The Internet Is Beautiful

The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is an expansive area of the northern Great Plains that contains thousands of shallow wetlands known as potholes.

Mark Klein (1945 or 1946 – March 8, 2025) was an American AT&T technician and whistleblower who revealed details of the company's cooperation with the United States National Security Agency in installing network hardware at a site known as Room 641A to monitor, capture and process American telecommunications

Common usage--abetted by Merriam-Webster--notwithstanding, "centi-" is the System International (essentially the US Metric System) prefix for "divided by 100", and has been for at least 6 decades, and hence is incorrectly used here; "centibillionare" actually means "has 1/100 of $1B". The correct term is "hectobillionaire".

Despite the fear they may inspire in humans, sharks have far more reason to fear us. Nearly one-third of sharks are threatened with extinction globally, mostly as a result of fishing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9835

In conclusion, we have demonstrated that water droplets in a spray generate luminescence, which we call microlightning, when they split into smaller droplets in the absence of any external voltage.

While current evidence does not tell us exactly when language itself appeared, the genomic studies do allow a fairly accurate estimate of the time by which linguistic capacity must have been present in the modern human lineage. Based on the lower boundary of 135 thousand years ago for language, we propose that language may have triggered the widespread appearance of modern human behavior approximately 100 thousand years ago.

Science has already proven that sculptures from ancient Greece and Rome were often painted in warm colors, and now a Danish study has revealed that some were also perfumed.

The days are getting shorter and colder for Curiosity as we head into winter.

In 1897, the Indiana legislature nearly passed a bill, known as the Indiana Pi Bill, that would have declared pi to be 3.2.

As opposed to "interactivity". I saw this in a post from wpb@lemmy.world: https://programming.dev/post/26779367/15573661

Researchers have long known that many dinosaurs had bold patterns and bright, sometimes flashy feathers—far from the grayish, scaly monsters we often see in movies. Now, a new study of Chinese fossils published today in Science reveals the coloration of some of the early mammals that coexisted with dinosaurs. They were clad in dark brown or grayish fur—a trait that may have played a key role in their survival up to the present.

Until recently, scientists thought that only animals of the genus Homo, which emerged around 2 million years ago, made stone tools. The discovery of cut-marked bones in Dikika, Ethiopia (in 2009) dated at 3.4 million years, and in 2011 of stone tools at Lomekwi, Kenya from 3.3 million years ago, changed scientists’ ideas of how much access Australopithecus had to meat.

If you were asked to describe the scent emanating from an ancient Egyptian mummy like you’d discuss a high-end perfume or the bouquet of a fine wine, you might mention fragrance notes of old linen, pine resin and citrus oils—with just a whiff of pest repellent.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peekskill_riots

Crab mentality describes the mindset of people who try to prevent others from gaining a favorable position, even if attaining such position would not directly impact those trying to stop them.

A few vets boldly state on the record that they are directly aware of alien life existing on Earth right now, and suggest that spacecrafts have been traveling here since the 1940s to spy on our technological capabilities.

Scientists have identified a promising new way to detect life on faraway planets, hinging on worlds that look nothing like Earth and gases rarely considered in the search for extraterrestrials.

Accusation in a mirror (AiM) is a technique often used in the context of hate speech incitement, where one falsely attributes one's own motives and/or intentions to one's adversaries.

These are Cipolla's five fundamental laws of stupidity:

Like the telharmonium, this is one of those inventions that could only have existed for a brief period of time.

OP: @cambskeptics@mastodonapp.uk

After Coltrane's death, a congregation called the Yardbird Temple in San Francisco began worshipping him as God incarnate.

I like this one ⸮, I'll try to use it, it's more elegant than /s.

However, this enduring focus on serial killers comes at a cost. The victims of such crimes are frequently overshadowed, their names forgotten, while the killers become cultural icons. Despite his historical significance, Jack the Ripper was ultimately a brutal murderer. Yet the way we remember him today reflects a wider cultural obsession with serial killers that is both compelling and problematic.

Astronomers have discovered a collection of tiny galaxies located roughly 3 million light-years away that includes the smallest and faintest galaxy ever seen.

You can doubt just about anything. But there’s one thing you can know for sure: you are having thoughts right now.

The octopuses in the genus Hapalochlaena, known as blue-ringed octopuses, wield one of the deadliest substances known to science. The tetrodotoxin in their venom is such a potent paralytic that a single bite from the palm-size cephalopods can kill a person. But for the octopuses, it’s just a sedative—one that males use to subdue their much larger mates, researchers report this week in Current Biology.

Article from July 2010

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist

By examining megalodon's vertebral column and comparing it to over 100 species of living and extinct sharks, they determined a more accurate proportion for the head, body, and tail.

Rats laugh, bees roll balls for fun, turtles dance when they anticipate feeding, and dogs wiggle their tails when they’re excited. Research into animal emotions and experience has been on the rise since the late 20th century, and scientists are beginning to use these findings to help understand an age-old question: Do nonhuman animals have consciousness?

Most human pathogens are of zoonotic origin. Many emerged during prehistory, coinciding with domestication providing more opportunities for spillover from original host species. However, we lack direct evidence linking past animal reservoirs and human infections.

