William and Margaret Patterson owned a photo supply shop in El Paso, Texas. There was evidence that their marriage was not always happy, but they were otherwise upstanding and well-liked in the community. Then on March 6, 1957, a store employee was awakened by a call from William Patterson saying the couple were going away. That didn't seem all that suspicious, but later events would. Nine days later, a telegram arrived at the store directing employees to lease out the Patterson's home for nine months and make other odd arrangements. At the home, they found the Pattersons had not taken their luggage, and Margaret's beloved cat was wandering the neighborhood, which was very suspicious. By August, employees involved the police.
While the Pattersons were never seen again in El Paso, a cryptic letter came from Laredo about distributing the Patterson's assets, and witnesses had seen the couple in Valle de Bravo, near Mexico City. As the years passed, the clues became more infrequent, but still stranger than before. Read about the mysterious disappearance of William and Margaret Patterson at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: WhisperToMe)
While the original Star Wars trilogy left us with the idea that the Jedi were good and the Sith were bad, the prequels made us doubt the Jedi were all that ethical, and the sequel trilogy further tarnished their reputation. However, the Sith remain ridiculously evil. The latest Star Wars TV series, The Acolyte, further muddies the waters with Jedi who have plenty of questionable motivations and deeds. The streaming series concluded a couple of weeks ago, and received generally favorable reviews, after an initial review-bombing. There is no word yet on whether there will be a season two. Meanwhile, Screen Junkies has plenty to say about the series in an Honest Trailer that makes me feel as if I have seen the entire run of Star Wars: The Acolyte, yet I'm still confused as to what it's all about. The whole idea of space witches has me longing for a simple trench run.
behind the scenes of iconic album covers, a thread: pic.twitter.com/KOFKwvltaL
— pop culture (@gagasyuyi) July 16, 2024
Some album covers are works of art, while others are nonsensical, but all are designed to get our attention and a lot of thought goes into them (with some exceptions).
Twitter user @gagasyuyi collected a list of 34 album covers paired with a photo taken during the photoshoot that gives us an idea of what went into designing it. Most are from the 21st century, although they do go back as far as Abbey Road. You might be surprised by the things you thought were Photoshopped that turn out to be real, and the things you thought were real that were anything but. And we find out that they really did set a guy on fire for the cover of the 1975 Pink Floyd album Wish You Were Here.
Check out the entire collection at Twitter or at Threadreader. -via Kottke
If you were to choose by which frame of mind you will look at reality and live according to that perspective, would you rather life be a fairy tale, a novel, or a poem?
Perhaps, many of us would prefer living in a fairy tale, in a world of fantasy and magic, where the impossible can become possible, only limited by what your imagination can conjure up. Living in a novel seems no different than how we are currently living our real lives. Day in and day out, it's just a reflection of our reality. Living life as a poem seems a bit tricky, since poems are more fluid, and they don't have a certain end in mind.
Now, instead of having an aspirational perspective about the topic, if we take a different approach and look at our lives and see how we actually live, the question takes on a different form. If we were to describe our lives right now, would we say that it is a fairy tale, a novel, or a poem?
I have learned that, no matter how much I hope or plan or expect things to happen in my life, things often don't go the way we want them to. And so, the question then is, how do we respond to the different circumstances, sometimes maddening and at other times, blissfully surprising, that we encounter in life? How do we look at reality and inwardly, where do we position ourselves in the grand scheme of things?
That was the question that G.K. Chesterton pondered on in a portion of his essay collection Tremendous Trifles, quoted by The Marginalian in this article. Essentially, we can either look at our lives as a fairy tale, in that, we see ourselves as sane and rational surrounded by a chaotic and wild world, or as a novel, in which the world around us is mundane and trifling, while we are the odd ones out.
As I thought about it, it felt that the duality between these two perspectives seems insufficient to capture the fullness of reality and our response to it, whether that makes us sane or not.
On the one hand, there are times when it feels as though the world or fate has conspired against us, foiling our attempts at living peacful lives in every juncture and crossroads. And at times, it does seem as though life just offers little to stimulate our imagination and our capacity for adventure, and it drives us mad how routine everything has become, and we want to escape it somehow.
But these two scenarios are merely two of many different circumstances that can happen in life. We may be making rational decisions and things will go our way. And we may be out seeking adventure of some sort and we are thrown into the unknown, left to fend for ourselves and quench our thirst for spice in life. If we put these different scenarios under one of the storytelling frameworks, then we would be hard-pressed to categorize it under one or the other because it appears to be a mixture of the two.
