Rain Noe of Core77 shows us an unusual tool. Can you guess what it's for? The answer is below the fold.

Science gives us an ever-expanding archive of knowledge, and each discovery bring a need for labeling. New species, chemicals, and processes each need their own name so that other scientists will know what you're talking about. Things can get weird. We may laugh at the term "spaghettification," but thanks to whichever physicist who came up with the term, it's pretty self-explanatory. And that's what's important.

You can't get much clearer than that. As long as a species name stays within the limits of taxonomic nomenclature, you can name a species anything you want, if you are the one with the right to do so. Besides, the western lowland gorilla can claim early adopter status. He can always claim he is the default gorilla! See a dozen of these strange science terms in a pictofacts list at Cracked.

PS: I believe they meant a Jiffy is a "short amount of time."

See also: 11 Naughty-Sounding Scientific Names, Funny Chemical Names, and Diabolic Acid and other Chemical Structures. And don't forget about the thagomizer.

If you want to know what color the sun is, the worst way to find out would be to look at it, especially it's high in the sky. That's a good way to damage your eyes. When you look at the sun as it is rising or setting, you get the idea that it is yellow, or maybe a bit orange. But you can't always believe your eyes. Atmospheric conditions affect the way things appear to us, and the limitations of our eyes affect what we perceive. So what color is the sun really emitting? All of them, but it turns out that it emits a green wavelength more than any other. To determine this, we first have to define color, and then measure the sun's wavelengths, and explain ehy we don't see the green color by looking at the factors that affect our perception. SciShow gives us an overview of all that in just five minutes.

Maybe it's too much screen time before bed, maybe it's too hot, but there's always the possibility it's our own brains who are disturbing our sleep. Those psychological questions you spend so much time avoiding during the day can try to come up when you are asleep, and it's hard to process them properly while sleeping. If we put some time into self-care, confronting the thoughts, ideas, and emotions we tend to avoid during our conscious time, it might help us sleep better at night. At least that's an idea from The School of Life you can try. Or at least think about trying. -via Laughing Squid

The Transformer statues above are the crux of a controversy in Washington, DC, involving the questions of what is art, the difference between public space and private space, and historic preservation vs. property rights. In the historic and expensive Georgetown neighborhood, residents and tourists can see 10-foot statues of Optimus Prime and Bumblebee from the Transformers franchise. Dr. Newton Howard, a professor at nearby Georgetown University School of Medicine, installed the statues in January of 2021 atop two brick planters outside the front door of his $4 million home.

Tourists, and some of the neighbors, love the statues. Others neighbors don't, and some say they don't object to the statues as much as to the traffic and crowds they draw. Howard is in an ongoing battle with the Prospect Street Citizens’ Association, the Advisory Neighborhood Commission, the Old Georgetown Board, and the D.C. Public Space Committee.     

Howard is a "mysteriously wealthy" character who's been referred to as the real Tony Stark. His home is filled with more Transformer art and memorabilia, and there's another large Optimus Prime visible on his roof. Read about Howard and the battle of the DC robots that are still up, but under orders to be taken down. -via Metafilter

The University of Sheffield Department of Civil and Structural Engineering has a Blast Laboratory. That's where scientists and engineers go to have a blast -literally. They study and measure explosions with some really impressive equipment that not only precisely measures what's going on during a detonation, but must also survive to relay that information.  

Tom Scott visited the Blast Laboratory to ask how explosives work, which is a great excuse for a video, but we all know he went there to watch them blow stuff up. In this video, you can, too, without having to buy a ticket to a Hollywood film. Those movie explosions are mostly CGI these days, but at the Blast Laboratory, they are real. However, these are for science, not for show. The explosion they perform in this video goes so fast that you can't really see it until they play back the high speed recording. How high speed? How about 250,000 frames per second!

If this topic interests you, the University of Sheffield has another video about their research you can watch.

We've heard stories of animals being put on trial, and at least once there was a dead body hauled into court, but now here's a tale of a statue that was prosecuted.

