STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

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CLAYOQUOT WILDERNESS RESORT

Sometimes you just want to get away from it all, unplug, and sit atop a mountain somewhere in a tent. Of course, setting up tents can be a tiresome task, and the whole sitting on the ground thing just isn’t for everyone. But if you like the idea of being pampered outdoors, look no further than the Clayoquot Wilderness Resort in Clayoquot Sound Biosphere Reserve in Canada, a one of a kind resort that boasts twenty luxury canvas tents and a three tent campsite that’s only accessible by helicopter from the camp below.

The Clayoquot Wilderness Resort allows you to be secluded from the rest of the world, enjoy the great outdoors, and remain surrounded by luxurious comfort. There’s even 5 star dining that utilizes locally raised meat from farms of Vancouver Island and the Fraser Valley, wine and produce from the Okanagan, and seafood right from Clayoquot. The resort is now booking adventures for their 2015 season, which lasts from May 21 to October 1.

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ANICORN SERIES 000 WATCH

We’re definitely seeing a major resurgence in watch-wearing as of late, mostly due to the rise of the smart watch. But where some people prefer connected devices and the internet of things, there are others that prefer style. With that in mind, let us introduce you to the ANICORN Series 000, an incredibly stylish timepiece that was inspired by the simplicity and practicality of modern architecture and industrial design.

Hong Kong-based ANICORN has certainly taken a less is more approach with the design of the Series 000. The watch utilizes a unique dial system instead of the usual watch hands, and it doesn’t require a battery. It uses sapphire crystal glass with anti-reflective coating. The strap is made up of cow skin genuine leather with a staineless steel buckle and PVD black plating. The watch is available in black/blue, black/yellow, and black/red. The ANICORN Series 000 will run you $325.00, and can be ordered from the official ANICORN online store. [Purchase]

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JAWBONE UP4

Think you need a smartphone to pay for things with your wrist? Think again. Thanks to a partnership with American Express and NFC technology, you can use the Jawbone UP4 at any of the same places you'd use Apple Pay or Google Wallet. Just log in to your Amex account in the Up app, choose the card you'd like to use, and you're all set. Of course, it boasts the same tri-axis accelerometer, bioimpedance sensors, skin sensors, and ambient temperature sensor as its predecessor, so you get the same activity, sleep, and health tracking you'd expect to go with your new wireless wallet.

[Habana Mike]

13 Horrifying Ideas America Had For Invading Cuba

The United States is beginning to normalise relations with Cuba. Which is kind of amazing, when you consider the fact that America has been trying to sabotage the island nation for over half a century. In fact, the US government has officially produced dozens of ideas for destabilising Cuba. And many of them sound like conspiracy theory fan-fiction. Yet they’re all real.

When you look through the lists of declassified ideas from the early 1960s it can be a bit shocking. They were conceived under the umbrella of initiatives like The Cuba Project, Operation Mongoose, and Operation Northwoods, all with the rather straightforward goal of ousting Fidel Castro. Some of the plans literally involve false flag operations — covert missions to disrupt Cuba and instigate war, but hiding the fact that they were executed by the United States.

One of the more innocuous ideas involved distributing fake photos of an obese Fidel Castro living in the lap of luxury. Other ideas involved air-dropping one-way aeroplane tickets that would let Cubans fly to nearby cities. But some of the most bizarre plans called for staging fake attacks on Americans that would be used as a pretence for invading Cuba.

Below we have just a few of the ideas concocted by American intelligence and military planners. These aren’t crazy half-baked conspiracy theories that were floated by the tinfoil hat crowd. They’re real plans from the 1960s that are currently sitting in the US National Archives.

Stage a Cuban attack on an American aeroplane

Plane lands in Florida after being hijacked and taken to Cuba in 1968

Perhaps the most shocking plans to disrupt Cuba came from a top secret memo by Brigadier General William H. Craig dated March 13, 1962. The document was titled “Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba,” which pretty much explains itself.

Craig detailed plans to blow up empty American warships, stage riots at the gates of Guantanamo Bay, and conduct fake funerals for American soldiers. One of Craig’s plans even involved blowing up a CIA drone made to look like a civilian plane that was carrying American college students.

“An aircraft at Eglin [Air Force Base] would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CIA proprietary organisation in the Miami area,” the 1962 plan says. “At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone.”

The document goes on to explain how the CIA drone would issue a distress call, explaining that it was under attack by Cuban fighters. The drone would then be blown up by remote control in the middle of its distress radio transmission. “This will allow ICAO radio stations in the Western Hemisphere to tell the US what has happened to the aircraft instead of the US trying to ‘sell’ the incident,” the document explained.

Make Castro look fat and happy with doctored photos

The goal of Operation Good Times was to create fake photographs of Fidel Castro living lavishly. The hope was to stir dissent and aid in some kind of homegrown uprising.

“Prepare a desired photograph, such as an obese Castro with two beauties in any situation desire, ostensibly within a room in the Castro residence, lavishly furnished, and a table brimming over with the most delectable Cuban food,” the planning document reads.

The photo would be accompanied with a caption such as “My ration is different,” to give the impression that Castro was living the good life, while his people suffered.

Drop one-way plane tickets on Cuba

Interior of a BEA Vickers circa 1960

With Operation Free Ride, the American government imagined a scenario in which planes would drop one-way tickets on Cuba to cities like Caracas and Mexico City. The idea was to stage a mass exodus and “create unrest and dissension amongst the Cuban people.” Interestingly, the planning documents explicitly state that no tickets to the United States would be dropped.

Coordinate real terror attacks on Miami and Washington

Advertisement on the Miami waterfront after Castro came to power

Shockingly, one idea that was floated involved staging terror attacks on U.S. soil. US officials actually proposed that Americans could start a campaign of terror to frame Cubans, complete with exploding bombs and attacks on refugees in American streets.

“We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” one document from 1962 reads. “The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States.”

The term “pointed,” in this case, means that Cuban refugees would be targeted with violence. Violence made to look like it was the act of radical Cuban terrorists loyal to the Castro regime.

“We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated),” the document continued. “We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicised. Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.”

Use the American space program as a propaganda weapon

John Glenn in 196

The start of the US space program was rocky, to say the least. The first attempt by Americans to put a satellite into space didn’t go very well. The Americans were hoping to answer the Soviets and their successes but any time the Americans tried something in space, there wasn’t much confidence that it would work. So the military came up with two ideas aimed at Cuba that would utilise any failures to their advantage.

