Neatorama

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• Graves Reveal Fear of the Undead During Epidemics
• 19 Students Who Made Their Teachers Laugh Hard
• Rarest Dog Breed is Still Alive and Singing
• Masks
• The Derp is Strong in the Sunflower Field
• There’s No Bad Solution When It Comes To Solving Puzzles
• Escape To The Sonora Art Village
• The Foxes That Say HEHEHE
• Swimming Between Two Continents, Debunked
• This Electric Guitar Plays On Its Own!
• Economy Class Flight Simulator
• A Great Story about a Little Boy Misusing the Word "Whorehouse"
• Swimming Ring for a Seal
• How Did Human Butts Evolve to Look That Way?

Graves Reveal Fear of the Undead During Epidemics Posted: 02 Sep 2020 10:45 PM PDT Forensic anthropologist Amelie Alterauge was unfamiliar with corpses being buried face-down until she found such a grave herself in 2014 in Switzerland. Burials in the prone position are exceedingly rare. Since then, she has compiled 100 cases of prone burials over a 900-year period to study them. In the early Middle Ages, some nobles and priests were buried face down to show humility even after death, and their graves show a great deal of respect. But things changed in the 14th century, which was when the plague began to ravage Europe. As medieval Europeans tried to explain what they were seeing and hearing, they might have seized on ideas about the undead already circulating in Slavic communities of Eastern Europe: "We don't have [the concept of] vampires in Germany," Alterauge says, "but there's this idea of corpses which move around" that is imported into western Europe from Slavic areas to the east not long after the first plague outbreaks take place in the mid-1300s.    Before the 1300s, medieval stories in German-speaking Europe described helpful ghosts returning to warn or help their loved ones. But in an age of epidemics they took on a different shape: revenants, or the walking dead. "This shift to evil spirits takes place around 1300 or 1400," says Matthias Toplak, an archaeologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany who was not involved with the study. Turning to medieval folklore for clues, Alterauge and her co-authors found tales of nachzehrer, loosely translated as corpse devourers: restless, hungry corpses that consumed themselves and their burial shrouds, and drained the life force from their surviving relatives in the process. Lacking understanding of disease, it only made sense that someone who died of the illness returned to kill family members, because they often developed the same disease. But how would burying someone face down help? Read the theories behind these discoveries at National Geographic. -via Damn Interesting

19 Students Who Made Their Teachers Laugh Hard Posted: 02 Sep 2020 10:45 PM PDT Kids say the darnedest things, and if you spend a few years as a teacher, you'll end up with a few quotes you'll never forget. With all the words they have to learn, it's not surprising that some get mixed up or misunderstood, sort of like the kid who thought a whorehouse was a mental facility. Heres a sample: 9. "We had a kid who kept saying his dad drove an 'Asstank.' We couldn't figure it out until his dad drove up to school in an Aztec." Warner Bros. —Monica Stricker, Facebook 10. "I was teaching eighth grade when there was a strange knock on the classroom wall. One of my students cried, 'Ahhh! It's a polygamist!' I quickly figured out that he meant 'poltergeist.' "Though, when I explained why I was laughing so hard, my students decided a polygamist would have been just as scary.'" —Sarah Flame, Facebook But it's not all misunderstood words. Some are just kids hilariously acting like adults, whether it's kindergarten or high school. Read a roundup of the funniest things teachers ever heard in class at Buzzfeed. (Image credit: horizontal.integration)

Rarest Dog Breed is Still Alive and Singing Posted: 02 Sep 2020 09:20 PM PDT The New Guinea singing dog was considered to be extinct in the wild since the 1970s. There is a captive population of these dogs, about 300 of them, which have been bred in conservation centers. Those dogs are descended from a small population that have been in captivity for decades. But New Guinea has another wild dog, called the Highland wild dog. And the study of genetics has come a long way since the '70s. Recently, genetic samples were taken from three Highland wild dogs, and have been studied to see whether they are the ancestors of the singing dog, or related in some other way.      According to the researchers, the genomic similarities between the New Guinea singing dogs and the Highland Wild Dogs suggest that we're dealing with the same breed. Since all New Guinea singing dogs have been raised in captivity, there's been a lot of inbreeding that reduced variations in the group's DNA. But, essentially, the Highland Wild Dogs are the wild and original population of New Guinea singing dogs, this new study suggests. It's just that the latter lost the genetic variation present in the wild population due to inbreeding. Read about the research, and hear what the the singing dogs sound like, at ZME Science. -via Fark (Image credit: New Guinea Highland Wild Dog Foundation)

