Amy Schneider is on a months-long winning streak on the game show Jeopardy! On Tuesday, she surpassed Matt Amodio to become the second-winningest contestant on the show when she won her 39th game (Ken Jennings is still the champ, winning 74 consecutive games). How long will this continue? A few people know, including Schneider herself, but she's not telling anyone.
See, Jeopardy! tapes a week's worth of shows at a time, and they air a couple of months later. So that's a long time to keep a TV spoiler to yourself. The show doesn't stipulate secrecy as a requirement, but encourages it to make the game more fun for viewers. As it was, Schneider held a small party for friends when her first episode aired. They were excited when she won, but had no idea how many times she would go back to defend her title. And they still don't. Ken Jennings' boss was in on his winning streak, since he had to miss work again and again for TV tapings. They collaborated on stories to tell other employees about his frequent absences. Now imagine that Schneider won enough money to retire from her job -which could happen. Quitting months before anyone knows why would be an obvious spoiler. What would you do? Read how Schneider and other big Jeopardy! Winners deal with the tension and temptation to tell at The Ringer. -via Digg
🐻 An Amazon driver was trying to deliver a package when a black bear suddenly appeared! So who will win the face-off of an Amazon delivery driver vs a black bear?
🅰️ It's amazing to see how letters in the modern Latin alphabet evolved from Proto-Sinaitic script (c. 1750 BCE). Did you know that "A" evolved from the shape of a cow's head and "D" from a fish?
🚗 Those crazy Russian mechanics of Garage 54 flipped a Lada. On purpose.
🏠 We all know that The Simpsons is fiction because its about a middle class family with a single working parent owning a house and two cars. But did you know that the Simpsons' house would be worth $450K in today's real estate market?
ICYMI: The Mystery of the Alaskan Killer Bigfoot and 3D Printed SpongeBob SquarePants Sponge Holder
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🚀 Featured art: That's No Moon by indie artist Dumbassman - see how many characters, space ships, symbols and items you recognize from their silhouettes.
See also: Sci-Fi T-Shirts
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A painting by Surrealist artist Yves Tanguy was believed to have been lost to a raid on a Paris cinema. In an interesting turn of events, this long-held belief by scholars has been disproved thanks to the discovery of the 1930 artwork.
The artwork, called Fraud in the Garden, was hiding in plain sight. The painting was bought at an auction in 1985. Tanguy’s artwork was also slashed during the raid but it was restored to a ‘perfect condition.’ It turns out that people were doubting the claims of its authenticity due to its restored state. At least we know now, right? Read more about the painting here.
Image credit: Yves Tanguy
Good luck finding this particular cookie. It’ll be an adventure, indeed.
Girl Scouts’ new cookie flavor, brownie-and-salted caramel goodies called Adventurefuls are now running low in stock because of the high demand and labor shortages where the cookies are being produced. In a press statement, the Girl Scouts have reassured its customers that their cookie producer, Little Brownie Bakers, “is working diligently to address the impact that the labor shortage has had on the production of Adventurefuls." Better try the other flavors then!
Image credit: Girl Scouts of the USA
This game is nearly five years old. I’ll let that sink in. Five years old, and players are still finding new kinds of things about it. Now that’s dedication!
Recently, people in the community have been focusing their attention on reaching out of bounds areas in the games to obtain a random item stashed in there, or open a wayward chest that was lodged in them, which the developers might have forgotten during development. The challenge and tediousness in obtaining these ‘impossible’ items have piqued the interest of dedicated players and speedrunners.
Glitch hunter and speedrunner Luke Steelman successfully collected one of them after a year of theories and attempts. The speedrunner, also known as “LegendofLinkk” online, has obtained the shock arrow near the Daqo Chisay Shrine in Gerudo Town. Read more about his attempts here!
Image credit: LegendofLinkk / Kotaku
For those nerds who would like to imagine the different cities featured in the fictional world of The Witcher in real life, this team of geographers has your back!
The geographers from the University of Warsaw created the first-ever detailed map of The Witcher’s fictional world. The map is part of a series called Poland in the contemporary world, which highlights Polish soft power through several cultural products and achievements. The map details the topography and location of cities, islands, kingdom borders, and rivers featured in The Witcher.
Image credit: Wereszczyński et. al via Kafkadesk
This gem is from out of this world. Literally.
Meet ‘The Enigma,’ a 555.55-carat black diamond that is going to be sold at an auction by Sotheby’s in February. The rare gem is believed to have come from outer space. According to the auction house’s jewelry specialist, Sophie Stevens, the diamond was formed in outer space. "With the carbonado diamonds, we believe that they were formed through extraterrestrial origins, with meteorites colliding with the Earth and either forming chemical vapor disposition or indeed coming from the meteorites themselves," she said.
The gem is expected to be sold for at least 5 million British pounds ($6.8 million).
Image credit: Kamran Jebreili/AP
The eruption of the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai volcano on January 15th was huge. The nearby nation of Tonga was flooded by a tsunami, covered with volcanic ash, and cut off from the internet for days. What have we found out about it since then?
