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

[MIKA27]

On 31/03/2017 at 4:28 PM, Fuzz said:

Gonna have to try some of this stuff. I've been drinking Killer Coffee (430mg caffeine per 250ml cup). Pretty good, but after a day or two, you get used to the caffeine level.

Careful @Fuzz too much will stunt your growth

[Fuzz]

1 hour ago, MIKA27 said:

Careful @Fuzz too much will stunt your growth

Well passed that point!

[MIKA27]

Australian Scientists Just Made A Major Breakthough That Could Put Solar Power Anywhere

A new type of electrode developed by researchers at RMIT University has the potential to not only boost the capacity of existing energy storage technologies by 3000 per cent, but it opens the door to the development of flexible, thin film, all-in-one solar capture and storage. We're talking the means to self-powering smart phones, laptops, cars and buildings.

And it has all been inspired by a plant.
The new electrode is designed to work with supercapacitors, which can charge and discharge power much faster than conventional batteries. Supercapacitors have been combined with solar, but their wider use as a storage solution is restricted because of their limited capacity.

RMIT's Professor Min Gu said the new design drew on nature's own genius solution to the challenge of filling a space in the most efficient way possible – through intricate self-repeating patterns known as fractals.

"The leaves of the western swordfern are densely crammed with veins, making them extremely efficient for storing energy and transporting water around the plant," said Gu, Leader of the Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence Nanophotonics and Associate Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research Innovation and Entrepreneurship at RMIT.

Gu said the electrode is based on these fractal shapes – which are self-replicating, like the mini structures within snowflakes – and the team has used this naturally-efficient design to improve solar energy storage at a nano level.

"The immediate application is combining this electrode with supercapacitors, as our experiments have shown our prototype can radically increase their storage capacity – 30 times more than current capacity limits," says Gu. "Capacity-boosted supercapacitors would offer both long-term reliability and quick-burst energy release - for when someone wants to use solar energy on a cloudy day for example - making them ideal alternatives for solar power storage."

Combined with supercapacitors, the fractal-enabled laser-reduced graphene electrodes can hold the stored charge for longer, with minimal leakage. The fractal design reflected the self-repeating shape of the veins of the western swordfern, Polystichum munitum, native to western North America.

PhD researcher Litty Thekkekara, said because the prototype was based on flexible thin film technology, its potential applications were countless.

"The most exciting possibility is using this electrode with a solar cell, to provide a total on-chip energy harvesting and storage solution," Thekkekara said. "We can do that now with existing solar cells but these are bulky and rigid. The real future lies in integrating the prototype with flexible thin film solar – technology that is still in its infancy."

Flexible thin film solar could be used almost anywhere you can imagine, from building windows to car panels, smart phones to smart watches. We would no longer need batteries to charge our phones or charging stations for our hybrid cars, according to Thekkekara.

"With this flexible electrode prototype we've solved the storage part of the challenge, as well as shown how they can work with solar cells without affecting performance. Now the focus needs to be on flexible solar energy, so we can work towards achieving our vision of fully solar-reliant, self-powering electronics."

[MIKA27]

Norway Gets A Second Doomsday Vault That Stores Data

Just in time for doomsday, Norway's "Doomsday Vault" is getting an expansion. Officially known as the World Arctic Archive, the vault opened this week and has already taken submissions from two countries. This time, instead of storing seeds that will survive the apocalypse, the vault is archiving data using specially developed film.
Located about 998km from the North Pole in Svalbard, Norway, the World Arctic Archive has been built in "Mine 3," an abandoned coal mine close to the Global Seed Vault. Countries are being encouraged to submit data that is particularly significant to their culture.

A Norwegian company called Piql is handling the conversion of digital data onto a photosensitive, multi-layered analogue film. The company claims that the film is expected to last between 500-1000 years. Piql's Katrine Loen Thomsen tells Norwegian outlet NRK that the process is similar to turning data into "big QR codes on film."

According to documents from Piql, a country can upload test, images or audio-visual content to Piql's servers. That data is then transferred to the special film that is designed to withstand significant wear and tear. It's then placed into a secure box and housed inside the heavily fortified vault. As long as the internet and servers are still functioning, the data will remain searchable online. Upon request, it can be delivered digitally or shipped on a physical format of the users choice.