Masks Posted: 02 Sep 2020 09:20 PM PDT In 2006, Liam Kyle Sullivan went viral with the song "Shoes." It became an internet classic. Fourteen years later, he's back with a song along the same lines about masks. His character Kelly is still not her parents' favorite, and shopping is her defense mechanism. -via Digg

The Derp is Strong in the Sunflower Field Posted: 02 Sep 2020 09:20 PM PDT Agnieszka Ciszyńska has three beautiful white Swiss shepherds named Walkiria, Fenris, and Björn. She recently took them to a sunflower field for a photo shoot, but the dogs were more interested in the sunflowers than in posing, so the outtakes turned out better than the portraits! Normally, the dogs, who go by the name White Valhalla Wolves, are magnificently photogenic. See more of the sunflower pictures at Bored Panda, and see the many travels of the White Valhalla Wolves at Instagram.

There’s No Bad Solution When It Comes To Solving Puzzles Posted: 02 Sep 2020 05:07 PM PDT The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild is known for having puzzle room-type mini dungeons, where the player is asked to solve a number of puzzles strung together. The thing about these mini-dungeons, called shrines, is that any player can solve them in their own way. While there is a recommended way to solve each shrine, people can get creative and do it their own way. Such is the case of Twitter user @MrOrdun. His solution is to not solve the shrine puzzle, instead opting to head straight to the end of the shrine. How did he do it? Watch the video here.  Image screenshot via Twitter

Escape To The Sonora Art Village Posted: 02 Sep 2020 05:07 PM PDT Escapism is one of the coping mechanisms people turn to during stressful times. Some of us feel trapped and isolated from the rest of the world. So what's the harm in trying to mentally get out of the situation you're in? Davit and Mary Jilayvan created a computer-generated community called Sonora Art Village. The village is full of colorful walkways, brightly-painted houses, and oddly-shaped courtyards and lots, as Plain magazine details:  There is no rhyme or reason to the design of this community. "The houses are located chaotically, each house has its own colorful path," they say. A jumble of medium and small houses exist alongside semicircular arches, passageways, small overhanding volumes, and social spaces such as a community pool and basketball court. They envisaged a lot of stairs as well, and we can very well imagine ourselves climbing each of them in anticipation of what we'd find at the top –  "Making it feel like you're going up and down in a game like Supermario," as the siblings put it.  The surreal village exudes an intriguing appeal; it would without doubt be certified as 'highly Instagramable' if it actually existed. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, what's certain is that creating this utopia helped the siblings deal with the isolation and loneliness of lockdown. "We wanted to create a place where people can come and feel for a while in a completely different place, far from the grey reality, to feel like being in some bright 3D space, or even a cartoon," they note. "It's a place free from prejudice. We tried to create a completely different atmosphere that would exude joy, love and happiness." More images from their project on their Behance. Image via Plain magazine

The Foxes That Say HEHEHE Posted: 02 Sep 2020 05:07 PM PDT SaveAFox blesses our feeds with this video of two foxes. It's about time we knew what foxes really say, right? Do they sound like the viral song from a long time ago? Apparently not! Well, if you're just in to witness foxes being cute, this one's for you too!

Swimming Between Two Continents, Debunked Posted: 02 Sep 2020 10:53 AM PDT Tom Scott went snorkeling in Silfra, a spot in Iceland where tectonic plates are moving apart. That is said to be where the North American and Eurasia meet, but it turns out that tectonic plates aren't as cleanly delineated as national borders on maps. Still, it's a lovely place to go snorkeling, no matter what those plates are really doing.

