Core 77 introduces us to the simple but ingenious Paddle Pump. It's a paddle that has a built-in pump so that maneuver your canoe while bailing out the water. Or, in the case of the above video, extract water from the leaky pontoons of a seaplane. New Atlas talked to the inventors about the origin of the idea:

"The inspiration was actually born from seaplanes," says John Hartz, who co-created the Paddle Pump along with its main inventor, Dan Dufault. "Seaplane floats are typically made of riveted aluminum and over time will leak, so part of the pre-flight is to pump out each float compartment. Paddles are also necessary equipment, because you can't motor all the way into the dock and there is no reverse. So this idea was an easy blend of both of those needs."

Every year, the beautiful countryside around Nishikan ward, Niigata Precture, Japan holds the Wara Art Festival. Artists gather to carefully assemble huge, vibrant sculptures of animals made from straw wrapped around wooden frames. Colossal describes the origin of this captivating event:

Traditionally, the byproduct is used as livestock feed, for compost that revitalizes the soil, and to craft household goods like zori sandals, although farmers increasingly have found themselves with a surplus as agricultural technology and culture changes. This shift prompted a partnership between the people of the former Iwamuro Village, which is now Nishikan Ward, and Tokyo’s Musashino Art University (known colloquially as Musabi) in 2006. At the time, Department of Science of Design professor Shingo Miyajima suggested that the unused straw be used in a collaborative art project between the university and local farmers, resulting in the first Wara Art Festival in 2008.

Nikon's annual Small World Photomicrography Competition has announced its winners for 2021! This is the 47th year for the competition, with first place going to Jason Kirk of the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas for the image you see above.

This year’s first place prize was awarded to Jason Kirk for his striking image of a southern live oak leaf’s trichomes, stomata and vessels. Using various lighting techniques and design tools, Jason’s final image is a masterful example of the dynamic relationship between imaging technology and artistic creativity. Using a custom-made microscope system that combines color filtered transmitted light with diffused reflected light, Jason captured around 200 individual images of the leaf and stacked them together to create the stunning image.

Second place went to Esmeralda Paric and Holly Stefen of Macquarie University in Australia for this image of 300,000 or so networking neurons.

Frank Reiser of Nassau Community College in New York won third place for this picture of a rear leg and trachea of a louse. 

See the top 20 images in this gallery, and click on each to read more about them. See more in the honorable mentions gallery.

-via Metafilter

As a commenter from Estonia said, there's no reason for any of us to be interested in British river crossings, but Tom Scott makes them interesting anyway. The two ferries and a bridge operate in weird ways because they are governed by laws that are over a century old, from the days when people didn't have cars. Could they change the laws? Maybe, but they apparently don't want to bother. -via reddit

Unsurprisingly, people had a way to get drunk even during ancient times! Archaeologists found ancient pots with traces of beer along with two skeletons in China. The discovery is now evidence that regardless of the travels of the nomadic hunter-gatherers in southern China and their small amount of rice, they were able to create alcohol: 

The ancient pots were discovered in a platform mound, which was surrounded by a human-made ditch, based on ongoing excavations at Qiaotou. No residential structures were found at the site. The mound contained two human skeletons and multiple pottery pits with high-quality pottery vessels. As the study reports, these artifacts are probably some of “the earliest known painted pottery in the world.” No pottery of this kind has been found at any other sites dating to this time period.The research team analyzed different types of pottery found at Qiaotou. Some of the pottery vessels were small and similar in size to drinking vessels used today, and to those found in other parts of the world. Seven of the 20 vessels, appeared to be long-necked Hu pots, which were used to drink alcohol in the later historical periods.

Image credit: Leping Jiang

All hail the researchers who have spent time and effort in translating an 800-year-old passage from the legend of King Arthur. The manuscript, called ‘the Bristol Merlin,’ was fully translated into English. In addition, researchers also analyzed the handwriting and linguistic style of the manuscript. The passage is dated to between 1250 and 1275, and was penned in northern France: 

[...]Though about an English king, the Arthur myth was told and retold in different ways throughout France. The manuscript is not the first document to contain its particular story, which is called the Suite Vulgate du Merlin. Researchers believe the text was initially written around 1225, which means the Bristol Merlin was a fairly contemporary retelling of the story.

Laura Chuhan Campbell, a scholar in medieval literature with a specialty in Old French Merlin texts at Durham University, told Gizmodo that “the medieval Arthurian legends were a bit like the Marvel Universe, in that they constituted a coherent fictional world that had certain rules and a set of well-known characters who appeared and interacted with each other in multiple different stories … This fragment comes from the second volume, which documents the rise of Merlin as Arthur’s advisor, and Arthur’s turbulent early years as king.”

Image credit: Leah Tether

That’s just bonkers, man. The result of one of Banksy’s infamous art world pranks will now be resold at an auction for between £4 million and £6 million, which is more expensive than its initial sale at a Sotheby’s auction in 2018. The artwork, titled Girl With Balloon, self-destructed after it was sold for more than £1 million. After the artwork was shredded and renamed Love is in the Bin, the buyer still went ahead: 

Reflecting its newfound place in art history, estimates for Love is in the Bin have skyrocketed over the last three years, with the upcoming Sotheby’s sale expected to fetch between £4 million and £6 million. (In the past, Banksy has played down speculation that the auction house was in on it all along.)

