Banks are where the money is, but people don't often rob them because 1. it's wrong, 2. there are security measures, and 3. if you could pull it off, the long arm of the law will find you, and the consequences will be severe. But every once in a great while, someone does pull it off and gets away with it.
A bank robbery in Krugersdorp, South Africa, in 1977 seems like something you'd see in a movie. The perpetrators rented a building next door to the bank, and dug a tunnel to the bank vault. Noisy construction equipment outside covered up the sound of the digging equipment inside. The extra noise also tended to trip the bank's alarm system, so bank employees turned it off. All of this came to light after the money was gone, and neither it nor the thieves were ever found.
Read the details of this story and of five other famous unsolved bank robberies at Mental Floss. But keep in mind that just because these schemes worked once, that doesn't mean they will work again.
In the 1979 movie Alien, we were transfixed by the xenomorph that went through different and terrifying life stages, and we were shocked when all the actors we'd heard of were killed off, leaving Sigourney Weaver to be the last survivor, along with the ship's cat Jones. Everyone liked Jonesy, and wanted him to make it out alive. So what if we made the whole cast into cats? Well, maybe throw in some dogs, a pig, and a turtle. And change the name of the ship to the Nostromeow.
Mean Orange Cat did just that, with artificial intelligence. Except the narrator's voice must be real, which explains the gender swap. If they had an AI voice, he would have made it Weaver's, or at least a woman's voice. But Mean Orange cat uses the same voice in all his AI movie remakes, with a cat wearing an eyepatch as the protagonist. -via Geeks Are Sexy
Do you have somewhere to go this fall? Would you like to use the excuse of seeing the fall colors to take a weekend getaway? You can plan that trip around the 2024 Fall Foliage Prediction Map from the folks at SmokyMountains.com, who would like you to visit Gatlinburg, Tennessee. But the opportunity is there for any place in the US, or at least the 48 contiguous states, for a leaf-peeping trip if you time it right. I will be traveling for a grandchild's arrival, and I'm delighted to see that the scenery will be lovely during my long drive.
The entire map is green now, but you can use the slider underneath to see which areas will be at peak color during the months ahead. The image above shows the map for the week of October 7th. By that time, the people in New England will be inundated by the annual migration of leaf-peeping tourists, but will be glad they brought their money. My hometown will not peak until November 4th. You may see a startling amount of green right in the middle of autumn, but that doesn't really mean green. Green means "no change," so I believe the late autumn green means no change from the week before. Eventually, even Florida will see some fall colors. -Thanks, Brittany!
If you are going to start carving Jack O'Lanterns in September, let's hope you have a lot of pumpkins, or else a lot of resin to preserve them with. That didn't stop Bre Ellis, who has pumpkins and chickens and knows how to use them. Ellis scraped the thin rind off of a pumpkin at strategic spots, unleashing the aromatic lure of the fruit underneath. We know tigers, bears, elephants, and other wild animals love a good fresh pumpkin, and apparently so do chickens. The chickens pecked and pecked at the parts that smelled good until they had eaten their way through. The result was a grinning, glowing Jack O'Lantern!
Sure, Ellis did this so early because she wanted to show you how it's done. When the time comes, you can let your chickens do the carving, or you can take your pumpkin to a farm and give someone else's chickens a treat, while you get your Jack O'Lantern carved by "nature." -via Laughing Squid
Look at this nice home for sale in the seaside town of Rhyl in north Wales. It has three bedrooms and one bathroom, and the asking price is only £179,950, but I don't know how many Euros that is. The description at the real estate listing has a checkbox for "Character Property." I thought that must be a UK real estate term I'm not familiar with, but once you step inside you realize what they meant. There are characters everywhere.
The above is the living room. The kitchen would look fairly normal once you removed all the Disney slogans gracing each cabinet. The staircase area is drenched in pink with images of castles. I'm not sure what this room is for, but I don't want to spend too much time there.
