It takes a certain amount of hubris to believe that intelligent alien life forms would be anything like humans. That unconscious assumption makes it easier for Hollywood, but is actually quite limiting. Intelligence can evolve in ways we cannot even imagine, but we should try to. We have an example right here on earth, although separated from us by the environment of the ocean. We know an octopus is intelligent, but its neurological system is very different from all the land animals we are familiar with. They have more neurons in their arms and suckers than in their brains. Those neurons process sensation and communicate and coordinate all along the system. “It’s not about how intelligent they are, it’s about how they are intelligent.”

Now imagine this video from Lizbeth's perspective. She was abducted by an alien species, taken to a lab, studied, scanned, and experimented on, and then brought back home unharmed. Do you think any of her friends are going to believe that tale? -via Digg

The Neolithic people who built Stonehenge 4,500 years ago left behind an amazing monument, but that's not all they left behind. They also left their trash and body waste in the village of Durrington Walls, where they are believed to have lived while erecting the stone circle. Scientists have studied coprolites, or fossilized feces, found in the dump. These have been identified as both human and canine. They found parasite eggs, most notably capillariid eggs, in some of the samples.

Capillariid worms don't normally infest humans, and the people who passed them probably didn't suffer from them. But it gives us a clue as to what they ate. That would be beef and pork, including organ meats, not cooked well enough to kill the parasites. The canine samples also contained the eggs, which indicates that humans shared their undercooked food with the dogs. These findings bolster other clues about the people who lived there, like their festive gatherings that drew travelers from far away. Read what we've learned about the builders of Stonehenge from the trash they left behind at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: garethwiscombe)

You may have wondered at one time or another whether sloths ever fall out of trees. They do, but they have evolved physically to survive long falls. Earlier this month, a baby brown-throated three-toed sloth was found near a beach in Costa Rica. Volunteers from the Jaguar Rescue Center in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca rushed the infant to a vet to be checked out. The baby was okay, so they took it back, hoping to find its mother.

The mother sloth had probably looked for the baby, but sloths have terrible eyesight. She had already climbed halfway back up her tree when the crew arrived with the baby. They summoned the mother with the recorded cry of the baby (iPhones are really handy). The mother made her way back down, a sequence that is edited in this video because it probably took a loooong time. After we get to see the reunion, they play it again, to show how the volunteer climbed up to meet her. What a sweet reunion! That baby won't let go of mama again for a long time.  -via Digg

Con man William Penn Patrick understood the basics of relieving people of their money: 1. people want to believe there's an easy way to get rich, and 2. when they realize they've been conned they are often too embarrassed to admit it. Patrick's three most notorious businesses, launched between 1963 and 1974, were lucrative but also unethical and dangerous.  

Holiday Magic purportedly sold cosmetics, but that was just the gimmick. It was a pyramid scheme, in which every participant's income depended on recruiting others, even after their initial investment. Spectrum Air repaired planes, with deadly results. And Patrick's Leadership Dynamics Institute was an expensive course in self-improvement that involved torture to toughen participants up. The activities included lying in coffins, being semi-crucified, whipping, kicking, humiliation, eating bad food, and even worse. Eventually the FTC and other in investigative bodies caught up with him. Read the story of William Penn Patrick and his scams at Mental Floss.

Nicole Pesce is a concert pianist of the highest caliber. She's been at work since early childhood, having memorized over 500 songs by the age of  7. Now, as an adult, she's personally composed over 300 and is famous for her comedic performances reminscent of the late Victor Borge.

In this concert delivered in 2011, Pesce imagined what the classic tune "Happy Birthday" would sound like if it had been written by famous classical composers. She mixes up that song with Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata", Chopin's "Military Polonaise", Brahms's "Lullaby", Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor", and a Mozart piece that I can't name.

For the final bit, Pesce imagines Mozart performing it while very drunk. Quite athletically, she plays the piano while upside down. Pesce takes her inspiration from a particular scene in the film Amadeus.

