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2020/08/31

Neatorama

Neatorama

Woodworker Makes 7-Variety Nut Bar for Visiting Squirrels

Posted: 31 Aug 2020 05:34 AM PDT

Sure you can just toss up some birdseed or even, if you'r feeling generous, some nuts for the neighborhood squirrels (a species that one exterminator described to me as "rats with good PR").

But Duke Harmon, a master woodworker, went much, much further. He built an elegantly refined bar that offers squirrels the opportunity to taste a vast variety of nuts in the most sought-after vintages. While enjoying the cultured and sophisticated ambiance, squirrels can try cashews, peanuts, pecans, sunflower seeds, walnuts, pistachios, and almonds.

I watch a lot of build videos in this job. Most are, to be blunt, painful to watch, even when the resulting work is beautiful. But Harmon is genuinely entertaining and a great video editor.

-via Technabob

Gargoyles – Glorious Gruesome Grotesques

Posted: 31 Aug 2020 05:33 AM PDT

Gargoyles are stone waterspouts that direct water away from the roofs of large buildings such as cathedrals. They were often intricately carved into the forms of animals, real or legendary, as symbols. On cathedrals, these were often symbolic of the seven deadly sins.

Barcelona Cathedral has this marvellous goat gargoyle. Like many of the animals featured here it had a duality of nature in the eyes of medieval Christians. On one side they were thought to be Christ-like because of their ability to find food on steep mountainsides and nourish themselves from almost nothing (the Feeding of the Five Thousand springs immediately to mind as a parallel). On the other hand they were seen as venal creatures and were often perceived to be a symbol of lust – yet another one of those seven deadly sins. Plus, of course, which animal would you most naturally associate with Satan?

But gargoyles also took the forms of chimeras, dragons, and other fantastical creatures that served as a warning to those who saw them. And yes, medieval gargoyles were also carved in the forms of people, often those who were being punished for their sins. See a roundup of gargoyles and their meanings at Kuriositas.

(Image credit: Flickr user Son of Groucho)

Free WiFi! (With Complications)

Posted: 31 Aug 2020 02:25 AM PDT

 

Art director Pablo Rochat kindly provides his neighbors (and anyone walking by his home) with free WiFi access. The password is a little tricky, especially if you're trying to type it into a phone. But is is free.

-via Super Punch

Play-Doh Bus Stop Ads

Posted: 30 Aug 2020 10:34 PM PDT

Two years ago, the DDB ad agency in Colombia created a series of bus stop advertisements on behalf of Hasbro's Play-Doh line. While waiting for your ride, you could take out the jar of Play-Doh and mold forms left for your convenience, including a monster (above), a robot, and an airplane.

-via Toxel

She Did It!

Posted: 30 Aug 2020 10:33 PM PDT



Earlier this summer, planes spent a lot of time on the ground when everyone canceled their vacation and business trips. That led to some shenanigans among flight crews. Flight attendant Lindsey O'Brien proved that she could close four overhead bins with her feet. Not only did she do that while supporting her body weight with her arms, she was doing in in a skirt and high heels!

"I used to do yoga and I was a cheerleader growing up so my core is pretty strong and I had to see if I could do it," O'Brien told the outlet after her friend "wanted to try the move."

-via Dave Barry

The Convenient Truth of Rotisserie Chicken

Posted: 30 Aug 2020 10:33 PM PDT

While you're grocery shopping after a long day of work, and you think about what's for dinner, suddenly the smell of rotisserie chicken hits you. That whole cooked bird is cheaper than a raw one, and will save you a lot of cooking time. And they're pretty tasty, too! Yeah, it might seem like the easy way out, but it saves you time and money, and you can't produce the same dish at home without a rotisserie oven.  

At Costco, the wholesale supermarket chain founded in 1983 with 785 locations in the United States, rotisserie chickens have been widely reported to be a "loss leader" at $4.99 each; they're sold for less than they cost, but they are there to lure you into the store, so you can buy other goods (at a profit to the company) while you're shopping. (Representatives at Costco declined to comment for this article.) At many other supermarkets selling cut-rate rotisserie birds, the same strategy has been in place for decades. A spokesperson for Kroger, a supermarket chain with nearly 3,000 stateside locations, says that their rotisserie chicken program began in the 1980s: "Hot rotisserie chickens are a prepared food mainstay for many households," she added.

Even restaurant chefs have a soft spot for the supermarket entrée. King Phojanakong, chef-owner of Kuma Inn on New York City's Lower East Side, remembers that rotisserie chicken was an imperative whenever his family shopped at Costco growing up. Now, he goes with his kids.

