Justin Bateman, a British artist, specializes in selecting and arranging pebbles into temporary mosaics. The arrangements, which he calls "land art", are vividly familiar. He places them in the outside world because, as he quotes artist Robert Smithson, "A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world."

The most famous pigeon ever was a bird named Cher Ami. The homing pigeon worked for the US Army Signal Corps during World War I and was mentioned in the Neatorama article The Lost Battalion. Cher Ami was a genuine war hero.

In the fourth year of World War I on October 4, 1918, as the story goes, Cher Ami, an English-bred bird, was the last available pigeon for the American doughboys of the Lost Battalion, cut off and surrounded by German troops. On the afternoon of the fourth, the Americans found themselves being shelled by their own artillery. The commander of the Lost Battalion, Major Charles W. Whittlesey, hurriedly wrote a brief message: “We are along the road parallel 276.4. Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us. For heaven’s sake stop it.” The message was inserted into a holder on Cher Ami’s leg, and the pigeon went aloft amidst a hail of exploding shells and enemy rifle fire. When the pigeon reached its loft behind the front, either a bullet or shell fragment had almost completely severed its right leg and sliced across the bird’s breast. Miraculously the message capsule hung to the tendons of the severed limb. The capsule’s contents revealed the location of the beleaguered Americans and helped contribute to their relief on the night of October 7.

Cher Ami received the best veterinary care available, and even toured the United States, but succumbed to those devastating war wounds the next summer. The pigeon was given a taxidermist's treatment and was displayed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. But one mystery remained: was Cher Ami a hen or a cock? The military records referred the the pigeon as "she," but the Smithsonian's description gave the bird male pronouns. The different press outlets went with either one when describing Cher Ami's exploits. The taxidermist left no evidence or records of the bird's sex. More than a hundred years later, the Smithsonian leveraged the technology of DNA analysis to find out who was right, a story you can read at The National Museum of American History. -via Smithsonian

A tubulum is a percussion instrument made of flexible pipes of different lengths. Israeli designer Asaf Wainberg took that idea and made it wearable. He calls this musical instrument an OCTAV, for when you've got such a good beat you have to dance to it.



See a video of the eight-armed OCTAV in action at Yanko Design. Now, if Wainberg could just make those pipes move around like the Spider-Man villain, he could take over the world. -via Everlasting Blort 

Dutch company MX3D installed the world's first 3D-printed steel footbridge in Amsterdam! The project, which was unveiled by Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, was done to show how 3D printers can be used to create one-of-a-kind products, which would be difficult or impossible to achieve using mass production methods. The 12-meter novel bridge is a pedestrian footbridge that spans the Oudezijds Achterburgwal canal: 

This footbridge isn't only an artistic novelty; it is also a scientific instrument. MX3D and Imperial College London researchers outfitted the bridge with a network of sophisticated sensors. Those sensors will let them gather data on how the bridge holds up to the stress of being a part of real-world infrastructure. The research team created a "digital twin" of the bridge, with is a simulated duplicate. They can feed the real-world data into that simulation to refine their models. We have accurate physical simulations for cast and extruded steel, but 3D-printed steel is still something of an unknown.

With this data, they will be able to see how the real bridge holds up compared to their predictions. That data will be invaluable for developing reliable simulations, which will improve the design of future 3D-printed structures. In the interest of progress, the collected data will be made available to researchers around the world who want to help with analysis.

Image credit: Imperial College London

In a press release, the Baltimore Museum of Art announced that it will conduct an exhibition hosted by staff members whom visitors see every time that they visit: the security guards. These 17 employees are very familiar with the museum's holdings, so it's appropriate to consult their perspectives:

“Our security officers spend more time in our galleries and living among our collection than any other staff within the institution,” said Christopher Bedford, BMA Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director. “It is their perspectives, their insights, and their relationships with the art and daily interactions with our visitors that will set the stage for Guarding the Art to be an exceptional experience.”

Guarding the Art opens in March of 2022.