This Electric Guitar Plays On Its Own! Posted: 02 Sep 2020 10:53 AM PDT It sounds spooky, I know. Anthony Dickens has revealed a musical concept called 'circle guitar'. The instrument is a self-playing electric guitar that can exceed the performance of a human thanks to the motor-driven spinning disc in its body, as Designboom details:  the radical design is essentially a self-playing electric guitar that uses a built-in mechanical step sequencer disc, rotating underneath the strings. the project has already caught the attention of many musicians -including radiohead guitarist, ed o'brien and grammy-winning writer and producer paul epworth – gaining growing popularity.  anthony dickens has built the circle guitar with the help of a team of brilliant engineers to generate sounds, textures, and rhythms that would be impossible with a conventional electric guitar.  Image via Designboom

Economy Class Flight Simulator Posted: 02 Sep 2020 10:53 AM PDT if you miss riding on a plane, maybe this video game can help! Airplane Mode, developed by Hosoji Auji for AMC Games, is "the only flight simulation game where players can experience the intense excitement of being an economy class passenger on a long-haul flight." The game lets players realistically experience riding a plane in the economy class, as UPI details:  The game allows player's to simulate the experience of taking a long flight in real-time, with available activities including rifling through an in-flight magazine, completing Sudoku puzzles, watching movies from the 1930s and looking out the window, which features realistic satellite imagery of the flight path. The players are also treated to experiences including in-flight meals, turbulence and WiFi outages. "Crying baby not guaranteed on every flight," the game's description reads. Auji told CNN that he discovered while developing the game that everyone he talked to seemed "to have a strong opinion about flying. And while there have been 30-plus years of flight simulation games, the passenger experience has never really been taken into account." "A large part of the commercial flight experience is largely predictable," Auji said. "Our goal was to design this standardized flight and then layer it with delights, annoyances and idiosyncrasies that the frequent flier will surely find relatable." Image screenshot via AMC Games

A Great Story about a Little Boy Misusing the Word "Whorehouse" Posted: 02 Sep 2020 10:53 AM PDT   Here is a story about the time I got in trouble as a kid for repeatedly using the word "whorehouse." — Andrew Farmer (@thatsajellyfish) September 1, 2020 When I was a little boy, I misunderstood something that my mother said and believed for far too long that human hair is made of peanut butter. Children hear things that adults say, but don't necessarily understand them. When he was eight years old, comedian Andrew Farmer heard the word "whorehouse" and misunderstood it to mean "psychiatric hospital". He tells a funny and hopefully true story about the results. -via Super Punch

Swimming Ring for a Seal Posted: 02 Sep 2020 10:53 AM PDT This amazing video of uncertain provenance appears to show an aquarium loop that allows a pet seal to swim over the surface of the pool. It has my seal of approval. I want one, even though I don't own a seal. -via Geekologie

How Did Human Butts Evolve to Look That Way? Posted: 02 Sep 2020 10:52 AM PDT Every Tuesday this month @massivesci will be publishing an article about the butt. Welcome to #ButtMonth. Today, @darcy_shapiro on why human butts even look like that. Featuring art from @melissa_k_nigrohttps://t.co/U1plWTb3Dz — Dan Samorodnitsky (@d_samorodnitsky) September 1, 2020 Even if you think you have a flat butt, it's certainly rounder than most other animals outside of homo sapiens. That Corgi is cute, but its butt is all hair. A cat will gladly show you its anus, which is right at the surface, like most animals. So why do humans develop round buttocks? It wasn't for sitting, Take a look around the animal kingdom. Even our closest living relatives among the great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas), don't have proportionally as big butts as humans do. The main reason for this probably comes down to our unique style of locomotion. We're the only mammals alive today whose primary way of getting around is walking on two legs. And becoming upright bipeds has had some important consequences for our derrières. But(t) it's not just standing up that makes those big muscles necessary. The mechanics involved in walking on two legs meant we had to bulk up the butt. Read how at Massive Science. -via Damn Interesting

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