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2020/12/25

Neatorama

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The Real-Life Guardians of The Galaxy

Posted: 24 Dec 2020 07:56 PM PST

If your country had a space force, what would you call the personnel of that force? For the United States Space Force, they decided to call their personnel "Guardians". Yes. Guardians. Let that sink in.

"Henceforth, the men and women of the United States Space Force will be known as Guardians," U.S. Vice President Mike Pence announced today (Dec. 18) during a ceremony marking the branch's impending first anniversary. 
"Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Guardians will be defending our nation for generations to come," Pence added, also invoking the terms that refer to people who serve in the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. (Service members in the nation's other military branch, the Coast Guard, are called "Coast Guardsmen.")

But what does the United States Space Force do? Learn more about the country's newest military branch over at Space.com.

Well, what do you think?

(Image Credit: United States Space Force/ Wikimedia Commons)

What Holds This Ring of Pringles?

Posted: 24 Dec 2020 07:56 PM PST

Humans are able to do great things when they have mastered the laws of physics. This ring made out entirely of Pringles is proof of that statement. But what holds the pieces together? According to the one who posted this, it's friction and gravity.

Amazing!

(Image Credit: u/ LaurenLdfkjsndf/ Reddit)

Weird Liquid Hand Soap

Posted: 24 Dec 2020 07:56 PM PST

Is it just me or does the hand soap kind of solidified? I think it's too cold in this bathroom. Might be best to turn the heater on, or else someone might suffer from hypothermia.

Via Important Images on Facebook

The Best Horror Game That You Probably Haven’t Heard Of

Posted: 24 Dec 2020 07:56 PM PST

When it comes to modern horror video games, there is one element that gets used a lot, and that element is jumpscares. But jumpscares aren't the only thing that can make a video game scary. In fact, you can make a video game scary without using them. But how? The answer lies in great sound design and storytelling.

In this video, YouTuber Bricky reviews Darkwood and explains why it is the best horror game with no jumpscares.

(Image Credit: Bricky/ YouTube)

The ‘Batman Effect’: How Having an Alter Ego Empowers You

Posted: 24 Dec 2020 07:32 PM PST

Science says that having an alter ego, a different persona than the one you inhabit every day, can boost confidence and reduce anxiety. I can attest to that, as I used a stage name on radio and another on the internet. Batman probably got a lot of courage in hiding behind a batsuit. And others have tried that method of overcoming stage fright.

Beyoncé's was the assertive and empowered 'Sasha Fierce', who allowed her to perform with extra self-confidence and sensuality. "Usually when I hear the chords, when I put on my stilettos, like the moment right before when you're nervous… then Sasha Fierce appears, and my posture and the way I speak and everything is different," she told Oprah Winfrey in 2008. It was a strategy that she continued to use until 2010, when she felt she had matured enough to avoid the psychological crutch.

Inspired by an emotional meeting with Beyoncé herself, Adele followed suit, telling Rolling Stone magazine in 2011 about her creation of 'Sasha Carter'. The persona was a combination of Beyoncé's Sasha Fierce persona and the (real) country music star June Carter. Adele said the strategy helped her give her best to every performance during her breakout year.

Although the embodiment of a fictional persona may seem like a gimmick for pop stars, new research suggests there may be some real psychological benefits to the strategy. Adopting an alter ego is an extreme form of 'self-distancing', which involves taking a step back from our immediate feelings to allow us to view a situation more dispassionately.

"Self-distancing gives us a little bit of extra space to think rationally about the situation," says Rachel White, assistant professor of psychology at Hamilton College in New York State. It allows us to rein in undesirable feelings like anxiety, increases our perseverance on challenging tasks, and boosts our self-control.

Of course, that confidence isn't always used for good, as any internet comment section reader can tell you. Read about the experiments that led scientists to these conclusions at BBC.  -via Damn Interesting

(Image source: Shed On The Moon)

Christmas Lunacy with Jean-Luc Picard

Posted: 24 Dec 2020 07:14 PM PST



John C. Worsley does a Star Trek Christmas song every year. We've seen them here! He edits Star Trek clips to fashion 23rd-century versions of classic Christmas songs. This year Worsley took on the challenge of recreating Mariah Carey's mega-hit "All I Want for Christmas is You," sung by Captain Jean-Luc Picard (and friends). The entire song is covered, the editing is the best he's done, and there are some lyrical surprises to make you grin.

Kentucky Fried Chicken Builds Gaming Console That Keeps Your Chicken Warm

Posted: 24 Dec 2020 07:14 PM PST

It's the age old problem: how do you keep your snacks warm while keeping Agent 47 busy on his killing spree? Kentucky Fried Chicken has now solved that conundrum by building a console with a built-in chicken warmer.

It's not exactly an original idea. Gamers have been heating food on overly hot consoles for years. But what the KFConsole does is conveniently and intentionally convey the machine's heat to the food. CNN reports:

Your chicken will be kept hot thanks to a custom-built cooling system that keeps the console hardware at a regular temperature while using heat produced by its components to warm the chicken chamber. [...]
The console can handle virtual reality games and offers smooth gameplay thanks to 240 frames per second frame rate and 4K display compatibility, according to details published by Cooler Master.