The first was called Operation Cover-Up (a little on the nose, no?), which was to convince Cuban officials that the US space program is a cover for something else. A cover for what? Even US military strategists didn’t care about thinking that far ahead. They just wanted to stir the pot and let the Cubans believe the worst. The second idea was called Operation Dirty Trick. If elements of the space program failed, such as the upcoming orbit of John Glenn, then the Americans would make it look like it was the fault of the Cubans.

“The objective is to provide irrevocable proof that, should the MERCURY manned orbit flight fail, the fault lies with the Communists et al Cuba,” one document explained. “This is to be accomplished by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans.”

Destroy confidence in Soviet oil coming to Cuba

The goal of Operation Full-Up was to destroy confidence in fuel being provided by the Soviets. After the Cuban Revolution established a socialist state in 1959, the Soviet Union began sending oil to Cuba. At first American oil refineries refused to refine this oil, but that didn’t last long. Castro simply took over the oil refineries. So the Americans’ idea was to make Cubans believe that the oil coming into the country was somehow defective.

“This is to be accomplished by introducing a known biological agent into jet fuel storage facilities,” one document said. “This agent flourishes in jet fuel and grows until it consumes all the space inside the tank.”

Fake an attack on Guantanamo Bay

Guantanamo Bay in 1964

With Operation Bingo, US planners conceived of an idea to fake an attack on American soldiers at Gitmo as a pretence for war.

“The objective is to create an incident which has the appearance of an attack on U.S. facilities (GMO) in Cuba, thus providing the excuse for use of U.S. military might to overthrow the current government of Cuba,” a top secret document reads.

The plan was to use simulated war sounds that would sound like an actual fire-fight. This simulated attack would then be heard at Gitmo and understood by the majority of men stationed there as a real attack.

“This would, with proper preparation, be followed by a counterattack and with adequate planning the base at G’Mo could disgorge military force in sufficient number to sustain itself until other forces, which has been previously alerted, could attack in other areas.”

It was believed that such an attack could “overthrow the Cuban Government in a matter of hours, providing the plan is implemented within the next six months.” Since this document was written in March of 1962, that estimate of things being untenable after six months was pretty damn accurate. The Soviet Union would soon be sending nuclear missiles to Cuba, culminating in the Missile Crisis of October 1962.

Cause car and plane crashes in Cuba

American cars in Havana in 1958

Another idea that American planners had was to sabotage Cuban boats, cars, and planes so people would lose faith in them. Called Operation Break-Up, the idea was to “clandestinely introduce corrosive materials to cause aircraft, vehicle or boat accidents.”

Terrorise Cubans with a barrage of sonic booms

Concorde supersonic plane in 1969

The goal of what planners called Operation Invisible Bomb was to pummel Cuba with sonic booms in order to create confusion and damage. At first, Cubans would no doubt believe that they were under attack by isolated bombings. But over time, the shriek of the sonic boom would simply become an overwhelming presence of sustained terror.

“The ‘sonic-boom’ can be employed in several different ways such as an individual boom at selected spots or a continuous boom and performed at either high or low altitude,” one document explained. “It will cause not only apprehension but varying degrees of malicious damage as well, i.e. break all the windows on a street in Havana.”

The best part of the plan, as the government saw it? It was “relatively safe” while leaving “no tangible evidence” that it was conducted by the Americans. “It can be planned and executed with a minimum of effort and expense.”

Make coloured rain fall over Cuba

Cloud seeding unit flown over Vietnam via USAF

Much like the cloud seeding missions that were actually conducted years later in Vietnam , Operation Raindrop included a plan for weather control over Cuba.

The US wanted to “seed clouds off Cuba which would produce heavy rains during cane harvesting season.” The author of the paper explained that he was told that “the state of the art will permit colouring the rain (red/green).”

Hijack Cuban radio and TV with anti-communist messages

Fidel Castro in 1959

The idea behind Operation True Blue was to disrupt Cuban radio and TV broadcasts with anti-Castro propaganda. Their ideas for messages that could be broadcast are actually kind of amusing, if only because they’re so damn straightforward and earnest:

“Cuba Si, Russia, No.

Communism exploits the masses.

Communism is ruthless totalitarianism

Castro and henchmen: feast off the land while we are rationed.

Castro and his reign of terror.

Castro is a lunatic and should be put away.

Castro is the cause of all our troubles.

Rise up against the pig Castro, etc. etc.

“If approved this operation could become a continuous project, perhaps under control of USIA,” the planning document said. The USIA was the United States Information Agency, the country’s foreign propaganda-production arm.

Today, though the USIA is no longer in existence, it may not surprise you to learn that the United States creates fake social media accounts to influence conversations online. Or maybe it’s no surprise. After learning about false flag operations conceived by the US government it’s hard to be surprised by anything these days.

Distract and harass Cuban pilots by calling them names

Cuban Air Force B-26 lands in Miami seeking asylum in 1961, after taking part in air attacks on airports at Havana and Santiago

Operation No Love Lost was perhaps the most juvenile of the bunch. The goal? Harass Cuban pilots through radio communications by just calling them names. And here you thought state-sanctioned trolling was new.

“Argument could go, ‘I’ll get you you Red son-of-a-gun,’ and call by name if appropriate,” one document read. “Would be real trouble for Castro pilots in actual weather conditions.”

Sabotage Cuban communications equipment

The idea of Operation Smasher was to introduce faulty vacuum tubes into Cuba so that everything from military communications to home radios would be disrupted. The plan was to pay off employees of various suppliers and seed the country with vacuum tubes “modified in such a manner as to cause a short circuit.”

When compared with the other ideas on this list, Operation Smasher was pretty tame. But it still had the potential to do a fair amount of damage to the country’s communications infrastructure.

The Fallout

his list is far from comprehensive, but it does give a taste of just how badly the United States wanted to see Castro overthrown. Why were so few of these operations carried out, as far as we know? Because the US was hyper-aware of looking bad to the rest of the world. As one CIA memo from 1962 explained: “[…] the reactions to a determined US effort to overthrow Castro would range from lack of sympathy or support to expression and acts of opposition.”