Then, there's the third perspective in approaching this problem of reality and sanity. And that's the way of the poem. Whitman suggests that by breaking free from the "rules of life" that do not fit or do not work for you, then you will be able to live like a great poem. And I take that to mean that Whitman urges people to express their individuality without fear or bias of what rules of structure, rhythm, or composition dictate. Let your mind run free and take everything in as they come.
Whether you see your life right now as a fairy tale, novel, or a poem, I think what it all boils down to is our search for meaning in life. At the end of the day, we all want to live for something, and we frame the external factors and aspects in our lives according to that thing for which we strive. And so, try to find what it is that gives your life meaning and devote your life to it. Hopefully, everything else will fall into place.
(Image credit: Denise Jans/Unsplash)
I find it equally fascinating and annoying how, sometimes, a random tune would start playing in my head, and it sounds so familiar yet I can't seem to put my finger on the song's title, the singer or band who sang it, or even the lyrics. However, that just goes to show how music can be so deeply embedded in our memory that, no matter how old we get or whether we have memory problems, we can still remember and recognize familiar tunes from different moments of our lives.
My grandmother who has had dementia for the past 13 years can still remember the songs she used to listen to back in her day, so we just put those songs on repeat and let her listen to them, and it soothes her. When she's quite lucid, she'll even remember the lyrics to the songs and sing along with the video.
Sarah Sauvé, a music scientist at the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom, recently conducted a study which suggested that our musical memories may be immune to any age-related cognitive declines or degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. In order to test her hypothesis, she gather a group of 90 adults, ranging from age 18 to 86, and had them listen to a live concert by the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra. Meanwhile, another group of 31 people watched a recording of the concert in a laboratory.
In the test, the researchers had the participants listen to three pieces of music: Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik, of which the team assumed all the participants were familiar, and two experimental pieces which were specifically played for the experiment.
The results of the experiment showed that all the participants equally recognized Eine kleine Nachtmusik. On the other hand, they were also all unfamiliar with the two experimental pieces. The same results were found to be true for those who watched the recording in a laboratory.
According to Steffen Herff, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Sydney, Australia, the reason why people can still remember and recognize these familiar tunes even as they age may be due to the emotions attached to those pieces of music, making it more deeply embedded into our minds.
Despite these findings, the study did not look into the participants' cognitive health and functioning so it is uncertain whether any of them have problems with memory or symptoms of Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases. This study may not have focused on that and so, we cannot make a definitive conclusion about musical memory recognition or recall of people with memory problems like Alzheimer's, but there is growing interest in the use of music to help people with dementia buttress their memory from the progression of the disease.
(Image credit: Nikoloz Gachechiladze/Unsplash)
This shot of Gabriel Medina is ABSOLUTELY UNREAL 🤯 😱
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) July 29, 2024
( 📸: Jerome Brouillet) pic.twitter.com/4JQNI4olsi
Here we see Brazilian surfer Gabriel Medina celebrating after riding a perfect wave, scoring a 9.9 during the qualifying round of the 2024 Olympics. The surfing events are happening in Tahiti, 15,700 kilometers (8400 miles) from Paris. Medina is so happy he's levitating above the water, along with his tethered surfboard!
The full, uncropped photo shows even more. This picture has not been Photoshopped. It was taken by surf photographer Jerome Brouillet, who knows how to capture a moment in time, but this borders on magical. To understand how serendipitous this image is, here is the video sequence showing when it was caught.
Now picture where Brouillet had to be positioned to get the picture. The shot is one in a million, or maybe even one in a billion. Medina may well go on to achieve a gold medal, but he is already a star for posing while flying through the air with a surfboard. -via reddit
This story has nothing to do with underwear. Jenny Nguyen envisioned a sports bar that only showed women's sports on the TVs. It would be more of a pub than a bar, welcoming families with children, maybe with some sports memorabilia. She would offer food and drinks from companies run by women. In 2022, she opened The Sports Bra in Portland, Oregon.