-via Nag on the Lake

There's a Facebook group called simply Funny Signs. Anyone can go look, and 4500 people have joined in order to post funny signs. Be warned that it is a time sink, as you keep scrolling to see the strangeness of modern signs. See, we ignored posted signs for so long that those who create them had no choice but to get creative just on the off chance that you might read one. And creativity pays off!

It's amazing what you can find entertaining if you just pay attention. You can see a roundup of 40 such signs at Bored Panda, or go directly to the Facebook group to keep up with the flood of incoming signs. 

Finnish madman Lauri Vuohensilta (previously at Neatorama) loves to destroy things in dramatic fashion. He's managed to obtain some high-performance fireworks to blow up various objects like handbags and mail boxes, but the ultimate goal is to blow up the toilet from his father's workshop. Now, to be honest, it appears that the toilet was being replaced anyway, and they took it outside to give it a respectful send off after 50 years of service. We also get to meet Lauri's father, and find that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. The elder Vuohensilta finds the explosion a success, noting that at least the toilet doesn't leak anymore. But wait! There's more! They also blow up a washing machine and a car. "That was a big boom!" A good time was had by all. -via Fark

The ancient human species known as Denisovans were first identified by fossil fragments in Siberia. More were found in Tibet. And although Denisovans disappeared as a species 50,000 years ago, DNA studies show that traces of Denisovan DNA exist today in people throughout southeast Asia. And now scientists have finally found a Denisovan fossil in southeast Asia, in Laos to be exact. Samples of sediment removed in 2018 from Tam Ngu Hao 2, also known as Cobra Cave, contain animal teeth and a human child's molar. The tooth, estimated to be 164,000 to 131,000 years old, is almost certainly Denisovan. It shares some morphological dimensions of Neanderthal teeth, but no remains of Neanderthals have ever been discovered that far south in Asia.    

We know that several human species inhabited Asia at one time or another, including Denisovans, H. erectus, H. neanderthalenis, H. floresiensis, H. luzonensis, and H. sapiens. We also know that they interbred, although the exact timeline of the interactions between each species is not yet clear. Read more about the new Denisovan identification at Archaeology World. -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: Fabrice Demeter, et al)

Rejection, whether is from a job or a date, can be painful. But sometimes, when it happens, the person turning us away can be kind about it.

David Attenborough, a British broadcaster most famous for creating and narrating nature programs, such as Life on Earth, has a public reputation as a gentleman. He does not casually cut down people who seek his aid.

James Mielke, a producer for the video game design studio Limited Run Games, once attempted to enlist Attenborough as a voiceover artist for the game Jupiter & Mars. That's an underwater, immersive VR experience, so Attenborough would be an ideal narrator.

Attenborough thanked Mielke for the invitation, but demurred. He doesn't do fiction narration in order to maintain a specific public image. But he let Mielke down gently.

-via Richard Eisenbeis

I posted a free-floating meme for a laugh and ended up learning something new. This illustration from a medieval manuscript isn't a tucking-in bird, it's a caladrius. The caladrius bird was usually white, and often lived with kings. A medieval healer would be well-equipped to own, or at least know, a caladrius because of their healing and diagnostic abilities.

The dung of the caladrius was believed to cure blindness, but this remedy was rather a mixed blessing since it required the direct application of guano in the eyes of the afflicted.  But the real value of the caladrius was in its infallible prognostic abilities.  If it was brought into a sickroom and turned away from the man or woman within, that person would surely die.  If, however, the caladrius kept his gaze on the ill person and 'directed itself towards his face' (sometimes this is depicted quite literally; see below), it was a different story.  After staring down the sick man or woman, the caladrius would fly into the air, taking the illness with it, and the patient was destined to make a full recovery.    

You rarely see any depictions of a caladrius bird after the 15th century, but Saturday Night Live featured one in a skit called Theodoric of York.

See more illustrations of the caladrius and you can learn something new, too, at the British Library's Medieval Manuscripts blog.  -Thanks Kolo Jezdec!