After the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961 which involved Cuban exiles trained by the CIA in Guatemala, US officials figured that the only answer was to sabotage the Castro regime through tactics that couldn’t be traced back to the American military and intelligence communities.

A memo from Brigadier General William H. Craig (excerpted below) dated March 13, 1962 made the objectives of the Cuba Project abundantly clear:

This plan, incorporating projects selected from the attached suggestions, or from other sources, should be developed to focus all efforts on a specific ultimate objective which would provide adequate justification for US military intervention. Such a plan would enable a logical build-up of incidents to be combined with other seemingly unrelated events to camouflage the ultimate objective and create the necessary impression of Cuban rashness and irresponsibility on a large scale, directed at other countries as well as the United States.

[…]

The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.

As James Bamford explains in his 2012 book Body of Secrets, many of these proposals were nothing short of treason. And these weren’t low level bureaucrats coming up with these ideas. They were top level military and intelligence advisors.

But there weren’t repercussions for the people who concocted these schemes. Instead, many were promoted. Where did Brigadier General William H. Craig wind up? He was promoted to General and went to work as the head of the Army Security Agency — the former military arm of the NSA.

Well I for one am glad we've moved way beyond the idea of doing anything like this in the last half-century

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The Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice Trailer Is Official

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You Can Sleep In The Old Hydroelectric Plant In The Middle Of This Australian Lake

In 1995, the hydroelectric power plant on the shores of this Tasmanian lake went dark for the final time. It’s remained silent for 20 years since — until this year, when it re-opened with a radically different business model: a hotel.

It turns out that hydroelectric power has a long legacy in Tasmania — back in the 1930s, the Australian government invested heavily in building the infrastructure to supply power using a series of dams, reservoirs and hydroelectric power stations, like the one that used to sit inside these two buildings on Lake St Clair, a protected wilderness area in the heart of Tasmania. The building at the end of a 244m dock once housed the turbines, while a house on the shore was used to run it.

After the enormous turbines inside the pump house went silent in 1995, the former hydroelectric plant was abandoned — its Art Deco splendor rotting away alongside the lake. After a developer was granted the right to redevelop the two decaying, heritage-protected buildings a few years ago, the job of renovating the spaces fell to Cumulus Studio, a Tasmanian architecture firm.

Cumulus’ designers left the flaking facades of the 80-year-old plant buildings alone, while the insiders were carefully gutted — a choice the architects say was intended to preserve just a little bit of the site’s history:

Only minimal work has been done to the exterior of the buildings. This is a deliberate response to maintain the high heritage value of the existing buildings and to emphasise the contrast between the new interiors and the exterior — their distressed condition a testament to the harsh environment in which they are located.

The interiors were restored and eventually turned into modern hotel rooms, complete with bathrooms, fireplaces and other amenities. Today, it’s a resort called Pumphouse Point, and for a few hundred bucks a night, you can sleep at the end of the dock too.

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A Dude Will Live In This Giant Ball For One Year To Study Icebergs

It sounds like a great idea: Grab a cleaving iceberg from the Greenland coast and live on it until it melts into the sea, getting a first-hand glimpse at the effects of climate change. But how exactly would one liveon an iceberg? Inside this giant ball, of course.

Outside has the story of Alex Bellini, an Italian explorer who plans to make a year-long trip inside this floating survival capsule. It was originally designed by engineer Julian Sharpe as a rescue pod for two to ten people in tsunamis. Bellini is tearing out the extra seats and making a one-bedroom apartment out of the aircraft-grade aluminium orb, which has an inner lining that rotates so the floor inside will always remain level.

Here’s one of the two-person versions, available to order now!

Why a ball? The shape makes it the best way to weather an ice-strewn Arctic sea:

“It’s strong enough to survive a storm at sea or getting crushed between two icebergs. It will rest on top of the ice using either its own weight or a specially designed stand that will detach if the berg rolls. The circular shape is crucial for avoiding a crushing blow. The capsule will just roll off any incoming mass, and the water will provide an equal and opposite reaction to any force exerted on the capsule. “A multicurved surface is almost uncrushable,” Sharpe said. “If you imagine shooting an arrow at a wooden ball, unless you hit dead center, it will ricochet.”

Of greater concern are the physical and psychological tolls of ball-living. Solar panels and a turbine will power the craft (and provide him with wifi, thank goodness), but Bellini will not be able to venture outside the womb-like apartment very often. He plans to use a stationary bike and install an illumination system that simulates natural light.

The ball should be ready to start rolling in about a year, and Bellini plans to turn his adventure into a book. In the meantime, the project also acts as excellent marketing for Sharpe, who envisions that his capsule will come in handy due to rising sea levels. Will we soon all have our own balls at home, waiting for the storms to come?

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An Oil Spill Near Louisiana Has Been Quietly Leaking For 10 Years

Everyone remembers the catastrophic oil spills like BP’s in 2010. Few remember the slow motion spills, like Taylor Energy’s, which has been drip drip dripping for all of the past 10 years — a leak shrouded in secrecy and seemingly impossible to fix.

An investigation by the Associated Press this week sheds some light on the Taylor Energy oil spill, which is even worse than previously thought. In 2004, Hurricane Ivan sent a mudslide that knocked over Taylor Energy’s platform. The wells underneath have been leaking ever since, at an estimated rate of over 33,000 gallons a year, six times that of an earlier estimate. A visible oil slick spreads out from the area.

How can it be 10 years and the leak is still going? On one hand, this leak is especially tricky to fix. The mudslide dumped sediment all over the wells, making the job harder than your typical “plug and abandon.” But Taylor Energy has also been especially secretive in their filings, refusing to disclose many details because of trade secrets.

What’s even odder about the whole story is that Taylor Energy is now only a ghost of a company now. The company sold off all of its offshore assets in 2008, and it has just one full-time employee now. It only still exists to deal with the oil spill — how’s that for a legacy?

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A Remote Amazonian Tribe Harbours Unprecedented Microbiome Diversity

The trillions of bacteria that live on us and in us — our microbiomes — are vital to our health in ways we’re just beginning to understand. Now scientists have discovered the most diverse collection of bodily bacteria ever, in a remote Amazonian tribe of southern Venezuela.