On opening night, the line to get in was long. In the first nine months, the bar pulled in a million dollars. Athletes and teams donated memorabilia from women's sports that line the walls. Other people took the idea and ran with it, like Jillian Hiscock, who opened A Bar of Their Own in Minneapolis. And most importantly, young girls saw athletes they could look up to on the TVs and on the walls. Read about the meteoric rise of The Sports Bra and women's sports in general at The 19th. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Another Believer)
Storm chasing is quite a peculiar occupation, whether one is a professional or a hobbyist. When we first took notice of these folks, they seem tailor-made for exciting action movies and reality TV. The new movie Twisters opened ten days ago and scored a record box office for a natural disaster movie. But is it anything like a real storm chaser's life? Just the more exciting parts. Oh yeah, it takes a special person to even consider heading toward a tornado instead of away from one, but you can't just decide to do it and think you'll be okay. The real labor that storm chasers put in to learn the ropes and find tornados to get relatively intimate with while staying safe is a lot of work, but not all that exciting onscreen. Still, learning the story behind the story is always interesting. Accomplished storm chasers have varied motivations, but some of them have ultimately made the rest of us safer.
The longest recorded time that a person held their breath underwater was 24 minutes and 37 seconds. That record is held by professional breath hold diver Budimir Šobat from Croatia, which was certified by the Guinness World Records on 27 March 2021. Šobat beat the previous record by 34 seconds.
In his attempt to beat the record, the 56-year-old freediver hyperventilated with pure oxygen beforehand, which the rules allowed for up to 30 minutes, and then he started the attempt. In order to achieve such a feat, Šobat said that during the whole time he submerged his face underwater, he only focused on trying to hear his heartbeat.
For mammals, having no gills to breathe freely underwater, there are several techniques to try and hold their breath for a long time. Training your body to be able to hold your breath longer would be the best way to increase the lung's capacity to hold more oxygen.
Freedivers use oxygen tables and carbon dioxide static apnea tables to develop the technique that allows them to hold their breath longer. They also do exercises like box breathing and diaphragmatic breathing to increase lung capacity. Finally, while training underwater, staying still helps in preserving the oxygen that they're holding.
Humans have to train hard if we want to develop the ability to hold our breath longer underwater. And it's an extremely useful skill to have, especially in cases of emergency, like when an accident occurs, and you find yourself trapped in a submerged vehicle or you get swept away by a rip current.
Pinnipeds, like seals and sea lions, have a much easier time holding their breath underwater, and that's because they're built differently from humans. Even though they're mammals, a new study found that the reason why these critters on flippers can last longer underwater lies in their hearts.
The longest time that any pinniped held their breath underwater was almost two hours, accomplished by a southern elephant seal. And the secret, according to the researchers was this structure in their hearts called an aortic bulb, which is essentially a very large artery that allows more oxygen to circulate throughout their body.
This aortic bulb, along with the animal's lower heart rate, allows it to conserve oxygen and stay submerged for longer periods of time. To verify this finding, scientists from the University of British Columbia compared data of heart size and dive durations from different seals — crabeater, leopard, harbor, and Weddell seals — then used ultrasound to measure the heart size of northern sea lions and northern fur seals.
The infographic above gives us a summary of their findings. As we can see in the lower left panel, the larger the aorta, the longer these seals were able to stay underwater which lends credence to the idea that their ability to hold their breath was thanks to this structure attached to their heart.
(Image credit: Mercedes Minck/Hakai Magazine)
Diagnosing Alzheimer's disease can be a bit tricky. Traditional tests to confirm a person has Alzheimer's include an invasive spinal tap, a special PET scan which is quite expensive, and looking into a person's symptoms, then using cognitive exams to diagnose whether Alzheimer's could be the cause for their memory problems.
Now, a new Swedish study suggests that a certain form of blood testing may be more accurate than current methods. It's based on the idea that there are certain "biomarkers" which lead to the slow degeneration of a person's cognitive functioning.
In traditional tests, beta-amyloid was the primary biomarker being measured to confirm Alzheimer's. When this sticky protein builds up and forms plaques in the brain, it may block cell-to-cell signaling at synapses and even activate immune system cells that trigger inflammation and devour disabled cells.
Generally, it takes a period of about 20 years before the first signs and symptoms of Alzheimer's appear, however, that means several plaques have already accumulated and may have done considerable damage to the nerve cells in the brain.
Current medication to mitigate the progression of the disease is usually most effective when taken in the earlier stages of Alzheimer's, but it requires an early diagnosis as well, which, due to the incredible difficulty in identifying whether a person has already developed Alzheimer's, would also take time before a person is verified or cleared for the drug.
Since the diagnosis of Alzheimer's in patients is in a murky state, researchers have been trying to find new methods to detect Alzheimer's at the earliest possible moment. That's how this new Swedish study using blood tests came about.
