Sponsor

2020/11/05

Neatorama

Neatorama

This Man Cried Because Of His Early Birthday Present

Posted: 05 Nov 2020 02:44 AM PST

Peter Goicouria loves cats, and he would always talk about adopting a black cat. So when his roommate found a litter of black kittens, the roommate picked out one of them for himself, and another one to give to Peter as an early birthday gift. When Peter saw the black kitten, he couldn't help but burst into tears.

And, as you'll see, she was the greatest gift of all:
Meeting the kitten for the first time felt "overwhelming and genuine," Goicouria told The Dodo.
He named her Monday.

Wholesome.

(Image Credit: u/peglegpete/ Reddit)

(Image Credit: Peter Goicouria/ The Dodo)

This Bacterium Is Our Ally In Fighting Against Alzheimer’s

Posted: 05 Nov 2020 12:09 AM PST

Scientists have recently identified a bacterium which could pave the way towards new treatments to Alzheimer's disease. The bacterium, called rhizolutin, is produced by a Streptomyces strain, and grows in the root zone of ginseng plants, a plant used as traditional medicine in Asia.

Through cultivation in a medium fortified with ginseng powder, the researchers were able to increase the rhizolutin production of the bacterium by a factor of ten. This allowed them to determine the structure of this novel compound, which turns out to be a unique framework made of three rings bound together (a 7/10/6-tricyclic dilactone flanked by a seven-membered and a six-membered lactone ring).
A screening of natural product libraries indicated that rhizolutin is a drug lead that can dissociate amyloid-β (Aβ) plaques and tau tangles (fiber-like aggregates of tau proteins), both of which are typical hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease.

Exciting!

Learn more details about this study over at Neuroscience News.

(Image Credit: Neuroscience News)

It’s A Car Made Out of Popsicle Sticks

Posted: 05 Nov 2020 12:08 AM PST

I really am amazed with artists. Their imagination knows no bounds, and they can make their visions come true thanks to their incredible skills, which they honed for hundreds, or even thousands of hours.

This person has made a tiny car out of mostly popsicle sticks, and did so without using power tools! Look at all those grooves and curves, as well as the tiny details, like the cargo carrier on the roof.

You can also watch how the car was made here.

(Image Credit: u/ReighDoren/ Reddit)

There’s Now A Degree In Ninja Studies

Posted: 04 Nov 2020 07:13 PM PST

If I get a master's degree in this subject, will I become a hokage (you know, the head of the ninja village from Naruto)? All jokes aside, it's a surprise that a university actually offers a ninja studies program! Genichi Mitsuhashi, the first graduate of the ninja studies degree program at Mei University in Japan, was recently awarded his masters in ninja studies, as My Modern Met details: 

As one of their earliest students, Mitsuhashi had to pass examinations in Japanese history and reading tests in ninja documents for admission. The course of study is primarily historical, although strategies of stealth and survival are also taught. Students are not required to be ninjas, but Mitsuhashi has devoted his life to the study and practice of the ancient art. While he hopes to complete his PhD in ninja studies, he lives the day-to-day life of many past ninjas. In the morning, he farms, followed by training and martial arts in the afternoon. He also runs a local inn using the produce he grows.
If you would like to learn more about the history of ninjas, International Ninja Research Center provides a number of online resources. And for more quick snippets of ninja history, ThoughtCo wrote an informative piece on famous ninjas (including women) who made history.

Would you apply to the program if you were given a chance?

Image via My Modern Met

The Playstation 5’s Accessibility Features

Posted: 04 Nov 2020 11:06 AM PST

With the arrival of next-generation consoles such as the PS5, people will always seek features that can make gaming more accessible for all types of gamers. Sony has revealed their next gen console's accessibility features, including old features from the PS4 such as  text to speech, inverting colors, and enabling custom button configurations. New features include one of the new console's biggest innovations, speech to text, as NME details: 

Users will be able to use speech to conjure messages on screen with the DualSense's built-in microphone, negating the need to use the controller to manually type.
For those who are visually impaired, a screen reader is said to provide "blind and low vision users with options to hear on-screen text", whilst also ensuring that "deaf and hard of hearing users can type text messages, which will be spoken out loud to other party members". Both of these functions will support a range of languages.
With the custom button configurations and closed caption features of the PS4 making a return, the PS5 will now also be able to support colour correction, which Sony has said will give owners the ability "to adjust colour, and in supported games, game presets will allow users to customize their common settings in advance."