The study, which appeared yesterday in the journal Science Advances, finds that the Yanomami tribespeople harbour an unprecedented level of microbial diversity in their digestive tracts and on their skin — roughly 40 per cent more types of bacteria than humans living in industrialized countries. The findings offer yet more evidence that modern lifestyles reduce the diversity of our microbial ecosystems, with potentially far-reaching consequences for our health.

The Yanomami villagers are a small collection of hunters and gatherers who are thought to have lived in total seclusion until they were contacted by a medical expedition in 2009. Unexposed to modern antibiotics and Western diets, they offer a unique window into the bacterial ecosystems of humans past.

In the study, researchers analysed 28 skin and oral swab samples and 11 faecal samples from 34 Yanomami villages. They compared the bacterial DNA in these samples to populations in the United States, the Amazonian Guahibo Amerindians in Venezuela, and residents of rural Malawian communities in southeast Africa. (The latter communities represent tribal populations with more exposure to Western culture than the Yanomami.)

In faecal and skin samples alike, the researchers discovered a gradient of microbial diversity that’s inversely proportional to the level of exposure to antibiotics and processed foods. According to lead study author Maria Dominguez-Bello of NYU’s Langone Medical Center:

“Our results bolster a growing body of data suggesting a link between, on the one hand, decreased bacterial diversity, industrialized diets, and modern antibiotics, and on the other, immunological and metabolic diseases — such as obesity, asthma, allergies, and diabetes, which have dramatically increased since the 1970s,” she said. “We believe there is something environmental occurring in the past 30 years that is driving these diseases. We think the microbiome could be involved.”

Another interesting find was that the Yanomami still harbored some antibiotic resistant bacteria, despite having never been exposed to commercial antibiotics. These drug-resistant bugs were likely picked up from the natural environment: Soil, for one, harbours a wealth of antibiotic-producing organisms, and natural antibiotic resistance crop up all the time.

To date, the vast majority of microbiome studies have focused on Western populations. Studies like this one, which shed light on how microbiomes have shifted in the modern era, may be a vital step toward developing therapeutics that can rebalance wayward bacterial communities.

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NASA Says Nobody's Getting To Mars Without Its Help

NASA really wants humans make it to Mars, and it also really wants to be the one that gets us there. In fact, NASA administrator Charles Bolden went so far as to say that “No commercial company without the support of NASA and government is going to get to Mars.”

Bolden made the blunt statement on Thursday morning when speaking to the US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, in response to a suggestion that the government agency could be entering a new space race to get to Mars with the likes of commercial spaceflight company SpaceX.

“Our ultimate focus is the journey to Mars and everything comes back to that,” Bolden told lawmakers.

NASA’s official goal is to get astronauts to Mars by the 2030s. Of course, the private company Mars One has grandstanded about setting up a Martian colony nearly a decade sooner. But the Mars One hype bubble started to burst last fall, when an independent analysis conducted by MIT researchers identified life-threatening flaws in company’s mission design. More recently, a Mars One finalist spoke out about the company’s wildly sketchy approach to funding, leading many to question whether or not the entire operation is, in fact, anything more than a scam.

Not only does Bolden find the notion of Elon Musk getting boots on Mars first preposterous, he maintains that the ultimate focus of many recent NASA initiatives, including the recently-announced Asteroid Redirect Mission, is to serve as a testing ground for technologies that will, eventually, put a colony on the red planet.

“Mars is the planet that is most like earth,” Bolden said, “And it will sustain life when humans [NASA-trained astronauts] get there in the 2030s.”

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Watching Fighter Jets Burn Through The Night Is Pure Awesome

I can pretty much watch these fighter jets rip through the runway at night forever. I mean, what is more awesome than seeing city lights blur and afterburners shoot out fiery power? This footage comes from The Aviationist and includes all kind of fighter jets burning rubber at the Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas, Nevada.

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US Navy Secretary Wants To Stop Using Fighter Pilots In Favour Of Drones

Manned fighter jets may have a limited future. The secretary of the US Navy has announced that the new F-35 Lightning II “should be, and almost certainly will be, the last manned strike fighter aircraft the Department of the Navy will ever buy or fly.”

The Register reports that the US Navy’s secretary Ray Mabus made the announcement at the Sea-Air-Space 2015 conference on Wednesday. In his speech, Mabus explained:

[W]ith unmanned technology, removing a human from the machine can open up room to experiment with more risk, improve systems faster and get them to the fleet quicker. While unmanned technology itself is not new, the potential impact these systems will have on the way we operate is almost incalculable… We need to give ideas like this one a place to flourish, and that’s why, in the coming months, we will be making some pretty substantial changes to how the Department is organised to ensure the structure is in place to help incorporate this capability more fluidly into our operations.

Part of that change includes the appointment of a new Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Unmanned Systems, as well as a new office for unmanned systems in its Warfare Systems division, ” so that all aspects of unmanned — in all domains — over, on and under the sea and coming from the sea to operate on land — will be coordinated and championed,” according Mabus.

He also pointed to the fact that the Navy is looked to capitalise on rapid prototyping and 3D printing technologies in the future. “The only limit to what this new technology can do for us is our imagination,” he explained, adding that “the potential for technology like this — and the fact that we can print them — make them — ourselves, almost anywhere, is incredible.”

The Navy has already been experimenting with these kinds of concepts: “a group of Sailors onboard USS Essex used advanced manufacturing to create the parts for an unmanned aerial vehicle that they then built and flew,” points out Mabus, and its “Close-In Autonomous Disposable Aircraft (CICADA) can be made with a 3D printer, and is a GPS guided disposable unmanned aerial vehicle that can be deployed in large numbers.”

But clearly this is just the start. Mabus wants to use technology to escape the “the tortuous, sometimes years-long acquisition process.” He’s got a point: those processes aren’t just slow and complex, they can stymie innovation and unfairly favour contractors too, leading — ultimately — to a Navy without the competitive advantage it needs. Perhaps ditching fighter pilots in favour of drones can fix that. Mabus seems to think so.

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Mini’s Working on Augmented Reality Driving Goggles

Steampunk enthusiasts and Morgan owners aside, driving goggles are a thing of the past, rendered obsolete by the advent of the windshield. Yet Mini sees a bright future in which we all wear goggles … as head-up displays.

The once-British brand, now owned by BMW, says its customers value style and performance above all, which makes us wonder if it really thinks people will embrace augmented reality goggles. Nevertheless, Mini believes such eyewear is the best way of populating the driver’s field of vision with helpful information.

