The Colôrobètch is a bogey that personifies the bise or icy wind. Known from Namur, Belgium, it nips unprotected children with its red beak until their skin becomes red, cracked, and bleeding.

A Book of Creatures is a project by an artist named Emile. She draws legends, myths, and cryptids from all over the world and tells us their stories. As drawn, they're both whimsically cute and terrifying. You have to wonder at the imaginations that brought these animals to existence.  

Usilosimapundu is a colossal creature from Zulu folklore. He literally carries ecosystems on his back, and his head is an enormous boulder. A swallowing monster, he is a personification of landslides.

The Marool is the anglerfish or monkfish in Shetland folklore. It has many eyes and sings wildly with joy when a ship capsizes.

You can see the full collection of legendary creatures at A Book of Creatures at Instagram. Bored Panda has a roundup of 40 of them plus an interview with the artist.

You don't have to be young to have the wrong idea about the 1980s. Some of us who lived through them only found out the real story later, or else got our timelines mixed up. At the time, it was just the way the world was: stranger danger, mullets, and the ozone layer. Those thing can even be related. The ozone layer was being destroyed by chlorofluorocarbons in aerosol sprays, right? And it took a lot of hair spray to get those big hairdos to fluff up just right, right? So it was vanity that destroyed the atmosphere, right? Wrong. While most of the publicity over the ozone layer was in the 1980s, scientists were way ahead of us, and CFCs were already banned in most aerosol cans in the 1970s. So you can blame the Aquanet, but you can't blame the big hairstyles of the '80s. And that's just one thing that makes sense to us now, but just wasn't so. Read the busting of seven misconceptions about the '80s at Mental Floss. You can also listen to it in video form.

In the 1950s, the CIA launched Project MKUltra, in which they experimented with LSD as a possible truth serum, mind control drug, or biological weapon. The head of the project was biochemist Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, who has been compared to "Q" from the James Bond movies as well as a mad scientist. The project began with volunteers, but then moved to unwitting subjects, with nefarious results that you can read about in a previous Neatorama post.

Later in the program, Gottlieb wanted to see how the combination of LSD and sex would affect possible subjects, specifically if they would be more easily interrogated and would release private information. To do this, MKUltra set up apartments and hired sex workers to lure subjects in. They were given LSD without their knowledge. After sex, the women would question the men while CIA agents watched through two-way mirrors and listened through planted microphones. Houses were set up for this in New York City and in San Francisco for Operation Midnight Climax. Hundreds of people were subjects of this experiment, and may not have ever realized anything was amiss afterward. Read about Operation Midnight Climax at Messy Nessy Chic. No nudes, but some images might be considered NSFW.

This is Dr. Ronald Weiss of Ottawa. Over the course of his career, he's performed vasectomies on at least 58,789 men including, according to the Toronto Star, celebrities, politicians, and entire hockey teams. He's a pioneer of a no-scalpel method and has a famously low complication rate, which has drawn to him patients as far away as Los Angeles and Japan.

In a 2016 interview for Ottawa magazine, Dr. Weiss shares his origin story. He had been a family physician who did minor operations in his office suite in the early 90s. Word got around that he could snip men quickly and painlessly. Eventually, it became his specialty and he would perform 14 each working day. This is why his wife calls him "the vasectomy machine."

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Vasectomy.Ca

A few years ago, redditor /u/flashtone experienced a hailstorm that damaged his car. It appears that the plastic coating held even when the glass did not, thus keeping the ice from completely penetrating the barrier and damaging the interior.

Some redditors are making off-color jokes about other protective coatings preventing other types of fluids from leaking. Others are pointing out that the car now has, as a feature, a decorative chandelier or mirrored disco ball.

-via Massimo

pic.twitter.com/hZr5NvnUzI

— Amanda (@Pandamoanimum) March 30, 2023

Mushrooms come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Pedro Pascal, the star of The Mandalorian and The Last of Us, has the stylish wardrobe of a man who gets his picture taken a lot. So who wore it better- one of nature's brilliant fungi, or the fun guy?

pic.twitter.com/wfoCQs9AEO

— Amanda (@Pandamoanimum) March 30, 2023

A Twitter thread from Amanda @Pandamoanimum has a dozen of these comparisons. You can enjoy the pretty colors, or just enjoy looking at Pedro Pascal. -via Everlasting Blort

The Royal Navy vessel HMS Bounty set sail from Tahiti to Jamaica in 1789 on the last leg of an arduous mission to import breadfruit to feed enslaved people in the Caribbean. The ship was commanded by Lieutenant William Bligh, a name that has become a metaphor for cruel authoritarianism. Three weeks out, Bligh's second in command, Fletcher Christian, led a mutiny and put Bligh to sea along with 18 loyalists in a small boat. The crew took the Bounty back to Tahiti and then to uninhabited Pitcairn Island to hide out. Bligh and his men rowed all the way to Timor, and eventually made it back to England.

