Neatorama

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• How Many Robots Does it Take to Run a Grocery Store?
• The Real Martial Arts History Behind <i>The Karate Kid</i>
• How to Weigh a Koala
• 4,400-Year-Old Shaman’s Staff Found In Finland
• Wild New Theory For What Killed The Dinosaurs
• Woman Steals $1M Worth Of Jewelry From A Date
• Florida Man Lives The Plot Of <i>Up</i>
• Transplanting Monkey Testicle Tissue into the Ballsacks of Millionaires
• A Hotel in Iceland Will Wake You if the Northern Lights Are Visible
• The Yoghurt Mafia: How Two Meth Manufacturers Switched to Yoghurt Production
• What Made Early Humans Smart
• When Mom Gets Home

How Many Robots Does it Take to Run a Grocery Store? Posted: 05 Jul 2021 07:34 PM PDT Let's take a tour of Ocado's automated grocery warehouse in London. The point of this video from Tom Scott is to make us think about how networks of robots may be many individual robots, or one robot made up of a colony of parts, like a Portuguese man o' war. Yeah, but what we are really seeing is the future of humanity, where the robots have taken over the grocery business and eliminated not only shopping, but grocery workers. Still, considering how many cars are in the parking lot, it appears that robots still need a lot of supervision.

The Real Martial Arts History Behind <i>The Karate Kid</i> Posted: 05 Jul 2021 07:34 PM PDT We had martial arts films before The Karate Kid came out in 1984, but they were mostly considered to be B-movies. The saga of Daniel-san and Mr. Miyagi changed all that. Karate schools sprung up everywhere, martial arts actors Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Jackie Chan became mainstream stars, and there were several Karate Kid sequels, remakes, and even a streaming series that follows the young characters as adults. But how real is the karate of The Karate Kid? Den of Geek consulted Dr. Hermann Bayer, an expert authority on Okinawan Karate and the author of the upcoming book Analysis of Genuine Karate―Misconceptions, Origin, Development, and True Purpose. Dr. Bayer remembers firsthand how The Karate Kid stimulated the Karate boom in the mid-eighties because he was a practicing Karateka then. But as a martial scholar, he's pragmatic about his opinions. "First and foremost, we have to bear in mind that we are talking about a movie, not about a documentation or a piece of research," says Bayer. "This means that we need to concede that fascinating viewers by something pretty, amazing, or spectacular to look at is more important than authenticity." Read and find out how authentic "wax on, wax off" is, and more importantly, how the karate styles give meaning to the characters in the original The Karate Kid.

How to Weigh a Koala Posted: 05 Jul 2021 02:48 PM PDT Will the koala hold still? Perhaps, if you put him in a comfortable environment. The caretakers at Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park in Duncan, South Australia, show a tool that they use with a scale to accurately weigh the little fellow. -via Nag on the Lake

4,400-Year-Old Shaman’s Staff Found In Finland Posted: 05 Jul 2021 02:48 PM PDT A new artifact has been found by archaeologists in southwest Finland. The item, a wooden staff with a snake-like carving, was discovered in a wetland, and is believed to be an ancient shaman's staff. The staff is estimated to be 4,400 years old, and was from a site that revealed a lot of well-preserved artifacts made of wood, bark, and bone:  The shaman's staff would have been used in a religious or spiritual ceremony. Perhaps it was even used to communicate with the dead, given that ancient people inhabiting what is now Finland believed in a "Land of the Dead" that was associated with wetlands. Shamans were also believed to be able to transform themselves into snakes, the researchers report, emphasizing the connection between the snake staff and the mystical realm. Other artifacts uncovered by the excavations include a wooden scoop with a bear's head handle, wooden containers and paddles, fishing tools, pottery, and structural remains. Organic materials such as wood typically degrade after a long period of time. But the staff was well-preserved because of the environmental conditions at the site where the object was discovered, known as Järvensuo 1. Because it is a wetland, Järvensuo has low oxygen and high humidity, allowing water-logged items to survive. Image credit: Satu Koivisto