"I cook a pot of rice, there's salad, and that's dinner," he says. "The next day, we make a fried rice, and everybody loves it."

You might wonder how the grocery store rotisserie chicken began and how it varies from place to place, which you can read about at Taste magazine.  -via Nag on the Lake

Real Time Lightning Map

Posted: 30 Aug 2020 08:56 PM PDT

Want to see where lightning is striking right now? Check out the Real Time Lightning Map. Zoom in on activity or check your local area. Here's how it works: 

"Blitzortung.org" is a lightning detection network for locating electromagnetic discharges in the atmosphere (lightning discharges) with VLF receivers based on the time of arrival (TOA) and time of group arrival (TOGA) method. We are a community of station operators who send their data to the computing servers, programmers who develop and/or implement algorithms for locating and visualizing of sferic positions, and people who assist in any way to keep the system running. There is no restriction on membership. All people who keep the network in operation are volunteers. There are no fees, terms and conditions, and no contracts. If a station stops pooling its data, the server stops providing the access to the raw data for the user of that station.

There's more, mostly unintelligible to those not versed in meteorology or electronics. But the map is tres cool, and you might want to bookmark it to pull up the next time you have a thunderstorm approaching. -via Metafilter

20 Remakes That Are Better Than the Original Movie

Posted: 30 Aug 2020 01:42 PM PDT

Hollywood sometimes produces movie remakes because they think they can squeeze a few more dollars out of an existing property, but usually they happen because someone thinks they can do a better job the second time around. And often, they are right. In fact, many of the films on this list are classics that you probably didn't even know had an earlier version. It might have been a good story with a poor production, or was just hopelessly outdated, or wasn't a big hit for one reason or another. In the case of The Maltese Falcon, the earlier movie was never even shown in theaters.

Believe it or not, it's entirely possible that the most iconic film noir Hollywood ever produced exists only because Warner Bros. couldn't re-release their original version of The Maltese Falcon. The 1931 adaptation of Dashiell Hammet's story, featuring famed detective Sam Spade, was made just before the Hays Code severely disrupted the industry's ability to show racier elements. When the studio couldn't re-release it because it failed to pass the censors, the studio attempted to make an incredibly forgettable comedic version of the story, then smartened up and hired John Huston to make his directorial debut with the now-legendary film featuring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, and not nearly as much sexual innuendo as the first.

Read about a bunch of remakes that vastly improved upon their predecessors at Mental Floss.

YouTuber Drama, but it’s a Danganronpa Trial

Posted: 30 Aug 2020 01:42 PM PDT

If you're always on Twitter or Youtube, surely you've seen countless people talk about the different issues (or drama, really) about different YouTubers. It's tiring, and sometimes you'd think these YouTubers are doing it for publicity. Ali Soltan is one of those people who were turned off by these dramas, as they were happening at a time when other matters are more important. But that doesn't mean he couldn't turn it into something more comedic and relatable  (and honestly, it's a very witty way of telling someone about these dramas). Ali Soltan presents a Danganronpa Class Trial version of YouTuber drama. It's very entertaining to watch, seriously. 

The Latest News On Neuralink

Posted: 30 Aug 2020 01:42 PM PDT

In 2016, Elon Musk founded a company named Neuralink. This company was dedicated to developing implantable brain-machine interfaces, or BMIs.

Musk once again directs the people's attention towards his company, as he showed the progress of the Neuralink device, called the "Link".

The goal [of BMIs] may be ambitious — and definitely subject to a lot of ethical and medical debate — but the technology that Musk actually demonstrated was much less so. Musk first noted that Neuralink had changed design since the reveal last year, with a smaller physical device profile that he said can be fully hidden under hair once installed in the skull. He had a physical device in-hand to show its size.
Musk then turned the audience's attention to three pigs that were in attendance in nearby pens, with handlers nearby. The three pigs were one that was untreated, the second ("Gertrude") was installed with a Neuralink device, called the "Link," and the third had previously had one installed but then subsequently had it removed.

More details about this story over at TechCrunch.

(Image Credit: Neuralink/ TechCrunch)

Remembering Hurricane Katrina

Posted: 30 Aug 2020 01:42 PM PDT

Despite being only the third most powerful storm at that time, this hurricane was among the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States. This hurricane was Katrina, which made landfall near New Orleans, Louisiana fifteen years ago, on August 29, 2005.

