Paleontologist Lisa Buckley is fascinated with birds. So in addition to her scientific research, she applies makeup to match the fashions of the world's most beautiful birds. Buckley calls her art "Bird Glamour".
When an artist renders three-dimensional objects in two dimensions, they normally give it perspective, so that it appears realistic to the eye. However, since the two-dimensional medium (a computer screen or a canvas) has no depth, you can mess around with the perspective part and really have fun. M.C. Escher was a master at such shenanigans. His use of confusing perspective inspired Macedonian artist Fleta Selmani to create the font she calls Impossible Type. Letters are three-dimensional, but their perspective defies reality.
The font is not difficult to read, as our brains perceive basic shapes in total at the speed we read, but if you stop and look closely at the letters, they are mind-bending. You can purchase and download Impossible Type (upper case, numbers, and punctuation) here.
-via Kottke
When you see a flock of birds fly up in the sky, have you ever wondered how they know where they are going? If humans have difficulty in navigating short distances on foot, what more if they were on air and without the aid of technology? The lack of technological assistance makes bird flight much more interesting. AmazeLab looks into the avian’s sky navigation and the established explanation for their flight.
-via Flipboard
Image credit: Alvaro Pinot
Benjamin was the last thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, in captivity and as far as we know, the last thylacine in existence. He died in 1936, and the species has been considered extinct since then. Now all that's left are some lifeless anatomical specimens and a few photos and film footage. We posted this video of Benjamin before, although it was quite a few years ago. But through the miracle of technology, it's been brought to life in color. The National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) of Australia commissioned a restoration of the film with added color.
The NFSA created a 4K scan of the original 33-mm negative of a 77-second video, shot by naturalist David Fleay in 1933. This was then sent to Composite Films in Paris, where Samuel François-Steininger and his team recreated the creature’s color in painstaking detail.
Unfortunately, no true color photos or video of the thylacine exist, so the team studied specimens preserved in museum collections, consulted sketches, paintings, scientific drawings and written descriptions from the time, as well as more recent 3D renderings.
“Because of the resolution and quality of the picture, there were a lot of details – the fur was dense and a lot of hair had to be detailed and animated,” says François-Steininger. “From a technological point of view, we did everything digitally – combining digital restoration, rotoscoping and 2D animation, lighting, AI algorithms for the movement and the noise, compositing and digital grading. More than 200 hours of work were needed to achieve this result.”
To be honest, the realistic depiction of the thylacine only underscores how sad it is that they are extinct. -via Damn Interesting
Here's another clever yet dreadful mashup from the YouTuber known as There I Ruined It. He combined the classic Queen "Another One Bites the Dust" and laid it over the instrumentation of "Tequila" by The Champs. Since the song was necessary for the Pee-wee Herman dance, that's who stars in the video. -via reddit
Can you guess the metro area with the highest number of college degrees per capita in the United States? My first guess was Raleigh-Durham, but I was wrong. Not very wrong, however, because this list divides the metro areas differently, and both Durham-Chapel Hill and Raleigh-Cary did pretty well. As the joke goes, North Carolina's biggest exports are tobacco and college graduates, even though some of them stick around to contribute to the work of the Research Triangle. The most educated metro area is Ann Arbor, Michigan, where you'll find the University of Michigan. WalletHub compiled the statistics to come up with the educational rankings of the 150 biggest metro areas of the US. They crunched 11 metrics, including degree attainment, quality of local schools, and equity in race, gender, and economic status. The top 20 metro areas are:
1. Ann Arbor, MI
2. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
3. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV
4. San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA
5. Madison, WI
6. Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH
7. Durham-Chapel Hill, NC
8. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA
9. Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, TX
10. Provo-Orem, UT
11. Raleigh-Cary, NC
12. Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT
13. Colorado Springs, CO
14. Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO
15. Trenton-Princeton, NJ
16. Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA
17. Portland-South Portland, ME
18. Tallahassee, FL
19. Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI
20. San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA
See the rankings of all 150 metro areas and top rankings in various categories, plus methodology and additional statistics at WalletHub.
