The National Audubon Society has crowned the winners of its annual photography competition. The Grand Prize went to the photo above by professional nature photographer Liron Gertsman of Vancouver. These are two rock pigeons engaged in allopreening, a new word I learned today that means grooming each other as a courtship gesture. Look how their iridescent feathers stand out against the dark background! Rock pigeons generally mate for life and share child care duties.

The photograph that won in the Professional category is this Atlantic puffin, captured in the Westman Islands off Iceland by Shane Kalyn. Kalyn shot this puffin sitting on a lava formation on a rainy day. It was the first Atlantic puffin that he'd seen!

Other awards were given in categories such as Amateur, Female Bird, Plants for Birds, Fisher, Youth, and Video. You can see all the award winners and honorable mentions at the Audubon contest site. The top 100 photos not making the winner's circle are listed here. -via Kottke

It's August in the year 410. The eternal city of Rome is captured and sacked by the Visigoth warlord Alaric. The Visigoths eventually left the city, but the western Roman Empire never recovered from this blow, triggering a sequence of events that would ensure that it would not survive another century.

If you were an accidental time traveler to Rome during this terrible time, how could you survive making best use of current knowledge of the event? Author Cody Cassidy has advice. His newly published book, How to Survive History: How to Outrun a Tyrannosaurus, Escape Pompeii, Get Off the Titanic, and Survive the Rest of History's Deadliest Catastrophes, has specific, detailed advice with a focus on European history.

Cassidy has published a summary in Smithsonian magazine, including helpful tips for living through the 410 sack of Rome (there were numerous sacks of Rome, so it's important be specific). Your best option is to flee the city toward the south and hide in the hills. You'll need to do so for only a few days because the Visigoths left the city quickly. If you're unable to get out of the city, hide in a church, as many of them were spared by the invaders.

Other calamities listed in Cassidy's article include the 1453 fall of Constantinople and the famine of 536. How can we escape a Tyrannosaurus Rex? We'll probably have to read the complete book to find out.

-via Nag on the Lake | Image: Andre Durenceau

YouTuber luisengineering likes to ramp up the power of ordinary household devices. In the past, he's modified a robot vacuum so that can move up to 37 MPH and adapted a Nerf Blaster to fire tampons.

In a similarly practical vein, he wants to deal with a roommate problem. His video is in German, but I gather that our hero lives with three other men and all four like to use electric toothbrushes. There aren't enough electrical outlets in the bathroom to keep all four toothbrushes juiced, so he has built an off-grid solution.

Luisengineering bought a 2-cyclinder 4-stroke gasoline engine with a 7 cc displacement. After designing and 3D printing new parts, he was able to drive this power to his toothbrush.

Hearing protection is advised while using this powerful and loud tool.

-via Hack a Day

You've probably seen it a million times, but never thought much about it. The stock photos of women lying on their stomachs while typing on a laptop or writing in a journal are really common, yet just as physically impossible as that movie poster pose. To see what's in front of you while lying this way, a woman must prop herself up on her elbows, which makes using her hands for typing too difficult. It's not comfortable, either. These photos never show men doing it, because that would be ridiculous. This pose happens in movies and TV shows as well. No one does this in real life.  

Why this pose? Most likely it's an opportunity to show both boobs and butt, and also hint at the behavior of a teenage girl in her bedroom. Merrill Markoe is a writer, and those images got under her skin, so she wrote a funny and relatable essay about these women in stock photos who not only appear to be writing while on their stomachs, but also drinking coffee, talking on the phone, and otherwise multitasking in bed. -via Boing Boing

The assignment - do not need the ER this #July4th pic.twitter.com/wUa0Ye9HEX

— US Consumer Product Safety Commission (@USCPSC) July 1, 2023

After a three-year absence due to the pandemic, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission returned to the National Mall in Washington last week to put on a demonstration of how not to use fireworks. They used styrofoam mannequins to show us the most common ways people get injured during the Fourth of July (and then they picked up all the pieces before they left). Last year, eleven people were killed by fireworks, and 10,200 people were injured badly enough to go to the emergency room. If Elon Musk's latest tweaks to the algorithm prevent you from seeing the video, you can watch the carnage here.

USCPSC coming through solid on this July weekend.

— Kenny_Blankenship (@Blank3nship89) July 1, 2023

Lifehacker has a list of the latest fireworks safety tips, including warnings about how to supervise children and pets. Besides all that, the the USCPSC Twitter feed is a pretty handy reference for the latest product recalls, and they can be quite funny at times, too. -Thanks WTM!  