Image via NME 

The Genshin Impact Gacha Saga

Posted: 04 Nov 2020 11:06 AM PST

If you haven't seen all the videos, articles, and tweets about the new free-to-play RPG called Genshin Impact, consider yourself saved. I'm kidding. If you like playing open world games, maybe this game is right up your alley. Here's a warning though : this game has gacha (a system where the player needs the in-game currency to get a chance to roll for an in-game character). Gacha gets addictive the more time, money, and prayers you've given it just to get your favorite character. This YouTuber spent a whopping $2,000 to get the game's new character named Klee. But that was just a start of a long discussion and commentary concerning Genshin Impact's gacha system: 

Not long after spending those thousands of dollars, the Canadian YouTuber uploaded another video stating he regretted all of it and, adding salt to the wound, he now believed the character "sucks."
The thumbnails, while provocative when lined up to one another, didn't tell the whole story. You can't get the entire tale from watching the videos now, either, because he's deleted some of them following backlash from viewers. Speaking to Polygon over Discord, Tash says that the money had all come from his YouTube earnings from covering Genshin Impact. It was, in other words, a business expense that did not reflect on how deeply the gacha game cut into his wallet.
But this series of events sparked heated discourse over Genshin Impact, its business practices, and how exploitative a gacha game can be when there's less than a 1% chance of winning any given powerful character. In follow-up videos, Tash claimed that viewers warned him that he may have a gambling addiction, though he denied to Polygon that this was the case. Instead, Tash says he felt the game was "scummy" from the start, though he failed to reconcile during our conversation why he chose to move forward with the game anyway.

Image via Polygon 

This Cosmic Cloud’s Heartbeat Is In Sync With A Black Hole

Posted: 04 Nov 2020 11:06 AM PST

Cosmic clouds have a heartbeat? Apparently so! Just not like the heartbeat we humans have, though. Scientists have discovered a gamma-ray 'heartbeat' that is beating in rhythm with a black hole consuming a nearby star. The heartbeat, dubbed SS 433, is called a microquasar, as Nerdist details: 

The miniature black hole-star pair apparently powering the heartbeat—dubbed SS 433—is referred to as a microquasar. A microquasar arises when a stellar-mass black hole accretes (or sucks in) matter from a partner star. Subsequently, this accretion disk becomes so hot from friction that it begins to emit gamma rays.
"This material accumulates in an accretion disc before falling into the black hole, like water in the whirl above the drain of a bath tub," Li said in a DESY press release that comes via Gizmodo. "However, a part of that matter does not fall down the drain but shoots out at high speed in two narrow jets in opposite directions above and below the rotating accretion disk."
SS 433's accretion disk does not lie in the orbital plane of the black hole and its partner star, however. The accretion disk sways, or precesses, spinning like a top on a slanted table. "As a consequence, the two jets spiral into the surrounding space, rather than just forming a straight line," Torres added in the press release.

Image via Nerdist 

This ‘Phantom’ Image Sells For $6.5 Million

Posted: 04 Nov 2020 11:06 AM PST

Between you and me, I wouldn't  shell out a whopping $6.5 million for a photo. Then again, I'm also not rich enough to pay that amount of money for a single photo. Photographer Peter Lik's photo, called "Phantom," holds the record for the most expensive photo sold. The Phoblographer details on the very expensive purchase: 

"The purchase also included Lik's masterworks "Illusion" for $2.4 million and "Eternal Moods" for $1.1 million.  With this $10 million sale, Lik now holds four of the top 20 spots for most expensive photographs ever sold.  He already has a position in the ranking with a previous $1 million sale of famed image, "One."
$10,000,000. So why so much money? Peter is well known for his landscape photography and his color work. To see landscape and black and white together is very rare. Combine that with the very ghost-like look due to dust and the little sliver and light, and you've got yourself a winner. Technically, this is a very tough image to accomplish because of the high amounts of contrast. According to Lik's news post today, it was shot in the Southwest part of the United States.

