Seasickness has been plaguing mankind since we first took to the seas, tens of thousands of years ago. The stability of the body in relation to the boat is in conflict with the motion of the ocean, and our bodies react to that disconnect, sometimes violently. And it's not just the sea, as modern life can give us the same reaction to air travel, space flight, self-driving cars, and virtual reality experiences.

Motion sickness, as many point out, is not a sickness or a disorder by definition. Clinically, it’s “a natural response to unnatural conditions.” There is a point where it’s no longer “natural” and becomes an actual illness: if you can’t adapt, even after many exposures, and you feel sick for a long time after motion ceases, it’s a problem and an illness. However, unlike a fear of heights, and maybe even hiccups, the motion sickness reaction has no practical meaning. Evidence suggests it’s really just one big misunderstanding.

“The best explanation is that motion sickness is a bit like other sicknesses: to clear out poison,” says John Golding, a professor of applied psychology at the University of Westminster, England, presenting the most widely accepted reason for seasickness in his keynote speech at the conference. The poison-detector theory posits that dizziness and vomiting are backups, in case the taste buds or the gut’s chemosensory system fail to pick up on a poisoned meal—the wrong kind of mushroom, say, or too much alcohol. In a mobile environment, the part of the brain processing movement interprets the action as dizziness and, through neural pathways, alerts the “vomit center” located in the medulla, a part of the brain above the spinal cord. And with luck, there are a few moments before the signal kicks in so that you can consider the direction of the wind.

Remedies have been offered throughout history, with varying results, and scientists are still studying motion sickness to treat or prevent it. Read up on seasickness and what it really means at Hakai magazine.  -via Metafilter

(Image credit: lienyuan lee)

Face masks are now frequently used for safety and as a precaution against the current pandemic. If you want to spice up your face mask collection, The Daily Beast shares some different stylish face masks in different colors and patterns. From neutral ginghams to polka-dot patterns, there are a lot of variations of face masks you can choose from!

image via The Daily Beast

The Hatching Cat's latest post is a reprint of a 1907 newspaper article about the cats of Hell's Kitchen. It paints a depressing picture, but it contains an image of Tommy, the mascot of the Lamb's Club in the 1930s. The Lambs is a social club for theater professionals in New York City, founded in 1874. Their animals mascots have included a parrot named Sir Oliver, a goat named Billy, and Tommy, who was quite a character.

Tommy Casanova Lamb, a husky grey-and-white cat from the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, wandered into The Lambs Club in 1932 when he was just a kitten. There, at 128 West 44th Street, he took up his station at the bar, where he spent most of his waking hours gazing at the celebrity customers, fattening up on beer and free lunches, or kicking out any other cats that tried to create disorder in the club.

Although The New York Times called Tommy the Feline Bar Fly, he did keep good order at the establishment. One time a black tom with green eyes from Sixth Avenue crashed into the bar and tried to steal some bologna from the counter. As the Times reported, Tommy evicted him with a few well-placed lefts.

Tommy was also a very smart feline. Not only did he know when anyone in the dining room ordered fish, he was quite aware that The Lambs Club was his forever home.

Tommy's adventures include various fights, injuries, and romances, an appearance in a vaudeville skit, and a formal dinner given in his honor. Read about Tommy Casanova Lamb at The Hatching Cat. -via Strange Company

(Image: The Lambs Collection)

Will Hulsey was the undisputed king of the animal attack pulp cover. You name it, he'd paint it attacking you in a pool of stagnant water. pic.twitter.com/fallsyzZX2

— Pulp Librarian (@PulpLibrarian) June 10, 2020

Wil Hulsy illustrated covers for men's magazines in the 1950s, and followed the formula to a T. A masculine white man in a swamp, accompanied by a woman in a ripped or ill-fitting red shirt, fighting off a deadly animal attack. You may think I am exaggerating, but in this Twitter thread, Pulp Librarian gives us 14 examples (yes, it includes "Weasels Ripped My Flesh") with commentary on the reasoning behind them. You may also notice the similarity of the other articles promoted on the covers. If a formula works, you may as well run it into the ground. -via Metafiter

French comedian Michel Lauzière has a unique act he calls Les Klaxons, performed in a suit covered in horns. You don't need to understand French to follow along as he performs several classical tunes with his body movements at Patrick Sébastien's Plus Grand Cabaret Du Monde. -via The Kid Should See This

