Damn, that's interesting!

One of the most intriguing objects housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York is a container for something that few people have ever heard of: the lapis de Goa, or “Goa stone.”

Goa stones were a compound of gold, crushed gemstones, herbs, bezoars, and other exotic substances popular in the 1690-1750 period. Like the bezoars they imitated, they were thought to offer a powerful protection against poisoning. Tiny flakes would be shaved off and consumed (I picture them being dropped in wine glasses) by wealthy consumers in India and Europe. As you can no doubt tell from the incredibly lavish decoration of this particular Goa stone container, they were extremely valuable.

It almost looks like those tempera paintings on windows we did in grade school. Also, why are they empty? Don't they have a homeless problem.

Among all of the visual information published by the U.S. government, there may be no product with a higher information density than the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) aviation maps. Intended for pilots, the FAA publishes free detailed maps of the entire U.S. airspace, and detailed maps of airports and their surroundings and updates them frequently. The density of the critical information layered on these maps is staggering, and it is a miracle that pilots can easily decipher these maps’ at a glance. But they can.

2022 was the bad year that wasn't—at least for a mysterious paralyzing condition in children.

In the decade before, hundreds of young, healthy kids in the US abruptly felt their limbs go weak. Debilitating paralysis set in. In recent years, around half of affected children required intensive care. About a quarter needed mechanical ventilation. A few died, and many others appear to have permanent weakness and paralysis.

Together, the 100 most valuable brands in the world are worth more than $5 trillion.

Brands play an important role in driving shareholder value, yet pinpointing how much a brand is worth can be challenging. Investments in brand could pay dividends for many decades, but because those financial benefits are fairly open to interpretation, most financial regulators don’t usually accept brand assets on balance sheets.

To look at it another way, Apple is missing one of its most valuable assets on its financial reporting—a brand worth $516.6 billion.

This visualization ranks the top 100 brands by brand value, based on the annual global ranking from Brand Finance.

Right in the center of the island nation of Madagascar there’s a strange, almost perfectly circular geological structure. It covers a bigger area than the city of Paris — and at first glance, it looks completely empty. But right in the center of that structure, there’s a single, isolated village: a few dozen houses, some fields of crops, and dirt roads stretching out in every direction.

When we first saw this village on Google Earth, its extreme remoteness fascinated us. Was the village full of people? How did they wind up there?

Wikipedia

Gallery of his works (Warning: Depictions of nudity)

These wasps are not single-celled organisms though, and their brains alone contain 4600 neurons. For reference, the brain of a honeybee contains ~1 million neurons. Despite their extremely small heads (again, look at that head next to the SINGLE CELLED amoeba) the wasps can still fly, seek out mates, and find thrip eggs to parasitize. So…what? How?

Reminds me of the web back in the 90’s, before Google.

A group of horse-riding warriors kept some gruesome battle trophies.

A Relay attack is a form of keyless car theft. Criminals bypass keyless entry security by extending the signal of the car key inside the house.

I didn't know, so I looked it up. Now I know. Thought you might like to know too, if you don't already. 🙂

Mirror: https://files.catbox.moe/d4abeo.mp4

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The incident happened in Limpopo, a province in the north-east of South Africa. The truck was transporting oranges from the farm to the market. It broke down on the way.

https://t.me/c/1702333698/1275

Mirror: https://imgur.com/g4YAY7W

Mirror: https://imgur.io/gallery/HABEE3H

An impressive feature is their bright red colored eyes with vertical slits. They do not have a true eyelid, but rather a nictitating membrane that allows light to enter the eye so that they will awaken when predators are approaching.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agalychnis_callidryas#Description

Mirror: https://files.catbox.moe/424ydy.mp4