Sometimes clues to a disease come from the people who don't get it. A 1950 study of the psychological lives of blind people revealed that there are no cases of people who had been blind since birth developing schizophrenia. Double-checking through larger health records confirmed the fact. Those who suffer an eye injury or otherwise become blind after seeing in childhood might develop the disease as much as anyone else, but those who were born with a malfunctioning visual cortex in the brain do not. 

The visual cortex plays a big role in detecting signals from the outside world and sorting them out. The brain spends a lot of energy ranking visual stimuli to calculate which is important and using those signals to make sense of the world. In schizophrenic patients, this ranking seems to go haywire, and the brain cannot ignore random signals. When there is no visual stimuli in the visual cortex, that part of the brain is often repurposed for other tasks. Does this reorganization of brain tasks provide some kind of protection against schizophrenia? The answer may lie in the complex way in which our brains work. Read about this intriguing research at the Conversation. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: Database Center for Life Science(DBCLS)) 

The Takeout has compiled a list of 11 tiny eateries in these United States, including the famous Squeeze-In in Sunbury, Pennsylvania.

This hot dog joint has been in continous operation since 1945. You might want to order your dog for takeout because it measure sonly 8 by 16 feet. If you insist on dining indoors, you'll have to squeeze in next to other customers at the handful of stools available. You can browse the menu here.

After 81 years, the Squeeze In is a cherished local institution with a devoted local fan base.

Photo: The Sqeeze-In

Boxers and other hand-to-hand fighters sometimes get "cauliflower ear", which is referred, medically speaking, as "auricular hematoma." It's a deformity that results most commonly from getting punched in the ear.

So a guy with cauliflower ears looks like someone who's been in some hard fights and is ready for more. From a particular point of view, it contributes to an aesthetically appealing appearance.

Oddity Central reports that some men in Russia are getting cauliflower ears not the hard way, but through cosmetic surgery. When matched with a muscular physique and a confident demeanor, they convey an overall impression of physical dominance.

Perhaps women find this look attractive.

But I'm going to hold out for the full Ferengi look.

A rat king is an entanglement of rats by their tails. It refers to a rare but real phenomenon among rodents but also a symbol of social and political disorder as outlined by Lucas Reilly in Mental Floss.

In this case, it's a dumpling dish prepared by the girlfriend of redditor /u/Curious_Psychonaut.

Trying to contain or control the flow of lava from an erupting volcano seems like a fool's errand. It would be much better to avoid building communities anywhere near a volcano. But volcanos can go millions of years between eruptions, and people don't mind living near what they figure is an extinct volcano. They often have rich soil for crops. So we are occasionally surprised by an eruption, which can be devastating. 

People have attempted several different methods for controlling lava flow, including bombs, water, and dikes (although I'm not sure that would be the right term, since it's lava instead of water), with varying results. Oh yeah, and sacrifices, which isn't addressed in this video at all. It turns out that one method seems to work best, but only when the community is prepared way ahead of time. That's not much help when an "extinct" volcano decides to suddenly resurrect itself, but it's better than nothing. Or as one commenter put it: "Well as long as you stay on the furniture and don’t touch the floor you should be fine."   

The latest food hack going viral online is to combine potato chips and chocolate by pouring molten chocolate into cans of Pringles. After it cools, cut the cans off. Then slice the cylinders into chunks of salty chocolate potato chips about an inch think.

There are different ways to improve upon the concept, such as adding marshmallow to the mixture. But as a Southern boy, I know the right ingredient: pickled pigs' feet. Anyway, I now have plans for the weekend.

-via Sora News 24

Pacific Counter is a chain of tropical-themed Asian cuisine restaurants in the Tampa Bay area. Among their treats are aloha whip, which is pineapple-flavored soft serve ice cream, and hot dogs.

On April Fools' Day, the business promoted the Aloha Hipdog, which is a hot dog inverted and stuffed inside an ice cream cone and then wrapped with aloha whip.

It's a joke, of course. But I suspect that the mixture of sweet ice cream and savory meat would actually be tasty and worth a try. Perhaps it could prove even tastier with whipped cream and a cherry on top.

-via Born in Space

Most of us, I expect, have used electric irons. I've seen in antiques displays "sad irons", which are slabs of metal that are heated in fireplaces and stoves. There were, though, many alternative designs between these two extremes. Among them is this gasoline-powered iron patented in 1936 and sold through the Montgomery Ward mail order catalog.

YouTuber Gilles Messier traces the technological history of the iron before addressing in detail this particular design. The video begins with him pulling on a starter cord like it's a lawnmower with an internal combustion engine, but that's now how gasoline functioned in this iron.

