Researchers from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University have explored ‘hot streak--’ a period of high-impact works by an artist clustered together in close succession. Dashun Wang was motivated to discover what triggers an artist’s hot streak, and he was inspired after visiting the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Phys Org has more details: 

Van Gogh experienced an artistic breakthrough from 1888-1890, during which he painted his most famous works, including The Starry Night, Sunflowers and Bedroom in Arles. Before that, however, his work was less impressionistic and more realistic. He also tended to use somber earth tones rather than the bright, sweeping colors, for which he is best known today.

"If you look at his production before 1888, it was all over the place," Wang said. "It was full of still-life paintings, pencil drawings and portraits that are much different in character from the work he created during his hot streak."

By using artificial intelligence to mine big data related to artists, film directors and scientists, the Northwestern researchers discovered this pattern is not uncommon but, instead, a magical formula. Hot streaks, they found, directly result from years of exploration (studying diverse styles or topics) immediately followed by years of exploitation (focusing on a narrow area to develop deep expertise).

The research will be published on Sept. 13 in the journal Nature Communications.

With this new understanding about what triggers a hot streak, institutions can intentionally create environments that support and facilitate hot streaks in order to help their members thrive.

Image credit: wikimedia commons

I don’t know if these new trash cans would entice or scare people into throwing garbage in them.The Japanese arm of Coca-Cola collaborated with local officials and people involved with the Attack On Titan series to promote urban cleanliness and recycling. Well, these Titan-inspired trash cans certainly catch the eye: 

If you wanted more people to be aware of their local urban sanitation, lifting some of the most terrifying villains in recent anime history is a good place to start. Because of their size, these trash cans and recycling bins actually give a fairly accurate idea of what titans would look like if they were real. Now we just need this AI to be able to give the complete picture.

This initiative wasn’t the first time Attack On Titan IP was used to encourage more environmentally-conscious behavior either. Earlier this year another Attack On Titan recycling bin was used to collect polyethylene terephthalate bottles. This makes me think about what exactly would resonate the same way in America... Peter Griffin? Homer? Mechanized Tom Brady?

Image credit: Change For The Blue

It’s adorable to watch. The border collie in the video noticed a man lounging on a park bench in The Colony, Texas. Just like any friendly, playful dog-- whose name is Nova, by the way, she decided to approach the man to see if he would like to play frisbee with her. 

The gentleman, who looked very bronze and stationary, was actually a sculpture of President Abraham Lincoln. I feel bad for Nova now. I hope someone actually played with her during her park visit! 

At the turn of the 20th century, scientists knew about contagion, but the concept of an asymptomatic carrier was completely new. How could someone spread a disease when they weren't sick? We can't say that Mary Mallon, also known as Typhoid Mary, was the first asymptomatic carrier, but she was the first that health officials knew about. Determining how all these wealthy families families came to contract typhoid would be easy now, since they all hired the same cook, but inspectors at the time were looking for actual sick people or bacteria in the water supply. George Thompson owned a vacation house in which the Warren family became sick, and he was determined to find the source to protect future renters.  

Desperate to get to the bottom of the puzzle, Thompson hired George Soper, thirty-seven-year-old freelance civil engineer who had been investigating typhoid outbreaks in well-to-do families. After learning that the Warrens had hired a new cook, who no longer worked with them, Soper had his suspicions. Soper was able to trace Mary's employment history back to 1900. He found that typhoid outbreaks had followed Mary from job to job. From 1900 to 1907, Soper found that Mary had worked at seven jobs in which 22 people had become ill, including one young girl who died with typhoid fever shortly after Mary had come to work for them.

Soper tracked Mary down to her new place of employment, the family of Walter Bowens, who lived on Park Avenue. There was typhoid in the residence too. Soper found that two of the household's servants were hospitalized, and the daughter of the family had died of typhoid.

Soper confronted Mary in the kitchen of the Bowens, and asked her to give samples of her urine and stool. This infuriated Mary. Grabbing a carving fork from the table, Mary chased Soper out of the house. Sopher tried again, this time in the apartment of a man Mary was spending time with. Mary threw Sopher out again, swearing the whole way.

