I’m surprised it survived, actually. The Green Man was a pub in Loughborough, Leicestershire that was shut down in 1993. The bar is still surprisingly intact, even if a new mall has been built above it. From murals, to propped up benches, to empty pint glasses all over the place, and to bags of peanuts on the bar, this place feels like it was frozen in time:  

Although the pub has been visited by potential developers, they all decided against taking on the job.

Speaking in 2011, Baljit Kooner, Carillon Court's manager, said: “Developers looked at it a couple of years ago, but they were put off by the cost.

“Lots of pubs seem to be being bought by Tesco to make them into Express stores. But I don’t think even Tesco would want to put a shop down there.

"The whole place looks like a castle inside, the pictures are very impressive.

“It is also pretty clean as well – there are not as many cobwebs as you’d think.”

image via The Sun 

Parasitic worms of multiple species can infect you by penetrating through intact skin and often don't even lead to a rash. They then develop for months and the adults or their eggs cause disease. Also pin worm eggs can be airborne and can survive machine washing with detergent.

— Molecular Worm Dude® (@JRHagerty) December 31, 2020

Harvard professor Michael Baym asked Twitter users to share an "uncomfortable" fact that they know because of their professional expertise. Since many of his followers are academics, we have a lot of cringeworthy facts in the replies.

Jesus christ I'm stunned that didn't happen in 2020

— Doctor TAS (@tas997) January 1, 2021

While it's nice to know how the world works, some of these bits of knowledge explain the old adage that ignorance is bliss. As a commenter at Metafilter put it, "Seems like most of them boil down to, there are no adults in the room, and you are far less safe from nature than modern living leads you to believe."  

About 2 degrees Celsius of our body heat comes from the metabolism of microorganisms helping us digest our food.

— Rob Young (@DoubtTheWorm) December 30, 2020

Read a lot more of these facts (and they aren't all science-related) in the Twitter thread.  -via Metafilter

There’s a perfectly nice house for sale in Guildhall, Vermont, boasting four bedrooms. These are bedrooms on the second floor. However, there are actually seven more that aren’t as prominently advertised. When you look through the photo gallery, you get the image 30 before you see the jail cells. The cells are mentioned only at the end of the realtor’s description.

This home is situated on nearly an acre of land offering a large private back yard for gardening, and a detached barn with plenty of additional storage. The main house served as the Jailer's residence and attached to the north wall of the house is the former Essex County Jail (discontinued in 1969).  The Jail still exhibits the prison cells with barred windows & the Jailers Office.  Bring your own ideas on what this 28' x 40' wing could be!

This is not the same house as the one we posted back in August, but the story is pretty much the same. The town jailer lived there, and having your work so close to home means you don’t have to have a 24-hour schedule of guards. But now you can purchase a home for only $149,000 that will sleep many people if you aren’t too choosy about where to put the kids. -via Boing Boing

Weird Universe introduces us to Stuart Stebbings, a businessman in Wisconsin (of course), who marketed candy made from cheese. He speculated that cheese might absorb smoke effectively and could therefore be used as the filters in cigarettes. In 1958, he worked with Henry Lardy, a biochemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin, to develop an effective filter and patented the result. The best cheeses for these filters are Parmesan, Romano, and Swiss.

The work of paleobiologist George Poinar Jr. inspired Michael Crichton to write Jurassic Park. Poinar's latest published research introduces us to a tiny flower found embedded in amber 100 million years ago in what is now northern Myanmar.   

The discovery is a type of angiosperm flowering plant and has been named Valviloculus pleristaminis. The stunningly well preserved specimen is a male flower which Poinar notes displays amazing detail.

“Despite being so small, the detail still remaining is amazing,” explains Poinar. “Our specimen was probably part of a cluster on the plant that contained many similar flowers, some possibly female. The male flower is tiny, about 2 millimeters across, but it has some 50 stamens arranged like a spiral, with anthers pointing toward the sky.”

What's really groundbreaking about this flower is how it shows our timeline of continental drift may have to be adjusted. Poinar explains how at New Atlas. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: George Poinar Jr.)

