The Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit was, until last year, the world's most advanced stealth strategic bomber aircraft in the world. It's gradually being replaced by the B-21 Raider, but the B-2 is still a technological marvel.

The B-2 has been out of production since 2000, so parts can be hard to find. Aviation Geek Club shares a story from Brian Edwards, a technician who worked on the B-2 while serving in the Air Force. Years ago, a B-2 needed, for the first time, a replacement windshield. The manufacturer had none and couldn't make new ones without extraordinary expense.

But the company had sold a surplus of the windshields to a private citizen. The Air Force reached out to this man and, for an undisclosed sum, purchased them. He had been using the windshields for his daughter's treehouse.

-via Ace of Spades HQ

Dolly Parton wrote the song "Jolene" in 1972 and made it a hit in 1974. Since then, everyone and their brother has recorded the song, the latest being Beyonce, which is why the song is once again a hit. We've even posted versions of it that went viral here at Neatorama.

The song is an emotional plea from a woman whose marriage is threatened by a more beautiful interloper, although it's hard to imagine any woman taking Dolly Parton's man (she's been married to Carl Dean for 57 years). Still, the feeling in the song resonates with anyone who is insecure in their relationship. Did that really happen? Uh, no. Dolly is just the kind of talent who can infuse meaning into a song so thoroughly that we all feel it. Parton explains two different sources for the song lyrics, neither of which is is malevolent, at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: RCA Records)

Mainichi (Google Translate version in English) reports that Professor Hiroshi Yoshida of Tohuku University in Sendai, Japan argues that the most common surname, Sato, will be come universal by the year 2531. Because married couples adopt the same surname, Sato, which currently constitutes 1.529% of the population, will only increase over time.

Professor Yoshida urges that couples keep distinct surnames in order to stave off the coming Satopocalypse. But he also notes that due to declining population, although everyone in Japan will be a Sato by 3310, that's only 22 people total.

-via Spoon & Tamago

Accurately measuring time can be a puzzle. The most common time period is the day, measured by a complete rotation of the earth. But modern technology, not to mention train schedules, rely on precise timekeeping. The earth's rotation is a bit inexact, so we switched to measuring seconds using the resonance of cesium atoms in 1955. Since then, the varying spin rate of the earth makes it necessary to occasionally add a "leap second" to a year to keep things straight.

But in the 21st century, melting glaciers at the poles are adding volume to the earth's oceans, which changes the distribution of the globe's mass, and is beginning to slow down the earth's rotation. Scientists are looking to the possibility that we may have to employ negative leap seconds to the year, meaning we would be subtracting a second instead of adding one. That may sound simple, but computers and the systems that depend on computers aren't built for that change. If that sounds confusing, the conundrum is explained in a thorough and understandable way at Smithsonian.  

Occasionally we post stories of turtles that have grown moss on their backs, or a turtle that emerges from hibernation carrying a slab of sod on its shell. These posts always reference Terry Prachett's Discworld, in which a turtle carries Discworld on its back. That idea was based on an old Hindu story in which the world rests on the backs of four elephants standing on a turtle. There are similar cosmology stories in Native American mythology, without the elephants. These tales work because a turtle's back looks like an island in the water -and they really do carry sod on their backs from time to time. But they don't work with gravity as we understand it today, so the question becomes, "What is the turtle standing on?" Well, another turtle, who is standing on another turtle, and it's turtles all the way down, like that one scene from Yertle the Turtle. The phrase has even found its way into the NeatoShop. In this video, Dr. Moiya McTier goes over the various ancient tales and how we got the catchphrase "Turtles all the way down." -via Laughing Squid

In ancient times, there was really no barrier between science and art. Or religion, for that matter. Art can make science attractive, accessible, and memorable for the non-scientists among us. NASA continues this tradition by partnering with artists who bring the science of the heavens above us to beautiful posters for the upcoming total solar eclipse on April 8. So far, they are offering the public free eclipse posters by Dongjae “Krystofer” Kim, Genna Duberstein, Tyler Nordgren, Michael Lentz, and Kristen Perrin. There may be more posters released between now and April 8th.

Atlas Obscura takes us through the history of astronomy and art, a confluence that goes back thousands of years, featuring more eclipse posters by Tyler Nordgren. -via Nag on the Lake

(Images: NASA/Tyler Nordgren)

The luxury fashion house Balenciaga has once again sparked debate with its latest accessory, a bracelet designed to resemble a roll of clear tape, complete with the brand's logo and a hefty price tag of approximately $4,000!

This is just insane pic.twitter.com/DwUFI7lMl4

— epicthings (@justepicthings) March 23, 2024

Balenciaga, a world-class fashion house, knows its audience. Two years ago, it attracted the fashion elites with its designer garbage bag. Now it's offering a more upscale (and expensive) roll of packing tape that you can wear around your wrist like a bracelet.

Highsnobriety reports that Balenciaga unveiled its must-have accessory last winter but it has taken until more recently for larger and more gauche audiences to learn about it. The bracelet is helpfully branded with the fashion house's name so that people won't think that you're just wearing something you picked up at the office supply store. And, if I understand it correctly, the item just looks like a roll of tape, so it lacks the actual utility of tape that would mark you as a prole.

-via Dave Barry

The YouTuber named the Speed Bard performs musical covers with an unconventional instrument: the speed bag. Although most commonly used to train boxers in a gym, the Speed Bard proves that anything can be a musical instrument if you hit it hard enough.

In his video, he performs the 1999 hit "All Star" by Smash Mouth. Browse his channel for other songs, including "Feel Good Inc" by Gorillaz, "In the End" by Linkin Park,"Gangnam Style" by PSY, and "Uptown Funk" by Bruno Mars. After you feel pumped from watching, try knocking out your own rhythms on a heavy bag.