If she had cooperated, the name Mary Mallon might only be known in science and medical circles, but she fought quarantine for years and became so notorious that her nickname is still used for people who spread disease. Read the story of Typhoid Mary at Amusing Planet. 

Bone Discovery Suggests Humans Were Already Manufacturing Clothes 120,000 Years Agohttps://t.co/HAIURNkU9c

— ScienceAlert (@ScienceAlert) September 17, 2021

Pinpointing when humans started wearing clothes is tricky, as leather, fur, and textiles tend to rot completely away. However, we can find hints in the tools people used to make clothing. A team headed by Emily Hallett of the Max Planck Institute has been excavating a cave in Morocco that has yielded some 12,000 bone fragments. Some of those bones, dated to around 120,000 years ago, have markings that match newer bones from other sites that were used to skin animals for fur and leather. In addition to these bone tools, other animal bones suggest that the people who lived there ate herbivores and just skinned carnivores.   

"In this cave there are three species of carnivores with skinning marks on their bones: Rüppell's fox, golden jackal, and wildcat," Hallett told ScienceAlert.

"The cut marks on these carnivore bones are restricted to areas where incisions are made for fur removal, and there are no cut marks on the areas of the skeleton associated with meat removal."

While for leather, several species of bovid were found at the site.

"Hartebeest, aurochs, and gazelle bones were found in high abundance in the cave, and these animals were also consumed by humans, because there are cut marks associated with meat removal on their bones," added Hallett.  

These are the oldest leather working tools yet found. However, genetic studies in lice suggest that head lice and clothing lice diverged around 170,000 years ago, which may mean there are even earlier leather working tools to be found somewhere. Read about the discovery at ScienceAlert. -via Strange Company

Superman? I’m just your daily journalist #NFID22 pic.twitter.com/0aL2Awnac8

— Ronith Arum (@ronitharum) September 14, 2021

North Farmington High School in Farmington Hills, Michigan, (previously and previously) has a tradition of letting their senior class wear what they want for their student identification cards. They've been doing it since 2014, and the incoming seniors plan their costumes long ahead of time. The class of 2022 has received their ID cards, and the students have posted them to Twitter.

“Mulan you will NEVER bring your family honor” @nfhs2022 #NFID22 pic.twitter.com/GU5tJ2xQxM

— jess💍. (@jessicawang23) September 14, 2021

#NFID22@nfhs_2022

I’m scared, she hasn’t gotten her muffin yet… pic.twitter.com/KspJB9B2Ht

— Em ⁷ 🏳️‍🌈 🎗 (@LittleJelly469) September 14, 2021

“I NEED A HERO” #NFID22 #nfhs_22 pic.twitter.com/lA5bIRv0eq

— Leah (@Leah09086642) September 14, 2021

Even one of the teachers got into it!

I threatened for years….I bring you @britneyspears #FreeBritney #NFID22 pic.twitter.com/oKOgDgicNY

— NFHS Engineering (@NFHSEngArch) September 14, 2021

You can check out all the ID cards that have been posted with the hashtag #NFID22. Or see a gallery of the best ones in a list at Bored Panda.

Well, Walead Beshty seems… inspired. The LA-based artist packaged his art pieces in FedEx boxes and shipped them across the countries to exhibitions and galleries. One would expect that extra precautions are made in delivering precious cargo for display, but Beshty intentionally designed his pieces to break. The reasoning behind this odd decision was that the sculptor wanted to obtain a ‘fingerprint’ that documented the journey of each package to its destination: 

The FedEx works […] initially interested me because they’re defined by a corporate entity in legal terms. There’s a copyright designating the design of each FedEx box, but there’s also the corporate ownership over that very shape. It’s a proprietary volume of space, distinct from the design of the box, which is identified through what’s called a SSCC #, a Serial Shipping Container Code. I considered this volume as my starting point; the

perversity of a corporation owning a shape—not just the design of the object—and

also the fact that the volume is actually separate from the box. They’re owned

independently from one another.

