Thursday 4/27/23
Celebrate:
Babe Ruth Day
International Design Day
Love Your Thighs Day
Marine Mammal Rescue Day
Morse Code Day
National Devil Dog Day
National Prime Rib Day
National Teach Children to Save Day
National Tell a Story Day
Poem in Your Pocket Day
Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day
Thank You Thursday
World Tapir Day - kind of like a hairless anteater without the nose
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Sheffield, a British city just south of Manchester with a population of 580,000. you can wander off to iconic buildings in the city center and marvel at the digital artworks springing from their rooftops.
Think Pokemon Go but with art (and no game play.) who's company is involved with this project.
In February, Sheffield launched one of the world’s biggest augmented-reality art trails. Titled “Look Up!,” the trail counts four buildings, each of them paired with a QR code on the sidewalk below. Using a free app, viewers can scan that QR code to follow a bunch of animated arrows that lead their gaze upward. There, from the roof of a building, they can watch a stick figure made of different-colored balloons drift up, swirl around, and fade into the sky—all through their phone’s screen.
It also makes for a solid Instagram post.
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It doesn't look good for the lunar rover that the Japanese company ispace had hoped would become the first private spacecraft to land on the moon. The 7-foot landing craft, which held a 22-pound mini moon rover, was within 33 feet of the moon's surface when communications from the lander cut out. Whether the lander crashed or not, ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said the company would attempt a second moonshot in 2024.
Those sneaky moon men have kept hidden all this time and when we get too close to something important..well they have to take it out. Just saying.
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Entomologist Justin Schmidt has created 78 entries of ant, bee, and wasp stings in his Pain Scale for Stinging Insects, widely referred to as the Schmidt Sting Pain Index.
The index ranks stinging pain on a scale of 1 (red fire ant) to 4 (warrior wasp) and recounts Schmidt’s face-off with each insect with a poetic, and sometimes humorous, description.
He’d been stung more than 1,000 times throughout his research career—his fascination growing from his childhood admiration for the fuzzy, brightly colored yellowjackets and bumble bees around his hometown in Pennsylvania.
Schmidt went out of his way to get to stinging insects.
To bring live specimens back to the lab to study their venom, he often used his bare hands to grab fistfuls of the insect and stuffs them into vials. If he didn’t get stung during that process, he’d apply one to his arm to be stung once or twice.
Two examples of really bad stings are:
Tarantula Hawk - "Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair dryer has been dropped into your bubble bath. A bolt out of the heavens. Lie down and scream"
Bullet Ant - "Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch nail embedded in your heel."
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Blackpool Zoo is on the hunt for a team of people to wear large bird costumes and spend their days scaring away nuisance seagulls.
The unusual roles are being advertised in a bid to stop the birds from stealing food from both visitors and animal enclosures, and ensure a good experience for those visiting the zoo.
The advert, which is for 'variable' seasonable hours, says candidates must be 'outgoing - as you need to be comfortable wearing a bird costume!'.
Successful applicants will join the Visitor Services team as 'Seagull Deterrants'.
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The '90s were a good time for cartoons, but what was YOUR favorite? The website SlashFilm chose the 15 best. Here's how they ranked them:
1. "SpongeBob SquarePants"
2. "Animaniacs"
3. "Arthur"
4. "Family Guy"
5. "Batman: The Animated Series"
6. "Rugrats"
7. "Pokémon"
8. "South Park"
9. "The Magic School Bus"
10. "The Wild Thornberrys"
11. "Doug"
12. "The Powerpuff Girls"
13. "Spider-Man"
14. "Dexter's Laboratory"
15. "Darkwing Duck"
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Jet-Puffed has created a new, limited-edition marshmallow that will change colors when it's hit with direct heat, like at a campfire.
The colors aren't a surprise. The pink marshmallows will turn orange . . . the blue marshmallows will turn green. The transformation doesn't take long . . . about 10 seconds after they're exposed to a flame.
The Jet-Puffed color-changing marshmallows will be out soon, and they'll hang around until September.
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The question....Is your thumb a finger?
Someone polled 8,000 Americans, and not everyone agrees. 22% say thumbs are not fingers, they're just thumbs. So, almost one in four people.
Thumbs are obviously a little different. They only have two bones instead of three, for example. So do the non-finger people have a point?
Merriam-Webster's definition of a "finger" doesn't even put the question to rest. They say a finger is, quote, "any of the five terminating members of the hand" . . . but "especially one other than the thumb."
Here are two more random things the poll asked . . .
1. Are your ears part of your face? 27% say no . . . they're part of your head, but not your face.
2. Is your shoulder part of your arm? 21% say no, they're separate things.
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Today's Useless Fact of the Day - Only a certain kind of peanut makes the cut for ballparks. It's called "The Virginia," and it's bred for an exact size and look of its shell. It's grown in Virginia, and also in the Carolinas, Texas, and New Mexico.
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