The researchers looked at 1,200 patients who consulted a primary care doctor or a specialist for their memory problems, received an initial diagnosis, had blood tests taken, and then proceeded to get a spinal tap or PET scan for confirmation. In comparing the accuracy between the primary care doctors' initial diagnosis, the specialists' assessment, and the blood tests' results, the researchers from Lund University found that primary care doctors had a 61% accuracy rate, specialists had 73%, and the blood tests were 91% accurate.
Digging deeper into the gaps in accuracy between the three, one of the reasons why blood tests had higher accuracy in diagnosing for Alzheimer's was the fact that they measured another biomarker which was correlated with the development of Alzheimer's, called tau protein.
The benchmark measure being used in those blood tests is p-tau217, which, according to Dr. John Hsiao of the National Institute on Aging, and Maria Carrillo, the chief science officer of the Alzheimer's Association, was correlated with the amount of plaque buildup in a person's brain. If the blood test shows a high level of p-tau217, then there is a high probability that a person's memory problem is being caused by Alzheimer's. Otherwise, there may be other reasons.
At the moment, the companies offering p-tau217 tests include ALZpath Inc., Roche, Eli Lilly, and C2N Diagnostics. However, these tests can only be availed by the order of a doctor from the labs, since there are still no guidelines from the Alzheimer's Association regarding its use, neither is there FDA approval for the procedure as of yet.
Despite stressing the importance of getting an early diagnosis for Alzheimer's, these blood tests cannot yet be used for people who may be susceptible to Alzheimer's, due to their family's medical history, but have not yet shown any signs or symptoms of it. However, studies are being conducted on possible therapies for these people who are at high risk of getting Alzheimer's in the future.
For now, the only way to lower the chance of getting Alzheimer's or perhaps, preventing it completely, is to eat a healthy diet, exercise, and get enough rest and sleep. I would like to add to those pieces of advice engaging in activities that exercise the mind so as to keep it sharp and active, and staying away from stressful environments or anything that may cause stress.
(Image credit: Dmitriy Gutarev/Pixabay)
Ingenious, mesmerizing, and absolutely revolutionary. Those are only some of the words that we can use to describe the three Dennison sisters and their contribution to England's penny arcades.
When I was a child and my parents would bring me to the mall, there was one place I would always beg them to allow me to go, and that was the arcade. Making my way to that corner of the mall, flashing with neon lights and 8-bit sounds and music, a rush of excitement would fill my heart. I'd go up to the counter and exchange a bill for several tokens, and then I would wile away the time while my parents did their shopping.
A hundred years ago, such establishments also existed, like the Blackpool Tower in England. There, vacationers, holiday-makers, families, and other tourists would visit to see the attractions and find some entertainment in them.
Back then, Blackpool had a thriving tourism industry, taking notes from other places and attractions like Chicago's Ferris Wheel, Coney Island's rides, Berlin's trams, and the Eiffel Tower, a 518-foot replica of which had been constructed as a symbol for the image they wanted to portray of the city.
With all this flurry of excitement, innovation, and spectacle, John Dennison finally gained an avenue and opportunity to showcase his own arcade machines. Using his experience working at an engineering firm as well as drawing inspiration from his hobby of building automatic models, he displayed several of his coin-operated clockwork models of ships and agricultural machinery at Dr. Cocker's Aquarium, Aviary, and Menagerie on Blackpool's seafront.
Later on, when Dr. Cocker's was replaced by the Blackpool Tower, Dennison continued the partnership with the new management, retaining his contract to provide coin-operated working models to the new tourist attraction. The machines turned a profit for Dennison, given the thousands of tourists who visit the Tower each day, who, for a few pennies, were able to find some amusement in Dennison's moving machines.
In 1924, John Dennison passed away at 77, and not wanting the business to fall by the wayside, the three Dennison sisters — Florence (36), Alice (34), and Eveline (28) — continued what their father had started. Florence became the business manager while her younger sisters fiddled and tinkered with the machines along with the scenery, props, characters and their costumes, as well as the plot and setting of the dioramas.
Building on from their father's designs, they added more movement to the characters in the scenario, and provided more exciting plot twists and reveals, which infused their working models with a life of their own and increasing the drama and entertainment experienced by the audience who pinched their pennies into the machines.