This weatherman from Austin, Texas, knows how to take advantage of his luscious greenery. It turns out that his yard is a good replacement for a green screen, as seen in this video shared in r/nextfuckinglevel. The weatherman used his yard to display the map for his weather forecast. Now that’s cool!

image screenshot via reddit

What does a travel photographer do when travel is restricted? In Erin Sullivan's case, she got creative at home. For her photo series called Our Great Indoors, Sullivan built landscapes using food! Pancake mountains, broccoli forests, and gelatin lakes stand in for natural landscapes.



In the photos here, click to the right, and the last image will show you how it's done. See more of Sullivan's work at Instagram. -via Laughing Squid

Do you recall what music you were listening to 31 years ago? The latest mashup from The Hood Internet will bring those memories back, with 50 songs from 1989 mixed into a three-minute video. You can check out their mixes for each year from 1979 to 1989 in this playlist.

I’m terrible at remembering historical events, along with names of famous people and locations. Isn’t history easier to study when it’s presented in an entertaining manner? Watcher’s Puppet History does just that. The series presents historical events in such an entertaining and funny manner that you’d remember the event well. Or you’ll remember the catchy songs at the end of every episode. This episode about the dancing plague is not only entertaining, but the catchy song at the end will make you remember the dancing plague really well! 

The African wild dog or painted dog (Lycaon pictus) is a canine, but it evolved way further back in the Canis family tree than wolves or domestic dogs. They naturally eat antelope, but because livestock is a tempting meal in their ever-dwindling territories, they are among the most endangered species in Africa. The Painted Dog Conservation organization, headquartered in Hwange, Zimbabwe, is trying to save these wild dogs.

Of the 7,000 painted dogs left in the world, approximately 160 reside in Hwange, where the PDC was established in 1992 by Greg Rasmussen, a wildlife conservation biologist. Painted dogs’ “biggest threats come from humans,” says Shepherd Phiri, the facility’s head keeper. Because the animals sometimes hunt cattle –– although they prefer wild prey –– they’re considered “vermin” by farmers “and are often lost to snares,” Phiri explains. Another threat comes from infrastructure development, which results in habitat loss for the animals, which in turn increases human-wildlife conflict. The biggest challenge the PDC faces is changing people’s mindsets.

Read about the unique painted dogs and the efforts to save them at Ozy.

(Image credit: Derek Keats)

A few species of animals naturally have a bone in their hearts, including cows, sheep, and dogs. This os cordis has not been seen in primates, until recently discovered in chimpanzees in a study by the University of Nottingham’s School of Veterinary Medicine and Science. Not all chimpanzees, but some chimps who have heart problems, specifically idiopathic myocardial fibrosis (IMF). This is the first time a heart bone has been found in great apes.

For the new study, 16 chimpanzees, some with IMF and some without, had their hearts scanned with x-ray microcomputed tomography. No animal needed to be killed, as all chimps died of natural causes in European zoos. The scans generated clear, high-resolution images showing the tiny os cordis, which measures just a few millimeters across.

For anatomy nerds out there, this “hyperdense” bone structure was found inside the right fibrous trigone. Simply described, this meaty part of the heart forms a link between the aortic, mitral, and tricuspid valves.

Some chimp hearts also exhibited cartilago cordis, that is, cartilage formation. This is an important discovery, because the cartilage might have something to do with the growth of the rare bone structure, as cartilage has the potential to turn into bone.

This discovery might open up research into possible ossification of human hearts with IMF. Read more about the discovery at Gizmodo.

(Image credit: Bjørn Erik Pedersen)

We know that soap is a surfactant made by combining fat and and an alkaline substance such as lye. Wouldn't you love to find out who first decided to combine these things, and what they were trying to achieve? But alas, like many products invented before written accounts, we don't know. We do know that ancient Mesopotamians produced soap in this way.

Ancient people used these early soaps to clean wool or cotton fibers before weaving them into cloth, rather than for human hygiene. Not even the Greeks and Romans, who pioneered running water and public baths, used soap to clean their bodies. Instead, men and women immersed themselves in water baths and then smeared their bodies with scented olive oils. They used a metal or reed scraper called a strigil to remove any remaining oil or grime.