-via Mental Floss
(Image credit: Kit)
You don't have to be Indiana Jones to hunt treasure. If you're lucky enough, you don't even have to hunt for it! A crew of construction workers were renovating a mansion in France a couple of years ago and found a metal box embedded in a wall. It was full of gold coins- rather old ones, it seemed. That was on a Friday. The next Monday, the workers found another stash of coins, this time in a bag buried in a wall. François Mion and his wife, who purchased the mansion in 2012, were suddenly glad they decided to renovate and join the three buildings on the property.
After the 2019 find, Mion alerted the local authorities and later sent the treasures away to be studied and verified. Archaeologists determined that the coins were minted during the reigns of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, monarchs who ruled France from 1610 to 1643 and 1643 to 1715, respectively. The most recently minted coins were likely created during a series of money reforms that Louis XIV enacted to finance several costly wars. During his 72-year-long reign, Louis XIV also oversaw massive expansions to the Palace of Versailles.
Beginning in 2016, all treasures discovered in France automatically became property of the state. However, since the mansion owners purchased the property in 2012, they have the rights to sell their finds, reports France 3. Per French law, the proceeds from the sale will be split in half, with half going to the married couple who owns the property and half to be split evenly among the three discoverers.
You have to wonder how close the Mion family came to putting off renovations for a few years. The coins will go up for auction on September 29, and are expected to bring more than €250,000. Read the entire story at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: Ivoire Auction House)
As we approach the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it's natural to take a look at what has changed in the years since. Those horrific moments when we all watched the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapse live on TV were particularly scarring. You have to wonder how safe such tall buildings really are, because those towers were a model of safe architecture in their day. It might be reassuring to know that we've come a long way in both design and materials since the World Trade Center was designed in the 1960s, and especially in the past twenty years since they fell. -via Digg
Just look at this photograph of the Amazon River! It looks like gold flowing through a darkened forest. It is not enhanced; the sunlight reflecting off the water among the darkened trees are due to the angle. This photo from taken from the International Space Station, by German ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst in 2018. You can see how the river is much longer than the distance it travels through, as thousands of years of flowing water has formed meanders and even oxbow lakes where the meander has collapsed on itself over time. The Amazon is unique because of its size and the lack of engineering along its banks. A river that has dams, cities, and levees does not curl itself into nearly as many meanders. -via reddit
(Image credit: Flickr user Alexander Gerst)
So you've inherited your grandmother's precious dolls, which she cherished, but you can't stand them because they look so creepy. You aren't alone, as many people end up with dolls that are ugly, haunted, or give off uncanny valley vibes. You could toss them, but that's neither respectful to Grandma nor is it environmentally-friendly. What to do?
Sara and Brian have found their niche in recycling. They run a program called Unsettling Toy Removal and Rehoming, in which they take in your unwanted dolls and offer them to people who are not so bothered. If you're interested, you can look through the dolls that are available, or for a real horror show, see the permanent collection.
Note: video may be NSFW due to the presence of a medical dummy named Maria.
-via Boing Boing
The 1995 teen comedy Clueless was a big hit and is now considered one of the best teen movies of all time. What? From the comments at YouTube, it's apparent that Clueless is cherished as a work of art by the Millennials who watched it as teens. However, if all you know about the film is what is in this Honest Trailer, that can be mystifying.
Mark Rober (previously at Neatorama) is pretty well known for his cool and entertaining stunts, which have only gotten bigger over the years. This time he's going for the world record in shooting elephant toothpaste into the air. But this video is about so much more than that. It's the story of the elephant toothpaste, alright, both his past failures and the new project. But it also involves some debunking of certain internet videos, a jet ride, a pool with a foam slide, a pool filled with millions of orbeez, and a rainbow of devil's toothpaste.