Furthermore, I was interested in how art objects acquire meaning through their context and through travel, what Buren called, something like, “the unbearable compromise of the portable work of art”. So, I wanted to make a work that was specifically organized around its traffic, becoming materially manifest through its movement from one place to another.

Image credit: The Whitney Museum of American Art

These creations are absolutely witty. Fancy getting a vaccine-inspired alcoholic beverage? If you’re near Penang, Malaysia, then you’re in for a treat! Backdoor Bodega came up with vaccine-themed drinks, or as Vice’s Heather Chen calls them: booze-ter shots, to sell as packaged cocktail orders. The ‘boredom boosters’ can combat and eliminate any “pandemic-induced lockdown boredom and sobriety,” according to the bar’s online drinks menu: 

There’s Sinosour (a play on China’s Sinovac vaccine), ExtraGineca (named after the AstraZeneca shot and combining a potent blend of gin and dry bitters) and the Pfizermeister, an obvious reference to the Pfizer vaccine.  

The drinks cost around $8 and are available by delivery—part of a successful business strategy that has helped the bar avoid closure at a crucial time when many businesses folded.

“We’re thankful that cocktail deliveries have been sufficient to sustain our overheads over the past year,” said owner and bartender Koh Yung Shen, who added that the lack of in-person interaction has taken away from the experience of running a bar.

Image credit: Mohd RASFAN / AFP 

Some celebrities find no rest in death. There are plenty of people who want just a little piece (or more) of a famous body for one reason or another. That's to be expected if one becomes a saint, but keeping body parts around is not limited to religious icons. When Galileo's remains were moved to a new tomb in 1737, several pieces were snatched up along the way. One of the scientist's fingers ended up in a museum, and a stolen vertebra eventually went to the University of Padua. That left two missing fingers and a tooth unaccounted for.

Galileo’s tooth and the other two fingers didn’t leave such an obvious trail. The original thief, an Italian marquis, bequeathed them to his progeny, and they stayed in the family for generations. But the last written reference to the artifacts was from 1905, and historians later in the 20th century assumed they were gone for good. Then, in 2009, two fingers and a tooth showed up in a jar at an auction in Italy. The auction organizers didn’t know whose body parts they were selling, but the buyer had an inkling that they were Galileo’s. They brought their purchase to the Institute and Museum of the History of Science, where museum director Paolo Galluzzi confirmed the theory.

He based his verdict on the fact that the items and their container matched the detailed description from 1905. And since the objects were unlabeled and sold for a scant sum, it seemed unlikely that someone had produced them in some kind of bizarre counterfeiting scheme. As Galluzzi told CNN, “[The] story is so convincing I cannot think of a reason not to believe it.” After renovations, the museum reopened in 2010 under a new name—the Galileo Museum—which proudly exhibited Galileo’s two shriveled digits (and lone tooth) next to the finger already on display.  

Read the stories behind ten corporeal relics of historical figures at Mental Floss, or you can listen to a video telling the same tales.

(Image credit: Marc Roberts)

We all know George Washington, Father of our Country, Commander of the Continental Army which defeated the British Empire to create the first modern democracy. He was the most famous and most respected man of his time among the 13 states, and so Americans elected him to the presidency twice. But do you recall exactly what Washington did while he was in office? He had his work cut out for him, as the young nation's government was fairly unorganized, and the states worked as if they were all separate countries. Washington went to the people, to sell them on the idea of putting "United" before "States."

Washington took his show on the road in the spring of 1789. Over the span of two years, he visited all 13 original states (14 if you count Maine, which was then part of Massachusetts), traveling on horseback and by carriage along rutted dirt roads and over rising rivers. The president often donned his magnificent Continental Army uniform and rode his favorite white stallion into towns, where he was greeted by cheering citizens. Along the way, he communicated his hopes for the new nation and how he needed everyone’s support to make this vision reality.

“It was awe inspiring,” Philbrick says. “Washington was seriously the only one [who] could have sold the concept to the people. Not only was [he] able to unify us politically, he was able to unify us as a nation. Instead of saying our state is our country—as was customary back then—we were saying the United States is our nation. We take that for granted today, but it wasn’t that way when Washington took office in 1789.”

