I know that these photos look like the next meme craze to go viral on the Internet, but cats are cute. Giant cats? Also cute! Frandsita Muafidin reimagines a world with giant cats, which is reflected in his works posted online. Muafidin Photoshops cats into feline titans, placing them into real-life images of different locations around the globe. Check more of his works on his Instagram!
Image credit: Frandsita Muafidin
I want this guy’s collection. Imagine the time, effort, and money to collect all of those games! Antonio Romero is now the holder of the Guinness World Record for the largest video game collection in the world. The Texas resident has a total number of 20,139 games and over 100 systems (both regular and collector’s editions):
It took the folks at Guinness a whopping eight days just to count them all, which sounds ridiculous until you see it for yourself. What first appears to be one impressive game room keeps extending further and further, filling room after room from floor to ceiling—a true nerd paradise . . . “Nerd-vana,” if you will.
In the end, we’re not quite sure if Antonio deserves admiration or psychiatric help, but we’re totally jealous either way.
Image credit: Guinness World Records
They don’t kidnap human babies, don’t worry. However, naked mole rats apparently kidnap each other’s babies and turn them into slaves. These mammals have massive colonies with over 300 workers-- that’s a lot! These animals, like ant or bee colonies, have one queen that is the only one who reproduces. The colony’s workers are actually made up of stolen babies:
In the early 1990s researchers caught and released naked mole rats to track them for a long-term field study in Kenya. They found 26 colonies expanded their burrows into neighboring colonies. Individuals from 13 of the invaded colonies were never seen again.
A year after checking one of these colonies, they found two pups in an invading colony looked to have been from an invaded colony, but the team couldn't be sure it wasn't just a mistake.
"We just didn't have the tools to make sure that I hadn't totally screwed up," evolutionary biologist Stan Braude from Washington University told New Scientist. But genetic analysis of the tissues they collected has now confirmed what they witnessed.
"The pups kidnapped by colony QQ became non-reproductive workers," the team wrote in their paper, "hence their life effort would be categorized as slavery, in the same sense as slave-making ants."
Naked mole rat kidnapping behavior had previously been witnessed in the unnatural conditions of a laboratory, but this is the first time it's been confirmed in the wild.
Image credit: wikimedia commons
A family went missing after a hike near Yosemite National Park. Jonathan Gerrish, Ellen Chung, their 1-year-old, and their family dog, were all found dead in Sierra National Forest. No signs of trauma, injury, or suicide were found. The circumstances behind their mysterious death is now being linked to a toxic algae bloom:
At first, officials speculated toxic gases may have been seeping out of an old mine 3 miles away from where the bodies were found and investigated under a hazmat warning, according to the Associated Press. But that warning has now been lifted.
“I don’t believe it’s connected to a mine,” Mariposa County Sheriff Jeremy Briese told the Bee.
Now, the State Water Resources Control Board is investigating the area for toxic algae blooms and lists the area near where the bodies were found as a place of “caution.” The Sierra National Forest issued a similar warning on July 13 regarding toxic algae blooms, advising visitors to avoid swimming in some bodies of water within the forest.
Still, the local Sheriff said there is no definite answer yet, and that the investigation is still ongoing.
Image credit: Cullen Jones
After the fall of the last imperial dynasty in China, the country fell into a decades-long struggle for a cohesive government. While there were many factions involved, those most likely to succeed were the Nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek, and the Communists. Chiang had help in his rise to power from a man named Du Yuesheng, who you've probably never heard of. For decades, any books about Du were banned in China, and even the mention of his name was forbidden.
Respectable heads of state rarely admit to keeping company with gangsters. But in April 1927, about 15 years after the collapse of the last imperial dynasty, Chiang Kai-shek and China were at a crossroads. Chiang had followed a murky path to leadership of the Chinese Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang. Although the Kuomintang was rivaled by an assortment of warlords who ruled the provinces as their personal fiefdoms, in Chiang’s mind the greatest obstacle between him and control of that vast and war-torn country was a young Communist Party which, he believed, would soon be nothing but lethal trouble.
