While the rest of the world is turning off lights to save energy, the Orkney Islands are producing so much clean renewable energy that they don't know what to do with it! To be honest, there are plenty of things they can do with it, but the necessary infrastructure is not quite there yet, so they are looking in many different directions to keep from wasting it. The obstacle, of course, is money. Sadly, according to an Orkney resident in the comments, one thing the power companies haven't considered is dropping the price of electricity for local residents, so they still burn coal and oil to heat their homes, if they don't have their own turbine.
The village of Trasmoz, Spain, has only a few dozen year-round residents, but it's a mecca for thousands of people who take part in their witchcraft festival every July. Or visit their sorcery museum any time of the year. Trasmoz is a cursed village, and has taken that status to heart, becoming the Spanish equivalent of Salem, Massachusetts.
Its unorthodox past goes back to a series of squabbles that began more than 700 years ago. At the time, Trasmoz was a prosperous community of Christians, Jews and Arabs with a powerful adversary: the neighbouring monastery of Veruela.
A quarrel between the two over whether villagers could fell trees in the area for firewood came to a head in 1252, leading the monastery’s abbot to demand that Trasmoz be excommunicated from the Catholic church. “One could call it a tantrum,” said Ruiz.
I didn't know a town could be excommunicated. But that was only the beginning. Another dispute 250 years later saw the abbot put a curse on the town. The villagers mainly shrugged and went on with their lives. Afterward, Trasmoz's reputation provided a handy cover for crimes, such as counterfeiting and even murder. But when other Spanish villages began to use local themed festivals to draw tourists, Trasmoz knew what it had to do. Read about the cursed village of Trasmoz at The Guardian.
This photo above, titled "Ohhh Nein" by Doris Dörfler-Asmus, was one of the over 606,000 photos from 170 countries submitted to the CEWE Photo Award 2021. It was shortlisted in the category Animal.
View more fantastic animal photos from the competition over at our new cute animals and pet site Supa Fluffy.
Image: Doris Dörfler-Asmus/CEWE Photo Award 2021
Meet the X-Men Princesses, a series of mash-up artwork of what Disney's Princesses would look like if they were X-men mutants. This marvelous (ahem) artwork series is drawn by the talented illustrator and comic artist Marcus Williams (AKA Marcus the Visual).
Pop Culturista, our new pop culture site, has the gallery, X-Men Princesses: Disney Princesses and X-Men Mash Ups by Marcus The Visual
Images: Marcus The Visual
Paul Rantham's company specializes in turning shipping containers into offices and bathrooms. One day in 2016, while on a trip to Palm Springs, he got an idea of turning shipping containers into swimming pools, and thus Modpools was born.
During the lockdown period last year, Rantham's company saw a huge increase in demand as people couldn't travel and decided to put in swimming pools in their backyard instead.
Homes & Hues has the story Modpools: Turning Shipping Containers Into Swimming Pools
Image: Modpools
According to his bio, Chicago-based digital artist Doctor Photograph is an expert in creating "doctored images, fake cover art and bootleg toys." So his images may be fake, but the laugh he got from his imaginary items are quite real!
Take a look at a compilation of Doctor Photograph's fake grocery items over at Pictojam. Here's 30 Grocery Items That Don't Exist But Should.
Images: Doctor Photograph
Don't just bring a bag. Bring a roll of bags. You need a backup plan in case your dog is backed up. Listen to your dog's warnings.
During her life in New England, Emily Dickinson was better known for her baking than she was for her poetry. One of her recipes, for black cake, or Caribbean Christmas cake, was scribbled on a note that is now in the hands of Harvard University’s Houghton Library, and it has become a tradition in recent years for Dickinson fans to bake it for her birthday in December.
A relative of British fruit cake, black cake depends on the sugar English colonizers forced the Indigenous and African people they enslaved to produce. The Caribbean version of the cake usually includes rum and either molasses or burnt sugar, also known as browning, a bitter liquid that results from scalding white sugar over a high flame. “You can taste the slight bitterness at the back of your throat,” says Canadian poet M. nourbeSe philip, who wrote an essay on Dickinson’s black cake. For many Caribbean families, preparing the cake is a joyful annual tradition. philip watched her mother bake the cake growing up in Trinidad and Tobago. After she immigrated to Canada, her mother shipped her a homemade black cake every year.
The recipe and its ingredients were likely brought to New England from the Caribbean along the horrific triangular trade. Dickinson’s version uses molasses and swaps the rum out for brandy. Both Dickinson’s and Caribbean recipes are dense with dried fruit, including raisins, currants, and candied citron in Dickinson’s case. And they’re fragrant with nutmeg, cinnamon, and mace, brought to the Caribbean by colonizers from the spice coasts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Malabar.
Dickinson's recipe calls for 19 eggs and will feed an army, but there is also a scaled down version with more accessible ingredients. The article at Atlas Obscura has more, though, as it looks at what is revealed about Emily Dickinson by the recipes, notes, and letters she left behind.
The YouTuber behind the Brick Experiment Channel designed and built a remote-control LEGO car to see how it would climb obstacles. The first iteration of that car is here, but it wasn't good enough. In this video, he adds another joint to the chassis and puts it into situations you just know the car cannot climb out of. But it does. The vehicle design is quite impressive, but his skills at controlling the movements are amazing. -via reddit
Competitive athletes face a constant conundrum in many sports. Gaining weight can give you more energy, muscle, and endurance. But losing weight can put you in a different competition class, which can make the difference between winning and losing. For women athletes, there's also the extra pressure of keeping their weight down for appearances. Looking chubby or masculine can be brutal when you're in the the media spotlight. Coaches and athletes alike have long bought into the "leaner is better" idea. But there's a cost to dieting while training for a sport. Nutritionist Christel Dunshea-Mooij became concerned about New Zealand women's rowing team after the 2016 Olympics. They were in danger of RED-S, or Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport.