Analogue storage is generally considered more future proof than digital. No special codecs or updates or operating systems would be necessary to decipher the information in the event that the planet suffers some sort of catastrophic reset.

But even in the short-term, this could be useful for storing precious data that a government might need but only trusts in the most secure of locations. In 2015, the first withdrawal of seeds from the Global Seed Vault occurred. Samples of wheat, barley, and grasses were sent to replace seeds in a gene bank in Aleppo that was damaged in the ongoing Syrian Civil war. It's not inconceivable that a government might have to replace some lost data in the near future.

Thus far, Mexico and Brazil are the only countries that have submitted to the project. Officials from Piql tell Live Science that Brazil has submitted historical documents like the Brazilian Constitution and Mexico has submitted important documents that date all the way back to Inca period.

Hopefully, the extreme and multi-faceted destabilization that the world is facing today doesn't end in some sort of full-on mass catastrophe. But if it does, the AI overlords that rise in its wake will hopefully have access to some of the most important aspects of culture that humans left behind.

[MIKA27]

Excalibur Is An Airbender In Craziest King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword Trailer Yet

The legend of Excalibur isn't always the most consistent. Sometimes it's the Sword in the Stone, sometimes it's a gift from the Lady of the Lake. In any case, I'm pretty sure none of the legends gave King Arthur magical air powers.
The final trailer for Guy Ritchie's stylised medieval epic King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is here, and holy hell I'm going to love and hate this movie in equal measure. It looks absolutely bonkers. Charlie Hunnam keeps angrily punching the air, Jude Law is in full DGAF mode, and there are war elephants the size of skyscrapers (at least I think it's an elephant).

As someone who willingly watched the living tragedy that is Gods of Egypt, I can tell this movie is going to bring me so much masochistic delight.

The trailer does give us more plot points that we didn't really have before. For example, this version's Arthur wasn't raised in the countryside by Sir Ector... he grew up in a brothel (because we've gotta show those sexy ladies, amiright?).

We also see proof of Vortigern's powers, which could be linked to the aforementioned stadium-sized war elephants. 300 can suck it with their pitiful normal-sized elephants. We're in Arthur's world now.

[MIKA27]

Big Trouble In Little China: The Game Looks Fan-Freaking-Tastic

We first heard about Big Trouble in Little China: The Game last winter, and this week we got a first glimpse of what the box art, game art, and — most excitingly — the miniatures will look like in the final product. Three words: Mini Egg Shen.

The still-in-development game is designed by Chris Batarlis and Boris Polonsky, who are both obviously huge fans of John Carpenter's cult film. Here's a little bit more about the game from its makers:

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It's a thematic, cooperative, strategy, miniatures, adventure game that allows 1-4 players to experience the events they remember from the film as well as create new adventures of their own. The game plays in two acts: Act One uses the front side of the game board: Chinatown, while Act Two takes place on the back: Lo Pan's lair. Players will choose from six characters, each with unique abilities, and will use custom dice for actions, quest tasks and combat. They will also be able to use the communal fate dice, which come with a fun risk/reward mechanic. After completing quests and upgrading their characters, players will move to the back of the board for the big showdown with Lo Pan! Will the heroes stop Lo Pan's evil scheme in time, or is everything gonna go to hell?

And now for the images, starting with renderings of Gracie Law, Lightning, Rain and (my personal favourite) the Wild Man:

Here are two peeks at the game board art that anyone who's seen Big Trouble will easily recognise:

And some of the miniatures. Alas, no glimpses of Jack Burton or Lo Pan (nor the game's "thematic dice") yet, but the inclusion of fan-fave character "Wing Kong Six Shooter" clearly indicates the level of detail we can expect from the finished product.

Speaking of the finished product, Big Trouble in Little China: The Game will be available for pre-order later this year; you can sign up here for updates, or check out the Facebook page.
 

[MIKA27]

Warner Bros. May Have Trouble Exorcising A $1.2 Billion Lawsuit Over The Conjuring

The Conjuring series has been haunted by lawsuits for years, and the stakes are only getting higher. Author Gerald Brittle is now seeking $US900 million ($1.2 billion) in damages over claims producers lifted from his work about two real life paranormal investigators. His ace in the hole? Recognising the pair probably made it up.
The author of the 1980 book The Demonologist says paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren violated their agreement with Brittle for exclusive rights over derivative works based on their cases. According to the lawsuit, Lorraine Warren gave Warner Bros. the right to use their cases in the now-successful movie franchise (it's made about $US900 million [$1.2 billion] so far, which matches the lawsuit), but producers needed to seek Brittle's permission instead.