The machines grew in popularity, owing to the appeal of their more morbid sceneries like the one pictured above titled "Murder in the Museum", a reference to and inspired by the American film which was released that same year they built the machine.
When they first took over the business, the sisters' working models raked in annual earnings of £1,586 (around $83,500 today). A decade later, they were making £2,624 (about $170,500 today). And then, in the midst of WWII, with Blackpool's tourist base now including soldiers on leave, London civil servants, and evacuated women and children, their machines earned them £6,831 (approximately $311,500 today).
In 1944, right after the war, the sisters decided to sell off their entire collection and live the rest of their lives from the proceeds. The machines themselves continued in popularity for the next two decades, while the women behind them were mostly forgotten. It even came to a point when the Blackpool Tower Company posted a request on the Blackpool Gazette regarding the origins of the machines, to which the sisters themselves replied.
Many of the Dennison sisters' machines are quite rare collectibles, as many of them were handcrafted and uniquely designed, with a lot of them now considered as "lost". However, if any do resurface, they become embroiled in fierce bidding wars between collectors.
Some of the machines that survived now live in museums. Murder in the Museum, one of the sisters' most popular machines, is currently housed at the Abbey House Museum in Leeds, and still retains its charm for evoking wonder, amusement, and a childlike joy from anyone who gets to see it in action.
(Image credit: Jenny Elliot; Leeds Museums and Galleries)
The biggest and the best entertainment extravaganzas were staged by Roman emperors who had the power and the wealth to do so. And the audiences were fairly bloodthirsty. The spectacles included chariot races, animal killing, executions, and gladiator fights. For around 200 years, women participated in those fights, and their bouts were often highlighted as the main event.
We don't have a lot of documentation on these female gladiators, and there's not even a Latin word for them, but we know they existed. Most were probably slaves, but there is some evidence that upper class women also participated, which was an even bigger draw. People disapproved of such behavior among higher-status women, but they also went to watch them fight each other. A woman who voluntarily became a gladiator was essentially throwing her reputation away, and that was worth watching, especially since they often fought topless and without a helmet to prove that they were indeed women. Read what little we know about the women gladiators of ancient Rome at Atlas Obscura.
Once upon a time, a bachelor's degree mostly meant that this person has a well-rounded education and can stick with a project for years at a time. That was a leg up in almost any job, no matter what subject the degree was in. Now it's too much of an investment to take any kind of risk.
In the latest of Cracked's Honest Ads series, we learn the costs and benefits of a college degree. It can be quite a shock to the average 18-year-old to confront the costs and the debt they may have when they graduate. But once the dream is punctured, there are plenty of options for higher education. This scenario is a private college with a good reputation (except for Roger Horton's name on it). Students who are prepared for the college search ahead of time know that community college can get you quite a few credits for much less money, and a public university will cost less than a private school. For most careers, which school you go to matters little as long as it's accredited. But the real difference in a student's ability to pay back a student loan is whether they graduate, and whether the career they study for is something the world really needs.
Pictured above is William E. Dickey, the winner of the 1904 Olympics in the swimming event known as the plunge for distance. He doesn't look like a typical Olympic athlete because the plunge for distance was not a typical Olympic event. In fact, it was called the most boring sport of all time. The 1904 games were the only Olympics that the sport appeared in, and the only competitors were five Americans. But it was part of the competitive swimming scene in the US for decades.
The plunge for distance was a kind of competitive floating, to see how far an athlete could drift without any exertion after diving into a body of water. This particular act was made easier by extra body weight, as fat makes one more buoyant. It was taken seriously by those who competed, but for spectators, it was exceedingly dull, and the sport died out in the 1920s. Frank Parrington holds the world record in the plunge for distance at 86 feet 8 inches, a record that will stand forever. BBC Future talked to Parrington's grandson, Dave Parrington, head diving coach at the University of Tennessee, about the erstwhile sport of the plunge for distance. -via Damn Interesting
(Image source: Missouri History Museum)
It's far too easy to pick up an infestation of bedbugs while staying in a hotel and then bringing the critters back home with you. That's why travel writer Lydia Mansel advocates for placing your luggage in the hotel room's bathtub as soon as you arrive.
Travel + Leisure magazine explains that bedbugs prefer to live in fabric surfaces, so the most straightforward solution is to reduce contact between your luggage and fabrics, such as the carpet.
You can also leave a note on your luggage to ask the housekeeping staff to leave your luggage in its otherwise puzzling location.
-via Nag on th Lake | Photo: Holidayextras