-via Dave Barry | Photos: KFConsole

The Particle That’s Only Available In Two Dimensions

Posted: 24 Dec 2020 07:14 PM PST

Meet the anyon (yes, that's how it's spelled), a one of a kind, extraordinary subatomic particle that only shows up in specific conditions. Scientists believe that this flat particle could be the key that will unlock quantum computing. The anyon only arise in realms confined to two dimensions, and at temperatures near absolute zero and in the presence of a strong magnetic field:  

Scientists have theorized about these flat, peculiar "particle-like objects" since the 1980s, and the very nature of them has made it sometimes seem impossible to ever verify them. But the qualities scientists believe anyons have also made them sound very valuable to quantum research and, now, quantum
The objects have many possible positions and "remember," in a way, what has happened. In a press release earlier this fall, Purdue University explains more about the value of anyons:
"Anyons have characteristics not seen in other subatomic particles, including exhibiting fractional charge and fractional statistics that maintain a 'memory' of their interactions with other quasiparticles by inducing quantum mechanical phase changes. Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek, professor of physics at MIT, gave these quasiparticles the tongue-in-cheek name 'anyon'" due to their strange behavior because unlike other types of particles, they can adopt 'any' quantum phase when their positions are exchanged."

Image via Popular Mechanics 

A TV For Ants

Posted: 24 Dec 2020 07:14 PM PST

Over the years, televisions have increased dramatically in size, but is it necessary? Shall we make our televisions bigger, or is time to decrease the size? If you're not a fan of big TV screens, then you might like this miniature television from TinyCircuits. You have to build it on your own, however.

Introducing the $64 TinyTV DIY Kit from TinyCircuits, it comes with everything you need to assemble your own miniature television in five minutes and with no skill required. My kind of project!
The TinyTV DIY Kit can store up to 4 hours of video on its microSD card, which you can control with the included remote's channel up (next video) and channel down (previous video) buttons. Or you can just do what I always do and lose the remote in the sofa and give up on ever watching TV again.
The television's 3D printed console comes in white, but you can paint it whatever color you'd like for added realism.

Well, what do you think?

(Image Credit: TinyCircuits/ Technabob)

Weird Al Yankovic's 9th Grade Crush

Posted: 24 Dec 2020 07:14 PM PST



When you were young and shy and awkward and felt the world was against you, there may have been someone who told you that good things would happen to you eventually. It wasn't much comfort to hear right then, but time has a way of making it come true. Weird Al Yankovic was a shy and awkward 12-year-old with a crush on the girl who sat in front of him in school. Click the "see more" button, or click through to Facebook to read the story of his interaction with Patrice, and how he reconnected with her almost 50 years later. The story is a ray of sunshine. -via Bored Panda

Perseverance: Coming Soon to a Planet Near You

Posted: 24 Dec 2020 11:23 AM PST



"A planet near you" is relative, of course, as 300 million miles is still quite a journey. NASA's Perseverance rover launched in July, and is scheduled to land in the Jezero Crater on Mars on February 18. The landing will be covered live, and to drum up enthusiasm, NASA released a "trailer" for the landing, with all the drama you might expect for a blockbuster event. Perseverance's mission is to:

Seek signs of ancient life and collect samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and soil) for possible return to Earth.

They named the mission Mars 2020, which was probably unavoidable but still seems unfortunate. Catch up on what the mission is all about at NASA.  -via Mashable

The Satisfaction of Mathematically Efficient Christmas Cookies

Posted: 24 Dec 2020 11:22 AM PST

When you make cookies in specific shapes, you roll out the dough and use a cookie cutter. There's always negative space involved, meaning leftover dough. So after you cut cookies, you gather up the leftover pieces and roll the dough out again. This is how it's done, but it's not the most efficient way to do it. Chemist Martin Lersch runs a blog called Khymos in which he explores the science of cooking. One of his projects has been to find the most efficient cookie cutter to make Christmas cookies with little to no dough left over to roll out again. He looked at it as a form of packing problem, in which a tessellated shape would be the most efficient. Others have described limitations to this kind of project.  

This didn't stop Lersch, though, who created his own Christmas-themed tessellations of bells, Christmas trees, and other shapes using the free-to-use platform Tess. With help from a friend, he 3D-printed several cookie cutters and mixed up some dough. Lersch's cookie of choice, pepperkake, is a sumptuous Norwegian gingerbread. Lersch, primarily a chemist, notes that it was once made with ammonium carbonate from ground deer antlers, though most people substitute baking powder these days.

After deciding on the Christmas tree as the most efficient shape, Lersch then got to work. Emulating Escher's patterns, he stamped every other tree shape right-side-up, to fit perfectly with the trees around it, which he stamped upside-down. The result? Interlocking rows of cookies, with no leftover dough left between their lines.

Read about Lersch's tessellated Christmas tree cookies and why this kind of efficiency matters beyond baking, at Atlas Obscura. 

Oh yeah, the recipes for the cookies is here.

(Image credit: Martin Lersch)

Cary Grant pilots the Millennium Falcon in Darth by Darthwest 2

Posted: 24 Dec 2020 06:02 AM PST



It's been more than four years since Fabrice Mathieu brought us the surreal short Darth by Darthwest, in which Cary Grant was chased down by a TIE fighter in a mashup of North by Northwest and Star Wars. Now we have episode 2! Roger Thornhill (Grant) is taken aboard the Millennium Falcon for a ride. He bonds with C-3PO and Chewbacca, gets chased by pilots of the Empire, and is finally safety deposited at Mount Rushmore.  -via Digg
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