So generalissimo Chiang turned to Du Yuesheng of the infamous Green Gang of Shanghai, a criminal brotherhood rooted in equal parts menace and murk. Du was the leader of this criminal enterprise, and the bloated, gleaming international city lived and died by his word. It was the power of death which most interested Chiang that spring. He wanted nothing less than complete power over all of China, and to get it, he was willing to trade the lives of thousands and allow the establishment of a vast narcotics empire. Others might have balked at trading the murder of a few thousand political opponents for this goal, but neither Du nor Chiang felt any such hesitation.
The French and American residents of Shanghai factored into the struggle, as the foreigners preferred order instituted by organized crime to the rise of the masses of oppressed workers, for their own survival. Read the story of drug lord Du Yuesheng and his role in the Shanghai massacre in the latest longform article, or listen to it in a podcast, at Damn Interesting.
In junior high and high school, my class studied one Shakespeare play every year. The only one I recall much about was Macbeth, reserved for seniors, because it was so difficult. "Macbeth doth murder sleep," indeed! Macbeth has long been considered the scariest of Shakespeare's plays, as it contains ghosts, witches, murders, curses, blood, and even walking trees. Productions of Macbeth have been littered with so many accidents and fatalities that it is considered a cursed play, and thespians won't even say its name.
But fans of Macbeth often say its freaky qualities are deeper than just the plot devices and characters. For centuries, people been unsettled by the very language of the play.
Actors and critics have long remarked that when you read Macbeth out loud, it feels like your voice and mouth and brain are doing something ever so slightly wrong. There’s something subconsciously off about the sound of the play, and it spooks people. It’s as if Shakespeare somehow wove a tiny bit of creepiness into every single line. The literary scholar George Walton Williams described the “continuous sense of menace” and “horror” that pervades even seemingly innocuous scenes.
Jonathan Hope and Michael Witmore did an analysis of the language used in Macbeth, down to individual words. Which words were used more than in other Shakespeare plays? How were those words used? They came up with the creepiest word in Macbeth, but it's not one you would have guessed. Then they had to explain why its use made the play so unsettling, which you can read at OneZero. -via Metafilter
(Photo credit: Ungry Young Man)
"The Elephant's Song" tells the story of Old Bet, the first circus elephant in the United States, related from the perspective of a farm dog. Written by Lynn Tomlinson and Sam Saper, the bouncy blues tune belies the sad story, accompanied by lush award-winning animation by Lynn Tomlinson.
-Thanks Sam!
Each one of Marisa Stratton's classmates appears in oil paint on panels measuring 1 by 2 inches. It's part of a series of painting collections inspired by the pandemic-induced Zoom lifestyle, including a virtual infant baptism and an online birthday party.
Stratton comments that after she painted the set, she invited her classmates to critique her portraits of them.
-via Super Punch
In 2017, videographer Peter Clausen, falconer Paul Klima and Red Bull Media House collaborated to film a 360 degree panoramic video from an eagle's point of view as it flies through the Dolomite Mountains in Italy.
Needless to say, the video is fantastic and should not be missed! Check out Eagle Cam: Explore the Dolomite Mountains From an Eagle's Eye Perspective in 360° over at SupaFluffy.
It is with great sadness that we learned of the death of Charlie Watts on Tuesday. The stylish Rolling Stones drummer was 80 years old, and had planned on playing the arena circuit with the band this fall, up until just a few weeks before his death. With tributes rolling in from all corners, people are sharing a particular anecdote they've heard over the years about Watts punching Mick Jagger in the face in Amsterdam in 1984. Hardly anyone gets all the details right from memory, so Vulture reprinted the story from the book Sympathy for the Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters.
This is the most famous Charlie Watts story. It is a very good story, and true — you cannot beat the Charlie Watts right hook. It’s like being hit by a freight train. Think about him playing “Rip This Joint” on the side of your skull, and you begin to get the idea.
These were bad times for the Rolling Stones. Keith had finally gotten clean, and while Mick had been doing a championship job holding things together with a world-class junkie as his second, by the time they come out the other side, he is convinced the Rolling Stones are his band, and the last thing in the world he wants is to cede control to a cleaned-up junkie guitar player now capable of sharing the decision making. What’s more, heels are dug deep into the argument that will define the confusion of their work for years: Mick wants to make a trendy pop record heavy on dance music, and Keith wants to stick to their roots and drive the guitars into the earth. Blues, reggae, rock’n’roll, whatever, just no tricks. He doesn’t care what the kids are listening to — he cares about what the Rolling Stones do best. The situation only gets worse when Mick decides he needs a solo career.