When the astronauts from Apollo 11 returned to Earth, could they bring with them a microorganism that could sweep across the earth, killing an Earth population biologically unprepared for it? That was a major fear leading up to the moon launch and return. Aeon describes the extraordinary precautions that NASA engineers and scientists took to ensure that there were no breaches in the quarantine around the astronauts, machines, and lunar samples:

It was now clear that NASA would need to design a facility that could not only protect Moon rocks from terrestrial contamination but also protect Earth from contamination by those rocks – all while conducting complex experiments using the rocks and maintaining a strict quarantine of everything else that had returned from the Moon, astronauts included. Nothing like the facility they would need had ever been imagined, let alone built.

After more than a year of bureaucratic squabbling, NASA planners settled on a design for an 86,000 sq ft laboratory. It would cost nearly $75 million to build, $60 million to equip, and more than $13 million annually to operate (all in 2020 US dollars). It would consist of three parts, each with a different function: a quarantine facility to isolate returned astronauts and spacecraft behind a biological barrier; a sample operations area to run experiments on Moon rocks and Earthly biota behind another barrier; and an administrative area.

Despite these expensive and carefully-arranged procedures, there were several breaks in the quarantine system. Fortunately, the astronauts did not return to Earth with a plague (such as space herpes).

-via Nag on the Lake | Photo: NASA

Over the past few months, gamers have been subjected to the 60fps (frames per second), 4K resolution with ray-tracing promises from Microsoft and Sony. Did they actually deliver? Well, sort of. The 60fps at 4K with ray tracing pitch was a mirage, as not a single game on the market lives up to that pledge. New games such as Spider-Man: Miles Morales lets the player choose between better framerates or improved resolution and ray tracing. They can’t have both: 

The outlet cited Eurogamer's Digital Foundry article that tested the game's performance, and according to that study, Miles Morales' quality mode delivers ray tracing and 4K resolution but caps at 30 fps, while its performance mode removes ray tracing and shifts between 1512p and sub-4K resolutions to squeeze out 60 fps. Meanwhile, Digital Foundry also discovered Assassin's Creed Valhalla can't reach above 1728p, no matter what.

Tom's Guide's conclusion is clear: Despite the graphical horsepower sported by the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, the consoles can't currently deliver on their promises. However, the solution to this problem lies in one of two possibilities.

The first potential solution is obvious: If current-gen consoles can't hit 4K and 60 fps at the same time, then console manufacturers may have to brute force games with even more powerful hardware. This could mean that gamers have to ironically wait for yet another new generation of consoles, or at least until Microsoft and Sony release the inevitable Xbox Series X Plus and PlayStation 5 Pro. Judging by the time it took the companies to release the Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro, Tom's Guide predicted these hypothetical improved iterations will launch around 2023.

The other solution, meanwhile, is to wait for developers to get better acquainted with the current generation's system suites. 

Image via SVG 

Wait, we already have a hottest colors list? The year has barely started! Apartment Therapy consults professionals on what colors will make it big this new year. The choice is yours, of course, if you’d want to incorporate these colors into your home. If you’re just curious as to what colors will be popular this year, check the full piece here. 

Image via Apartment Therapy

What Youtube videos do you watch to relax? Mine are a mix of cooking videos and people building things. If you’re looking for videos that can either make you feel relaxed or creatively inspired, this one might fit the bill! YouTuber Hanabira工房 shares their step by step process for  building a lovely Animal Crossing dollhouse by customizing a generic kit. Not only do they repaint and alter some of the materials provided in the kit, they also add more details, such as a whole yard to accompany this greenhouse kit. 

South Korea’s ‘artificial sun,’ a machine that generates and holds plasma at high temperatures, was able to set a new world record by maintaining a temperature over 180 million degrees Fahrenheit. Their machine was able to maintain such a high temperature for 20 seconds. 

(via Flipboard) 

Image screenshot via Flipboard 

Ah, catnip. The seemingly-innocent plant that drives felines wild. Did you know that it isn’t even a drug (technically)? The power of catnip on cats is very strong, but we haven’t actually properly understood why cats go head over heels for a sniff. A study published in Science Advances has finally explained why catnip has such an effect on felines: 

The plant's powers are thanks to an evolutionary trick that puts cats into a tizzy whenever they sniff this innocent-looking form of mint.

Catnip's pungent odor comes from a chemical called nepetalactone. It helps the plant repel insects.

