Skull of the Altamura Man

The Altamura Man is a fossil of the genus Homo discovered in 1993 in a karst sinkhole in the Lamalunga Cave near the city of Altamura, Italy.  Remarkably well preserved but embedded in stalagmites and covered in a thick layer of calcite the find was left in situ in order to avoid damage

Altamura Man is one of the most complete Paleolithic skeletons ever to be discovered in Europe as "even the bones inside the nose are still there" and as of 2016 it represents the oldest sample of Neanderthal DNA to have been sequenced successfully

Image via.

The "journey north" has begun

You can follow the monarch migration and many other signs of spring (songbirds, frogs, leafing out) for this year and previous years in the maps at Journey North.

Another generation of children will misspell cemetery

YouTube link

The book was published in 1983 and the first movie came out in 1989.  A Digg column collects reviews of this new remake.

"Piano" coat rack

With adjustable "keys" that can be used as coat hooks or to make shelves.  From Archiproducts, via.

Introducing Candida auris

The man at Mount Sinai died after 90 days in the hospital, but C. auris did not. Tests showed it was everywhere in his room, so invasive that the hospital needed special cleaning equipment and had to rip out some of the ceiling and floor tiles to eradicate it.

“Everything was positive — the walls, the bed, the doors, the curtains, the phones, the sink, the whiteboard, the poles, the pump,” said Dr. Scott Lorin, the hospital’s president. “The mattress, the bed rails, the canister holes, the window shades, the ceiling, everything in the room was positive.”

C. auris is so tenacious, in part, because it is impervious to major antifungal medications, making it a new example of one of the world’s most intractable health threats: the rise of drug-resistant infections...

Other prominent strains of the fungus Candida — one of the most common causes of bloodstream infections in hospitals — have not developed significant resistance to drugs, but more than 90 percent of C. auris infections are resistant to at least one drug, and 30 percent are resistant to two or more drugs, the C.D.C. said.

Dr. Lynn Sosa, Connecticut’s deputy state epidemiologist, said she now saw C. auris as “the top” threat among resistant infections. “It’s pretty much unbeatable and difficult to identify,” she said.

Nearly half of patients who contract C. auris die within 90 days, according to the C.D.C. Yet the world’s experts have not nailed down where it came from in the first place...

As with antibiotics in farm animals, azoles are used widely on crops. “On everything — potatoes, beans, wheat, anything you can think of, tomatoes, onions,” said Dr. Rhodes, the infectious disease specialist who worked on the London outbreak. “We are driving this with the use of antifungicides on crops.”

More information at the New York Times.

154 cases in Illinois.

Rube Goldberg would be impressed - updated

YouTube link.

There are some extremely clever contraptions here.  Probably best viewed fullscreen to see some of the details of the mechanisms.

Via Neatorama.

Reposted to add this new one:

YouTube link.

Divertimento #162

So many gifs, so little time...  Here's about a hundred that have accumulated since January

(It's done with a mirror)

Hidden wall safe

Biker helps a lady in distress

Teaching children about teamwork

Truckload of cotton catches fire

How to tie a bow in a belt

Not sure what to call this

Effect of methamphetamines on Hitler

Chain flow

Each of these bearings is moving in a straight line

Footage of astronauts on the moon speeded up

Apparent USB wall charger is a spy camera

The making of the claymation movie "Coraline"

Asian girl has a problem with mascara

Turkish coffee made using hot sand

Sandcasting an iron fence

Nature and Science

Bubbles floating on sulfur hexafluoride gas

Ink on a leaf in a puddle

Colorful river in Colombia

Tourists run from a calving glacier

Time-lapse of potted plants

Avalanche recorded on dashcam

When you sprinkle salt on a fresh fish filet

Surface tension

Basalt columns in China

Relative positions of Earth and Venus over time

 How tectonic activity creates mountains

Spontaneous synchronization of metronomes

Animals

Starfish walking

Butterflies in Cambodia

Blue-footed boobies going fishing

A raven's ear

Sea snails emerge from the sand

Cecropia moth

Electric fire clam

Zebra drowning rival male's offspring

Count the ducks

Sheepherding dog

Snake going up a handrail

Dog teaching toddler

Boy "gets all the chicks"

Dog knows how to fetch ball in tree

Kangaroo rats kick rattlesnakes in the head

Cows negotiate a fence

Leeches in a drainage ditch

Pig loves his swimming pool

Pod of orcas work together to displace seal from ice floe

Golden scarabs

Chicken head stabilization

The power of a moose (and the advantage of long legs in snow)

Sports

Dog catches 83-yard Frisbee toss

In the gym

Soccer move

Skillful (but penalized) ice hockey maneuver

Apparently this is called "trials biking"