And here’s the thing: It actually works pretty well.

The latest Mini hardtop comes with camera-based active safety features like pedestrian detection and collision avoidance (automatically applying the brakes if necessary). It’s also got a head-up display that projects information like speed and navigation directions onto the windshield. HUDs are a common and popular feature on luxury cars these days, one Mini wants to take off the windshield and put right in front of its customers’ eyeballs.

About 18 months ago, BMW turned to Qualcomm for help. The key was providing the ability to display content that aligns with and is anchored to things in the real world, as your head moves. I gave the goggles a try before their debut at the Shanghai auto show this week, and was impressed by how seamlessly they added a digital layer to whatever I was looking at.

To do that, it was crucial to minimize the motion-to-photon latency: the time it takes the system to see something, process it, and add graphics. That will never be eliminated—it will always take some amount of time to achieve that—so Qualcomm reduces it by predicting how your head will move, using cameras an inertial sensors. As the system develops, Qualcomm VP of connected experiences Jay Wright says, it edges closer to “effective zero latency.” In other words, “perception is reality.”

The goggles were drawn up by Design Works USA, a BMW-owned firm based in Southern California. Aviator-style, polycarbonate lenses sit over downward-facing 720p displays. A printed circuit board runs across the top of the unit. A forward-facing camera sits between the lenses, and an infrared camera on top is used for tracking exactly where the goggles are, by following the headliner. The nose bridge is adjustable, and you can use them with prescription lenses.

Because the temples aren’t flexible on this prototype, I was told to put them on like a hat: Putting the nosepiece on my nose, then sliding the temples down over my head. They’re snug and a bit heavy, but not uncomfortable. After a two-minute tutorial to learn the UI (there’s only one button, which doubles as a track pad) and calibrating them for my face, I was ready to see the future.

To start, the Mini engineer told me to check out a poster advertising a concert. The goggles picked out the address and asked me if that’s where I wanted to go. Sure, I said, by pressing the button. The navi told me to get in the the car, and off we went.

This is where I clarify that the demo occurred in a small room in a San Francisco Mini dealership. The car was set up in front of a screen displaying the “world” around it, but how the goggles work was clear.

As I moved my head and adjusted my seating position, the speed I was “traveling” remained within my field of view. Instead of through my phone or the console screen, directions popped up on the road, with arrows making it perfectly clear where to go. These are the features I love having in a head-up display, taken beyond the bottom left corner of the windshield.

When you look at the doors, the goggles pipe in video from a camera outside the car, allowing you to effectively look through the metal

The goggles offer one especially impressive feature: X-ray vision. Well, of a sort. When you look at the doors, the goggles pipe in video from a camera outside the car, allowing you to effectively look through the metal. You can see how close you are to the curb, and spot that little kid in the driveway behind you.

The system’s not perfect, and I noticed some lag on the visual effects whenever I moved my head quickly. Still, it’s an impressive vision of how augmented reality can improve the driving experience (until it’s used to display ads, anyway). This is a prototype, but, Wright says, it could be ready for production within months. “Technology-wise, we’re very close.”

I’m impressed by how well the tech works, and by Mini’s innovative approach to something every automaker is, or should be, thinking about: How to safely and competently integrate the huge amount of digital information on hand, into our cars.

But I’m not sure about the look. The goggles aren’t the goofiest thing on the planet, but I’d need a major boost in self-confidence before plopping them on my head and driving around town. And probably a leather jacket, cooler hair, and a beard. Oh, and seriously tinted windows. I’d like to see a version that looks more like regular, less noticeable glasses. Or how about an ego-massaging software tweak that replaces bystanders’ giggles with approving nods?

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The Man They Could Not Hang

What is luck? Is it some definable, measurable quality like our IQ, height, or shoe size? Is it the influence of some higher power? Or is it merely a series of happy coincidences masquerading as something more? When a person stares death in the face and miraculously comes out unscathed, is this luck, mere happenstance, or perhaps even some sort of divine intervention? There have been countless people who have narrowly avoided death in such a way as to make us ponder such questions, and certainly one that has become well known over the years is the curious case of a man that was sentenced to death by hanging, yet was mysteriously and inexplicably unable to be executed; a series of events that would give him the unshakeable nickname of “The Man They Could Not Hang.”

John Henry George Lee, also known more notoriously as John ‘Babbacombe’ Lee, was born in 1864, in Abbotskerswell, Devon. He served in the Royal Navy, but accrued for himself the rather unfortunate reputation as a thief. For awhile, his altercations were merely low level cases of basic thievery, but it was not long before things graduated to full blown, brutal murder. In 1884, Lee was employed as a footman at a sprawling estate known as “the Glen,” in Babbacombe, Torquay, under his employer, a rich and elderly spinster by the name of Emma Keyse at her home. Mr. Lee had worked at Ms. Keyse’s home before joining the Royal Navy, and after he had gained a medical discharge from the Navy and had served 6 months in prison for theft from another employer, he resumed his work at the manor. In November of 1884, Ms. Keyes was found brutally murdered in the wake of a house fire, her corpse stuffed within a pantry with her throat slashed and exhibiting evidence of severe blunt force trauma to the head. There was also oil everywhere and the body was surrounded by charred paper.

At the time, police immediately homed in on Lee, as he had been the only male servant on the premises at the time of the crime, he had a criminal record, and he had had an unexplained cut on his arm at the time. The evidence was fairly flimsy at best, yet nevertheless, Lee was arrested and subsequently convicted for the heinous crime. Lee proclaimed his innocence to the last, but was still sentenced to hang for the murder, with the motive being stated as his dissatisfaction with a pay cut he had received for unsatisfactory work at the estate. Despite his constant claim to innocence, a jury found Lee guilty and he soon found his days numbered. He was sentenced to be hanged at Exeter Prison on 23 February 1885. Throughout his time on death row, Lee continued to proclaim his innocence to anyone who would listen and claimed to have vivid dreams of his execution failing. In an effort to beat the charges, he even tried to point the finger at his half sister, who had been working as a cook on the same premises at the time, claiming that she had been trying to cover for a lover who had visited her on the night of the vicious murder. All of these efforts were in vain, and Lee waited as the days ticked by to his demise.

