Archiving my Twitter, Facebook and other social network activity
“No one is sure why, but in 1898 Rufus T. Owens of Central City, Colorado (elevation 9,000 feet) decided to build a submarine, which he named the Nautilus. He and a few friends launched it on nearby Missouri Lake. They ballasted it with three tons of rocks. Owens intended to captain the maiden voyage himself, but fortunately for him, the submarine sank before he had a chance to climb inside.”
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-mountain-submarine
#submarine #weird
This is not how you usually consume #GPS with #Python.
#weird
“Pythons are snacking on GPS-wearing opossums that give up their locations”
https://wapo.st/3lOpFzv
NVIDIA's RTX 4090 card has been getting so hot its *power cables have been melting*! 😱
Apparently it's hard to tell whether the power adapter has actually snapped in, and if it's just a little bit off, it can come loose enough to overheat.
#hardware #nvidia #weird #safety
DOJ seizes stolen bitcoin from a 10-year-old heist against the Silk Road (remember them?), some of which was stored “on a single-board computer that was submerged under blankets in a popcorn tin stored in a bathroom closet.”
It’s like the classic saying about the only way to guarantee your computer is safe from hacking.
Search warrants, on the other hand…
via
https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/7/23445125/bitcoin-silk-road-recovered-investigators-billions
Or, now that I think about it, the plans for demolishing Arthur Dent’s house.
Oh jeez, I bet there are a lot of bitcoin aficionados who would file stuff under Q on principle
Actual WaPo headline:
Please stop licking psychedelic toads, National Park Service warns
“As we say with most things you come across in a national park, whether it be a banana slug, unfamiliar mushroom, or a large toad with glowing eyes in the dead of night, please refrain from licking.”
“When America Banned Sliced Bread”
WW2 rationing, trying to save on packaging material and metal for slicing machines.
It didn’t last long.
The “sound” of a black hole: pressure waves measured in observations of the interstellar gas in a distant galaxy cluster, converted to sound, then transposed upward by 57 octaves into human hearing range.
“A scientist behind the project likened the sounds to ‘a beautiful Hans Zimmer score with the moody level set at really high’”
#astronomy #weird
I dreamed that Jean Valjean convinced Javert to rescue an injured goose like he helps rescue Marius in the original. Javert took the goose to the station, issued it its own photo ID (it was a modern retelling), and the goose proceeded to follow Javert around everywhere for weeks until it got homesick and wanted him to take it back to the lagoon where Valjean had found it. Somehow it managed to convey this to him and he brought it back.
Love this headline: “Sea lions take joy ride on borrowed boat near Olympia”
(video in article)
Interesting story of a vanished disease called Devonshire colic, caused by drinking poisonous cider and relieved (in part) by soaking in the hot springs at Bath…
When the Cure for Poisonous Cider Was Hours of Bathtime
…because it turned out that the colic was actually lead poisoning from the cider-making equipment in Devon, and spending all day in water, like living in microgravity, causes bones to shed some of their mineral content.
Weird bug I saw today. Looked like a moth as it flew past me, looks like a pair of twigs on the wall.
#iNaturalist suggests it *is* a kind of moth, possibly a plume moth of some sort. I don’t think I’ve seen a moth whose wings roll up forward before.
I think the headline says it all: “Dropbox had to evacuate its headquarters when an electric scooter caught fire”
Apparently their neighbors reported them for renting it out as Airbnb or similar (which the city doesn’t allow). Then they painted the house bright pink with giant 😜 and 🤐 emoji on it. Now the neighbors are complaining about the mural, but the city says it’s on private property 🤷♂️
Honestly I’m surprised – it sounds like the kind of area that would mandate specific shades of beige paint.
(LA Times, paywall)
‘Emoji house’ feud erupts as frustrated residents urge Manhattan Beach to take action.
#EmojiHouse #weird #LosAngeles #California
—
(conversation includes link to The Guardian article) It made international headlines?
@OldBrushNewPaper It made international headlines?
Oh, of course it did. It’s a weird story with emoji. 🤦♂️ 😂
@OldBrushNewPaper It’s not really the kind of area where people would respond with better murals, though. I could see that happening in neighboring Hermosa Beach, but Manhattan Beach is…how should I say this…stuffier?
—
Wow, I should have gone looking for the Easy Reader to begin with. (It’s one of the two local papers in the area.) The owner comes off a *lot* worse with the additional background of how she allegedly treated the last long-term tenants.
The Emoji House war: A neighborhood feud erupts in El Porto
Susan Wieland had been away for a work conference since the end of May, but neighbors sent her the photo. Even so, upon returning to her home in the El Porto neighborhood of Manhattan Beach on the night of June 8, she wept when she actually saw her neighbor’s house. The house, a two-level…– Easy Reader News
“The Mystery of Florida’s Cannonball-Eating Spanish Fort”
The rock it’s made from, coquina, is a sedimentary rock made up of compressed seashells. It turns out that under impact, the component shell fragments can shift, absorbing the impact. This explains why cannonballs simply sank into the walls like pressing into foam instead of shattering them.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/coquina-fort-in-florida
Apparently opium affects parrots the way caffeine affects humans, and hyperactive parrots in India are trashing the poppy fields trying to get their fix.
@Satsuma replies:
cant decide if this is more or less funny than the high on opium wallabies making crop circles on Australian poppy farms
Wow!
I think wallabies and crop circles win! 😂
Apparently tomatoes have inactive genes for producing capsaicin, so scientists are trying to use CRISPR to activate the genes & create a spicy tomato, figuring it’ll be easier to grow than peppers.
In 1908, a photographer strapped cameras to pigeons to take aerial photos.
Literally a bird’s-eye view of the world.
For a Brief, Glorious Moment, Camera-Wielding Pigeons Spied From Above
Weird, I was just talking about this a few days ago.
When Researchers Used IHOP to Determine if Kansas Is Flatter Than a Pancake via @atlasobscura