Triple kick

11-year-old ninja warrior

Rollerskate skill

Impressive or clever

Gripper tool

One way to get out of a hole

Jumping frogs optical illusion

Colors disappear underwater

Harvesting nuts (?or olives)

Lady clerk doesn't tolerate bullies in her store

One way to drive out of a muddy spot

Testing various hair colors digitally

Dragon kite

Using string to carry a pot

Removing snow from a roof without a roof rake

"Glass Gem" corn

Teenagers save someone dangling from a chairlift

Multi-color  printer

How lithography ("printing with stone") is done

Drone that looks like a bird would be good for spying

View from a wingsuit flyer

Farmer saves neighbor's crop

When you add magnesium fluoride to blood

How to save your purse from thieves

An example of "dad reflexes"

Directional fire extinguishers

High-speed laser engraving

Floodwaters destroy a bridge

Falling ring catches on a chain (explained here)

Hair art

Probability demonstrator

Flashlight illusion in a children's book

Detonation of a WWII sea mine

Fails

Plastic pollution of the ocean

Sometimes it just isn't your day

Removing a roadblock

Lady with chainsaw lucky not to be injured

Champagne tower

Sliding down between the escalators

Cheerful

Boy in wheelchair gets to enjoy trampoline

Beth does not need more sambucas

Ninja cat

People dressed up as carwash brushes

Good boy is done shopping for the day

Nice dance moves

Sharing your skateboard with your dog

Dogs enjoying their day

Dog meets toy frog

"Zoomie riot" at dog park

Bird gathers nesting material

Happy girl dancing

The embedded photos of women during WWI are from a larger gallery at BuzzFeedNews.

The saddest "Twilight Zone" episode

Fans of The Twilight Zone will almost certainly recognize this studio still of Burgess Meredith in a post-apocalyptic setting -

“The best laid plans of mice and men and Henry Bemis, the small man in the glasses who wanted nothing but time. Henry Bemis, now just a part of a smashed landscape, just a piece of the rubble, just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself. Mr. Henry Bemis, in the Twilight Zone.”

Since I've always enjoyed last-man-on-earth fantasies, this episode really appealed to me - until the very conclusion, which was a crushing disappointment (and I think totally unnecessary):

YouTube link. 

I had totally suppressed my memories of this ending until I was reminded by that photo at the top, which I found at Old Hollywood.

Reposted from 2011 to accompany the adjacent post about Jorge Luis Borges.

Reposted from 2016 because of the impending release of the new Twilight Zone revival.

Spiral staircase - updated

Located in the Château de La Rochefoucauld, Charente, France.  Via.

Reminds me of the "Meeting on the Turret Stairs" painting.

Reposted to add this "double spiral staircase" -

with a video here.

And this "double helix staircase" -

 - at the Chateau de Chambord.

See also this "alternating tread stairway"

Amsterdam will eliminate 11,000 parking spots for cars

This week, Amsterdam is taking its reputation for pro-bike, anti-car polices one step further by announcing that it will systematically strip its inner city of parking spaces.

Amsterdam transit commissioner Sharon Dijksma announced Thursday that starting this summer, the city plans to reduce the number of people permitted to park in the city core by around 1,500 per year. These people already require a permit to access a specific space (and the cost for that permit will also rise), and so by reducing these permits steadily in number, the city will also remove up to 11,200 parking spaces from its streets by the end of 2025.

The cleared spaces won’t be left empty, however. As room for cars is removed, it will be replaced by trees, bike parking, and wider sidewalks, allowing Amsterdammers to instantly see and feel the benefits of what will still be a fairly controversial policy among drivers.

How can the city get away with it? Put simply, Amsterdam’s government has been given a mandate to. The city is currently being run by a coalition of left and centrist parties in which the Green Left party (GroenLinks) has the largest share. A promise to reduce parking space formed part of the initial coalition agreement. It also helps that no driver will actually be stripped of the right to park. Rather than revoking permits, the city will simply not replace any that are given up when drivers leave the city, give up their cars, or die. In this way, the city reckons it can naturally do away with about 1,100 permits a year.

More at CityLab, via Neatorama

Why India (and only India) is called a "subcontinent"

The answer begins with the topographic map above and discussed in an explainlikeimfive thread:

"Note that the use of the term 'Indian subcontinent' predates the discovery of tectonic plates.

The Indian sub-continent is bounded by mountains and other unfriendly terrain on all of its landward approaches.

This led to a degree of distinctiveness from the surrounding areas. Not only do Indians look different from the Persians/Arabs to the west and the Sinosphere peoples to the east, but they have a very different culture (or spectrum of cultures).

You rarely hear 'subcontinent' used in different contexts because there really isn't anywhere else like India in this respect. All of the various places you mentioned don't contain significant geographically isolated distinct peoples and cultures..."