Rather, gasoline (or, in some similar models, naphtha or kerosene) was slowly burned to heat the bottom. These designs had a tendency to start fires and thus came with certain risks attached. But they remained popular in regions where electrification was limited.

-via Hack-A-Day

It's already May the eighth in Britain, and so Sir David Attenborough is celebrating his 100th birthday. Born on May 8, 1926, the British broadcaster and naturalist joined the BBC in 1952, when it was fairly new and few people had television sets. He himself had never seen television before. Attenborough worked on several shows, then became the host (what the British call a presenter) of the show Zoo Quest in 1954. Since then he's brought us dozen of shows on the world's animals in their natural habitats. He also became an executive at the BBC.

Attenborough's nature documentaries have inspired children to become scientists, filmmakers, and conservationists. His shows, from Zoo Quest to Life on Earth to Blue Planet have given us a new way to see the world around us. Read about Attenborough's influence on what a nature documentary can be. 

Tributes to Attenborough's very public and inspiring career are rolling in, and he took time to record a message of appreciation for his fans. 

Specialized employment, or working a job for money, has existed for only a few thousand years of human history. Before that, people were pretty much all farmers, and before that, we were hunter-gatherers. We think of that as a hard life, but studies show that procuring enough food to eat didn't take up nearly as much time as you might think. YouTuber Axen illustrates how ancient people really spent their time, and you might end up being jealous. Just remember, today we have ice cream.  

But there are a couple of caveats here. This was from a time when there were fewer people and plenty of resources. Living in a warm climate meant you didn't have to spend a lot of time storing up firewood, building warm homes, and making warm clothes. That changed when humans used their free time to wander into new territory for new resources when the world grew more crowded. As that happened, they eventually had to spend more time defending the community from enemies as well. And no matter what time period you target, women still had the added burden of reproduction and child care.

Or, if you're a bit older, think of the Mikiphone as the world's first Walkman. This invention by Miklós and Étienne Vadász manufactured in Switzerland in 1924 was one of the first means of providing portable music. It's powered by a hand-cranked spring turned a few dozen times.

It would not have occurred to me that the landlocked Idaho has access to the sea for oceanic transport, but it does. The Snake River touches the Port of Lewiston on the western border of the state. That river connects to the Columbia River and thence the Pacific Ocean.

The US Department of Transportation refers to this route as Maritime Highway M-84. Note that this route does not provide sea access for the US Navy's submarine base in Idaho.

I should mention that Lewiston is not the most inland port of the United States. That would be Duluth, which can dock oceangoing vessels traveling along the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway.

-via Battle Beagle

In the past few weeks, Americans under 50 have been looking up the siege of the American Embassy in Tehran to understand the tensions between the US and Iran. Meanwhile, other incidents that have nothing to do with the US were happening at the same time, because groups of people have always been horrible to other groups of people.    

On April 30, 1980, six gunmen from the Democratic Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Arabistan (DRFLA) stormed the Iranian Embassy in London. They were Iranian Arabs opposed to the new government, supported and armed by Iraq. They took 26 hostages, mostly embassy employees, but also British and international contractors, visitors, journalists, and one policeman. The terrorists demanded the release of Arab prisoners in Iranian jails and safe passage out of Britain. Margaret Thatcher refused to promise safe passage. The siege went on for six days, until the British SAS staged a terrifying but brilliant raid to end the standoff. Read what led to the crisis, what happened behind the scenes day-by-day, and the fallout afterward at Utterly Interesting. 

New recruits for the Pontifical Swiss Guard are sworn into service annually on May 6. That day is special to these soldiers--the last Papal army in existence--because on that date in 1527, the Swiss Guard made its heroic last stand to defend Pope Clement VII during the sack of Rome by muntinous Imperial troops.

Yesterday, Pope Leo XIV attended the admission of 28 members to this revered unit. These men pledged to give their lives, if necessary, in his defense.

The official band of the Swiss Guard then performed for the Pope's pleasure, including a favorite from American popular music: "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond.

When I started watching this video, I thought it was going to be a rehash of the Lutz family story that inspired The Amityville Horror. But this is one I'd never heard before- it's far less supernatural and therefore scarier. Derek and Maria Broaddus bought a house in Westfield, New Jersey, in 2014. They immediately started renovations to get the house ready for them and their three children to move into. They also started getting eerie letters from an anonymous writer. The letters revealed that someone had them under surveillance, and intended to keep watching them. The letters continued and became more threatening, and the Broaddus family delayed moving in. 

Their story was published at a blog in 2018, and was eventually made into a TV show, The Watcher, which ran for seven episodes in 2022. Weird History gives us the rundown on what happened and some speculation about why it happened. No perpetrator has ever been identified. But you might want to watch something a little more benign to clear your head after hearing what the Broaddus family went through.