiton, a town in East Devon, harks back to a horrifying past. Honiton had a celebration after being granted a Royal Charter in the year 1221, which became an annual festival. In the early days, the landed gentry would climb to the upper stories of its buildings and throw hot chestnuts to the poor people below. This was soon changed to hot pennies, because the elite found it amusing to see desperate people scramble for the pennies and risk burning their hands to catch them. It wouldn't be the only time a horrific show of abuse was turned into a beloved tradition. Tom Scott made it to Honiton this year to witness the Honiton Hot Pennies ceremony for himself.
James Arnold & Son was a London company that make surgical instruments, but also branched out into other areas with some innovative ideas. In 1881, they registered a design for a combination knife and fork called the Desideratum, which would be a boon to someone who had only one hand to eat with. The knife was a cutting edge that could be closed scissors-style to form a fork. Let's look closer. The sharp edge of the knife would have to be on the outside of the blade, because putting it on the inside would make it fairly impossible to cut anything. So what happens when you put a forkful of food in your mouth? I see no locking mechanism to hold the knife edge closed, and even if there was one, you'd better pray that the two parts of the instrument would hold together closely enough to not cut your mouth.
The fork-knife-scissors gadget is one of five Victorian inventions listed together. The others include a parasol with eye holes, a trumpet developed by Adolphe Sax, who found greater success with the saxophone, and something called the "Improved Telekouphonon," which actually worked and sold well until it was eclipsed by the telephone. Read about all of these inventions at the British National Archives. -via Strange Company
The recent DC superhero movie The Flash raises ethical questions that go way beyond Ezra Miller. The plot of the film involves time travel, and the complications include creating alternate timelines. The result is the appearance of multiple versions of superheroes as they appeared in different media, sometimes portrayed by actors who are long dead, with the help of CGI and artificial intelligence. But would those actors have approved of the use of their personal images in this way? Not only does this bring up the sticky question of dead people having rights, it also foreshadows one of the issues of the current writers and actors strikes. Will prior work of living artists be harnessed to create new movies? Will those artists be owed any input or compensation? The whole moral of The Flash is the inadvisability of messing with the past, but the producers did just that in making the movie they way they did. Nerdstaligic explains the finer points of this argument in a spoiler-filled video. -via Digg