Wild New Theory For What Killed The Dinosaurs Posted: 05 Jul 2021 02:48 PM PDT This particular theory is more subdued than the widely accepted theory for how the dinosaurs were wiped off the Earth. You've heard of the story many times: a massive asteroid hit the Earth during the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) mass extinction event and killed all the dinosaurs. What if this theory is not exactly accurate? New research published in Nature Communicationssuggests that these prehistoric creatures actually died due to a long decline:  The asteroid may have been a death knell, but dinosaurs were on their way out long before Chicxulub made an appearance on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, the study suggests. In fact, the decline in dinosaur populations likely began 76 million years ago during the Campanian period — 10 million years before the asteroid hit. The researchers write that two factors may have had the most impact on the dinosaur decline: A changing climate (including cooling global temperatures) The declining diversity ofherbivorous dinosaurs The dual blows that killed the dinosaurs were not necessarily the double asteroids, but environmental and population factors that emerged much earlier, the researchers say. "Further analyses indicate that the global dinosaur decline could have been precipitated by the decline of herbivores," Condamine explains, adding that herbivores are essential "keystone species" in ecosystems. His research suggests dinosaurs weren't able to recover from these dual blows. The rates of new species of dinosaurs emerging could not keep up with the extinction rates, leading to a decline in dinosaur diversity. In fact, the dinosaur decline was so severe, Condamine and colleagues posit thatthe T-rex may have only had one species left on planet Earth by the time the asteroid made impact. Image credit: Stephen Leonardi (Unsplash)

Woman Steals $1M Worth Of Jewelry From A Date Posted: 05 Jul 2021 02:48 PM PDT Heartbreaking and disappointing. Imagine having a fun time with a potential significant other only to wake up and have your valuables taken from you! A woman managed to steal her date's jewelry valued at a million dollars stored in the hotel safe. The news claims that the date stole the jewelry as the man slept in his hotel. Check out the full story here.  Image credit: Immo Wegmann (Unsplash)

Florida Man Lives The Plot Of <i>Up</i> Posted: 05 Jul 2021 02:47 PM PDT Meet Orland Capote, a 63-year-old Florida man who has refused nearly $1 million worth of offers for his home. His house, which is reminiscent of the home of the main character in Pixar's Up, is now surrounded by luxury and high-end buildings. His two-bed, two-bath middle class home was purchased by his father in 1989, and contains memories for Capote that have no equivalent monetary value:  "This was my father's dream house," said Capote. "It took 20 years for him to find it. This house is like a hard drive. As I look around and live in it and move through it, I relive a lot of memories that I could not find in another house. The house is my soul. So what good is it to sell your soul for all the money in the world?" Capote's home has been engulfed by the commercial Agave Ponce LLC development for years now. Once a quiet residential block, his neighbors will soon consist of office space, stores, condominiums, and 242 luxury hotel rooms. Despite those high-end prospects — and constant construction noise and debris littering his yard, Capote refuses to leave. Cherished memories, such as Capote's father tending to the mango trees in the yard, linger in the homeowner's mind to this day. And the home's sentimental value only grew his parents died. Capote lost his father in 2005, after which he inherited the house. He lived there with his mother until last year, when she died, still fighting the city of Coral Gables over the development. But before she died, Capote's mother asked that he never sell the "family treasure." He still hasn't. And speaking of the offers he has received to relocate, Capote says he doesn't want to risk leaving and losing his cherished memories. Image credit: CBSMiami

Transplanting Monkey Testicle Tissue into the Ballsacks of Millionaires Posted: 05 Jul 2021 02:47 PM PDT Any time you hear the term "monkey glands" in some old movie, you can be sure it's a reference to Dr. Serge Voronoff, whose work became famous in the 1920s. The Russian-born French surgeon was a pioneer in transplanting organs- although the organs he was transplanting were animal testicles, or parts of them, into human scrotums. It wasn't in order to replace a man's gonads, but to "rejuvenate" them.   The first official transplant of a monkey gland into a human body was performed on June 12, 1920. Three years later, Voronoff's work was applauded by more than 700 scientists at the International Congress of Surgeons in London. The transplantation of living cells, tissues or organs from one species to another had become a experimental trend in the field of medicine as early as the end of the 19th century. Around this time, Voronoff had been studying the effects of castration in Egypt, which would later inform his work on rejuvenating treatments. By 1920, he was conducting his first transplants between chimpanzees and humans. For a brief time, he was using the testicles of executed criminals to transplant into his wealthy clients, but when the demand eventually became too great, he had to open a monkey farm breeding facility on the Italian Riviera. During his career, Voronoff also performed testicular transplants on more than 500 goats, rams and bulls, claiming the results showed that implanting organs extracted from young specimens into older animals had a revitalising effect on the latter. He proceeded to convince himself (the world's elite) that he had discovered a method to slow down the process of ageing. Thousands of men trusted Voronoff enough to pay exorbitant amounts of money to have monkey glands added to their bodies. This enabled Voronoff to expand his experiments to woman. Read about the monkey gland doctor at Messy Nessy Chic.