On the day of the execution, Lee made his way up the stairs to the scaffold and had the noose secured around his neck by executioner James Berry. Lee’s head was covered with a hood and he silently and calmly awaited his inevitable demise. What must be going through one’s mind in that moment on the cusp of death, right before that final “click” of the trapdoors brings final blackness to the world? Is it a review of the memories of one’s life? The regrets of a lifetime that has passed or the wistful hopes of a lifetime that will never be? Or is it just the confused ramblings of a mind about to be wiped out from existence? Whatever it was, it was no doubt flowing through Lee’s head at that point, but when the lever was pulled to open the trapdoors and send him to his death, they failed to open. The click and drop that should have ended his existence failed to bring the oblivion that was promised and Lee remained very much alive, standing in confusion upon the gallows. The executioner, Berry, halted the proceedings and did an inspection of the trapdoor mechanism but it was found to be in perfect working order. When Lee was pulled aside, the trapdoors opened just as was intended. In fact, several test runs showed it to be working perfectly. Lee was repositioned upon the gallows and awaited his execution once again.

An old fashioned gallows similar to the one used to try and execute John Henry Lee.

Again, the lever was pulled and the trapdoors failed to open, leaving the horrified Lee no doubt pondering at what point his final release from this life would come. The baffled executioner, Berry, once again checked the mechanism and found it to be in pristine, working condition. Lee was brought back to his cell while a full investigation was made into the faulty hangman’s door. A mechanic was brought in to try and fix the door, after which it was tested with a heavy stone meant to emulate a man’s weight and it worked just fine. Lee was brought out once again to serve his sentence and a third time the lever was pulled, but yet again, the trapdoors failed to open, leaving the accused standing upon them wondering when the extended prelude to death would come to an end.

After three failed attempts to execute him in front of droves of shocked and bewildered witnesses, Lee’s sentence was finally commuted to life in prison by Home Secretary Sir William Harcourt, who famously stated “It would shock the feeling of anyone if a man had twice to pay the pangs of imminent death.” It was an unprecedented series of events, and John Henry George Lee became known as “The Man They Could Not Hang” in various news outlets.

Many theories were advanced as to why they could not hang Lee. The official report concluded that the mechanism of the trapdoors that day had been improperly aligned, possibly due to damp weather at the time, and that they rested in such way as to prevent the doors from opening properly when weighted. However, others hailed the occurrence as a miracle; divine intervention on the part of an innocent man. Other rumors and theories brewed as well in the wake of the failed hangings. Some believed it was the work of black magic, while others believed that the hangman himself had been bribed to botch the execution. It was also suggested that prison mates in league with Lee had intentionally fixed the trapdoor so that it would not open when weighted by someone standing atop it. To this day it remains a mystery as to why the trapdoors continually failed to open even after extensive inspections and repairs on the device.

Even after his conviction and subsequent failed hanging, Lee continued to petition his innocence as he served his prison sentence.

While Lee served his time, suspicion fell upon Reginald Gwynne Templar, who was a frequent visitor to the Glen, and had even served to represent Lee in court, after oddly offering to do so on the morning after the murder, even though Templar had been a friend of the victim. It was believed that he had perhaps committed the murder and then tried to pin it on Lee through an intentionally fumbled handling of the case in court, getting Lee convicted on weak evidence. Templar eventually lost his mind, being committed to an insane asylum and ranting about murder until his early death. Lee would go on to claim that Templar had also been in the house at the time of the murder, adding fuel to speculation that perhaps he had been innocent after all and that he had been spared by higher power during his failed execution.

Lee, already hailed in the public consciousness as “the Man They Could’t hang,” served 22 years in prison and was finally released as a free man in 1907. He was not shy about exploiting his notoriety, and made money lecturing about his life, selling his story to a major newspaper, and becoming a minor celebrity. There was even a silent film supposedly made about his story in 1925 called The Man They Couldn’t Hang. Other than that, it is not certain what became of him after his release from prison; a situation made more murky by the fact that in later years several men would step forward claiming to be Lee, perhaps to cash in on his fame. It is mostly said that he married to a dressmaker from Grafton Terrace, Ellacombe, by the name of Kate Farmer, after which he found work at the Tavistock workhouse during World War II and eventually died of a heart attack in 1945; a rather mundane end to such a legendary defier of death. He was supposedly buried in an unmarked grave in Forest Home Cemetery, Milwaukee, but there are some that claim this is not the grave of the real John Lee. Many have claimed that he in fact had left England’s shores to forge himself a new, anonymous life overseas far from his homeland, with reports claiming that the real Lee died in places as varied as the United States, Australia, Canada, and England, only adding to the mystery of this already enigmatic figure. Whatever really happened to Lee remains a mystery.

How exactly did John Henry George Lee dodge a most certain death on a gallows that was in seemingly perfect working order?

Was it luck, divine intervention, the result of sabotage, or just mere mechanical failure? Did he end up fulfilling some purpose or approach life with a renewed vigor after staring death in the face and coming out unscathed? Or did he waste away in frivolous pursuits the final years that he had cheated death out of? Whatever the reasons, and no matter what his inevitable fate may have been, Lee has and always will be known to most as “The Man They Couldn’t hang.”

[MIKA27]

The Last Male Rhino And The Return Of An Extinct Monkey

Extinct means “vanished, lost, died out, no longer existing, no longer extant, wiped out, destroyed, gone.” That’s why the recent news that there’s only one male northern white rhino left in the world sadly means that extinction is imminent. Then again, the same thing was said about the Bouvier’s red colobus monkey which had not been seen since the 1970s but was rediscovered this year. Could there be male northern white rhinos hiding somewhere too?

Bouvier’s red colobus monkeys were first described in 1887 by Alphonse Trémeau de Rochebrune. “Colobus” comes from the Greek word ekolobóse which means “he cut short” and described the fact that the species had little or no opposable thumb and compensated for it with four long fingers they use as hooks. Found only in the Republic of the Congo, they were also fearless of humans and tasty as bush meat – a combination that drove them to apparent extinction in the 1970s.

In February 2015, a crowdfunded expedition led by primatologist Lieven Devreesefound a group of Bouvier’s red colobus monkeys in a remote swamp forest in the Ntokou-Pikounda National Park. Devreese brought pictures of a mother and baby and a warning that the monkeys are still fearless of humans and susceptible to hunting.