Get an idea of how the new nation came together under the leadership of Washington on his road trip at Smithsonian.

Melissa Miller started a project called Bad Science Jokes back in 2012 when she was in high school. She had a science teacher that would give extra credit for a science joke, and so she saw and heard a lot of them. Her collection was very popular on Tumblr, and then moved to Instagram. Some consider it just a meme page, but she also hears from students who credit the jokes in helping them to remember important concepts to get through science class.



Bored Panda picked out a bunch of these jokes that are both funny and understandable to anyone with a passing knowledge of science. See 40 of them in a list ranked by votes. Some of them are actually good science jokes!

The Nazi party in 1930s Germany was all about convincing the majority of Germans that they were superior to Jews and foreigners because of their racial purity. This led to an entire scientific discipline out to prove that theory, and the mad race to find evidence to support it.  

Those who swore by the idea of a white Nordic superior race were believers in the tale of the imagined lost city of Atlantis, where people of "the purest blood" had apparently once lived. Believed to have been situated somewhere between England and Portugal in the Atlantic Ocean, this mythical island allegedly sunk after being struck by a divine thunderbolt.

All the Aryans who survived had supposedly moved on to more secure places. The Himalayan region was believed to be one such refuge, Tibet in particular because it was famous for being "the roof of the world".

In 1935, Himmler set up a unit within the SS called the Ahnenerbe - or Bureau of Ancestral Heritage - to find out where people from Atlantis had gone after the bolt from the blue and the deluge, and where traces of the great race still remained and could be discovered.

In 1938, he sent a team of five Germans to Tibet on this "search operation".

The Germans were reportedly there to study zoology and anthropology, all the while taking casts of human body parts and measuring skulls and features of the local people, before the war cut their research short. Read about the Tibetan adventures of Himmler's research team at BBC. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: German Federal Archives)

Dolls can be creepy, especially when they are staring at you in the middle of the night from the top of the dresser. But there are a few dolls that have become famous for their activities in addition to their appearance. These real-life dolls have a reputation for inspiring terror. Whether the stories are real or not, the dolls are, even though one was also a movie character.

Twilight fans will recall that the film series concluded with the birth of the offspring of fang-crossed lovers Bella and Edward. In The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 1 (2011), their baby, Renesmee, was represented by some questionable CGI. On set, she was embodied by a very peculiar-looking animatronic doll (above). That prop is now being accused of malevolent sentience by people near the Forever Twilight display at the Chamber of Commerce in Forks, Washington, where the movies are set.

“One day she might be standing up straight, and the next, when you come in on another day, she’s in a weird position,” Lissy Andros, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce, told Jezebel in 2020. “It’s like, is she moving around in there? We don’t know. But we tell everybody that the [display case] cover is on her for their protection.”

Fortunately, Renesmee appears to be decomposing as a result of the fragile materials used to build her, so she likely won’t be around to disturb people for too much longer.

Read the stories of seven such haunted dolls, and see several videos on them, at Mental Floss.

Aerial photography is amazing. It provides a perspective that we humans cannot see on our own. Unfortunately, we can’t fly (yet, I hope), but we can take advantage of drones to get images from such a high point. The Drone Photo Awards 2021 celebrate different stunning aerial photographs, and they just announced their top picks. Terje Kolaas’ shot of birds above snow-covered ground took the top prize. Looking at the image makes me want to count the birds included in the shot, to be honest-- there were way too many! 

Check some of Time Out’s favorites from the competition here! 

Image credit: Terje Kolaas / Drone Photo Awards 2021 

Sleep is not the only way to take a break and recharge. While some of us may be working from home, it doesn’t mean that we’re not exhausted from daily chores and activities! The daily grind is draining both physically and mentally, and we need all the help we can get to recharge and power through the following days. So how do we do that? Entrepreneur’s Daniel Colombo shares different methods of resting to balance our energies. Check the full piece here!

Image credit: Toa Heftiba/Unsplash