"I'm looking at a list of the 108 tallest mountains in the world.

You know how many are in Asia?

108.

You know how many are between India and central Asia?

108.

You have to look at a longer list than that to find any mountain in the world that can compete with the ones that divide the Indian subcontinent from the rest of Asia."

Wikipedia notes that if Eurasia is regarded as a single continent, Europe could then be termed a subcontinent. 

Not The Onion

An unarmed mentally ill man was shot at by police.  Some of the bullets missed and struck bystanders in the street.  The DA decided to charge the mentally ill man with first-degree assault because of the injuries to the bystanders.

Police later said that after a cat-and-mouse game, Broadnax had reached into his pants pocket and removed an object, briefly “pointing” it at the responding officers. They thought it was a gun, and fired three rounds. After the shots, and a tussle with cops, Broadnax was hit with a Taser and arrested.

When the dust settled, a few things became clear. First, Broadnax was unarmed; the object police had thought was a gun was, in fact, a wallet. Second, Broadnax seemed to be in the midst of a mental health crisis. He told investigators immediately after his arrest that he was having auditory hallucinations, hearing the “voices of his dead relatives.”

The third fact that emerged was that the officers who opened fire had missed their target. Broadnax was unscathed. The bullets meant for him had instead struck Khoshakhlagh and a second victim, 59-year-old Theodora Ray, who was getting dinner at a food cart on 42nd Street, as she did almost every night...

Then, near the end of October, Khoshakhlagh’s attorney got a phone call from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. Prosecutors had changed their minds about the case: They now planned to prosecute Broadnax for the bullet wounds sustained by Khoshakhlagh and Ray. Under an unusual theory of law, the prosecution claimed Broadnax’s actions that night in Times Square were so irresponsible, it was as if he himself had pulled the trigger.

The top charge alone — assault in the first degree — was enough to land him in prison for the next twenty-five years...

As Binder says, when police are involved in incidents like this — high-profile and potentially embarrassing mishaps — there can be pressure to ensure that someone, anyone, catches an indictment. “It’s not surprising that Mr. Broadnax was charged,” Binder says. “This is something prosecutors do when police behave irresponsibly.

More details in a longread in The Village Voice.


Actually in The Onion:

Scientists Announce Discovery Of Dry Ice On Mars Means Planet May One Day Be Suitable For Halloween Party

Tourist In White House Gift Shop Browses Rack Of Security Clearances

 Purdue Pharma Reports Opioid Deaths Falling Short Of Quarterly Goals

Bavaria legislates "save the bees" into law

Bavaria has announced that it will pass into law a popular “save the bees” petition that promises drastic changes in farming practices – without putting it to a referendum first.

The landmark move comes amid increasingly alarming warnings from scientists that nearly half of all insect species are in rapid decline – a third of the crucial pollinators threatened with extinction.

The petition launched in February to seek better protection of plant and animal species had become the most successful in the southern German region’s history, garnering 1.75m signatures.

The proposal set a target for 20% of agricultural land to meet organic farming standards by 2025, before reaching 30% by 2030.

Ten per cent of green spaces in Bavaria would have to be turned into flowering meadows, and rivers and streams better protected from pesticides and fertilisers.

Rather than putting the petition to a referendum, Bavaria’s state premier, Markus Söder, announced it would simply be written into law, passing through parliament.

“We are taking the text of the referendum word for word,” said Söder, leader of the conservative CSU party which governs the state in a coalition majority.

So, a petition is started in February, and in April the legislature decids no need to debate this, we'll just pass what you want.

Compare that with the United States:

A memo from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced on Thursday that the Trump administration rolled back an Obama-era ban on neonicotinoids, a group of synthetic chemical pesticides that are linked to the decline of wild bee populations around the world (August 2018)

*sigh*

Image credit to 1011, from a gallery of similar images.

Powerwashing NYC

I'm sure it's wet and grimy and unpleasant in inclement weather, but there must be a certain satisfaction in a job that involves powerwashing.  (pic via)

Also here and here, and lots of tips and advice in the PowerWashing subreddit.

Oh, those dumb Swedes...

It's always difficult to blog an ethnic joke.  TYWKIWDBI has had readers in 212 countries, so no matter what nationality or ethnic group I choose, some reader might take offense.  I guess that's why movies use zombies and aliens for the bad guys.

My mother's family was Norwegian, and it was considered acceptable in my childhood to make jokes about Swedes.  We also told Ole and Lena jokes about Norwegians when my grandpa wasn't around.  But I'll target the Swedes for this one.

How do you keep a Swede busy all day?  (Answer at the link).

(Reposted from 2010 and 2013).