The home is filled with Disney collectibles and other toys, which we assume the current owner will keep. It would take a very special buyer to live in this house as it is, but most likely it could be returned to normal with two coats of Kilz and some regular wall paint. It's a good thing we have 18 real estate pictures for posterity. -via Digg
Giliam de Carpentier built a 12-legged coffee table that walks across the floor. The "how" is quite interesting. He started by writing a computer program that generated different designs for wooden legs that could walk. The program also tested each design for "fitness" along the desired kinetic parameters, and with those results generated more designs until the design evolved into the optimum leg Carpentier was looking for. Then he designed the table around a device with 12 legs, six on each side, which was the best number for moving smoothly and for steering in different directions.
All the components were modeled by computer and tested, tweaked, and finally carved out of laminated bamboo. Next, electronics were installed to power the table and control it remotely. If you are into computer design or woodcarving (or both!), you'll want to read Carpentier's process in designing what he calls the Carpentopod. It might remind you of Theo Jansen's walking sculptures, and he indeed contrasts the works. There are plenty of videos to illustrate the stages of the project. Carpentier is not building these to sell, but he will share the plans. -via Boing Boing
John McFall suffered a motorcycle accident when he was 19 and his right leg had to be amputated above the knee. He went on to compete in the Paralympic Games, where he won bronze for the UK in the 100-meter dash in 2008. McFall also became an orthopedic and trauma surgeon. Now he has another accomplishment to add to his resume: astronaut. The European Space Agency (ESA) hired McFall into its astronaut corps in 2022, making him the first individual with a physical disability to become an astronaut, or a "parastronaut."
McFall has not yet been selected to go into space, and there's no guarantee that he will, but the possibility is there. He took part in a feasibility study to study space travel for someone missing a part of one leg. In an interview about his experience, he explains that people with missing lower limbs or lower-limb paralysis might even have advantages in microgravity. However, ESA wants to know what accommodations will need to be made for astronauts with limb differences. Read the interview with McFall at Scientific American. -via Kottke
(Image credit: ESA/P. Sebirot)
They way one species evolves will affect other species around it, which is called coevolution. After all, other animals are a part of the environment that produces the stress that causes only the most fit to survive. You see this happening in predators and their prey, as they both adapt to the other's adaptations. Can you blame them? One depends on the other for food, while the latter avoids the former to just live another day.
Jaida Elcock calls these instances of coevolution "evolutionary arms races." This video gives us examples in the American cheetah, moths with audio camouflage, cuckoos that lay designer eggs, and the snake detection hypothesis, or how snakes affected the evolution of the human brain. That last one is very important to us, because we've had a fraught relationship with snakes since forever. Even Genesis tells us to avoid snakes. This video from SciShow has a 50-second skippable ad at 2:44.
America long ago decided it was easier to ship most goods across the country with trucks on highways rather than by rail. Our highways grew larger and people found that when their industry died, they could get a job driving a truck. That last part may be ending, as a startup named Aurora is set to launch its first driverless 18-wheeler by the end of the year. Aurora's experimental trucks are equipped with two full computer systems in case one fails. They use silicon photonics and lidar sensors to keep track of the surroundings. All the hardware and software go through a barrage of testing to see how it copes with weather and unexpected events.
But Aurora is not the only company working on driverless trucks. Kodiak and Gatik are developing these trucks as well, with some differences. Together, these companies have spent hundreds of millions on getting autonomous trucks on the road. While we are still getting used to driverless cars in just a few cities, the goal of putting 40-ton big rigs on interstate highways without drivers might give you pause. These companies believe that their trucks will be safer for the general public than those driven by humans. Read about the impending launch of driverless transfer trucks at Ars Technica.
(Image credit: Aurora)
The Bonhams auction house in London recently sold this grisly coin-operated amusement dating from the 1920s and attributed to Charles Ahrens, a noted creator of such automata.
It's called the "English Execution." If it looks familiar, that may be because you watched "The Wench Is Dead," a 1998 episode of Inspector Morse. This automaton appears in the opening scene.
first look: alex chinneck brings a massive, looping steel boat to sheffield's historical canal https://t.co/ncHEkGfBK0 pic.twitter.com/X1JPWFQ3ca
— designboom (@designboom) September 10, 2024
The surreal artwork of Alex Chinneck has long been a Neatorama favorite. He creates large-scale sculptures that bend reality in astonishing and amusing ways, such as this canal boat with a looped body. It's on display on the historic Sheffield & Tinsley Canal in South Yorkshire.