While some people later used soap to clean skin sometimes, it was mainly a laundry product until after the Civil War! Read what history professor Judith Ridner knows about the history of soap at The Conversation. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Strobridge Lith. Co., Cin'ti & New York, restoration by Adam Cuerden)

Tom Hanks' new World War II film is called Greyhound, after the ship it's set on. Is it based on a true story? No, Hanks' character, Commander Ernest Krause, is fictional, as is his ship and his story. But the naval campaign at the heart of the movie was real, and it lasted six years. That may be the reason you didn't study the Battle of the Atlantic in school.

Greyhound takes place at a critical moment in the Battle of the Atlantic, which began in September 1939 and only ended with the Germans’ surrender on May 8, 1945. As Blazich explains, the conflict was centered chiefly on supplies: An island nation, the United Kingdom required a steady flow of imported goods and raw materials, many of which originated in the U.S. The Soviet Union, besieged by the Nazis’ Operation Barbarossa, was also in dire need of food, oil and other essential supplies, which arrived via seaports on the Arctic Ocean.

“Had the Atlantic been lost, so too would have Britain,” writes historian James Holland for History Extra. “There would have been no Mediterranean campaign, no D-Day, no VE or VJ Days. The vast, global supply chain upon which the Allies depended … would have been cut, and with it the lifeline.”

The Allies sent supplies by convoy, merchants ships protected by navy destroyers and air cover. This added security made the convoys large and difficult to maneuver, all the easier for German U-boats to find and attack. Read about the Battle of the Atlantic and what it was like for those who participated at Smithsonian.

After its theatrical released was delayed several times, Greyhound moved to streaming television.  Its debut on Apple TV+ has been moved to July 10.  

Actors seem to be taken more seriously when they perform their own stunts. Maybe it's part of throwing themselves into a role, or giving their all for a production. And when they do those stunts bravely and enthusiastically, well, injuries happen. Producers hate it when a shoot has to be delayed because a star is in the hospital, but it happens ...often enough to make an internet list. Harrison Ford has contributed to these stories on more than one occasion.

During the filming of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Ford had to take a break from the set and fly back to L.A. for surgery after a rupturing disc in his back. Ford didn’t say exactly what the stunt was that caused the injury, but he told The New York Times in 1984 that he blamed the elephants. Indiana Jones climbing off an elephant and yelling, “Oww! My Back!” isn’t the most exciting story, but hey, that’s Hollywood stunt work.

Ford’s worst on-set stunt, though, would come decades later when reprising his role as Han Solo for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. According to The Guardian, Ford walked under the door of his trusty old spaceship, the Millennium Falcon, when the hydraulic door — which weighed the same as a small car — pinned him to the ground and nearly crushed him to death.

Ford was lucky enough to get out with only two broken bones in his leg — had somebody not quickly hit the door’s emergency stop button, Han Solo could have been down for the count before ever reuniting with Kylo Ren.

Read about stunt injuries involving Charlize Theron, Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise, and others at Mel magazine.

Fake photos are initially difficult to spot. There are some photos that look too real, but at a closer inspection, have been tampered with multiple times. So how can we actually decipher if a photo has been edited or fabricated? It can be spotted by looking at shadows included in a photo, as Hany Farid tells BBC: 

One trick he has picked up over time is to check the points of light in people’s eyes. “If you have two people standing next to each other in a photograph, then we will often see the reflection of the light source (such as the Sun or a camera flash) in their eyes,” he explains. “The location, size, and colour of this reflection tells us about the location, size, and colour of the light source. If these properties of the light source are not consistent, then the photo may be a composite.”

Another giveaway is the colour of people’s ears. “If the Sun is behind me, my ears will look red from the front because you’ll see the blood,” he says. “If the light is coming from the front, you won’t see the red in the ear.”

Take shadow, for example. If you draw a line from the edge of a shadow in a photograph, to a point on the object that is casting the shadow, you can trace that further to reveal where the light in an image is coming from. If you map out several points on a shadow, the lines should intersect.

If a photo has been tampered with, the shadows of some objects in the image may not match the light sources in the rest of the picture, says Farid. He has shown it is possible with this method to identify images that have had objects or people added after they were taken.

image via BBC