It wasn't easy to stay cool before the invention of air conditioning, and even harder before we had electric power. But some of our Founding Fathers were able to invest in a Fan Chair. The chair, invented by musical instrument maker John Cram, had pedals somewhat like those of a sewing machine, which powered a simple fan that moved back and forth to create a slight breeze on the user's face. The version you see above is somewhat of an improvement, relying on the action of rocking the chair to move the fan.

This is just one gadget from a roundup of eight methods of keeping cool before air conditioning at Mental Floss, most of which we don't use anymore. To be honest, I really would like a sleeping porch. I've known a few people who had them, and they are nice as long as there's a roof for rain and a good screen for insects.   

(Image credit: U.S. National Archives)

This video starts off assuring us that we won't be swallowed by a whale. Then it goes into details of "what if?" The problem I have with the presentation is the word "swallowed." In many of the cases, a better word would be "ingested," because there's a big difference between finding yourself in a whale's mouth and finding yourself in a whale's stomach. In fact, there's only one whale that could theoretically swallow a human, but plenty that might ingest a human. Still, we can't help but imagine being eaten when we see these gigantic ocean creatures. Don't worry, your chances of being ingested by a whale are smaller than being chewed up by a shark. You're welcome. -via Boing Boing

So I ordered a cake from a renowned bakery in Nagpur, through #Swiggy. In the order details I mentioned “Please mention if the cake contains egg”. I am speechless after receiving the order 👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/WHN0Ht20r0

— Kapil Wasnik (@kapildwasnik) May 20, 2022

Remember the telephone game, where a message is sent from person to person to see how mangled it gets? Swiggy is an online service for ordering and delivering food in India. Such services can make life simpler, but we all know that communication gets garbled when a message has to go through too many people, or even apps. This can reach ridiculous degrees when someone fills out the wrong field, and miscellaneous instructions get put where the cake decoration should go. It wasn't the first time this happened with Swiggy.

Dear @swiggy_in , thank you so much.. pic.twitter.com/ZAQ5y3g0hZ

— @run (@arunnair86) December 13, 2021

Then other people responded in the Twitter thread, although we don't know where they ordered their cakes.

Why shouldn't he be? It's his birthday!😂

— GubbWerks Misericordial (@GubbWerks) May 20, 2022

See more of these in the Twitter thread. Some are pretty old, but they are still funny! -via reddit

NASA has been receiving some glitchy data from Voyager I. Yes, you may be surprised to learn that Voyager is sending and receiving signals from earth, which are a little bit concerning lately. Data from its articulation and control system (AACS), which control the probe's orientation, don't match what is happening onboard. How would they know? Because if the data sent back was correct, the antenna would not be pointing toward earth, and we wouldn't have received the signals. Voyager's signals are still strong, and engineers are trying to pinpoint the problem.

But they really don't consider it a terrible problem. Voyager was launched in 1977, and honestly wasn't expected to send back signals this long. It is now outside the solar system, 14.5 billion miles (23.3 billion kilometers) away. NASA engineers have to be specially trained to use its "obsolete" but still working equipment. When it launched, computers were programmed by punch cards and those of us who weren't programmers were giving up our 8-track players for cassettes. Its partner Voyager II is close behind, at 12.1 billion miles (19.5 billion kilometers) away from earth, and has shown no problems in communication. Read an update on the 45-year-old V-gers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  -via Geeks Are Sexy

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Kingsland, Arkansas, has a Cash flow problem. The town is the birthplace of country musician Johnny Cash, and features a silhouette of the Man in Black on its water tower. Last week, someone shot the tower with amazing aim, and started a leak in a "very sensitive area" of the silhouette. For days, the image of Cash has appeared to be peeing on the town. Unlike cities in the west, Kingsland is not suffering a water shortage, and the effects on residents' water flow should be minimal. Kingsland authorities are concerned about the cost to repair the leak, estimated to be around $5,000. That may seem trivial, but it's a stretch for a small town with a limited budget. However, the viral story should be well worth it if the city were to launch a GoFundMe account. Since the initial report, a suspect has been arrested in the incident. Stephen Colbert addressed the story with a couple of musical numbers. -via Metafilter, where you'll find all the puns.