Track Math

(via reddit)

A Gloriously Happy Dog

Mia was taken in as a puppy by Beldi Dog Refuge in Morocco. Her back legs are paralyzed, possibly from an encounter with a car. Mia ended up in the Netherlands with a family who loves her and proved she can get around just fine without her back legs. This video is less about that and more about her efforts to make friends with her housemate Dino, an adult male cat who had a hard time putting up with the puppy's shenanigans. These frenemies eventually settled into a relationship. You can tell the cat loves her even though he has to keep up appearances. Now that Mia has wheels, there will be no stopping her! You can read Mia's story and keep up with her further adventures at Instagram.

Friday

(via Fark)

A Bike Flip on a Moving Train

Here's a bike stunt that has never been done before, either because no one thought to do it, and if they did, they couldn't afford to make it happen. Enter Red Bull. Polish cyclist and world champion Dawid Godziek will show us some bike tricks including a flip on a moving train. He and his brother Szymon Godziek designed and built the run on top of ten cars from the Polish State Railways. The locomotive here is high-tech and can maintain a steady slow speed in order to load cargo from hoppers without stopping and starting. That allows Dawid to get used to the physics of performing on a moving train, and helps keep him in the shot. (via Metafilter)

Miss Cellania's Links

Drunk Worms, Dead Trout, and Milk-Spewing Cows: The 2024 Ig Nobel Prize Winners.

The 2024 Fall Foliage Prediction Map is online now. (Thanks, Brittany!)  

When a Glacial Dam Burst, an Alaskan Town Was Hit With a Sudden Flood. From Alaska to Peru and the Himalayas, glacial lakes are suddenly breaking free and causing deaths and millions of dollars in damages.

John McFall Is Breaking Barriers as the World’s First Parastronaut. Paralympian and surgeon John McFall is redefining the astronaut image and proving that space travel is achievable for people with physical disabilities. (via Kottke)

News of the Times: Another U.S. School Hit by Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. The latest from Tom the Dancing Bug.

A House for Sale with Character. Lots of them. (via Digg)

6 Infamous Unsolved Bank Robberies. Keep in mind that just because these schemes worked once, that doesn't mean they will work again.

Ancient Roman military camp discovered in Swiss Alps. (via Damn Interesting)

What Researchers Learned From the World’s Oldest Cookbook.

Friday the 13th

(via Fark)

Real Life Space Invaders Using Drones

For GeekCon 2016, a team led by Tomer Daniel engineered a game of Space Invaders for the real world. Okay, there are computers involved, but the game play itself takes place outside of a computer. The targets are Arduino-enabled drones with LEDs, the weapon is a laser that turns itself off momentarily after firing, the movement is supplied by a twenty-foot rail underneath the player’s seat, and the drones turn out their lights when they get “hit.”
Read more about how they did it at Hackaday. A good time was had by all. (Thanks, John Farrier!)

Tweet of the Day

omg that’s like their beyoncé https://t.co/6IxnTeQMxi

— z̵s̴a̶ ̸z̸s̶a̴ ̷g̸a̷b̴o̶r̴t̵i̷o̵n̴ (@zsazsagabortion) September 7, 2024

(via Buzzfeed)

Suspicious Bulge

What could it be? (via Bad Newspaper)

Nostromeow

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. (via Geeks Are Sexy) https://www.geeksaresexy.net/  

Toot

(via reddit)

Chickens Carve a Pumpkin

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. 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! (via Laughing Squid)

Backache

From Married to the Sea.

Carpentopod

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 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. Carpentier is not building these to sell, but he will share the plans. (via Boing Boing)

Evidence

(via Fark)

Ping Pong Carnival

How many ways can you make table tennis into a form of entertainment? Well, there are trick shots, but that’s just the beginning of the silliness Takkyuu Geinin (which means “table tennis entertainer”) put together. I have to admit, the parts with the long-suffering girlfriend are my favorites. (via Tastefully Offensive)

Tweet of the Day

This puppy had to take some medicine and threw the most adorable tantrum we've ever seen. 12/10 pic.twitter.com/Sdj5WVD5IL

— WeRateDogs (@dog_rates) August 22, 2024

(Thanks, WTM!)

No, Thanks

(via Bad Menu)

Marathons

(via Give Me a Sign)

How Snakes Hijacked Our Brains

They way one species evolves will affect other species around it, which is called coevolution. You see this happening in predators and their prey, as they both adapt to the other's adaptations. 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. That last one involves humans, who have had a fraught relationship with snakes since forever. Even Genesis tells us to avoid snakes. There's a 50-second skippable ad at 2:44.