Image via The Phoblographer 

The Unsolved Mystery Of The ‘Mostly Harmless’ Hiker

Posted: 04 Nov 2020 11:06 AM PST

Multiple hikers and travelers have encountered a nameless hiker, who only introduced himself as a 'mostly harmless' hiker before he was found dead in a tent. Investigators tried to identify the unknown man, but his fingerprints didn't show up in any law enforcement database, and his DNA did not match any entry in the national DNA databases. His cause of death was 'undetermined', just like how no one knows his identity. The mystery behind his death and his identity has alluded investigators for years, and even the Internet tried their best in trying to solve the mystery of the hiker: 

The investigators were stumped. To find out what had happened, they needed to learn who he was. So the Florida Department of Law Enforcement drew up an image of Mostly Harmless, and the Collier County investigators shared it with the public. In the sketch, his mouth is open wide, and his eyes too. He has a gray and black beard, with a bare patch of skin right below the mouth. His teeth, as noted in the autopsy, are perfect, suggesting he had good dental care as a child. He looks startled but also oddly pleased, as if he's just seen a clown jump out from behind a curtain. The image started to circulate online along with other pictures from his campsite, including his tent and his hiking poles.
Soon there were dozens of people jumping in. They had seen the hiker too. They had journeyed with him for a few hours or a few days. They had sat at a campfire with him. There was a GoPro video in which he appeared. People remembered him talking about a sister in either Sarasota or Saratoga. They thought he had said he was from near Baton Rouge. One person remembered that he ate a lot of sticky buns; another said that he loved ketchup. But no one knew his name. When the body of Chris McCandless was found in the wilds of Alaska in the summer of 1992 without any identification, it took authorities only two weeks to figure out his identity. A friend in South Dakota, who'd known McCandless as "Alex," heard a discussion of the story on AM radio and called the authorities. Clues followed quickly, and McCandless' family was soon found.
The story pulled people in. Everyone, at some point, has wanted to put their phone in a garbage can and head off with a fake name and a wad of cash. Here was someone who had done it and who seemed to have so much going for him: He was kind, charming, educated. He knew how to code. And yet he had died alone in a yellow tent. Maybe he had been chased by demons and had sought an ending like this. Or maybe he had just been outmatched by the wilderness and the Florida heat.

Image via Wired 

War in the Time of Neanderthals

Posted: 04 Nov 2020 11:05 AM PST

The hominins who became Neanderthals ventured out of Africa hundreds of thousands of years before modern humans followed, and settled in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. When Homo sapiens joined them, it's a stretch to think that Neanderthals welcomed them with open arms. Rather than just co-existing, even at arm's length, Nicholas R. Longrich of the University of Bath contends that they were more likely to have been at war for tens of thousands of years. He looks at the general nature of similar species and at the evidence left behind.  

Prehistoric warfare leaves tell-tale signs. A club to the head is an efficient way to kill – clubs are fast, powerful, precise weapons – so prehistoric Homo sapiens frequently show trauma to the skull. So too do Neanderthals.

Another sign of warfare is the parry fracture, a break to the lower arm caused by warding off blows. Neanderthals also show a lot of broken arms. At least one Neanderthal, from Shanidar Cave in Iraq, was impaled by a spear to the chest. Trauma was especially common in young Neanderthal males, as were deaths. Some injuries could have been sustained in hunting, but the patterns match those predicted for a people engaged in intertribal warfare – small-scale but intense, prolonged conflict, wars dominated by guerrilla-style raids and ambushes, with rarer battles.

It is apparent that Homo sapiens eventually won the war, although Homo neanderthalis left traces in our DNA. Read the argument for the long-running battle between early humans at The Conversation. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Charles R. Knight)

Thirsty Wildlife

Posted: 04 Nov 2020 11:05 AM PST



Jennifer George loves to watch the wildlife in her Southern California backyard, and there's nothing to draw a variety of critters like a nice drink of clean water. She set up a fountain and a camera in order to catch what goes on when she's not watching. Everyone came- predator and prey, birds, reptiles, and mammals!  You can see many more fountain clips at George's Instagram page, including a bobcat that only comes at night. -via Digg

The World's First Mobile Bowling Alley

Posted: 04 Nov 2020 11:03 AM PST

For years, entrepreneur Terence Jackson, Jr. of Southfield, Michigan pursued his dream: to build a mobile bowling alley to entertain people at parties and corporate events. Despite the economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, he was able to launch his project this summer. He says that Luxury Strike Bowling is the only trailer of its kind in the world: a completely mobile 2-lane bowling alley.

The Detroit News describes the experience:

Luxury Strike consists of two lanes that are shorter than a traditional bowling alley, smaller bowling balls that weigh about 3 pounds. The bowling alley has a dual automatic bowling lane, scoring system, temperature control, neon lighting, an 80-inch theater screen, a sky lounge and a state-of-the-art sound system that guests can connect to through Bluetooth. [...]
The services also include a private bowling alley. The alley and loft can accommodate 10-15 people. Packages start at $500 for two hours.

How can other aspiring business owners follow his example? Jackson advises:

"Entrepreneurship runs the world," he said, urging those pondering a move to "focus, commit and continue discipline."
"Don't be a product of your environment, and make your environment a product of your greatness," he said.