In 1961, Forrest Ackerman, editor of  Spacemen magazine, received the above letter from a writer named Stephen King. But King was only 14 at the time, and not quite the household name he would become some years later. You can see hints of the horror master he would eventually be, in the declaration that the obituary section was his favorite part of the magazine.

Ackerman declined to publish the story accompanied by this letter, titled "The Killer." You can read a synopsis of it at Wikipedia. Despite this and other rejections, King kept writing and submitting stories until he finally got one of his tales published in another magazine in 1967. He also wrote full-length novels, and his fourth book was the first to be published: Carrie, in 1970. Persistence pays off!

Ackerman reconsidered his rejection many years later, and finally published "The Killer"in the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland, in 1994. -via Nag on the Lake

When we think of a saber-tooth, we imagine Smilodon, once called the saber-tooth tiger, that roamed America thousands of years ago and left remains in the La Brea tar pits. There were actually three species of the Smilodon genus. But not all saber-tooth animals were cats. They weren't even all carnivores! Terrifyingly long canine teeth evolved separately in mammals from the very beginning of mammals. Tiarajudens eccentricus was a proto-mammal that lived in Brazil 260 million years ago. It didn't eat meat, but had long canines that were possibly used to fight others of their species. The genus Inostrancevia was a ten-foot-long proto-mammal with species found in both Russia and South Africa, indicating they migrated over time before the continents split apart. Get a short course in saber-toothed creatures in a roundup of eight very different toothy animals that lived millions of years apart at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Momotarou2012)

The United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, is the elite college for army officer candidates. It has at least 4,000 cadets, all who go through both academic and physical training at the same time. Feeding these students and the faculty means preparing around 13,000 meals a day. That much food requires huge vats and advance planning. But what makes the West Point food service notable is its efficiency. All the cadets arrive for meals in formation at the same time, and must finish eating within 25 minutes. The schedule allows for no lags or screwups, and every member of the kitchen staff and the cadets themselves have specific duties to get it all accomplished in time. The plan goes off like clockwork, three times a day.     

The dietician said that they provide between 1,200 and 1,500 calories a day to each student. That will certainly keep them on the skinny side, as the average American adult consumes more than 3,000 calories a day! But most likely she actually meant for each meal, since they are eating hearty portions.

People ask why the cadets don't clean up their own tables. There are several reasons: that would be inefficient, they don't have time before their next class, and perhaps most importantly, they are officer candidates learning to be officers.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is in theaters this weekend. The fifth Indiana Jones film has so far garnered so-so reviews. So let's look back at the one that started it all: Raiders of the Lost Ark. The extended opening scene set up the character of Indiana Jones so well, it grabbed us and wouldn't let go. Jones being pursued by a giant boulder rolling straight for him is unforgettable even more than 40 years later, and that first chase scene has been recreated and parodied endlessly. Cracked looked back and resurrected six of the best parodies of the boulder scene, from Weird Al Yankovic, The Simpsons, Robot Chicken, The Muppets, and more. Even if you've seen them all before, you'll probably enjoy them at least as much as the new Indiana Jones film.  

You might have never heard of Brigadier General James Wilkinson, because he never accomplished anything great, and he was also never held accountable for his many failures. But a chronicle of his military career is a long list of corrupt escapades.

1. Wilkinson was involved in a conspiracy to remove General George Washington from command during the Revolutionary War, yet Washington still appointed him to lead the Second Infantry Regiment in 1791.

2. During the Northwest Indian War, Wilkinson spent his time undermining his superiors in order to be promoted in their place.

3. In 1803, he was sent to New Orleans to receive the Louisiana Purchase from France. While there, he gave the US's plans for exploration of the new territory to the Spanish in exchange for cash.

4. Wilkinson conspired with Aaron Burr to grab some land for themselves to start a new country, then sold out Burr to President Jefferson.

5. He took the US Army to Louisiana in 1809 to defend it from the British, but in a series of bribes and kickbacks, lodged his army in a place where almost half of the 2,000-man army died, and another couple hundred deserted or resigned. It was the deadliest peacetime military disaster in US history.

Wilkinson survived court martial or any discipline in these incidents because there was incompetence from others involved, and the various governing authorities wanted to avoid a public scandal. Wilkinson racked up more shenanigans later in his career, but this list is already depressingly long. Read about the astonishing career of General James Wilkinson at Military History Now. -via Strange Company

We who live in the Northern Hemisphere (and that's most of us) don't think much about the Southern Hemisphere until we point out some incongruences like how Australians carve watermelons for Halloween.