In 2018, Dunshea-Mooij tested the female rowers to find out their energy availability, which she describes as "the energy available to the body - from food - after the costs of exercise have been accounted for." So what's left over to run your body for the day.
The athletes made a food diary to see how many calories they were consuming, used their watches to calculate their energy expenditure, and had DEXA scans to determine their fat-free mass.
“When we saw the data, we were shocked,” Dunshea-Mooij admits.
She drew up a risk model based on the IOC consensus statement on RED-S, with three coloured zones - red for high risk, orange for moderate risk, and green for low risk of RED-S. "Only one of our females was in the green,” she says.
RED-S can cause issues with bone density, fertility, immunity, and metabolic and cardiovascular function. (Most of the rowers had "excellent bone density", also measured by the DEXA scan.)
Dunshea-Mooij worked with the rowers' coaches to turn things around. This not only meant eating more, but changing how the athletes thought about eating.
Jackie Kiddle, the current world champion in the lightweight double sculls, was also in the orange after the original testing.
As a lightweight athlete, the change in fuelling was a big shift, she says. “It used to be you ate less to stay a lightweight. But to be able to see I could eat a lot more and then train harder - and stay at the same weight - was eye-opening. It made a huge difference to the way I trained, because I could work harder.”
The change in their training diets led to four Olympic medals won by female boats in various rowing events. In fact, rowing was New Zealand's most successful sport in Tokyo. Read how they did at Newsroom. -via Metafilter
You can call it a secret, but it’s really a hidden gem. Montana has a whopping 55 state parks, and not all of them can be well-known. There are still a few hidden gems that attract fewer crowds. Only In Your State details one of Montana’s ‘secret parks,’ Clark’s Lookout State Park. The eight-acre park is located a mile north of Dillon, Montana:
The park has hiking trails, picnic areas, cultural and heritage information, and some of the best views in the area. And while there's no camping allowed here, you're welcome to spend the entire day enjoying it. In 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition made its way here (hence the name).
Image credit: Sheryl M / TripAdvisor
Nicole McLaughlin has mastered the art of turning food items into clothes. From cupcakes, to toast to sandwiches to old candies, the designer was able to spin eclectic wearable items that invoke nostalgia and promote sustainable utility. McLaughlin has no fashion background; she taught herself how to sew and opted for recyclable or edible materials as ‘fabrics’:
But so much more exists behind the balloon slippers and air-freshener vests. Nicole McLaughlin is trailblazing the future of sustainable waste behind-the-scenes, working with mega brands to change the way fashion is created. To get some insight on her simultaneously delectable and altruistic projects, CR sat down with Nicole for a broad chat on all things sustainability, design, and social media.
Check out the full interview with McLaughlin here!
Image credit: Nicole McLaughlin
It’s a good thing someone was brave enough to jump to the rescue! A party guest jumped on the back of an alligator after the animal bit (and didn’t let go) of the hand of its trainer. The animal trainer was injured when she was feeding the alligator during a girl’s birthday party. Lindsay Bull said that she fed the alligator, named Darthgator, ‘hundreds of times in the past,’ but the animal was a little pushy during that time:
At first, she thought the alligator would do a quick bite and release, but then she felt it bite down harder.
"He thrashed and at that point, I realized this is going to be a serious, potentially really big injury," she said.
Bull climbed into the alligator's enclosure and wrapped her legs around him because she wanted to be able to move with him in the water. She feared that if she was standing on the ground when the alligator started to roll, the force might rip her arm off.
Within seconds, Donnie Wiseman shouted for help before scrambling into the tank and jumping on the alligator.
"It was like instant relief. For a minute, I'm there going through this by myself and then all of a sudden, Donnie was up there on the platform yelling at me, 'what do you want me to do?'" Bull said. "I can't imagine that it was easy for him to jump in and jump on his back."
Wiseman showed CNN Salt Lake City affiliate KUTV the scrapes and scratches on his torso from the alligator's scales and said Bull remained calm throughout the entire ordeal.
Image credit: Scale And Tale Utah
Frank Olito lists ten reasons why he believes that taking the train is better than flying when it comes to traveling. After taking a 19-hour trip on an Amtrak train from New York to Chicago, Olito realized that there are benefits in riding trains compared to boarding an airplane. While the journey was not worth the $550 price tag, the lack of long lines, not worrying about baggage limits, and other reasons made the writer prefer trains over airplanes. Check his full piece here.
Image credit: Aris
Now this cat is a hero! Pets show their love in different ways. Dogs like to be cuddly and super friendly, while cats can be standoffish-- that doesn’t mean they don’t love their owners! Take a look at Piran, for example. This cat managed to alert rescuers to save her owner who fell 70 feet into a stream:
The woman had fallen through some barbed wire and had come to a stop in a stream below.
Tamar Longmuir, 38, was informed of her missing neighbour by the woman's friend on and immediately started searching her farm in Bodmin, Cornwall.
“The cat is very attached to her, and he was going back and forth in the gateway and meowing, so I decided to go and search the maize field,” Tamar Longmuir told reporters.
Longmuir then went to the field and started calling the woman’s name.
At first Longmuir’s cows responded but then she said that she heard the woman’s call for help.
“Without the cat waiting at the gate to that field, it could have been hours later that I or anyone else would have checked there,” Longmuir told Sky News.
Image credit: Tamara Longmuir