-via Kottke | Photo: Mike Steele

Did the man pick a good Pokemon, at least? Reddit user Blade Huraska confessed that he accidentally named his nephew after a Pokemon. His little sister wanted her baby’s name to start with a Z, and as he and his family were brainstorming for potential baby names, he was playing Pokemon Sword: 

"By pure coincidence, I was in the van playing Pokemon Sword on my Nintendo Switch in the back and I had just caught Zacian with a quick ball," said the Reddit user. So he jokingly suggested to name the baby Zacian. 

"It means 'sword' in Japanese," he told his sister. But of course, Zacian does not mean sword in Japanese. 

At the time the TIFU story was posted, only the Reddit user and his older sister knew the truth but planned to tell their little sister and their mom about it.

If you want to see how Blade Huraska confessed, and how his sister reacted, there are videos of his confession here! 

Farm owner Margaret Neville spotted an insect that looked like a work of art on a random bush. The pretty bug, which caught her eyes, was a type of praying mantis called a ‘flower mantis.’ With the insect’s small flower-like parts sprouting on its sides and having green and white swirls on its wings, the flower mantis does look like a figurine made by an artisan: 

Flower mantises are usually white. However, they can change their color to purple and pink to blend in with the flowers.

This survival instinct helps flower mantises to attract their prey and to protect themselves from predators. Neville was so fascinated with this mantis that she named it "Miss Frilly Pants" before returning it to her lavender bush. Also, she decided to share photos as well as a video of Miss Frilly Pants online.

Image credit: Margaret Neville 

Aquarium enthusiast Carly Thompson created a Star Wars-inspired tank using an AT-AT (All Terrain Armored Transport) aquarium decoration gifted to her by her brother. Thompson, in a stroke of creativity, designed the tank to envision a reality where the AT-AT was broken and abandoned, where its remains are sunk below the water: 

[...]“I knew that I wanted it to look as natural as possible,” Thompson tells My Modern Met. “I recalled the map Kashyyk in the video game Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order. That and the Moon of Endor from the Star Wars movies were my inspiration for this tank.”

It took Thompson around three days to design and put together the fish tank. She used a common aquarium wood called cholla to create the tall, burly tree trunks. She then used java moss and a three-leaf seed to create the mossy jungle appearance. Once the aquarium was finished, all that was left to do was decide on which fish will live inside the underwater world.

“The marine life that I chose to put into this tank was a very difficult decision,” Thompson reveals. “I wanted neon tetras because I felt the bright blue and red colors would not only represent a lightsaber appearance, but they would also give a good pop of color.” However, Thompson ended up falling in love with ember tetras and decided to put them in the tank instead. “Their fiery red color and the overall natural behavior of these fish are what made me want them. I purchased five of them at my local pet store and stocked my tank,” she says. “These fish were so curious and active in the tank.”

Image credit: Carly Thompson 

A couple of months ago, student pilot Brian Parsley did his solo cross country flight, a required step in getting his license. About 12 miles short of his destination, his engine sputtered out. What to do? While he is obviously stressed, he did not panic and just did what had to be done. Parsley managed an emergency landing on a stretch of grass. He explained more of what happened in a further video.   -via Digg

The Print Shop Club will transport you back to 1984, when you first discovered what marvelous things you can do with a computer! Broderbund's program called The Print Shop allowed us to design signs, banners, and even our own greeting cards on our Apple II home computers, and that was quite exciting. Except this version doesn't feed our banners to our dot-matrix printer loaded with fanfold paper, but converts our creations to .pdfs for sharing ...or even printing, if you choose to do so.

Once you try it out, you'll also remember what a pain that all was, and realize that the value of this throwback, while nostalgic, is also to show our kids what we went through to become the computer whizzes that we are today. Melody and April Ayres-Griffiths created this application to pay tribute to David Balsam and Martin Kahn, who created The Print Shop and exposed a generation of children (and adults) to the wonders of computing. -via Metafilter

This beautifully-animated short by Michael Dockery is set in an apocalyptic future in which humans are gone, but the tech we left behind is still being used... by the tech we left behind. You may read into it what you want. I recommend watching it in a larger format.  -via Nag on the Lake