-via The Awesomer

If what you know about shrimp comes with a cocktail sauce, then you are in for a ride. There are thousands of species of shrimp, and they've each found an ecological niche to fill. They vary in what they eat and the way they eat, from preying on smaller animals to grabbing tiny organic bits floating in the water to scooping up excreta. Some eat fish, while others climb into a fish's mouth to eat what's between their teeth. Their appearances and lifestyles vary depending on what works for them. Some are great at camouflage while others hide completely. The ones we eat do neither, but that is also part of the circle of life. Ze Frank has some fun with the many kinds of shrimp that do unspeakable things just to get by in this episode of his True Facts series. There's a skippable ad from 5:55 to 7:08, and the credits are a minute long, so this video is not as long as it looks.

For centuries, scientists have tried to classify human beings by scientific parameters, and human beings constantly confound such efforts. When I was young, children were given aptitude tests to see what areas of study or career they might succeed in, and such tests often doomed young people to low expectations they could easily exceed if they weren't stigmatized by test results. Now we can test and classify people at the molecular level, but DNA tests still aren't great at pigeonholing people.

No one will argue that Ludwig von Beethoven wasn't a great musician and composer. Yet recent analysis of his DNA would have one believe he had little potential in music. His DNA was scored against a database of 69 genes associated with musical ability gleaned from modern subjects with known musical ability, or lack thereof. The specific talent analyzed was beat synchronization, or the ability to keep a steady beat. Studies by both the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and Vanderbilt University found Beethoven to score at the ninth percentile and 11% percentile respectively. Previous studies show that musical talent is 42% heritable, but we can see right there that genes don't tell the whole story. If DNA had been used for aptitude testing when Beethoven was a child, it might have discouraged one of the greatest musical geniuses from ever pursuing his art. Read more about this study at New Atlas. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: DALL-E)

The Soviet Union was always secretive, but during the Cold War the outside world got hardly any information on what was going on behind the Iron Curtain. Only after the USSR collapsed in 1991 did we learn about the particulars of the Soviet nuclear program, including entire cities that were forbidden territory and kept classified even from their near neighbors. Sure, most of the US didn't know what was going on in Oak Ridge or Los Alamos during World War II, but the Americans working in those places knew it wasn't going to be a life sentence. City 40, on the other hand, was like a high-class, luxurious prison for nuclear scientists, technicians, and their families. Weird things happened in City 40, including a nuclear disaster and a story of alien adoption during those secret years. Now known as Ozersk, the city is clearly identified on Russian maps published after the Soviet Union dissolved. -via Digg

The world's largest veterinary clinic is Salam Veterinary Group in Buraydah, Saudi Arabia. The facility covers 71,500 square meters (769,620 square feet), employees around 300 veterinarians, and can house up to 8,000 animals at once. The complex contains an equine hospital, a camel hospital, pet clinics, a wildlife center, and a research center. They also have branch offices and mobile units used for farm visits. The clinic was already huge when it was established in 2020 before it expanded in 2022 in order to achieve the Guinness World Record.

This clinic offers services you won't find elsewhere, like embryo transfer for specialized camel breeding, infertility treatment, paternity testing, and drug screening for banned substances. I can't find out much about their wildlife services, but you have to wonder if they provide veterinary care for Saudis who keep tigers and other exotic animals. You might notice that the header at their website in English reads backwards. That's because Arabic is read from left to right. Still, any way you look at it, this is a big hospital.  

(Unrelated image credit: Prof. Mortel)

What kind of government would you prefer to live under? There are many that have been tried, with varying levels of success, depending on your standing in the hierarchy. The Paint Explainer (previously at Neatorama) goes through 21 words we use to describe how governments work. These terms are not mutually exclusive; most countries can be described legitimately as a combination of two or more types. When people are criticizing a government, they can use any number of these terms. In fact, you can make up a word and put the Greek suffix "cracy" on it to describe a government. And you'll have to study history to find examples of these terms, and how they can change over time. This comment has a list of the terms, in case you want to look one up and read more. They have a sponsor now; the skippable ad runs from about 5:25 to 6:40. -via Laughing Squid

There are several pairs of Dorothy's ruby slippers that still exist from the production of the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz. You might recall that a pair had been stolen from a museum in 2005 and recovered by the FBI in 2018. In 2023, 76-year-old Terry Martin was arrested for the theft. Now we have new details about Martin, such as why he stole the shoes. He thought they were encrusted with real rubies. An accomplice has now been arrested, and we learn more about what those shoes have been through- ultraviolet treatment, burial, and finally a return to their rightful owner. The story also involves a threat of revenge porn.

Also, we learn about the future plans for the shoes. After going on exhibit at various locations, they will be put up for auction in December. Of the half-dozen or so authentic ruby slippers, these are the ones with the most notorious history, and will probably fetch a pretty penny. Read what we know about the case by now at The History Blog. -via Strange Company  

(Image credit: dbking)

In the new short film The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story, Miles Morales is struggling with the pressures of being a teenager in the modern world, juggling family, friends, school work, and his future, combined with the stress of fighting crime and injustice as Spider-Man. His depression turns into anxiety and then to paranoia and a panic attack as he confronts the demon that is himself. Luckily, he doesn't have to deal with all this alone.   

Sony Pictures Animation made this video to bring attention to the Kevin Love Fund which encourages those with mental health struggles to seek help. They even have a mental health lesson plan to go along with this video. The film is also a part of The Hero Within series of videos reaching out to those who may need help. Director Jarelle Dampier and Kevin Love talk about the initiative in another video. -via Geeks Are Sexy