The truth is that the earth's Southern Hemisphere is really different from the Northern Hemisphere. In the north, we have a lot more land, but the pole has none, while the south has more sea but the pole is covered with a land mass. That, and other factors, make a distinct difference in the atmosphere, the pollutants, and the weather of the two hemispheres. There's even a sort of barrier around the middle where the earth spins the fastest that keeps the two halves of the earth distinct from each other. Hank Green explains the geological, astronomical, and cultural factors that make the Southern Hemisphere cooler, stormier, and cleaner.

The world was jarred by the loss of the five men aboard the Titan submersible that imploded last week as it went down to explore the Titanic shipwreck. The depth of that dive was around 13,000 feet, or about 2.5 miles, or four kilometers. The deep sea is dangerous whether you are in a submersible or a submarine. Wikipedia has an extensive list of incidents and accidents involving underwater transport, many of them deadly. But how deep was the deepest successful underwater rescue?

That would be 1,575 feet. Roger Chapman and Roger Mallinson were laying transatlantic cable in the submersible Pisces III off the coast of Ireland in 1973. After their shift, the submersible was towed up by its cable, but at the surface, the tow line tangled with a hatch, popped it open, and water flowed in. The submersible sank again, snapping the tow line when it reached its limit, then fell to the ocean floor. The two men inside had no lights, but by a minor miracle, they had 64 hours of oxygen left. They also had a support ship above them with other submersibles. But those had 1973 technology, and weren't built to rescue people from the ocean floor. By the time the men returned to the surface, they had been in the submersible for 84 hours. Read about the complicated rescue of the Pisces III at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: United States Navy)

Cute aggression is a psychological term that was coined in 2013. It refers to the urge to pinch, bite or squeeze something we find to be adorable, like babies, puppies, or kittens. We got an overview of this urge in a previous video. Scientists believe the aggressive urge to squeeze or bite what we find cute may have to do with the intensive rush of positive emotions.

In his new song "Cute Agression", musician Anthony Vincent supplies the aggression with his heavy metal composition, and his beloved cat Pyretta supplies the cute. Well, some of it. There are other YouTubers and their cats experiencing cute aggression in this video, too. It's quite unique- I bet you have never heard the lyrics "I boop her little nose" in any other metal performance. Warning: this song may stay with you.

-via Metafilter

The Barbie/Oppenheimer crossover has begun pic.twitter.com/16zESO1TAY

— Stone Cold Jane Austen (@AbbyHiggs) June 28, 2023

Two of the most anticipated films of the year are both opening on July 21st: Barbie and Oppenheimer. The only thing they have in common is a single name for a title. Will you watch them both? In many multiplexes, you will be able to see them back-to-back, but remember that Oppenheimer is three hours long, so plan accordingly. Theaters with limited screens will most likely run Barbie early in the evening, and reserve Oppenheimer for later at night, so you can see both, but that is not the order I would recommend for a good night's sleep afterward.

pic.twitter.com/mYrm97ZjMM

— 🖤🩶🤍💜Quinton Murdock🩷💛🩵🔜 MFF 🔆 (@QuintonMurdock) June 5, 2023

Anyway, the timely juxtaposition of Oppenheimer, a biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, and Barbie, a live-action movie about the fashion doll, gives us a perfect opportunity for memes. Some are mashups of the two polar opposite films, while others contrast people's facial expressions after watching each movie. And some are just found humor.

Their entire lives have led up to the Oppenheimer / Barbie release pic.twitter.com/w2FgLwhDg1

— Yann (@yannhatchuel) June 26, 2023

See lots more of these in a roundup of Barbie/Oppenheimer double feature memes at Hyperallergic.
-via Nag on the Lake

An artwork was discovered in the remains of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. Found by excavators in Region IX, located in the center of the city, it was hung on the wall in an annex of a house that included a bakery. This painting suggests that the residents of the city could have been munching on the earliest version, or at least the possible precursor to modern Italian pizza. 

The fresco, dated to be around 2,000 years old, shows a flatbread that looks like the distant ancestor of the modern delicacy, at least according to the Italian Culture Ministry. The dish featured in the painting doesn’t really have the ingredients that make it technically a pizza, but archaeologists said that the toppings on the flatbread were fruits such as pomegranates or dates.

Additionally, instead of the classic tomato sauce, it looks to have been seasoned with spices and some kind of pesto sauce. “How can we fail to think, in this regard, of pizza, also born as a 'poor' dish in southern Italy, which has now conquered the world and is also served in starred restaurants,” Pompeii director Gabriel Zuchtriegel said.

Image credit: Italian Culture Ministry