Brittle and his lawyers say they have been fighting the franchise for years. They sent a cease and desist letter to Warner Bros. before The Conjuring 2 came out, but producers claimed the story was based on "historical facts" instead of Brittle's book. However, Brittle now claims the Warrens made the whole thing up. He says he believed them before, but he was duped. Of course, that assertion is necessary for the lawsuit to actually work, but let's be honest... when it comes to paranormal investigating, it's pretty damn hard to claim historical accuracy.

"This is a pattern of deceit that is part of a scheme that the Warrens have perpetuated for years," Brittle's lawyer wrote. "There are no historical facts of a witch ever existing at the Perron farmhouse, a witch hanging herself, possession, Satanic worship or child sacrifice."

Brittle is seeking nearly a billion US dollars, and wants an injunction to stop the release of Annabelle 2, which is set to come out August 10. He also wants to stop any other films connected to the Warrens from being made, like the previously announced spinoff about The Conjuring 2's demonic nun.

[MIKA27]

Our Greatest Geological Discovery Is This Chocolate Boulder With Edible Candy Geodes Inside

If you thought Cadbury Creme Eggs were humanity's greatest confectionery creation, Alex O'Brien Yeatts, a baking and pastry student at the Culinary Institute of America, has come up with a dessert that looks straight out of a geology textbook — not a cookbook.

Working with cake decorator Abby Lee Wilcox, Yeatts created what looks like a massive boulder. When cracked open, it's filled with crystal-like geodes, making it look like a valuable chuck of amethyst. However, the entire thing is actually made from chocolate and sugar, and is completely edible — if you want a sugar high that will last until Christmas.

Instead of millions of years, it took Yeatts and Wilcox six months to create this delectable rock, although he's yet to reveal on his Instagram account exactly how much sugar and chocolate went into it. Far more than the Easter bunny could ever carry, that's for sure.

[MIKA27]

CREATIVE POSTERS THAT TEACH TOURISTS HOW TO RIDE TRAINS IN JAPAN

As a tourist, riding the local train can be intimating. But thanks to the gallery-worthy posters, newbies get a quick education on proper train-riding etiquette.

The posters were made for Seibu Railways in Japan. The poster series is titled denshanai meiwaku zue which means “picture of train car nuisance.” Rendered in a traditional woodblock style, the colorful posters are a crowd pleasure for both tourists and locals.

The posters remind train-riders to "Please let others sit comfortably", "Don't talk too loudly", and "Don't rush onto trains".

Can spot which is which?

[MIKA27]

New ‘The Mummy’ Trailer Finds Undead Tom Cruise Battling Undead Egyptian Queen

A new trailer for Universal’s The Mummy has been unveiled. Directed by Alex Kurtzman, the remake is intended to kick of a new interconnected series of Universal monster movies and stars Sofia Boutella as an ancient princess who is suddenly awakened in present day, where she unleashes her terror and malevolence on the modern world. Tom Cruise leads the cast, while the film boasts a script by Edge of Tomorrow scribe Christopher McQuarrie and Passengers writer Jon Spaihts.

This looks like it could be a bit of forgettable fun and seeing as Kurtzman is behind it, I’m willing to take a chance on that. The setting up of a cinematic universe, as this movie is doing with the meeting of Cruise as a…sort…of mummy and Russell Crowe as the infamous Doctor Henry Jekyll, is a laborious affair but there’s no requirement for it to make for a tedious movie. For all his problematic issues outside of the movie business, Cruise remains an absolute thrill to watch on screen, even as the quality of his non-Mission Impossible projects has noticeably dipped. From what can be gleaned from the latest trailer, The Mummy could as easily be an exception to that as further proof of that fact.

The less-than-colorful look of the film worries me immensely, as it’s the sign of a general disinterest with aesthetics, though certainly not an absolute one. The cast, which includes the likes of Jake Johnson, Annabelle Wallis, and Courtney B. Vance, balances that out a bit and I’m grateful that the trailer doesn’t give away the whole narrative arc like so many recent action films have. Ultimately, this is a movie that will live or die by its dialogue. If McQuarrie and Spaihts keep the laughs up and don’t depend solely on platitudes, The Mummy could be exactly the kind of rip-roaring epic that makes audiences shovel in the popcorn. If not, we might not have a cinematic universe to return to in the coming years.

