The Planet:
(the thing where all the other things are)
Ocean Life
The Blue Whale is the largest creature to ever live on this planet. A blue whale weighs 6,000lbs at birth and gains 200lbs per day. This video will tell you a lot about comparative animal size, including dinosaurs. (bonus fact: the breastmilk is so fat it has the consistency of toothpaste)
Octopuses are astonishingly far away from us evolutionarily, but not cognitively.
They're maybe the closest we'll get to see what an intelligent alien might be like.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Phylogenetic-tree-depicting-the-evolutionary-relationship-between-cephalopods-and-the_fig1_344151907
Here are a couple epic octopus camouflage gifs here for you:
(I tried having two amazing octopus gifs in the same toggle, but it was overwhelming, so you'll have to open them individually 🎁)
[You should maybe also just google and watch octopuses being amazing]
P.S. it really seems like we shouldn’t be eating them.
Tide Pooling
Tide Pooling is a magical activity where the ocean recedes for a couple hours and in that time, you can explore the homes of an astounding variety of creatures. Try to go when the tide will be lower than 1 foot. More details on the Tide Pooling page.
Sea urchins (and some other echinoderms including sea stars) have "tube feet" with little suckers on the end that they use to move themselves around and handle potential snacks.
Other things:
Cashews are a little dangly thing on the bottom of a big tropical fruit
Giraffe's tongues are prehensile and super long (18-20")
Pineapples grow on bushes near the ground
"This is Colossal" is a website full of cool stuff:
Colossal
A scroll through Jon Foreman's Instagram proves just how prolific the Wales-based artist has been this year-he's collaborated with artist James Brunt ( previously) on a few projects, too. From coils arranged in gradients to whirling patterns embedded in the sand, Foreman's land art sprawls across beaches and grassy patches in an impressive number of locations.
www.thisiscolossal.com
e.g. Andy Goldsworth's Magical Land Art (which isn't actually from there, but which is definitely the type of thing that you'd find there)
Hedgehogs:
There's a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to "Common Misconceptions"
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
The world has lied to you about bald eagles. In reality, bald eagles have a really weird call. When they show a patriotic bald eagle on a car commercial or at the start of a pundit’s show, as best I can tell, they’re actually playing the call of a red tailed hawk. (I discovered this while canoeing in the BWCA — it took me forever to figure out that the weird sounds I was hearing were bald eagles.)
The Universe is SO BIG. Here's an image of the "Ultra Deep Field"
This is a 3D rendering of (what was at least originally) our deepest view into the universe.
This image contains about 5,500 galaxies. The faintest galaxies are one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see.
NASA - Hubble Goes to the eXtreme to Assemble Farthest-Ever View of the Universe
Like photographers assembling a portfolio of best shots, astronomers have assembled a new, improved portrait of mankind's deepest-ever view of the universe. (Credit: NASA; ESA; G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch, University of California, Santa Cruz; R.
www.nasa.gov
See also the section on Living Life Well where I try to point at how new the world is.
Baby Pandas are the best. The National Zoo has a "Panda Cam" where you can watch them any time day or night as they grow up.
Giant Panda Cam
Welcome to the Smithsonian's National Zoo's Panda Cams, where you can watch giant pandas Tian Tian, Mei Xiang and Xiao Qi Ji. Toggle between Panda Cam 1 and Panda Cam 2 using the tabs at the top of the video player for the full experience.
nationalzoo.si.edu
There are also live feeds and compilations of adult pandas, which are so much like clumsy baby pandas that it starts to make sense that they would end up as an endangered species 😬
Grizzly bears are unbelievably fast, even when racing up trees
This mother bear is hanging out with her cub, senses a male nearby and chases him up an enormous tree (and pulls almost all the branches off the tree like it's nothing)
(for those who worry about these things: I don't think either bear is significantly injured in this bout; seems likely that the tree is mortally wounded though...)
Cranberries grow on low bushes/vines on dry land. The reason they’re always depicted in water is that cranberries float, so they flood the cranberry bogs in order to make harvesting easier, and because they have access to water, they also use it to protect the plants in the winter.
There is a woman, Joy Milne, who can smell diseases, like Parkinson’s, years before the person becomes symptomatic.
An Unlikely Superpower : Invisibilia
What if you had a superpower that allowed you to see part of the world that was to come? At the age of 60, a Scottish woman named Joy Milne discovers she has a biological gift that allows her to see things that will happen in the future that no one else can see.
www.npr.org
Kintsugi is a Japanese mending method that highlights rather than hides imperfections and is also embraced by KonMari as a way of extending the life of the things you cherish
Kintsugi
Kintsugi, also known as kintsukuroi , is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with urushi lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. The method is similar to the maki-e technique. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.
en.m.wikipedia.org
Beauty in Broken Things: The Art of Kintsugi
If something sparks joy for you but breaks, mending that item celebrates its integrity and form. This is the Japanese art of kintsugi.
konmari.com
Loofah Sponges are actually the insides of a gourd that you can grow yourself!
You do what you do because of who you are in that exact moment. Because of a short-term memory loss incident, there's an incredible recording of a person having a repeated identical response to noticing she had missed her birthday while unconscious — the implication being that when our minds are configured in a particular way, the same inputs will result in the same outputs. (though normal people's minds are always changing, so don't worry that your fate is sealed!)