Scientific analysis has revealed the actual size of the eruption, and the massive number of lightning strikes inside it. We have a possible trajectory of the ash flung skyward. We have pictures from Tonga, which you would have thought were taken with black and white film if it weren't for the blue of the ocean. The eruption's shock wave traveled around the world four times. Astrum brings us up to speed on the Pacific eruption and what we've learned about it so far. The last minute of the video is an ad.
You can recreate a player piano scroll, or the drum on a music box with the online generator Music Box Fun! Place your notes along the grid on a 15, 20, or 30 note scale and see what happens (if you need sharps and flats, select the 30-note scale). Bryan Braun tells us how he came to build this toy. Yeah, you could pull out a score from the piano bench and build it quickly, or just fool around like me, or if you know a bit about music you can show off your chops with a familiar tune or even an original.
People who know what they're doing have shared their creations. To get an idea of what it could sound like, here's the theme from Jeopardy! And here's "Bohemian Rhapsody," although you'll want to speed up the tempo to listen to it. If you make something with this, let us know! -via Laughing Squid
The Eternals is the 26th movie from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After an exciting opening in theaters last fall, it made $402 million worldwide and was the tenth highest grossing movie of 2021. That would be a great run for most movies, but The Eternals is an MCU film with a bunch of well-known actors, so the box office was a disappointment. Reviews were mixed, and The Eternals is currently the lowest-rated Marvel film on both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. So what happened? Screen Junkies fills us in with their Honest Trailer. Their verdict? It's dumb.
🚗 Can this driver pull off a U-turn on a narrow road with rocky hill on one side and a drop off on the other?
💰 Expert predictions about 2022 turned into a bingo card.
🏠 How crazy hot is the real estate market in San Francisco? Take a look at what $2 million buys you: a "zero bedroom" unlivable house that should've been condemned for being hazardous. In other words, a charming fixer upper!
🐱 Cosplay is better with a cat, especially if said cat is very chill about dressing up in costumes. Amber Maureen Lu took wonderful photos of her cat in more than 300 hand-made costumes (image: eatdrinkcat).
⚾ Wholesome: Grandfather has a collection of baseball caps from each university his grandchildren attended.
🎬 Quentin Tarantino was on the verge of scrapping his film Inglorious Basterds until he met a little known Austrian actor named Christoph Waltz, who played the Nazi villain named Hans Landa to perfection. Tarantino even considered Landa to be the greatest character he's ever written and many people think that he's one of the most terrifying villains in movie history. Find out why.
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Featured art: Dark Side of Impossible by indie artist Artstuff.
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When a prison is replaced or decommissioned for one reason or another, what do you do with the building? These are often very old and very solidly-built institutions, but hard to convert to offices on a government budget. So they are sold off to private interests. A surprising number of such buildings are converted into hotels, where the building's history is used to promote the business. After all, who wouldn't want to stay in a prison cell? Yeah, there have been extensive renovations, and many of these hotels are luxurious, despite the names. But there are a couple that cater to their history in their aesthetic, too. Pictured here is the HI Ottawa Jail Hostel in Ottawa, Ontario, which retains a lot of the flavor of being imprisoned.
The brick-walled cells have been freshened with a lick of paint and modern furnishings but still have metal bars and iron doors. There are now handles on the inside, though, so there’s no risk of being locked up for good. Regular guided tours typically take visitors around the building, rated as one of the most haunted in North America. With the gallows, where death row prisoners were hanged, soberingly on display, that reputation is perhaps unsurprising.
Whether it's your particular kink or you're just looking for some place different to stay during your travels, there's a prison hotel for you. Learn about 16 hotels that were once jails or prisons in a list at Love Exploring. -via Fark
Fancy indeed!
The photo above is a military helmet that looks honestly more like a movie prop with its extravagance, or something a king would wear for a ceremony. The helmet is dated around 1500-1100 B.C. and was found in Southwestern Iran. Made from bronze, the delicate and elaborate divine gold figures that adorn the helmet provide the implication that it would have been worn by a warrior of high rank, and perhaps on special occasions rather than in actual battle.
Image credit: The Metropolitan Museum
Following the massive Bethesda purchase, Microsoft has announced that it wants to acquire
Activision Blizzard, the publisher behind popular games such as Overwatch and Call of Duty. The company shared that it aims to purchase the studio for nearly $70 billion! While this isn’t as suspicious as some would like to paint online, it is alarming for what would happen in the gaming industry.
Microsoft’s purchase of different gaming studios these past few years feels like a move towards exclusivity, to increase the appeal of its gaming console, the Xbox. Digital Trends Jesse Lennox writes that the attempt is “a desperate move to bolster its library with exclusives and valuable IP.” Learn more about the potential acquisition and its consequences, should it happen, here.
Image via Digital Trends
Did you know that the dog walking industry is estimated to be worth around $979 million? Yeah, that’s huge. Who knew that walking dogs could generate that amount of money! According to studies, ~40% of dog owners don’t personally walk their canine companions on a regular basis. Add that to the fact that the total population of dogs in America is now at 89 million, there’s a huge clientele out there for dog walkers.
Learn more about the dog walking industry here!
Image credit: Andriyko Podilnyk