When the ancient Greek Olympic athlete Theagenes died, a bronze statue was made in his likeness. Another athlete had the habit of kicking the statue, until it fell over on him and killed him. The statue itself was put on trial, because someone had to take the fall, so to speak, for the athlete's death. But that wasn't the only time a statue was out on trial. During the Protestant Reformation, a Catholic statue of the Virgin Mary was put on trial in Riga, Latvia, for witchcraft! In that case, the statue's guilt was determined by the old "throw her in the water and see if she sinks" method.

Read about these trials, and three other cases in which statues were treated as if they were living human beings, at Cracked.

We often read about teenagers who lied about their ages in order to serve their country during war. But this story is about an old man who lied about being young enough to enlist. To be sure, it's common for a military to recruit older people with specialized knowledge for the war effort, but they are rarely put on the front lines. John William Boucher just wanted to serve.

Boucher was a Canadian citizen who enlisted in the Union Army in America's Civil War at either age 18 or 19, even though it took three attempts for him to get in. After the war ended, he went back to Ottawa and continued his life. But when Boucher approached age 70, World War I broke out, and he wanted to serve his country. The upper age limit for enlisting in the Canadian military was 45, and Boucher was rejected three times. By 1917, the upper age limit was raised to 48, but Boucher was 72 by then. He showed up at a different recruiting office and adamantly insisted he was 48 years old. The doctor didn't believe it, but he passed the physical and became a sapper. As a member of the 257th railroad battalion, he constructed railways across Europe and gained the nickname "Dad." After his time in Europe ended, Boucher continued to serve in public relations by telling his story. Read about John William Boucher and his service in two widely-spaced wars at Smithsonian.

(Illustration credit: Meilan Solly)

The Slovakian marketing group Kreativ Gang collaborated with LEGO to perform a cool stunt. They 3D printed miniature space shuttles and launched 1,000 LEGO astronauts into space! They made three launches from Malé Bielice Airport near Partizánské in Slovakia, each carrying about a third of the "Legonauts," which took them 22 miles up to the edge of space by balloon. When the balloon burst, the shuttle and minifigs went into free fall until a parachute opened. It was a bit tricky, because the shuttles had no roofs. They wanted to the Legonauts to be exposed to space.

The launches went off without a hitch on May 20, and the Legonauts ended up back on earth... somewhere. When the project team has them all gathered up, they will offer the Legonauts as prizes in a sweepstakes open to people in the Czech Republic and Slovakia who buy a new LEGO set. Read more about the project at PetaPixel. -via Boing Boing

Tumblr user mousemilf shares an endearing story of a holiday invented by her father. She grew up celebrating "Big Sandwich Night" -- a day when the entire family made a huge sandwich and ate it together:

I can see how this event could become popular. We need community, especially in-person community.

For a few years, my daughters and I celebrated Derpy Day, which is a brony holiday in which people bake muffins together in honor of Derpy, a minor character on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. The girls eventually figured out that no one else at their school celebrated this particular holiday.

Does your family celebrate any unique holidays?

-via Glenn Reynolds

A bonnacon is a legendary medieval beast that struck terror into the hearts of man. First described by Aristotle, it was widely known by the time medieval bestiaries were written, accompanied by rich illustrations. In most illustrations, the bonnacon resembles a goat, although its feet were sometimes clawed and sometimes hoofed. It had two horns that curled toward each other. So what was so terrifying about the bonnacon?

The bonnacon's unique defensive weapon was explosive diarrhea. You could call this an offensive weapon as well. Over time, the bonnacon's eruptions became more and more exaggerated. The effluvia was said to burn like fire, cover three acres, and hit a target at quite some distance. Tales of the bonnacon were widely told, possibly as a gag rather than a fable, and it was illustrated over and over. In fact, the Public Domain Review has 15 images of the bonnacon in addition to the animal's history. -via Everlasting Blort

And now for today's cautionary tale. (Miami Herald 1916, via @_newspapers) pic.twitter.com/ewlP33X3PG

— Undine (@HorribleSanity) May 30, 2023

The headline doesn't seem to make a bit of sense, but it's real. The syndicated story survives in more detail in the December 16. 1916 issue of the Nevada newspaper Elko Independent. A British man named Wilberforce Wiggins explained why he was in New York.