Chinneck has worked on this project for eight years. It's a complex build process, as you can see from videos posted on Instagram. The boat is a floating monument to two hundred years of industrial history in the region. You can see more photos of it at Design Boom.
-via Messy Nessy Chic
The Arabian legend of the genie has always fascinated us. The main idea of having a wish granted forces us to come up with our own three wishes, making us focus on what our real priorities in life are. The stories of this trickster character often reveal that the person making the wishes will get what they deserve instead of what they want. The genie can take a wish too literally, or too broadly, or grant it with all the problems that come with it, or mess it up in whatever way he chooses to keep you from getting what you desire. That has given us a thought experiment of sorts, to come up with a way to word a wish perfectly to ensure that the genie cannot trick us out of it or punish us with unintended consequences. We all know the first rule is no wishing for more wishes. This guy finally gets his chance, and he thinks he's ready with the perfect scheme. He's got a lesson coming, and it's that you cannot outsmart a genie. There's a reason the original stories all had the same moral, and it was "don't be greedy."
A little boy on the tube is so worried about his soft-toy lion falling on the floor that he is saying to him 'Hold on tight Sycamore Jones!'
— Miranda Keeling (@MirandaKeeling) September 8, 2024
Art by Simon Heath. Words by me. pic.twitter.com/WggtUEr6Yf
Miranda Keeling has made a habit of observing the people around her and taking delight in the things they say and the everyday vignettes she witnesses. She even wrote of book of these observations. But she continues to share them with everyone in her Tweets. Many of them have inspired illustrations and artworks.
Me (to a little boy beside me in a cafe who is wearing a yellow coat): Nice coat. Little boy: Thank you. It means when night comes I can hide as a star.
— Miranda Keeling (@MirandaKeeling) September 8, 2024
Art by Penny Neville Lee. Words by me. pic.twitter.com/bceJYqZBBj
On Sunday, Keeling shared a multi-part Tweet with 13 of these illustrations she received after posting her observations. We don't know how true-to-life the illustrations are, but they will make you smile. My favorite is the one about Jeremy the rabbit, but I couldn't embed that one to show the whole picture. You can see all 13 of the artworks here. -via Nag on the Lake
'SNL' Adds Ashley Padilla, Emil Wakim & Jane Wickline To Cast For Season 50, Promotes Trio As Chloe Troast Departs https://t.co/UjbQK7bUPh
— Deadline (@DEADLINE) September 10, 2024
Saturday Night Live goes into its 50th season later this month. Every year, just ahead of the premiere, we learn which cast members will be returning, and which ones will not. Punkie Johnson will be leaving SNL after four seasons and Molly Kearney after two. Chloe Troast, who joined the show just last year, was not invited to return.
Featured players Marcello Hernandez, Michael Longfellow and Devon Walker have been promoted to main cast members.
New to the show this year will be Ashley Padilla from The Groundlings, stand-up comedian and writer Emil Wakim, and TikTok humorist Jane Wickline. In addition, Maya Rudolph has put her sitcom Loot on hiatus temporarily to reprise her portrayal of Kamala Harris from 2020 through the rest of 2024. Read more about the cast changes and what to expect in the new TV season at Deadline. Saturday Night Live's 50th season will premiere on September 28th.
This chandelier is made of spoons, so it's called a "spoondelier." That's only appropriate as a light fixture at the Mississippi Spoon Gallery, a museum in Davenport, Iowa. The name makes sense when you realize it's right near the Mississippi River. Owner Cammie Pohl opened the museum to showcase her collection of more than 10,000 rare and historical spoons that began 35 years ago when her great-grandmother gave her a set of antique spoons. The collection has only grown since the museum opened, as people donate spoons and Pohl travels to collector's conventions to acquire more.
The museum boasts the world's largest collection of souvenir spoons from all over, including several World's Fairs. There are also commemorative spoons from events like coronations and political movements, and every spoon has a story behind it. The gallery also has a spoon club for collectors. It's a must-see if you are ever near Davenport, Iowa. -via Boing Boing
(Image credit: MissSpoonGal)
