NASA will decommission the ISS in 2030, after 32 years of service. The space station is the largest object in orbit, longer than a football field, so bringing it down is a project that scientists and engineers have spent years planning. Taking the station apart and bringing back the pieces one by one is not a part of those plans, since we don't have the spacecraft to even send our own astronauts up there. Instead, after all astronauts have left and taken the usable equipment, the station will be allowed to drift from its orbit at 250 miles up. Over a few months, the ISS should be down to around 150 miles above the earth. Then, an unmanned SpaceX vehicle operated by NASA will drag the station further down.

Most of the ISS will burn up as it reaches the atmosphere on re-entry, but 10-20% is expected to remain intact, and that's 180,000 pounds. The crucial part is determining where that debris will land. The de-orbit will have to be controlled so that the ISS lands in the southern part of the Pacific Ocean, the least populated area of the world. Read more details on the plans to bring down the ISS at Gizmodo.

(Image credit: NASA)

Allan Kassenoff and Catherine Youssef, both lawyers, had a volatile marriage beginning in 2006. Their split led to years of custody battles over their three daughters, with each accusing the other of abuse. The court dates stopped only in 2023, when Catherine, after a cancer diagnosis, went to Switzerland for a medically assisted suicide. Beforehand, she emailed a suicide note and uploaded files of her evidence against Allan. The files were obtained by a TikTok member who went viral sharing videos from the Kassenoffs' marriage, leading to a barrage of threats against Allan and the loss of his job.

Neither Allan nor Catherine was a perfect parent, but accounts of the marriage varied widely. Family and friends of the couple have conflicting views of the situation, as would be expected, but the courts, while changing custody orders frequently, most often sided with Allan. So do the three daughters, and three of the four nannies who agreed to be interviewed. But how can one fight back against a one-sided internet campaign and an opponent who is dead? Read the bizarre and tragic story of a permanently damaged family at The Free Press. -via Damn Interesting   

(Image credit: Ajay Suresh)

WTF does this machine do?
byu/knowitokay inWTF

What is going on here? A ridiculously small caterpillar vehicle is doing something with a bollard, but we can't figure out exactly what. Redditors have differing opinions, many of them NSFW, but the best is from finger_licking_robot, who confidently explained the workings of the Poller-Kalibrator. Whatever it is, it sure drew a curious crowd.

Other commenters figured this was either a protest, a stunt for internet clicks, or performance art. You should know by now that the answer is always C. This was part of the recent Berlin art festival called 48 Stunden Neukölln. The artists are Anton Steenbock and Peter Behrbohm, who collaborate under the name SONDER, and the little vehicle is part of the project called SONDER HARMONISATION. The description of the work is just as baffling as the performance itself, yet it was a great success in getting people to pay attention.

You can see more of SONDER's projects at Instagram, including a longer, even more confusing video of the bollard job. -via reddit

Montreal Comiccon has been going on all weekend, and the attendees had a great time. Many were there to show off their costumes, lovingly crafted in exacting detail from our favorite comic book, movie, TV, and game franchises. The group above (led by bodybuilder stefany_tribarta), sprung directly from the video game Mortal Kombat. Geeks Are Sexy was there on Saturday to document the stunning variety and talent of cosplayers from across Canada and the world. Comiccon cosplayers not only have talent, but imagination and a sense of humor as well. These guys imagined what it looks like when Mandalorian mercenaries take a beach vacation.



That beats wearing a full set of armor anyday, but especially in July. See a huge gallery of Montreal Comiccon cosplayers at Geeks Are Sexy. You can click on an image to pull up the full-size version. A good time was had by all.
 

The Darién Gap is the narrow piece of land that connects North America and South America, along the border of Panama and Colombia. It consists of mountains, rainforest, and wetlands, and it has proven impossible to build a road through the terrain. Criminal cartels control the Darién Gap, yet it is a major route for refugees and migrants who do not have the ability to simply fly across national borders.