But this research takes us further into the evolution of nepetalactone using genetic analysis. According to study co-author Benjamin Lichman, a plant biologist at the University of York, his team discovered "a suite of unusual enzymes" were responsible for nepetalactone's kitty arousing properties.

"These enzymes are not found in any related plant species and have evolved uniquely in catmint," Lichman says.

Nepetalactone uses a double-whammy — literally — to stupefy cats. Lichman and his colleagues discovered that while other types of mint form chemicals using only one enzyme, nepetalactone instead activates one enzyme, which sets off a chain reaction to activate a second enzyme.

This double whammy gives nepetalactone its potent powers, the study suggests, but it's not the only unique thing about the chemical.

Image via Inverse 

Ah, if I had only known how much my Pokemon Cards would sell for in the future, I would have kept them! Caleb King has managed to earn $80,000 for selling his Pokemon card collection. King is saving up to go to medical school, and this venture is a good one to earn more money for medical school: 

What's even better is that King, who's saving up to go to medical school to be an orthopaedic surgeon, hasn't even sold his most valuable cards. He has a first edition Red Cheeks Pikachu, which he estimates will net him $20,000 (~£14,680) and another 21 cards that he estimates selling for upwards of $50,000 (~£36,700).

The "Red Cheeks Pikachu", for reference, is that super-chunky piece of art in which Pikachu looks like he's had one too many Poké Puffs, and you can, indeed, find a few pricey ones on eBay.

Now that his hobby is making huge stacks of Pokédough, his parents seem to have come around to the idea, saying that they're "proud of his character [and] his drive". 

Image via NintendoLife 

IKEA has produced a tiny house on wheels that could (and hopefully, will) inspired environmental and climate-friendly changes in the housing industry. The tiny house, a collaboration between IKEA, Vox Creative, and tiny home builder Escape, is a 187-square-foot model filled with IKEA furniture, topped with solar panels and stocked with an on-demand RV water heater, as EcoWatch details: 

According to NBC, it runs on electric and allows for off-the-grid living. The tiny building also emits zero pollution, including carbon. In fact, the only emissions come from the trailer being towed.

Manufactured structures are usually less wasteful than on-site constructions, according to Pebble Magazine. The interior's whitewashed panels are made from sustainably grown pine, reported Travel + Leisure, while the kitchen cupboards are made from recycled bottle tops. There is also a compostable toilet and a collapsible desk/kitchen table, Lonely Planet shared.

Abbey Stark, IKEA senior interior design leader, told Lonely Planet that she prioritized renewable, reusable and recycled materials to make the space "functional as well as beautiful." Stark designed the space as an IKEA show home with sustainable, multifunctional, space-saving and energy-efficient products, Lonely Planet reported.

Image via EcoWatch 

The photo looks too good to be true, alright. That doesn’t mean it was Photoshopped, though. Photographer gm_astrphotography posted a photo of the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn that sparked discourse about its authenticity. The image contains ‘spikes’ seen around the two planets, which looks too good to be true. It is true, as PetaPixel confirms: 

“Diffraction spikes in astrophotography are “artifacts” that show on images of brighter stars where beams of light run through an obstacle on the camera lens and are bent, causing the light to spread out to capture a better image of the sky, according to Photographing Space. Said another way, in an image of a star or planet, they are the straight beams of light that point out in four directions from the object.”

Garret explains that he made those prominent spikes by using tape and rubber bands that he stretched across the front of the refractor in a cross pattern as a kind of practical effect. So while the image is enhanced by the photographer, it was not done in post-production: what is seen is really how the camera captured the photos.

“If you’re into telescopes as much as I am, you’re probably asking yourself how did I capture these spikes with a refractor?” Garret writes. “The best way I found to do this is with tape and rubber bands stretched across the front of your refractor in a symmetrical pattern (I did a plain cross). I feel like it adds something a little extra to the image!”

USA Today accepts his explanation and has rated this viral image as “true.”

Image via PetaPixel

You’ve heard about the revolutionary MRNA technology that makes the COVID vaccines different from traditional vaccines. However, if you’re like me, you’ve never had someone explain it to you in terms that only require a high school understanding of science. The guys from AsapSCIENCE are quite good at doing just that. -via Digg