A Hotel in Iceland Will Wake You if the Northern Lights Are Visible Posted: 05 Jul 2021 02:47 PM PDT Are the aurora borealis visible? If so, and you don't see them often, then you won't want to miss the sight! That's why this hotel phone in Iceland lets you program an option to wake you up. Redditor KristjanHrannar shares this photo of a great feature. If hotel phones in your town had a button like this, for what event would they wake visitors? -via Nag on the Lake

The Yoghurt Mafia: How Two Meth Manufacturers Switched to Yoghurt Production Posted: 05 Jul 2021 02:47 PM PDT Dylan and Wal, both incarcerated in New Zealand for methamphetamine production and related crimes, languished behind prison walls. Inside his cell, Wal watches the TV show The River Cottage, a program about old fashioned cooking. The episode airing is about making yoghurt from scratch. Wal gets excited and invites Dylan to their next racket. Tomorrow, he says, they're going to cook. Radio New Zealand details an amazing story of how to men behind bars secretly produce yoghurt, share their knowledge with other prisoners, and even smuggle yoghurt cultures between prisons. Dylan and Wal improvised their lab using resources available to them: With no thermometer available, the pair take turns testing the heat with their fingertips. When it is scalding, Dylan finds it "burns like tear gas". And so they wait. When it cools to just above tepid, Wal adds the whole punnet of yoghurt, not realising that just a smear of culture is enough to alter a whole batch of milk.  They take their concoction back to their cells, where two thick hot water pipes run in parallel lines across the rear wall of the 3m by 2m units. Wal wraps the carton in a t-shirt,wedges it between the pipes, and waits.  That night, with the temperature dropping close to zero, Wal worries about whether the life beginning in the carton on the pipes behind his head will survive. Through the quiet dark hours, he checks on it periodically and tenderly, as if it were a newborn baby. As morning breaks, he unwraps his creation. Inside the carton, the once thin milk is as thick and creamy, as sweet and delicious as any yoghurt plucked from a supermarket shelf. He is astonished.  Radio New Zealand also produced a web series that introduces the audience to Dylan and Wal, as well as their secrets of yoghurt production. -via Marginal Revolution | Photo: RNZ

What Made Early Humans Smart Posted: 05 Jul 2021 02:47 PM PDT What makes humans different from our evolutionary cousins, the great apes? Walking upright and big brains are the top differences. When we think of the evolution of mankind, those two things are often regarded as happening together, but it wasn't quite so. Paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva explains that walking upright came first, not because we were smart, but because the trees we lived in died out. "March of Progress" was an illustration done by a Russian artist, Rudolph Zallinger, in a 1965 Time-Life book called Early Man. It's this beautiful foldout that shows ancient apes down on all fours, and it has them slowly rising up to modern humans. At the time, with the fossils we had, you could create a narrative like that. But in the last half century we've made so many amazing discoveries that show the human family tree is much more diverse. The pace of evolutionary change is quite different and it turns out that upright walking is the earliest of these evolutionary changes. The earliest bipeds on the ground were evolving from things that were upright to begin with in trees. Really all that happened was an ecological change. These hominins were living in environments that had fewer and fewer trees. To continue to get from point A to point B to get your fruit and other food resources, you already are pre-adapted for an upright posture and moving on two legs. In that case, bipedalism wouldn't be a new locomotion, it'd be an old locomotion. It was just in a new setting on the ground, rather than in trees. Walking upright put our ancestors into quite a vulnerable position, but it was only later that proto-humans developed large and flexible brains to deal with the situation. Meanwhile, we had to be adaptable and use the environment we had by becoming cooperative and omnivorous. Read how that came about in a fascinating interview with DeSilva at Nautilus.  -via Damn Interesting

When Mom Gets Home Posted: 05 Jul 2021 02:47 PM PDT Waiting until the last minute is okay, when your team works like a well-oiled clock. While these guys did a wonderful job making this video, I have a few thoughts from experience. There are cups on the floor in the kitchen, but no dishes in the living room? And those cups have no liquid in them? Do these people always use disposable dishes? The only shoes on the floor are in a bedroom? I've never seen a laundry room so free of clothing, and I've never seen anyone vacuum a floor that's already so clean. The lack of dishes with food and liquid is the most nonsensical thing about this scenario- yes, more so than the three vacuum leaners. -Thanks, gwdMaine!

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