Can crowdfunding save the northern white rhinoceros? A 40-year-old male named Sudan, believed to be the last male of his kind, is now under 24-hour guard at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. Two of the four known remaining females are with him in the hope they mate and delay extinction. The other two females are in zoos. This subspecies of the white rhino family has been poached to near extinction for their horns.

Could any more rhinos be in hiding like the Bouvier’s red colobus monkeys? It’s thought that there may be a few in southern Sudan, but the political volatility of that country plus the ruthlessness of the poachers makes the possibility of finding and saving them extremely remote.

While the rediscovery of the Bouvier’s red colobus monkeys is exciting, the plight of the white Northern rhino is not. We like to say we “share” this planet – and potentially this universe – with other living beings. Most children first learning the concept would agree that killing to extinction is not a definition of sharing.

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Jurassic World Official Global Trailer

Looking forward to this one even though riding alongside a bunch of trained velociraptors is asking a little too much for even the greatest of fans...

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JAPAN'S BRAND NEW GODZILLA HOTEL LOOKS LIKE A BLAST

Ever wondered what it might be like to wake from your morning slumber only to peer out the window and discover that a giant behemoth is rampaging through the city?

Well wonder no more, the official Godzilla Hotel has just opened its doors in Tokyo and it comes complete with all manner of Godzilla related extras and designs.

The Hotel Gracery in the Shinjuku is home to several Godzilla-themed rooms which are covered in all kinds of movie monster magic, from the walls to the bed covers and even floor - the giant lizard is never too far away. Or if that's a little too full on, you could settle for a cheaper room which actually faces the giant Godzilla statue itself.

It towers an impressive 52m (171ft) above Tokyo's streets, you can't really miss him but for the average passerby looking up might prove quite the shock!

Depending on just how much Godzilla goodness you want in your life, rooms cost between £80-£285 which you can book right here.

[MIKA27]

Microwave Sickness and Skin-Writing

I’ve got a fun experiment for you. Open your web browser or a new tab and navigate to the Google home page. Now enter the search term “is my microwave oven dangerous”. When the results come up – which should be in the neighbourhood of 1.7 million hits – take a close look at each heading that appears in the list. I want you to count (without clicking on them) how many of those headings are answering ‘yes’ to your question, compared to how many are saying ‘no’.

When I tried it, the results were nearly 1:1, and amusingly, they appeared in an alternating pattern, with one claiming microwave ovens are deadly, followed by one claiming they’re perfectly safe, and so on.

The order in which Google chooses to serve them up has no bearing on the topic, of course, but it does highlight the issue. Since you now have that tab full of articles on the subject, you can undertake to inform yourself on the issue, or have a look at what Harvard Medical School has to say on it, or the World Health Organisation, or even theFDA. I’m not inclined to add to that mountain of information and misinformation on the subject, but there are some interesting things that happen when people are exposed to microwave radiation.

There’s a contentious medical condition known as radiofrequency neurasthenia, or microwave sickness (MWS). That second name may have been responsible for at least part of the public’s mistrust of microwave ovens, through a widespread misunderstanding of the science behind it. I say it’s contentious because there are few scientists or doctors who agree on whether it’s real or not, which takes some explaining.

Scientists mostly agree that high levels of exposure to microwave radiation, as with any radiation can and will cause heat damage, such as burns, blisters, and even cataracts. What they don’t agree is on what happens when the dose of radiation is much lower than that.

MWS is technically a syndrome, which includes a long list of symptoms ranging from fatigue, headaches, palpitations, insomnia, impotence, and blood-pressure fluctuations. Now, we’re not talking about people who stood too close to their microwave oven while it burned their popcorn, the people who have suffered MWS were, in most cases, people who worked closely with powerful radio equipment for at least a decade or more. And while their symptoms were most definitely real, the cause of them is still up for debate. (Hocking, 2001)

Perhaps the most interesting symptom associated to MWS is dermatographic urticarial, which is more commonly known as skin-writing. And it’s just as freaky as it sounds. It’s characterised by a reddening and inflammation of the skin when scratched, rubbed or even slapped. Which may sound fairly normal to you, but in this case, it’s even the slightest scratch that can cause a very well-defined, raised mark on the skin of the sufferer. And that means that one can literally write on their body, with just their finger.

The underlying cause for the condition is unknown, but the mechanism seems to have something to do with a rare form of autoimmune malfunction. People who suffer from skin-writing, apparently have weakened cellular membranes in what’s called their mast cells. Mast cells are responsible for releasing histamine into the blood stream as an immune response to foreign bodies or antigens. Those weakened cell walls mean that even the slightest contact with the skin can trigger the release of histamine, but without the presence of the antigens they’d normally attack, very much like an allergic reaction. Essentially, those with dermatographic urticarial are allergic to touch, which is both amusing and depressing.

The thing is, if these symptoms are indeed caused by exposure to microwave radiation, it suggests a profound alteration of cellular structures caused by an interaction with the waves, perhaps in the same way that microwaves interact with water. And to remind you, we are 98% water.

It’s important to realise that the radiation levels we’re talking about here are a few megawatts per square centimeter (mW/cm2) in the high gigahertz (GHz) frequency range, with near constant exposure over a period of ten to twenty years. In comparison, your microwave oven is limited by law to 5mW/cm2, normally at a frequency of 2,450 MHz, at the surface. In accordance with the square-cube law, that output will drop by a factor of 100, essentially 0mW, within five inches of the outer surface of the appliance.

So, if you’re looking to give yourself an effective dose of microwave radiation from your kitchen appliance, you’d have to surround yourself with several ovens within a proximity of about two inches, and run them for about eight hours every day for the next ten years. And even then you might not suffer any ill-effects.

In the study of toxicology, there’s a standard idiom that says “the dose makes the poison”. There literally is nothing on this planet (and perhaps in the universe) that cannot kill you if administered in the right dose. Microwave radiation is one of them, but as with dihydrogen monoxide, there’s really nothing to fear.

Hocking, B. (2001). Microwave Sickness: A Reapraisal. Occupational Medicine, 66-69. Doi:10.1093/occmed/51.1.66

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BELLROY PHONE POCKET

We’re not saying that wallet phone cases are something new, we’re just saying that Bellroy is doing it better than most – and the Phone Pocket puts their creative talents on full display.