-via Homecrux | Photos: Luxury Strike Bowling

If Children Grew up Isolated from Adults, Would they Create Their Own Language?

Posted: 04 Nov 2020 11:03 AM PST

Children learn to communicate at an astonishing rate when they are young and interacting with family members. They become fluent quickly, even if they are exposed to several different languages. But does that innate drive to communicate depend completely on exposure? That's a question that has always puzzled us, although it was approached differently in the past. The ingrained idea in ancient times was that humans have a "natural" language, and proposed experiments aimed at finding out which language that is, which would obviously indicate that language's superiority.  

The earliest such account comes from Herodotus, who described a supposed experiment by Psamtik I (who ruled Egypt from 664-610 BCE). Psamtik is said to have placed two newborns in the care of a shepherd with instructions to raise the children in isolation, with goats to provide milk as needed and no exposure to human speech. The goal was to determine whether the Egyptians or the Phrygians were the "eldest of all men" by observing whether these isolated children grew to speak the Egyptian or Phrygian language. According to legend, when the children were brought before Psamtik, they held out their hands and cried "becos", the Phrygian word for bread. This was taken as evidence that the Phyrgians, rather than the Egyptians, were the oldest people. It is unlikely that these events unfolded exactly as described by Herodotus, but it does show that our fascination with the origins of language dates back thousands of years.

Such experiments are quite unethical, as confirmed by cases of children who were discovered to have been raised in abusive isolation situations. These children have profound language difficulties, but due to neglect, they have a host of other problems as well. However, there was a case in Nicaragua where children were cared for but raised in language-deficient circumstances, and they managed to build their own language. Read about that astonishing scenario and more at Today I Found Out.

(Unrelated image credit: Yılmaz Kilim)

Kid Asks if Dragonfly Is a Baby Helicopter

Posted: 04 Nov 2020 09:36 AM PST

The body of a dragonfly is shaped something like a helicopter. And it does hover in midair. So, yes: dragonflies grow into full-size helicopters. It makes perfect sense. The largest helicopters grow into Mi-26 heavy lift choppers.

-via Born in Space

That Time Woodrow Wilson Caught the Flu During Peace Talks

Posted: 04 Nov 2020 09:36 AM PST

President Woodrow Wilson went to France for the Paris Peace Conference, in which the Allies set up the terms for the end of World War I. He was the first US president to visit Europe while in office, which seems strange today for a couple of reasons: first, all modern American presidents visit Europe while in office, and second, Europe currently doesn't allow Americans to visit at all because there's a pandemic. There was also a pandemic in 1919, and soon after the conference began, Wilson fell ill with the flu.    

Behind closed doors at the Hôtel du Prince Murat, the situation was grave. The president lay in bed, wracked with coughing fits, diarrhea, and high fever, while his staff tried to make sense of his delirious rantings. As chief usher Irwin Hoover recalled, they simply couldn't convince Wilson that the hotel was not, as he insisted, teeming with French spies.

"About this time he also acquired a peculiar notion he was personally responsible for all the property in the furnished place he was occupying," Hoover said. (Apparently, Smithsonian reports, Wilson thought some furniture had gone missing, though it hadn't moved at all.) "Coming from the President, whom we all knew so well, these were very funny things, and we could but surmise that something queer was happening in his mind."

The president's true condition was kept secret from the public. Wilson eventually rejoined the Peace Conference, but his ineffectiveness there had lasting consequences for the rest of the 20th century. Was is because of his illness? Read about President Woodrow Wilson's personal experience with the flu pandemic at Mental Floss.

(Image source: Library of Congress)
@

No comments:

Post a Comment

Keep a civil tongue.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Label Cloud

Technology (1464) News (793) Military (646) Microsoft (542) Business (487) Software (394) Developer (382) Music (360) Books (357) Audio (316) Government (308) Security (300) Love (262) Apple (242) Storage (236) Dungeons and Dragons (228) Funny (209) Google (194) Cooking (187) Yahoo (186) Mobile (179) Adobe (177) Wishlist (159) AMD (155) Education (151) Drugs (145) Astrology (139) Local (137) Art (134) Investing (127) Shopping (124) Hardware (120) Movies (119) Sports (109) Neatorama (94) Blogger (93) Christian (67) Mozilla (61) Dictionary (59) Science (59) Entertainment (50) Jewelry (50) Pharmacy (50) Weather (48) Video Games (44) Television (36) VoIP (25) meta (23) Holidays (14)