The terms "documentary filmmaker" and "YouTuber" are not the same, but there is some surprising overlap. If two YouTubers hiked the Darién Gap and recorded their experience, is that a YouTube stunt for clicks, or a serious journalistic endeavor? Timmy Karter and Benjamin Rich (who goes by Bald and Bankrupt) posed as Russians avoiding that country's draft when they joined other migrants to cross the gap. Just to enter the area, they had to be approved by a cartel, and at the end they had to be released after detainment by the Panamanian police. In between, the journey was laden with danger, as no one will evacuate you if you suffer an injury. They ran out of food at the halfway point. The journey was physically exhausting for two young men, and they met people who were doing it while elderly, pregnant, or carrying children. Yet they continued on, crossing Latin America to the southern border of the US to document the motives and the hardships of other migrants. Karter and Rich are the first to document the entire Darién Gap on film. Read an overview of their experiences at Big Think.

You can see Timmy Karter's one-hour video on the Darién Gap at YouTube.

Benjamin Rich's videos tell the story in a three-video playlist.

(Screenshot: Timmy Karter)

Steven Spielberg has often told us how Schindler’s List was a very personal project for him, but it turned into a very personal project for all who worked on it. Spielberg considered it his magnum opus, but he didn't want to make money from it. That's what Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park was for. The studio folks didn't expect it to do well, so they gave Spielberg a smaller budget than any movie he'd made in decades. How could a black-and-white film about the Holocaust draw audiences to the theater? Too depressing. Yes, it may have been a depressing subject, but the care that went into it resulted in a devastatingly emotional film. If it left us devastated after watching, what did it do to Spielberg himself, who spent ten years bringing to project to life, and then months crafting it? Weird History looks at Spielberg's experience, and other stories behind Schindler’s List.  

We're only three weeks away from the opening of the 2024 Summer Games in Paris. Hosting the Olympics is a big gamble for any city these days because of the expense. Paris budgeted €4.397 billion for the 2024 Olympics. Contrast that with the budget for the 1948 Summer Games in London:  £761,688, which would be £34 million today. That's less than one percent of the Paris budget, considering that pounds, euros, and dollars aren't all that different.

Things were different in 1948. There hadn't been any Olympics since Berlin 1936 due to war. Britain was heavily damaged and still recovering, but the games were an opportunity to raise spirits and show cooperation among the countries of the world. There was no new construction, as Wembley Stadium would do just fine, along with other existing venues. There was no Olympic Village, and athletes were housed in colleges and military bases. They were encouraged to bring their own food, too, since rationing was still in effect. Read about the 1948 games, done on a tight budget, at Messy Nessy Chic.   

Potato mashers are useful kitchen implents that serve to prevent you from opening drawers. If you are still able to open a kitchen drawer despite the persistent and valiant efforts of your potato masher, call in this monster.

The world's largest potato masher is a permanent exhibit at the Food + Farm Exploration Center in Plover, Wisconsin. This facility serves to educate visitors about agriculture. Just as the Statue of Liberty welcomes people to New York City and the New World, so does this potato masher signal the arrival of visitors to the educational facility.

At 38 feet and 11 inches tall and 7,500 pounds, it's the largest of its kind in the world.

-via Kyle

When two outlaws get into a dispute, only Sheriff Tanglewhip can save the day! Wait, is he there to arrest these guys for stealing gold (they say they "found" it), or is he there to settle their dispute with each other? It doesn't matter, since the sheriff is only armed with a whip. Don't bring a whip to a gunfight, unless it's with two outlaws who don't want to shoot. Even his creator says that Tanglewhip is the worst sheriff in the West. I was a little fuzzy on the concept of the Gordian knot (like the sheriff), so I looked it up. It's a mythological tale that you've seen recreated in modern times. But it may as well be Greek to these guys. By the end, we all remember what whips are really for.

Tanglewhip is a new cartoon by animator Charlie Hankin. Fans are hoping he will make it into a recurring series. -via reddit

And I do mean famous, not infamous.

The Lazy House in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, Japan is widely known for its very rude staff. As a direct result, reservations must be booked weeks in advance. Customers seek it out for a service experience is that a refreshing break from Japan's famously excellent customer service.

The waitstaff, if they don't just ignore you, will throw menus at you, serve food late, toss said food at the table, and otherwise treat customers with disdain. Sometimes they'll just walk away while you are vocalizing your order. Maybe they'll come back. If so, it will be to tell you to leave immediately after paying.

-via Jeffrey J. Hall

Jack Sprat could eat no fat
His wife could eat no lean
And so betwixt the two of them
They licked the platter clean.