Loops | Radiolab | WNYC Studios
Robert Krulwich: I guess my first question is what conceivable set of circumstances led to you doing what you did? Kurt Braunohler: I just thought it would be a weird thing to do. Kristen Schaal: Yeah. Kurt Braunohler: Yeah. It's like well, that would be ...
www.wnycstudios.org
Capers are pickled flower buds
This is a cool infographic of countries/land masses (I like what they decided to do with Chile)
Visualizing the True Size of Land Masses from Largest to Smallest - Visual Capitalist
How would you define a country's economic freedom? The cornerstones of economic freedom by most measures are personal choice, voluntary exchange, independence to compete in markets, and security of the person and privately-owned property. Simply put, it is about the quality of political and economic institutions in countries.
www.visualcapitalist.com
Jelle's Marble Runs is a shockingly entertaining YouTube channel where marbles compete while you're treated to a brilliant play-by-play.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jelle's_Marble_Runs
Wombat poop is cube-shaped:
How do wombats poop cubes? Scientists get to the bottom of the mystery
Humans may be fascinated by cubes, but only one animal poops them: the bare-nosed wombat. This furry Australian marsupial squeezes out nearly 100 six-sided turds every day-an ability that has long mystified scientists. Now, researchers say they have uncovered how the wombat intestine creates this exceptional excrement.
www.sciencemag.org
Santa’s reindeer were probably ladies 🦌 🚻
(male and female reindeer both grow antlers, but the males have lost theirs by Christmas)
The egg that made you was already safely stored in your mother’s ovaries when she was still inside your grandmother. Your egg-half used to be in your grandmother’s pregnant belly (and was pretty darn old by the time it started to become baby you).
On a related topic, a neighbor recently had a baby and I was totally caught by surprise when he came over with this tiny creature—I hadn’t noticed his wife being pregnant, and thought “oh, maybe they used a surrogate.” But what’s weird is that men are always using a surrogate; a friend of mine is about to have twins, but you’d never know by looking at him 😅
Your eyes/brain can do incredible things:
Look at the red dot on this woman's nose for 30 seconds. Then look at a simple wall and blink very fast! And then read more about afterimages.
(this is also fun to do at home in a very dark room/closet: stare into the darkness, have someone flip on the lights and then flip them right back off and see what happens!)
Stare at the + and the colors disappear!
Troxler's fading - Wikipedia
Troxler's fading, also called Troxler fading or the Troxler effect, is an optical illusion affecting visual perception. When one fixates on a particular point for even a short period of time, an unchanging stimulus away from the fixation point will fade away and disappear.
en.wikipedia.org
There are some incredible maps out there, including this one, which tracks wind:
And also this one which lets you listen to radio stations around the world: http://radio.garden/ (this one's actually cool enough that I initially just had it on my "Useful Services" page).
Every Noise at Once maps genres of music and let’s you explore (I also added it to the useful services page 🙃)
Every Noise at Once
musica indigena latinoamericana southeast asian post-rock latin american classical piano canadian indigenous hip hop vintage french electronic brazilian classical piano australian indigenous hip hop musica gaucha tradicionalista canadian singer-songwriter indonesian singer-songwriter italian contemporary jazz native american spiritual deep indie singer-songwriter new jersey underground rap musica tradicional cubana musica evangelica instrumental
everynoise.com
Other cool things to find:
Showcase
Urban World helps navigate the unprecedented global wave of urbanization. Users can compare GDP, population and household income for more than 2,600 cities worldwide, in 2010 and in one scenario...
www.informationisbeautifulawards.com
There is paint that is super black/reflects almost no light
Black 3.0 and Musou Black (and maybe Vantablack is blacker but unavailable to consumers) — seems like it might be best to airbrush it on.
Cool stuff about outer space: Ever wondered what __________ would be like in zero gravity? A fantastic Canadian astronaut (who also has a Masterclass) answers people’s questions with demonstrations on the international space station.
Want to guess what happens when you wring out a wet washcloth in space? Watch the video to find out whether you got it right.
This is a magical machine that plays music with marbles:
🌋
Sunsets can be just as remarkable with your back to the sun, facing east.
These are called “anticrepuscular rays.”
There are a bunch of home videos often accidentally posted to YouTube and someone made a website to let you peek into the things people from around the world thought were worth taking a video of.
IMG_0001
Between 2009 and 2012, iPhones had a built-in "Send to YouTube" button in the Photos app. Many of these uploads kept their default IMG_XXXX filenames, creating a time capsule of raw, unedited moments from random lives. Inspired by Ben Wallace, I made a bot that crawled YouTube and found 5 million of these videos! Watch them below, ordered randomly.
walzr.com
Violins are actually just fiddles—we often use the terms to distinguish the type of music played/the manner of playing the instrument—fiddle for ~folk music and violin for ~classical, but musicians will often use the term fiddle regardless of the music being played. 🎻
Scorpions glow in blacklight, which means that if you live in a place that might have scorpions, you can acquire a blacklight flashlight, hunt for them after dark, and impress friends & visitors.
See also Funny Things