The Difficult Chair is, well difficult. The Easy Chair is easy and thus has certain advantages. But as one Instagram commenter notes, you really need to experience the Difficult Chair to appreciate the Easy Chair.
So, inspired by this comic by Dan Piraro, let us endure the Difficult Chair to ensure that our children may have the liberty to study the Easy Chair. This plan does, though, assume that we are able to have children after sitting in that chair.
Native Americans and early colonists marked the graves of their dead, but markers made from wood don't last and stones weren't carved as they are today, until one man was memorialized in Jamestown, Virginia. A polished black limestone grave marker was found near the settlement's church in 1901. Jamestown was founded in 1607, but the tombstone has no dates. It had indentations where metal inlays have corroded and disappeared. One is in the shape of a knight, so it has been titled the Knight's Tombstone.
According to a new study published in The International Journal of Historical Archaeology, it was the shape of that indentation that led to the identification of the man who was originally buried there, and the fossils contained in the stone itself that led to the identification of its origin in Europe. As with many historical mysteries, the conclusions are labeled "most likely" in a lot of places. Read the story of the man who got America's first carved tombstone at IFLScience. -via Strange Company
(Image credit: Jamestown Rediscovery (Preservation Virginia))
TikTok is the modern equivalent of central Italy in the Fifteenth Century. It's the heart of a renaissance of intellectual development in which daring pioneers push the frontiers of human understanding beyond walls imposed by the reactionary elements of our society. It's why air fried Twinkies are able to exist.
@MorganChompz tests and evaluates mass-marketed foods in her home laboratory, but she also performs experiments at the edge of scientific certainty. Having heard that it was possible to cook Twinkies in air fryers, she conducted her own study. To follow her Promethean example, set your air fryer at 400° American and toast your Twinkie for three minutes. The result is a perfect balance between chewiness and crispiness.
-via The Takeout
Cartoonist Mark Parisi illustrates the proliferation of tipping as a practice for services that do not traditionally solicit tips. This dog really hopes that you wil click "Custom".
In the past year or so, I've seen automatic payment systems asking for tips and outrage from people on X and in real life objecting to this practice. But with the rise of AI, I accept that it may be worthwhile giving in to this shakedown. Perhaps tipping a robot now delays my future rightsizing into biomass energy.
Redditor valardohaerisx spotted this scene on the highway near Idaho Springs, Colorado. While refreshingly seasonal, one has to wonder why they felt the need to use ratchet straps to secure a pumpkin on top of the vehicle. From the comments, here are the most plausible reasons, not at all ranked in the order of likelihood.
1. The kids in the backseat were fighting over who gets to hold the pumpkin. And the trunk is full.
2. Dad recently bought ratchet straps and by golly, he's going to use them.
3. You don't put a dirty vegetable inside a Lexus!
4. The car is already full of pumpkins.
5. It worked for the Christmas tree.
6. Someone in the car is allergic to pumpkin.
7. "Because one stray "Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo" from a passenger, and you got a big freakin' horse carriage in your backseat."
8. Because it's funny.
A good time was had by all.
Amara is a young southern white rhinoceros at Knowsley Safari in Prescot, UK. She's just under two years old and was noticed to be limping earlier this year. Rest and pain medication didn't help, so the zoo consulted with veterinarians from the University of Liverpool. Scans revealed that Amara had a broken ulna and needed surgery. How do you perform this kind of surgery on a rhino? Very carefully. In fact, it had never been done before.
The university sent a team of ten large animal veterinarians to perform the five-hour surgery. But they had never operated on a rhinoceros -they specialize in horses. And who knows the amount of anesthesia to give a juvenile rhino that weighs 800 kilgrams (1,760 pounds)? But Amara came through the surgery just fine and her leg was fitted with a cast. She spent the next six months confined to a paddock with her mother, but now the cast has been removed. Veterinarians will continue to monitor the condition of Amara's leg, but she is doing well and back to playing with the other rhinos in the park. Click to the right on the image above to see Amara.
A dairy cow named Aria is appalled by the behavior of a distracted and incompetent barn hand who not only treats the cows like objects, but also wastes their milk. This young man needs a lesson in respect. So they sit him down and Aria performs a song written by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, who composed the music for Little Shop of Horrors, Beauty and the Beast, and The Little Mermaid, among other productions. "Aria for a Cow" was composed for Sesame Street, but was never used for the show. In this short it is sung with spirit by Kate Pazakis Gonzalez. The short has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. -via Metafilter
The fossil remains of an archaeopteryx were first discovered in 1861. It had feathers, so it was classified as a bird, the first bird, actually. But in the last 20 years, we've found an awful lot of dinosaurs of all kinds that had feathers, even dinos that weren't anywhere near related to each other. We know feathers help birds fly, but dinosaurs didn't fly (pterosaurs are not classified as dinosaurs) or so we thought. So why did dinosaurs develop feathers?