After briefly coming ashore in southern Florida on August 25 as a Category 1 hurricane, Katrina gained strength before slamming into the Gulf Coast on August 29. In addition to bringing devastation to the New Orleans area, the hurricane caused damage along the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama, as well as other parts of Louisiana.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city on August 28, when Katrina briefly achieved Category 5 status and the National Weather Service predicted "devastating" damage to the area. But an estimated 150,000 people, who either did not want to or did not have the resources to leave, ignored the order and stayed behind. The storm brought sustained winds of 145 miles per hour, which cut power lines and destroyed homes, even turning cars into projectile missiles. Katrina caused record storm surges all along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. 

Learn more about this destructive hurricane over at History.

(Image Credit: NOAA/ Wikimedia Commons)

This Trick Will Keep You Alert At Night

Posted: 30 Aug 2020 01:42 PM PDT

Struggling to be alert as you work at night? If so, then consider drinking coffee and then taking a nap after. And yes, in that order. According to this new research from the University of South Australia, doing this unlikely combination improves attention span and reduces sleep inertia (the groggy feeling that you have just after waking up).

"A 'caffeine-nap' (or 'caff-nap') could be a viable alternative - by drinking a coffee before taking a nap, shiftworkers can gain the benefits of a 20-30-minute nap then the perk of the caffeine when they wake. It's a win-win."

Details about this study over at EurekAlert.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

Why Do Multiplayer Games Collapse At Launch?

Posted: 30 Aug 2020 01:21 PM PDT

It's not just the developer's fault. In most cases, it's not the developer's fault at all. Take for example, what happened during the launch of Mediatonic's Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout. After 1.5 million players attempted to play the game, the servers collapsed, and the game stopped working. The cause of the problem is far too complex for a simple Twitter post, as The Guardian details: 

As with most social media blow-ups, the answer is far too nuanced for Twitter to cope with, but it comes down to this: running a global large-scale multiplayer online game is an expensive, technologically complex endeavour, even in 2020, even after weeks of beta testing and data analysis. Jon Shiring, co-founder of new studio Gravity Well and previously a lead engineer on Apex Legends and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, puts it very simply: "Each game relies on a lot of semi-independent services, and each one is its own scale problem. On top of that, sometimes they interact in complex ways."
One key thing to understand is that game developers usually don't own or operate the servers that online games run on. Instead, they are rented. A multiplayer game may rely on servers housed in dozens of data centres spread across the world, and there are hundreds of different companies running such centres. Alternatively, a developer may use a large cloud-based service such as AWS, Google Compute Engine, or Microsoft Azure, which run games on virtual machines that share server space among lots of different users. The former option, commonly using "bare metal" servers, can lead to better online performance but is complicated to manage; the latter is easier to manage, and to scale up and down depending on player demand, but can be much more expensive.

Image via The Guardian 

Here Are Apps That Can Help You Catch Some Zzzs!

Posted: 30 Aug 2020 01:20 PM PDT

Modern times can make us feel very stressed. Along with the looming pandemic, financial and social problems that make it harder for people to relax or sleep peacefully. Trying to get a good night's sleep while stressed is a difficult feat, as CNN explains: 

Let's say you have been feeling extra overwhelmed lately. That, Breus said, prompts your body to release cortisol, the primary stress hormone. This coincides with sugar (or glucose) entering the bloodstream, which elevates your blood pressure.
Next thing you know, Breus said, your muscles tense up, your heart pumps faster and your brain kicks into overdrive. It's the old fight-or-flight response you learned about in grade school. In other words, your body is now in survival mode.
That is what makes falling asleep very tricky.
When that stress persists week after week, the body adjusts to the higher cortisol levels. This continues to prevent you from getting quality shut-eye but can also lead to serious problems like heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and depression, according to Breus.

CNN recommends some apps that can help you fall asleep even in these difficult times. Check their full list here. 

Image via CNN

This Man Was Able To Create Affordable Prosthetics Because of YouTube

Posted: 30 Aug 2020 01:20 PM PDT

Easton LaChappelle has always been fascinated by robotics. As a child, he would take apart everything he could get his hands on, just to understand how things work.

During his science fair days, Colorado's Easton encountered a young girl with a prosthetic arm that looked "archaic" and cost about $80,000. He remembers thinking, is "this really her best available option?"
He tells GNN, "That's when I decided to dedicate my life to solving the affordability of prosthetic devices and creating technology that can impact someone's life on a deep level.

Unfortunately, his school did not have that many resources, and so he would have to learn on his own. And that's when he turned to YouTube to learn the core fundamentals of electronics. 

Eventually, his resolve would then lead him to build a company — Unlimited Tomorrow.

"Because of YouTube," he tells GNN, "I was able to turn my passion into a business that is having a positive impact on people's lives."

More details about this story in this video.

(Image Credit: Easton LaCappelle/ GNN)
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