You probably first heard this nursery rhyme when you were very young. If it was read from a book, it most likely had an image of a skinny husband and a fat wife. The meaning behind it may be about not being wasteful, or that married couples are better off being complementary instead of agreeing on everything. I was always struck by how odd it was that a couple ate nothing but meat. The rhyme first appeared in print in 1639, although the name Jack Sprat was already being used as a reference to a small man. 

Could this rhyme have a political inspiration? Other nursery rhymes came about that way, but sometimes it's a matter of retrofitting. In any case, there are two theories about English royal family members that the rhyme may have been written about. One was contemporary with the first published version of the rhyme, while the other happened a few hundred years earlier. Read a bit of history that may give you some insight into Jack Sprat and his wife at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: James Edward Rogers)

I learned the word antidisestablishmentarianism as a kid because it was fairly easy to learn for a big word. But it's only 28 letters long, far from the longest in the English language. How about 45 letters? Try pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. There are longer words, but they are chemical names that dictionaries don't count. Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is a disease of the lungs caused by inhaling fine dust from quartz or a fine silicate. In real life, doctors call it silicosis. I can't blame them. If you want to pronounce it, it's doable by breaking it into its many Latin parts, pneumo no ultra microscopic silico volcano con iosis. You may think that someone was trying to be funny by slipping "volcano" in the middle, and you'd be right. The word was coined by the then-president of the National Puzzlers' League in 1935. But it turned out to be a useful word for pulmonary doctors, so here we are. And I am thankful for the copy/paste function.   

Learn more about pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis and some other very long words from the English dictionary, including one with 36 letters that means the fear of long words. Appropriate. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: DataBase Center for Life Science (DBCLS))

Matching new archological findings with ethnographic records, we can show ritual fireplaces have been in continuous use for at least 12,000 years. https://t.co/PDHqjG8q5L

— The Conversation - Australia + New Zealand (@ConversationEDU) July 2, 2024

Communities and their cultural and religious practices change over time, as conditions change and cultures split or merge with others. Old rituals are lost to time and new practices rise. But a recent discovery in Australia may peg the Aboriginal GunaiKurnai people as having the oldest continuing cultural practices in the world.

Two fireplaces were discovered buried in Cloggs Cave near Buchan, Victoria. These were not fireplaces for cooking or heating; they are very small and each had a custom-cut stick in it. Modern GunaiKurnai elders recognized an ancient ritual for putting a curse on someone, one that is still taught today. Carbon dating of the sticks and other material place one of the fireplaces at around 11,000 years old, and the other at 12,000 years old! The instructions for the ritual were passed down orally for at least 500 generations. Read about this discovery and what it means at the Conversation. -via Strange Company

If all you know about Norse mythology is Thor, Loki, and Odin from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you have a lot more to learn. The many gods of old Norse paganism weren't perfect, just powerful. In addition to the powerful gods, there were also giants, dwarves, elves, and other supernatural beings. They did as they pleased, with no regard for mere humans nor for each other. Their stories weren't written, but passed down through generations by storytelling, until the Scandinavian countries were converted to Christianity by the 12th century. These stories varied among communities until the rise of the Vikings, which led to some consolidation of beliefs. But they weren't written down until after the rise of Christianity, so our understanding of what they actually believed is still fairly superficial.

Of the many stories of old Norse gods, Weird History picks out the most violent tales, having to do with power struggles, wars, and betrayal. An amusing bonus is hearing Tom Blank pronouncing all those ancient Norse names.

Lỗ Mạnh Hùng was only eleven years old when he begin to run into dangerous situations instead of away from them. That was in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in 1967. That's how Hùng became the youngest war photographer ever. He came by his skills honestly, as his father was also a photojournalist. But Hùng was small enough to wiggle his way through a crowd to get the best shot of whatever was happening, and he sold his photos to news organizations for more than enough to support the family during wartime. He made a name for himself by getting the images of the Tet Offensive in 1968.

Lỗ Mạnh Hùng managed to board a helicopter and escape Saigon in 1975 when the North Vietnamese triumphantly invaded the city. Read about the life of the world's youngest war photographer and what ultimately happened to him at Rare Historical Photos. -via Damn Interesting