That's what you would know about the mutiny from the movies, made in 1916, 1933, 1935, 1962, and 1984. But what ultimately happened to the people involved? The Bounty's crew fell into several groups: Those who sailed off with Bligh, those who followed Christian to Pitcairn, those who wanted to sail with Bligh but there was no room on the boat, and a group from various factions who decided to remain in Tahiti. Some from each group died or disappeared, and some on Tahiti were arrested for mutiny -and some of them died in a shipwreck. Bligh had a complicated career after the Bounty incident, including another mutiny, this one landlocked, so it was more of a coup. Christian and his men, plus a group of kidnapped Tahitians, disappeared for 35 years. But their descendants were eventually found, having created a strange culture of their own that continues today. Read the multiple complicated outcomes of the Bounty mutiny at Today I Found Out.

International borders can be weird. If you are in Detroit and go south, you end up in Canada (see the comments under this post). Rivers are like that. Near the mouth of the Rio Grande River, the water flow meanders widely, and in 1906 a private irrigation company simplified one of those meanders by cutting a channel across it to shorten the river, essentially changing the US/Mexico border and leaving the American residents of the village of Rio Rico in flux. When that was discovered, the government was like, no big deal, and made the irrigation company pay Rio Rico's residents some money. They were still US citizens, but over the years the oxbow lake left by the re-channeled river dried up and eventually no one knew where the boundaries were. The village made the most of their status during Prohibition, but the anomaly was rediscoverd in the 1960s, which led to further chaos. It's quite a story. -via Damn Interesting

Remote meetings tend to be a bit awkward or difficult. If workers aren’t struggling with the Internet connection, they’d probably be trying their best to finish the meeting without any uncomfortable moments or weird pauses. 

Inc.’s Jessica Stillman suggests one good way to kick off an online meeting. Following the words of Jackie Colburn, an online meeting moderator, she suggests kicking off meetings with a weird but effective icebreaker: people’s feet.  

"What are you wearing on your feet?" Colbourn wrote in her blog. "OK, I know this one is kind of goofy, but bear with me. I especially like using the prompt for virtual workshops because this detail is usually a mystery when dialing in from home." 

The question isn’t to let people be fashion critics but to introduce a little humor and playfulness into an interaction. It can also allow laughter to come into these meetings, and have employees feel relaxed and safe. 

"If a group is laughing together, then it suggests that our protective guard is down. This matters because there's research to suggest that when our brains are relaxed, we more easily achieve free idea association, which can lead to creativity," University College London professor Sophie Scott told the BBC.

Image credit: Anna Shvets

AnotherTomorrow, a fashion company dedicated to providing modern and sustainable luxury to its customers, is now asking people to send in their old clothes– and they’ll pay for it! 

The establishment launched its Authenticated Resale Program, which will pay people for sending their pre-loved clothing, provided that it’s from their label. The company will then resell these clothes in its store. Shoppers will then get a chance to purchase some discounted items from the set of pre-loved clothing from the program. 

Interested participants will only need to scan the QR code on their clothes and send it to AnotherTomorrow. They will then provide an estimated sale price and tell people how much they will get from the sale. After shipping the clothes to the company, participants may receive their payment via cash or store credit. 

Read more about the Authenticated Resale Program here!

Image credit:Kai Pilger

Meet Gabriele Galimberti, an Italian photographer that created the Toy Stories project, a heartwarming collection of photographs of children with their favorite toys. The collection captures the joy, innocence, and wonder of childhood. 

According to Galimberti, he began the project by accident when he was working for D di La Repubblica, an Italian magazine way back in 2010 and 2011. He traveled to 56 countries around the world, took photographs of people, and published their portraits as well as their stories.

“A few weeks before that long trip, a dear friend of mine had called me to her home to take photographs of her daughter Alessia,” Galimberti told Bored Panda. “When I arrived there, Alessia (four years old at the time) was putting her toys in order. I helped her, had the idea to advise her to put them in order by shape and color, and without realizing it I took the first photo of this project.” 