As the story goes, Wiggins was late for a lunch meeting with friends. To explain his tardiness, he spun a tale out of whole cloth. He said he was busy fulfilling an order from officials in India who were looking for 2,000 Manx cats to import in order to control snakes, and that they were paying $25 each for the cats.

Wiggins thought it was a hilarious tale, but the men he was dining with took it seriously, and each snuck off to make phone calls to connections on the Isle of Man (where Manx cats come from) to arrange fulfillment of Wiggins' mission. After all, $25 a cat was a lot of money in 1916.

Afterward, Wiggins was inundated by shipments of cats from the Isle of Man -and elsewhere, as the story got around quickly. There were also children carrying cats to his house, demanding their $25. His aunt even lost her beloved Angora cat when she walked away with one of the cats who escaped a cage at the dock. So Wiggins did the only thing he could do to escape the mess he caused, and fled to the United States to hide until the excitement died down.

Is there any truth to the story? Wilberforce Wiggins already proved himself to be a teller of tale tales with his luncheon story, so that's quite doubtful. But it's plausible that he actually said all this to a newspaper reporter in New York. -via Undine 

Atlas Obscura introduces us to a unique drive-through restaurant in the Netherlands. It began when Jan and Birgitte van den Elzen built up a successful strawberry greenhouse facility in the town of Uden. They looked for innovative ways to sell their fruit, including vending machines. Those vending machines are still present, but during peak strawberry season, which is from March to September, visitors to the Aardeien Drive-In can also purchase strawberry foods at the drive-through window.

These dishes include strawberry waffles, chocolate-dipped strawberries, strawberry shakes, strawberry smoothies, strawberry jam, and strawberries with whipped cream. Who's up for a yummy roadtrip to the Netherlands?

Photo: Aardeien Drive-In

The live-action film Barbie opens on July 21. It promises to be a true reflection of the doll's life and culture, and that includes a dazzling pink set full of Barbie Dreamhouses. While the Barbie Dreamhouse has been produced in many different versions, they all evoke a midcentury modern design rendered in bright colors, mostly Barbie pink. And so the movie set had to reflect that.

Production designer Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer talk about how they translated the Dreamhouse aesthetic into the real world in order to put real actors into the Barbie world. The set size is not exactly human scale, but close enough to use. There are few exterior walls, because there is no privacy in Barbie world, just as there is no place in the Barbie Dreamhouse you can't see -and the weather is always perfect. The San Jacinto Mountains in the background is not a CGI landscape, but rather a painted backdrop. Constructing the set meant causing a global but temporary shortage of pink paint.

Read about the Barbie set and the care that went into evoking the unique doll's world at Architectural Digest. The article has plenty of pink pictures. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Jaap Buitendijk/Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

Redditor Mare Astra found this in her mother-in-law's basement. Take a closer look at the fine print. If you are not familiar with this gadget, it may be alarming.

In case you are wondering, the polonium in the product is polonium-210, which has a half-life of 138 days. It is considered harmful to humans only if it is ingested, like if it got into a skin wound or was drunk in the form of Russian tea from a political enemy.

The Staticmaster 500 is one of a line of products from the Nuclear Products Company introduced in 1950. It was intended for use in cleaning vinyl records or photographic film by ionizing the air around the object, therefore eliminating static electricity and making dusting easier. If you already had one of these around the house, you might use it to keep your clothes from clinging or get your hair to stay in place. Since polonium-210 has such a short half life, these products were only guaranteed for a year. If you find one of these gadgets, it's safe to be around by now. But if you really want to have some polonium-210 around the house, you can still buy new static eliminators that use it.