Even without his trademark pranks, Banksy’s art has been steadily gaining value at auction, with his NHS-dedicated Game Changer image smashing estimates to bring in £14.4 million back in March. His profile has also risen worldwide, leading him to warn fans about a series of unauthorised shows, which have been criticised for containing replicas of his work.

Most recently, Banksy popped up in a series of British seaside towns, creating anonymous installations for his Great British Spraycation.

Image credit: Sotheby’s

This is definitely pleasing to watch. Neil Bromhall posts short, yet mesmerizing time lapses of plants growing and blooming over multiple days. One of the photographer’s latest uploads on his YouTube channel is a pair of one-minute time lapses showing a sunflower opening over ten days. Just like the other plants featured in his work, Bromhall grew his sunflower in a blackened, windowless studio with a grow light serving as artificial sunlight: 

“Plants require periods of day and night for photosynthesis and to stimulate the flowers and leaves to open,” the photographer tells PetaPixel. “I use heaters or coolers and humidifiers to control the studio condition for humidity and temperature. You basically want to recreate the growing conditions where the plants naturally thrive.”

Lighting-wise, Bromhall uses a studio flash to precisely control his exposure regardless of the time of day it is. The grow light grows the plants while the flash illuminates the photos.

“The grow light has a blind that moves over to blocks the grow light just before I take an exposure with the flash,” Bromhall says. “After the frame is taken the blind rolls back. The exposure interval, grow light with blind, and track or rotating head are controlled by a bespoke made control box.”

Bromhall does research into each of his subjects to understand the exact conditions each plant likes to grow in.

“If they are happy, there is a good chance they will grow,” he says.

Will modern marvels never cease? Trees are now next in line for replacing the glass in our windows! How is that possible, if wood cannot be as transparent as glass? Well, thanks to research done by Junyong Zhu from the Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) and colleagues from the University of Maryland and University of Colorado, a transparent wood material has been developed: 

Their findings were published in the Journal of Advanced Functional Materials in their paper, “A Clear, Strong, and Thermally Insulated Transparent Wood for Energy Efficient Windows.”

While glass is the most common material used in window construction it comes with a costly economic and ecological price.

Heat easily transfers through glass, especially single pane, and amounts to higher energy bills when it escapes during cold weather and pours in when it’s warm. Glass production in construction also comes with a heavy carbon footprint. Manufacturing emissions are approximately 25,000 metric tons per year.

Transparent wood is created when wood from the fast-growing, low-density balsa tree is treated to a room temperature, oxidizing bath that bleaches it of nearly all visibility. The wood is then penetrated with a synthetic polymer called polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), creating a product that is virtually transparent.

Image credit: USDA Forest Service

(Nathan Olsen)

How do you know that the cantina that you're working in is a rough place? It's not that some guy gets his arm chopped off. It's that everyone treats it like a normal event and not a major crime.

It was stressful enough that even Doikk Na'ts, a Dorenian Beshniquel player in the Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes, slips and calls his elegant instrument from a more civilized age a "space clarinet."

-via Super Punch

Janelle Shane works with artificial intelligence algorithms, and when she sees something weird or funny, she tells us about it on her blog AI Weirdness. For the third year in a row, she is challenging her readers to produce art for October, or as the algorithm calls it, "Botober." You can see art inspired by Shane's AI-generated prompts in previous years here. 

This year, five different algorithms have produced lists of art prompts that should inspire you to create something really strange in the categories of animals, Halloween, more Halloween, more animals, and landscapes. Check them all out, and when you've done your part, post your contributions to social media and tag them with #botober.

Here's something that will surely lift your spirits! Listen to "Ordinary Day" joyously performed by Alan Doyle and the Shallaway Youth Choir.

Ordinary Day is a song that reminds us about the power of positivity and the beauty of overcoming life's biggest obstacles. As we look for our new normal, we’re grateful for kids and youth and the example of resilience they continue to show us every day.

-via Nag on the Lake

What happens when the software Cyriak Harris uses to animate his disturbing ideas decides to crash? Well, he's not going to let that stop him! In this video, Cyriak uses meatspace tools to construct his own animation machine, complete with his signature style of movement and general weirdness.

A Canadian friend of mine learned Polish from her parents. She traveled to Ukraine and was surprised to find she could understand people speaking Russian. Another friend from New York said he could understand people in the Netherlands easier than he could people in Tennessee. And my daughter spent years learning French, but then picked up Spanish in about a month. Languages flow into each other, but sometimes they grow apart. So what really defines a language as distinct from a dialect? And how different must a dialect be before it is considered another language? The answer may surprise you, but when you think about it, you won't be surprised.

You forgot that the Dungeons & Dragons game starts in two hours and you're the gamemaster. Sure, you could just toss some goblins at the players, but if you're going to have a village encounter in the countryside or even make a map, you'll need some placenames. VillageBot is here to help.

There are at least 18,804 village names in England. VillageBot will spit them out to you in helpful lists like this one:

That will do in a pinch. Now you can focus on pretending to have a plot for your players to ignore.

-via Nag on the Lake