Neatorama

---

• Why Dogs Tilt Their Heads & Other Neat Stories
• The Story Behind the World's Biggest Nuclear Bomb
• Economics Jokes from the <i>Financial Times</i>
• Bird of the Year Again Stirs Controversy: Winner is a Bat!

Why Dogs Tilt Their Heads & Other Neat Stories Posted: 01 Nov 2021 11:06 PM PDT 🐶 Why do dogs tilt their heads when you talk to them? No, it turns out that they're not trying hard to be cute. According to science, dogs tilt their heads when they're trying to understand English words. I can't blame them - I tilt my head whenever I hear some people speak as they sound like gibberish to me. 🙀 Can't stand cute dogs who tilt their heads? The Demon Cat of Washington, D.C. doesn't bother with such a cute gesture. If DC (that's Demon Cat for you) tilts its head, it's probably getting ready to eat you. 🤖 Start me up! Spot Robot imitates the Rolling Stones and we can't get no satisfaction watching and welcoming our new robot overlords. 👑 Anyone can be a king or a queen! Rock Bridge High School in Missouri just voted for the first male homecoming queen. 🦹‍♂️ Man flees crime scene in a lawn mower. No, not Florida Man - this one happened in Hawaii. 💡 No ladder, no problem. Here's how you change a lightbulb using a drone. ⭐ This nebula looks like Godzilla. 🌋 The ultimate selfie to end all selfies: Japanese man took a selfie in front of an erupting volcano. 🛒 Lastly, a feel good story of the day: Lunch lady and her metal worker husband created a custom school cart for a boy with dwarfism. Read more neat stories at our new network: Supa Fluffy, Pop Culturista, Laughosaurus, Homes & Hues, and Pictojam. Thank you for checking 'em out! (Image: Sommese, A., Miklósi, Á., Pogány, Á. et al. An exploratory analysis of head-tilting in dogs. Anim Cogn (2021)/CC BY 4.0)

The Story Behind the World's Biggest Nuclear Bomb Posted: 01 Nov 2021 07:16 PM PDT On October 30, 1961, the Soviet Union tested the world's largest nuclear bomb. Tsar Bomba, as it came to be known, was deployed over an Arctic island and produced a fireball six miles wide. The explosion yielded the power of 50 megatons of TNT, although the bomb was capable of 100 megatons. In comparison, the bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima had the explosive power of 15 kilotons of TNT. Tsar Bomba was 40 times as powerful as any nuclear weapon the US ever built to this day. The test of the bomb brought an end to the nuclear test ban treaty between the US and the USSR that had been in effect since 1958. The US denounced the test, but publicly downplayed it in the press. The Soviets were obviously ahead the nuclear arms race, but that was because the US at the time deliberately avoided building larger nuclear bombs. The Eisenhower administration didn't think it was ethical, as if small nuclear bombs were. But once the Soviets had tested its Tsar Bomba, scientists were asked to design larger nuclear weapons. And US nuclear testing came back in full swing. Read the story of Tsar Bomba and the American response at Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The article includes footage from a Soviet documentary about the bomb.   -via Digg

Economics Jokes from the <i>Financial Times</i> Posted: 01 Nov 2021 10:55 AM PDT In one of the best scenes in one of the greatest comedy series—Yes, Minister—Sir Desmond Glazebrook explains to Sir Humphrey Appleby that, yes, he does carry a copy of the Financial Times with him. But that doesn’t mean that he actually understands it. (In case it's not clear, the Financial Times is read by the people who own the country.) Fortunately, the 404 error page of the Financial Times is far more comprehensible to those of us with a passing familiarity with economics. Or, if you’re like me, just smile and laugh when you see other people around you doing likewise. It will be less awkward. -via Kottke

Bird of the Year Again Stirs Controversy: Winner is a Bat! Posted: 01 Nov 2021 06:48 AM PDT Get ready for the uproar- the Bird of the Year (Te Manu Rongonui o Te Tau) competition has been won by a bat! The New Zealand organization Forest & Bird stages a poll each year to determine the best bird. This year, the winner is the long-tailed bat, or pekapeka-tou-roa. The announcement of the poll results has people wondering how a bat ever got into the competition, much less defeated the actual birds that were in the running.   This is the first time New Zealand’s only land mammal has been included in Forest & Bird’s annual contest, and it has flown away with the title. “I think I’m going to be fired,” says Forest & Bird’s Bird of the Year spokesperson Laura Keown.   Organizers say they included the bat in order to draw attention to it. In that they have succeeded wildly. On top of that, more votes were cast this year than in any previous year. The 2020 winner, the kākāpō, came in second in the polling. It's not the first time that the Bird of the Year contest was in the news for odd reasons. Last year, the contest had to deal with a case of voter fraud, in which 1500 votes had to be thrown out.  -via Metafilter (Image credit: Ian Davidson-Watts)

You are subscribed to email updates from Neatorama. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States