Designed to keep all of your everyday essentials safe and snug in one place, this iPhone 6 case has space for everything from your cards and keys to your notes and coins. In addition to stowing anywhere from 2 to 8 cards within the confines of its zip enclosure, a designated section for folded bills, coins and SIM Card round out the storage compartments. The case is constructed from premium full-grain vegetable tanned leather case, and while the standard offering will fit your iPhone 6 perfectly, they also make a Pocket+ model for those of you with Samsung Galaxy and iPhone 6 Plus smartphones. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

LA MARZOCCO GS3 ESPRESSO MACHINE

Good enough for the coffee shop, but built for your house. The La Marzocco GS3 Espresso Machine uses the same thermal stability system in the commercial Strada model, which includes a preheater, a digital PID controller, a dual-boiler system, and a digital display, to ensure a consistently great shot. The standard edition is handsome on its own, but if you want something more unique, you can customize the body, side panels, and several other parts to matches your style.

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Tight Spot? The New BMW 7 Series Can Park Itself With No One In The Car

The actual car hasn’t been revealed to the public just yet — at least without its camo wrapping — but that hasn’t stopped BMW from announcing that its new 7 Series will be the first car that can be parked remotely using its key fob, without anyone actually having to be inside the vehicle.

Other car makers have talked about and demonstrated similar passengerless self-parking technologies designed to let a vehicle squeeze into a space too small for its doors to be opened. But BMW is the first to include it on a production vehicle, allowing the driver to use the car’s touchscreen Display Key fob to either have it pull into a tight spot, or out of one.

At CES 2014, Bosch, a maker of automotive components, was showing off a similar feature the company had developed that allowed drivers to autonomously park a vehicle using a smartphone, but there’s no word if BMW is using the same technology for its new 7 Series. And while the new feature isn’t quite the completely autonomous self-driving car we’ve all been anticipating, it’s still a great sneak peek at the technology, especially for those of us who don’t exactly excel at parking.

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Humans Threw Out 41.8 Million Tonnes Of Electronics Last Year

The amount of old electronics we throw in the garbage is gross, and now a new report from the United Nations University quantifies the extent to which we’re discarding iPods and rusty washing machines.

In the US alone, we tossed out 7.1 million tonnes of e-waste. That means we created a digital-goods graveyard in a single year larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza, which is around six billion kilograms.

Globally, people produced 41.8 million tonnes of e-waste in 2014. That’s more than seven Great Pyramids’ worth of crapped-out Blackberry phones, forsaken Toshiba TVs and human misery.

Considering that the amount of gold found in e-waste is equivalent to 11 per cent of the amount of gold produced in mines each year, we’re missing out on recovering a host of valuable materials. Worse yet, the hellish underground economy that has sprung up around international e-waste dumping grounds in China and Ghana is leading to “environmental catastrophes”. Since only 15 per cent of the e-waste produced is properly recycled through take-back programs, most of the electronic detritus gets dumped without meeting pollution and waste standards.

The dumbing ground of Agbogbloshie, Ghana, is so polluted people refer to it as “Sodom and Gomorrah” (As above). It’s one of the most striking places to see what happens when we don’t regulate waste — a wetland-turned-garbagehell where people wade through the toxic smog of broken laptops and busted washing machines to salvage valuable materials like gold.

The amount of e-waste consumers produce is expected to continue increasing. The report points urges leaders to develop more robust take-back and recycling programs so we don’t end up creating more Agbogbloshies each time a new iPhone comes out.

[MIKA27]

A Closer Look At Batman V. Superman's Big Three Superhero Costumes

Here’s a better glimpse at the costumes that DC Comics’ biggest three superheroes will be wearing in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Batman’s new suit takes big cues from the Frank Miller iteration from The Dark Knight Returns and Wonder Woman’s gear looks a bit more colourful than the promo shots released thus far. Check out the video at Bleacher Report for more.

[MIKA27]

US Marines Leaving A Super Stallion Helicopter Looks Like A Movie Scene

Yup, real life is cooler than the movies. Especially when that life is of a US Marine. Here are five Marines walking away from a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter in the desert in a training exercise. It looks more badass and perfectly picturesque than any still from a Hollywood military movie.

The US Marines write:

Marines with 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, participate in a heavy helo raid during Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course 2-15 at K-9 Village, Yuma Proving Grounds, Arizona, April 8, 2015. The exercise is part of a seven-week training event hosted by Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One cadre. MAWTS-1 provides standardised tactical training and certification of unit instructor qualifications to support Marine Aviation Training and Readiness and assists in developing and employing aviation weapons and tactics.

[MIKA27]

Siberian Town Gets Mysterious Crater and Slow Landslide

The last place most people in the world want to live is Siberia. After the events of this month, the last place most Siberians want to live is Novokuznetsk. In a span of just a couple of weeks, the town was hit by a massive slow-moving earthflow of rocks and then woke up to one of those mysterious Siberian craters. What’s happening in Novokuznetsk?

The Siberian earthflow getting ready to cross the road

The huge landslide of boulders and dirt occurred on April 1, 2015, (no April Fool joke here – we have video!) at 1 pm local time on what was the main road between Novokuznetsk and Bolshaya east of the Ural Mountains. “Was” because the wall of rock tore apart and covered the road, a railway, trees and power lines. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

According to geologists, the earthflow was most likely man-made. Novokuznetsk is a coal mining area and it appears that a mound of waste material or overburden from the Taldinskoye coal mine collapsed and rolled slowly downhill over everything in its path. Melting snow and ice may have weakened the mound and lubricated the earthflow.

No sooner had the Novokuznetskians dug out from under the earthflow than a mysterious crater appeared in the town. While Novokuznetsk is 3500 km (2175 miles) from the mysterious craters in northern Siberia, big holes in the ground there are always a cause for concern. This one is 20 meters (12.5 feet) in diameter and 30 meters (18.7 feet) deep. While some residents blamed the crater on abandoned coal mines, neither the Emergencies Ministry nor the regional government would comment on a possible cause. However, they warned residents to avoid making fires near the large crater and a smaller one that appeared nearby in case of methane gas.

The crater is filling with water which, combined with the possible methane gas, makes it dangerous for experts to explore

Is Siberia collapsing under its own weight due to mining and climate change? Is something underneath it trying to push its way out? It’s understandable – above or below ground, it’s still in Siberia!