It's also the story of a young cancer survivor and how the community came together to make the best surprise party ever for him. Together, all that justifies the length of this video. -via Fark
The Romans were all about pomp and circumstance. That's why we have arenas today. However, among the chariot races and gladiator fights, one annual ritual stands out for its bizarreness, in which a lucky duck, er, goose is honored at the expense of a few good bois.
On a warm summer day in August in ancient Rome, a brilliantly decorated litter is carried solemnly in the direction of Circus Maximum. Its occupant is neither a senator nor a highborn lady, but upon arrival at his destination he is revealed to be a humble goose, and he had arrived at the venue, now seated on a luxurious purple cushion, to watch the crucifixion of some dogs.
This macabre ritual, called supplicia canum (or “punishment of the dogs”) is celebrated to commemorate the anniversary of a traumatic episode in the history of Rome—the sacking of the city by the Gauls in 390 BC or 387 BC. Supplicia canum is supposed to serve as warning to dogs not to fall asleep on guard duty. In the same procession, geese were decked out in gold and purple, and carried in honor for alerting the last defenders of the city from falling into the hands of the Gauls.
It's hard to believe anyone took the "warning" to the dogs seriously, but the ceremony might have served some purpose in teaching Rome's military history, which makes us glad we have documentation and schools and books from which to learn history. You can learn the circumstances of the sacking of Rome that led to the supplicia canum at Amusing Planet.
(Image credit: Marie-Lan Nguyen)
AskReddit is a never-ending source of stories that range from delightful to cringeworthy. Graceful_Swan_Ronson asked servers, "what's the most ridiculous request you've gotten from a customer at your restaurant?" Of more than 3000 comments, there are quite a few gems.
1. "A mom and her eight-year-old son came into the restaurant I waited tables at for lunch. The mom asked her son what he wanted to eat, and he replied 'ranch.' I politely asked if he meant a salad with ranch? Or French fries with a side of ranch? The woman looked at me and clarified he wanted a soup bowl full of ranch dressing."
"I walked into the kitchen and discussed with my manager because I had no idea how to charge them for a bowl of ranch dressing. We came to the conclusion that we should charge them for an entire bottle of ranch, so she paid $10.99 for a soup bowl full of ranch dressing. Yuck."
-Dpg2304
18. "I had a customer ask where the lobster was from that we used in our lobster bisque. According to him, he was allergic to shellfish...but only shellfish that comes from a certain ocean."
-erikarew
But they aren't all weird orders. One story was simply a hilarious miscommunication.
8. "I was at the Cheesecake Factory with a friend who ordered a 'coffee with Bailey's in it' for dessert. It took ages, but eventually the server comes back with a cup of coffee containing two bay leaves. I can only imagine how confused they were putting that one together."
Read a roundup of the funniest orders taken at restaurants at Buzzfeed.
(Image credit: Joi)
Daniel Lambert was born in Leicester, England, in 1770. That was a time when only the rich could always get enough to eat, and stoutness was an admirable quality, since it signaled one's more-than-adequate wealth. But Lambert wasn't upper class; he worked at the local jail, like his father before him. And when he was a young adult, he gained a lot of weight. Lambert became a local celebrity for his girth, and showed off his athletic ability as he participated in sports, especially hunting- until he got too heavy to ride a horse.
Morose about his weight, Lambert became a recluse and shut himself up in his house. In the meantime, stories of his bulk had spread far and wide and curious visitors came to Leicester and used various pretexts to visit his home. Lambert kept away from public eye as much as possible. He also refused to allow himself to be weighed. His friends once tricked him into getting into a carriage on the pretext of going to a cock fight. Once he had squeezed his way into the carriage, the rest of the party drove the carriage onto a large scale and jumped out. By deducting the weight of the previously weighed empty carriage, they calculated that Lambert now weighed 320 kg, making him officially the heaviest person in history, surpassing the previous record-holder, Edward Bright.
That's 705 pounds! In 1806, Lambert decided to make a living by putting himself on exhibition. He become famous nationwide, and even received a visit from King George III. Read the story of Daniel Lambert at Amusing Planet.