That's what Entrepreneur magazine is calling them, although it's unclear if the designers of the athletes' beds in Tokyo have that as a goal. More precisely, the cardboard beds not designed to withstand the weight of two people, especially two people in motion:

The organizers have stated that they are perfectly designed to support the weight of a single person, but that they cannot or should not be jumped on, as they can break.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: IOC Media

My level 6 cleric has all of the right equipment for the job, but I doubt my spells will work as well. There are some limitations to making Dungeons & Dragons real. Nonetheless, with the help of a friend, Tony Ho Tran went camping as Zaddy, his halfling bard character. Tran's first task was to acquire all of the items on Zaddy's inventory:

In his Explorer’s Pack, according to the D&D player’s manual, Zaddy carries the following:

A backpack

A bedroll

A mess kit

A tinderbox

Ten torches

Ten days’ worth of rations

A waterskin

50 feet of hempen rope

I already had some of these things: a backpack, a bedroll, and a wineskin I got as a souvenir from a trip to Spain. Through the magic of fate (read: Facebook Marketplace), I acquired a Boy Scouts mess kit, a survival tinderbox, and 50 feet of cotton rope. I also created ten torches by combining free paint stirrers from Home Depot with a few ripped-up T-shirts.

Once Tran and his friend and companion, Tanner, set up a crude survival shelter, they walked about the campground seeking out quests:

Once finished, I donned my equipment and we set out. In D&D, players accept quests given by NPCs (non-playable characters). I figured we could do the same by soliciting quests from strangers in the park.

To our surprise, folks didn’t immediately call the cops on us when we approached. In fact, we ended up completing quests and getting rewards like real D&D characters. Our quest-givers included:

A group of students from the University of Iowa. Their quest: for us to drink a shooter of Fireball. Their reward: two hard seltzers.

A lovely older couple traveling around the Midwest. Their quest: for me to play them a song on the ukulele. Their reward: a handful of Dove dark chocolates.

A young couple with excitable dogs. Their quest: for me to play them a song on my ukulele (I was afraid everyone else would want this, too, but luckily they didn’t). Their reward: a can of light beer.

It was an experience of a lifetime, but, unfortunately, did not result in enough experience points to result in leveling up.

-via Super Punch

Imagine trying to figure out a calendar from scratch, in which one could keep track of the days of the year, year after year. It's such a difficult project that what really happened was that every few hundred years we figured out what the problems with the existing calendar were and started over again to correct them. Today we use the Gregorian calendar, which takes into account that a year is 365.25 days and 11.5 minutes long. Before that, there was the Julian calendar, which didn't account for those 11.5 minutes, and before that it was the Roman calendar that didn't have much consistency from year to year at all.   

The Julian Calendar itself was created by Julius Caesar in 46 BC in order to fix the inherent errors of a lunisolar calendar, which the Roman calendar was. The Roman calendar consisted of 12 months for a total of 355 days, which is approximately 10 days shorter than the solar year. In order to catch up with the sun, the Roman calendar added either 22 or 23 days to every alternate year, the same way we add leap days every four years. As a result, Roman years alternated between 355, 377 and 378 days.

To make matter worse, the leap days (also known as the intercalary period) were not added in a regular and systematic manner, but was determined by the Pontifex maximus, the high priest of the College of Pontiffs. Often the Pontifex would abuse his power and lengthen a year when his political allies was in office, and reduce it when his opponents were in power. The net effect of this was that the average Roman citizen often did not have a clue what date the current day was.

The Julian calendar offered some consistency, but it wasn't an easy transition. Read about the shenanigans involved with changing a calendar at Amusing Planet.

The food manufacturing company Kraft has partnered with ice-cream maker Van Leeuwen, and the partnership of the two has produced a rather interesting ice cream flavor: macaroni and cheese. I know that cheese ice cream exists, but mac and cheese ice cream is unheard of.

The ice cream was made available on July 14th at Leeuwen’s website, as well as in scoop shops in New York City, Los Angeles, and Houston. The ice cream will be sold until supplies run out.

I wonder what the ice cream will taste like.

(Image Credit: Van Leeuwen/ Technabob)