Dinosaur feathers came in all shapes and sizes, from tiny fuzz to plumes to brushy spikes. They also came in a range of colors. Some dinos had both scales and feathers, and a few were capable of flight. Yes, recent discoveries have found a couple of non-avian dinosaurs that could fly with their feathers. That sounds contradictory but "avian" in this case doesn't mean flight, it means the dinosaur line that evolved into birds. Each species had their own reasons for growing feathers, from warmth to camouflage to mating displays, or a combination of ways to use feathers. Read about some of these remarkable dinosaurs and what we've learned from them at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: Lucas-Attwell)
Who knew the Bee Gees could rock so hard? The latest mashup from Bill McClintock (previously at Neatorama) is titled "You Make Me Feel Like Stayin' a Rocket Queen." It combines the Guns N' Roses song "Rocket Queen" with "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees and "You Make Me Feel Like Dancin'" from Leo Sayer, although Sayer doesn't show up substantially until the song is half over -although I may have missed something in all that falsetto. As McClintock often does, he sneaks in cameos from other artists for guitar solos, like Jimi Hendrix and White Zombie in this song. He's spent years proving to us that rock and disco go together like peas and carrots, as well as other music genres. While his mashups might make you laugh or make you wallow in nostalgia, they also remind us that a good song is good no matter how you categorize it.
YouTuber @CallDuckOfficial loves call ducks, which are a specific breed and, as far as I can tell, the most adorable breed. Chip and Clover live fun and pampered lives with their human, who gives them all of the comforts that an anatine companion could yearn for.
Nonetheless, Chip the duck is ungrateful and sometimes harasses his human. In this case, he prevents the human from tying his shoes.
-via Laughing Squid
You might not recognize the name Götz von Berlichingen, but he left his mark on history forever by coining the phrase "kiss my ass." That in itself is quite a legacy, but there was much more to the 15th-century German knight. In his 47-year military career, von Berlichingen fought for the Holy Roman Emperor, then against him, then for him again. He earned the nickname "Germany's Robin Hood" when he led a peasant's revolt and the nickname "Iron Hand" when he lost his right arm early in his career and replaced it with a metal prosthetic.
Götz von Berlichingen felt at home fighting and leading armies. At age 20, he retired from regular military service after several years and then raised his own army of mercenaries. They fought for whoever hired them for many years. Later in life, von Berlichingen lent his service to underdogs fighting for their freedom from oppression. He made a couple of attempts to retire that didn't stick, because von Berlichingen was born to fight. When he finally did and wrote an account of his life, it became a best seller and a play by Goethe. Read about the toughest knight of the Middle Ages at Military History Now. -via Strange Company
In 1994, Gloria Ramirez was suffering from late stage cervical cancer and went to a hospital for help. Staffers noticed odd odors emanating from Ramirez, especially when her skin was pierced by IVs or hypodermic needles. Her caregivers, other patients, and hospital employees immediately began to shows signs of a mysterious disease or possibly poisoning. These serious illnesses were quickly connected with Ramirez, but what was it? Was it the drugs she was taking to treat her cancer? Some strange chemical reaction in her body? Had she been poisoned herself? And how could she had survived even her short hospital visit with such dangerous toxins? Some have proposed that the symptoms other people experienced could have been a case of mass hysteria. Despite one of the most thorough medical investigations in US history, the case remains inconclusive, although there are several possible explanations. If the case sounds a little familiar even if you don't remember when it made the news, that may be because it inspired episodes in several TV shows.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) was marked as a musical genius from early childhood. Over the course of his life, he wrote over six hundred pieces that survive to this day. Now we can add one more composition to that list. The Guardian reports that the staff of the city libraries of Leipzig, Germany, have found a previously-unknown work.
Mozart probably composed the piece in late childhood. It has seven small movements for a string trio and, when played, lasts about twelve minutes. The manuscript is likely to be a copy of the original and dates to about 1780, fifteen years after the original was written. Scholars have titled it Ganz kleine Nachtmusik.
-via Ted Gioia | Image: Royal Opera House Convenant Garden
Once the groceries are purchased, people tend to disregard their shopping lists and leave them in shopping carts or parking lots. Or they may save them and contribute their lists to The Grocery List Collection, which has almost 4,000 of them now. Bill Keaggy founded the site in the year 2000 after becoming fascinated with other people's discarded lists that he found, and now he has a book, an album about groceries, and templates for your future grocery lists. But the real fun is looking through the collection to see what other people wrote down to remember what to buy.
They are jotted down on notebook paper, old receipts, envelopes, stationary, post-it notes, and a variety of scraps -even a dollar bill or two! The lists are a glimpse into a stranger's life, and their lack of spelling ability. It appears no one can spell mayonnaise, yoghurt, or even bananas. -via Messy Nessy Chic
I saw this and thought, "What's a tilt coaster?" That question is answered early in this video mockup when the track seems to break, and then just goes vertical before the roller coaster is, um, dropped onto the course. The new Siren's Curse roller coaster was just announced today, and will be opening sometime in 2025 at Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio. It is only the world's second tilt coaster, the other being Gravity Max at Discovery World in Taichung, Taiwan. Siren's Curse will feature a 90-degree drop, two full gravity rolls, 13 weightless airtime moments, and a speed of up to 58 miles per hour. Fans are happy that Cedar Point is offering this coaster without removing any of the existing rides. We hope it will undergo thorough testing before opening. Still, no matter how safe it is, that's a big nope from me. -via Digg