He then began another journey around the world to publish more photographs for the collection. Currently, the collection is still being updated. Photos of children and their toys from Texas, India, Malawi, China, Iceland, Fiji, and other locations are added to Toy Stories.  

The photographer aims to not only provide entertainment through these photos, but also show a child’s background, family, and culture. According to him, he noticed that children from richer countries were more possessive of their toys, while poorer kids tended to play with their friends outside.

Image credit: Gabriele Galimberti

We were honestly expecting some weird crustacean that was edible. But alas, it’s a fish. 

Government bodies and health associations usually recommend fish as a good source of protein, especially since it’s packed with omega-3 fatty acids. However, not all of the variations of fish are good for consumption. 

One of the most popular options for seafood to avoid is swordfish. This is because it is high in mercury and other contaminants. While eating this can provide protein and omega-3 fatty acids, the contaminants will be harmful to our health– which can outweigh the benefits of eating fish.

Aside from being bad for our health, hunting and consuming swordfish can be damaging to our environment. They are often overfished, which leads to an ecosystem imbalance. Farmed swordfish are fed with antibiotics and other chemicals, which can end up back in the environment and can be harmful to other wildlife. 

Read more about the swordfish here. 

Image via wikimedia commons

The Habsburgs (sometimes spelled Hapsburg) were a dynasty of Europeans from the same family who ruled over Austria, Germany, the Holy Roman Empire, and eventually countries across the continent for two centuries in the Middle Ages. You can recognize them in portraits by their pronounced jaws, called the Habsburg jaw. You are probably familiar with the last of the Spanish Habsburgs, King Charles II, from a previous Neatorama post. He is shown at the left in the image above, with his father and great-uncle Philip IV on the right. Charles had the most tangled family tree you've ever seen, outside the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. He also had a very pronounced Habsburg jaw, and so many other physical problems he never produced a royal heir. Common sense would tell you that the inbreeding caused the Habsburg jaw to become more pronounced over generations, but now we have science.

A study in the Annals of Human Biology focuses on 15 members of the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs from different generations who had realistic portraits painted. First they gleaned information from the family tree and assigned each of the subjects an inbreeding coefficient. Charles' inbreeding coefficient was so high that he never had a chance. Then separately, they asked mouth and jaw surgeons to examine the portraits and rate facial features that would indicate mandibular prognathism (protruding jaw) and maxillary deficiency (sunken midface). Then they compared the data from the two studies to determine that the Habsburg jaw was, indeed, likely to be the product of inbreeding. Get the details on this study at Smithsonian.

Passover is a Jewish religious observance to commemorate the Hebrews' exodus from Egypt. The name comes from the night the angel of death passed over their homes when killing the Egyptian's firstborn children. The traditional Seder is a meal in which every dish and every procedure has a story behind it, to teach and reinforce that history for the next generations.

However, this was a problem in the Soviet Union. Jews in Russia had suffered under many regimes, and the Bolsheviks were the least oppressive, considering their communist idea of equality. The communists wanted to welcome Jews into the fold, but they also wanted to stamp out religion. Their solution was to make Jews into an ethnic group instead of a religious group, by changing their religious traditions to suit the new ideology. That was the impetus behind the "Red Seder," in which the traditions were bent to reflect communist themes of throwing off the shackles of the capitalist bourgeois. Red Seders were promoted in the 1920s and '30s, after which they were deemed successful and then discarded under Stalin, who had his own feelings about Jews as an ethnic group. Read about the Bolshevik Red Seders at Atlas Obscura. 

(Image source: Hagadah far gloybers un apikorsim, 1923)

Francis Zuber was skiing through the trees at Mt. Baker in Washington state when he ran over an inverted snowboard. The board belonged to Ian Steger, who was still attached to it, but buried upside down in a tree well. Tree wells can have up to 20 feet of soft snow, and if you fall into one head first, you can disappear from sight forever. Steger was snowboarding with two friends, but they were ahead of him going downhill, and they might never have found him. When they called him, he couldn't reach his radio.

Zuber didn't know how long Steger had been buried, and frantically went to work finding his head so he could get air. This video contains NSFW language. Steger tells his side of the story and says he assumed he was going to die. He doesn't mention injuries, so we can assume he's okay now. -via Metafilter