But that's just the setup. You can read the whole thing as it happened at Vulture.
— Keith Richards (@officialKeef) August 24, 2021
Chicago in the 19th century had a problem. The city treated the Chicago River as a waste-disposal system, carrying sewage, garbage, and dead animals away to Lake Michigan. The problem was that the city also drew its fresh water from the lake. Engineer Ellis Sylvester Chesbrough tackled the problem by moving the city's intake valve further out in the lake. Separating the intake from the mouth of the river was a temporary fix, because how far away is far enough?
It was once again Chesbrough who came to the city’s rescue. Chesbrough proposed an audacious plan—reverse the flow of the river away from Lake Michigan. Chesbrough’s outrageous plan worked like this: just west of Chicago River lies a barely perceptible ridge called the Chicago Portage, that separates the drainage basin of the Great Lakes from that of the Mississippi River. Rainfall on the west of this divide flows naturally towards the Des Plaines River, which moves southward to converges with the Kankakee River to form the Illinois River, a tributary of the Mississippi. Any rainfall on the east of the divide flows into the Great Lakes. Chesbrough thought that if a canal could be dug through this divide and made it deeper than the water level of the Chicago river and the lake, gravity would cause the Chicago River’s stinky water to flow backward away from Lake Michigan.
The plan was massive and took years to complete. And it worked! Chicago no longer had to worry about sewage in their drinking water, because it was going into the Mississippi River instead. Which was now a problem for every settlement along the Mississippi, including St. Louis. Read the story of Chicago's scheme to deal with wastewater at Amusing Planet.
Taking on-site pictures and video of sports events is a pretty prestigious assignment among photographers, but it can be dangerous! This supercut shows that occasionally a cameraman will stick his lens in the wrong place, but most of it involves being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Access has its hazards. -via Digg
Stefani's powerfully rhythmic "Hollaback Girl" rocked us in 2005. YouTube's greatest gift to humanity, There, I Ruined It has adapted it for the ragtime tunes of a century ago. The song speeds up so that Stefani is putting her audience back in their place at a faster pace. It's a wonderful way to enter and take control of the speakeasy.
Content warning: foul language.
Meet the TACS ATL (Automatic Twin Lens), a new camera-inspired watch created by TACS. At first glance, the watch resembles a classic twin-lens reflex camera (which is what its design was based on). The new model is a new addition to the watchmaker’s Lens Series, which are composed of different photography-themed designs:
TACS writes, 'First released in the late 1920s, twin-lens cameras were widely used by photojournalists and correspondents to document World War II in Europe thanks to its robust and periscopic design. It was said that the inventor came up with the idea for the camera during World War I on a trench while peeping through a periscope.'
The watch was designed over two years and no consideration was spared during the design process. The dial in the center of the watch face looks like a twin-lens reflex camera, complete with a leather design. You can see through where the lenses would be to see the inner workings of the camera. Other features include a rotating bezel ring with etching like a lens's depth of field scale as well as hour and minute indexes. The crown is inspired by vintage focusing knobs and the crown protector looks like a camera strap's eyelet slot.
Image credit: TACS
In an interesting turn of events, an unknowing teenager who rescued a bumblebee ended up with a new companion! Lacey Shillinglaw spotted the bee with a crumpled wing lying on the road while she was walking her dog. The 13-year-old decided to scoop up the bee and tried to put the insect in a safer spot:
But it refused to stay put, buzzing back over to Lacey and crawling all over her, and after an hour she gave up and headed home with the creature perched on her shoulder.
And despite repeated attempts to leave her outside, the buzzy friend has refused to leave Lacey's side ever since.
It is always by her side in the house - sleeping on her bedside table - and has followed her to the shops and on a family trip to the bowling alley.
Lacey, from Coventry, West Midlands, said: “Betty is totally amazing - I’ll remember this forever.
“I thought she would fly off on the first day but she just never did.
“I’m so happy and I just love spending my time with her.
“She’s so fluffy and I love our friendship.”
Image credit: Laura Pashley / SWNS