As conversations around the role of museums in Indigenous cultural stewardship begin to shift in North America and beyond, much remains to be done to create a space for culturally informed curation and stewardship of animal remains. Animal remains are not usually treated with the same care as human remains or funerary objects subject to NAGPRA, but Indigenous concepts of personhood do not always make distinctions between human and animal.

This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 5, Issue 2, from 1991.

Keichousaurus, like all sauropterygians, was highly adapted to the aquatic environment. Most specimens had small body, males sexually mature with 12.6 centimetres (5.0 in) snout-vent length (SVL), and in females by 12.2 centimetres (4.8 in) SVL.

A controversy surrounding the AACS processing key arose in April 2007 when the Motion Picture Association of America and the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator, LLC (AACS LA) began issuing cease and desist letters[7] to websites publishing a 128-bit (16-byte) number, represented in hexadecimal as 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0[8][9] (commonly referred to as 09 F9),[10][11] a cryptographic key for HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation

When a species dies, so do its parasites

Updates to the Paranormal Database include glass smashing poltergeists, spooky pubs, and folkloristic places

Defining life is surprisingly challenging. While we intuitively recognize living organisms as having life, a precise definition remains elusive. Dictionaries offer various descriptions, such as the ability to grow, reproduce and respond to stimuli.

Are subterranean lifeforms viable on Mars? A new interpretation of Martian seismic data by scientists Ikuo Katayama of Hiroshima University and Yuya Akamatsu of Research Institute for Marine Geodynamics suggests the presence of water below the surface of Mars. "If liquid water exists on Mars," Katayama says, "the presence of microbial activity" is possible.

Neat quote saw when reading. Admitting you're wrong in a genuine way is something you see rarely these days.

"Our ballistic missile defense people were very concerned."

The 1998 discovery of a nearly intact Gravettian human burial in the Lapedo Valley (Leiria, Portugal) propelled the Lagar Velho rockshelter to worldwide fame.

Burial 10 is a unique Manteño (AD 650–1532) burial from Buen Suceso, Ecuador, dating between AD 771 and 953. This burial included the remains of a young female, pregnant at the time of death and buried with an elaborate array of goods, including anachronistic spondylus ornaments, green stones, and shell eye coverings. Perimortem trauma, including a cranial fracture and cutmarks on hand bones, perimortem removal of the hands and left leg, and other body manipulation suggest she was sacrificed, a rare event for coastal Ecuadorian peoples.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy

If you think you've spotted something peculiar in the skies, follow these expert-recommended steps from psychic chat provider Psychic World (www.psychicworld.com/) to ensure your report is taken seriously.

The Green Gardens core is particularly exciting for our science team because it contains serpentine minerals, which may have formed billions of years ago when water interacted with rocks before the Jezero crater impact. On Earth, serpentine-rich environments can support microbial communities, making this sample particularly important to understanding ancient Mars’ potential for life.

Little is known for certain about her life; her tumultuous career and flamboyant lifestyle were the subject of gossip, rumour, and colourful stories in her own time, and inspired numerous fictional and semi-fictional portrayals afterwards.

The Middle Neolithic in Britain (c. 3400–2800 cal BC) can be seen as a transitional period, with a shift from the construction of rectangular and linear monuments (such as long barrows, bank barrows and cursus monuments) to a circular archetype (

Legendary dog venerated as a folk saint

Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) was a German physician, sexologist and LGBTQ advocate, whose citizenship was later revoked by the Nazi government.[1] Hirschfeld was educated in philosophy, philology and medicine. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee and World League for Sexual Reform. He based his practice in Berlin-Charlottenburg during the Weimar period. Performance Studies and Rhetoric Professor Dustin Goltz characterized the committee as having carried out "the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights".[2]

The island is a protected area of India. It is home to the Sentinelese, an indigenous tribe in voluntary isolation who have defended, often by force, their protected isolation from the outside world.

Each stretching 550 feet long, the walls of the Octagon Earthworks form an enclosure large enough to contain four Roman Colosseums. It was built before the year 400 and points unmistakably to the position of the Moon at the peak of its 18.6-year cycle. This rare phenomenon is known as a major lunar standstill, and it’s happening right now. The current standstill began in the summer of 2024 and will last two years before embarking on another lengthy cycle.

A STATE-OF-THE-ART visitor centre is looking for a full-time “Nessie hunter” at the world-famous Loch Ness.

Here, we report the discovery of shatter cones in a complex, dominantly metasedimentary layer, the Antarctic Creek Member (ACM), in the centre of the East Pilbara Terrane, Western Australia, which provide unequivocal evidence for a hypervelocity meteorite impact.

In the Patagonia region of southern Chile, there are "living rocks."

A precursor to the modern integrated circuit. I learned about this because I own a calculator from 1975 that runs on this technology (and has a cool red LED display). It takes so much power it needs a 9 volt battery.

Earth’s atmosphere, the veneer of gases that makes most life possible, has changed dramatically over time. Bubbles of ancient air trapped in polar ice cores provide reliable archives of the past 6 million years—but that’s less than 0.2% of Earth’s history. For the eons before that, which saw the origin and proliferation of life, researchers have had to infer the atmosphere’s composition from evidence of its chemical effects on metals and minerals preserved in ancient rocks.

Stagflation is the combination of high inflation, stagnant economic growth, and elevated unemployment. The term stagflation, a blend of "stagnation" and "inflation," was popularized by British politician Iain Macleod in the 1960s