Watch the new trailer for The Mummy below, and catch it in theaters on June 9th.

[MIKA27]

Marshall Monitor Bluetooth Headphones

Marshall has long been a trusted name in the audio amplification space, but it wasn’t until recently that we saw the brand move away from boxy amps. Marshall’s biggest move has been into headphones, and with the release of the Monitor Bluetooth, the legendary name has their finest pair of cans yet.

The biggest move, obviously, is the removal of the cord, as the headphones are pretty similar otherwise to the Monitor headphones that plugged into your devices. They keep the same iconic design, with black as the primary color and functional accents being constructed out of brass.

The Monitor Bluetooth headphones boast 30 hours of wireless playback and leverage Bluetooth aptX for better audio quality and range. Plus, if you go wireless, you can let someone else plug into the 3.5mm socket so they can share the experience. Consider us fans. 

 

[Duxnutz]

On 30/03/2017 at 4:10 PM, MIKA27 said:

MAKING A DUGOUT CANOE

Master woodworker and Latvia native Rihards Vidzickis has a passion for creating things from man's most-used material. Rihards is a sculptor as well as a carpenter, crafting a park of wooden sculptures and classically-styled furniture. Here, Rihards months-long process for creating a traditional dugout canoe using mostly hand tools is detailed, starting with stripping the bark from the tree to finally launching the completed canoe.

This was really cool!

[MIKA27]

Scientists Say Medieval Villagers Mutilated Corpses To Prevent A Zombie Apocalypse

The discovery of mutilated and burnt human bones in an English grave pit supports the theory that medieval villagers thought the dead could rise from their graves, spreading disease and attacking the living.

A new study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science shows the extent to which medieval Englanders sought to prevent a zombie apocalypse. An analysis of over a hundred bones dating from the 11th to the 13th century shows signs of decapitation, dismemberment and burning. These mutilations were inflicted onto the bodies after death, which suggests the villagers were actively trying to prevent the bodies from being able to rise from the grave. The archaeologists who conducted the study considered alternative theories, such as cannibalism or the fear of outsiders, but they say the zombie theory fits best with the evidence.

The notion that medieval people lived in fear of zombies did not come from thin air. Medieval scripts describe ways to deal with "revenants", such as digging up potential zombies, cutting off their heads, ripping apart their limbs, and burning pieces in a fire. Medieval folk believed that a malevolent life-force could take root in a dead individual, particularly among those who committed evil deeds or created animosities when they were still alive.

An artist's reconstruction of the Wharram Percy village.

For the study, a collaborative research team from Historic England and the University of Southampton analysed 137 bones found in a grave pit at the medieval village site of Wharram Percy, England, in what is now a deserted village in North Yorkshire. The bones represent 10 individuals of both sexes, ranging in age from two to 50 years old at the time of death. The bones showed signs of breakage, burning and knife marks on the upper body. These mutilations were traced to multiple events, and not just one isolated incident.

A possible theory is that the remains belonged to outsiders of the community, leading to suspicion and unusual burial practices. But study co-author Alistair Pike, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton, doesn't believe this theory fits with the evidence.

Skull fragment showing burn marks

"Strontium isotopes in teeth reflect the geology on which an individual was living as their teeth formed in childhood," Pike explained in a statement. "A match between the isotopes in the teeth and the geology around Wharram Percy suggests they grew up in an area close to where they were buried, possibly in the village. This was surprising to us as we first wondered if the unusual treatment of the bodies might relate to their being from further afield rather than local."

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"The idea that the Wharram Percy bones are the remains of corpses burnt and dismembered to stop them walking from their graves seems to fit the evidence best."

It's also possible that the villagers resorted to cannibalism during times of famine, but again, the evidence doesn't fit. In particular, knife marks in cannibalised remains tend to cluster around major muscle attachments or leg joints, but in these remains, the knife marks were located around the head and neck area.

"The idea that the Wharram Percy bones are the remains of corpses burnt and dismembered to stop them walking from their graves seems to fit the evidence best," study co-author Simon Mays said. "If we are right, then this is the first good archaeological evidence we have for this practice. It shows us a dark side of Mediaeval beliefs and provides a graphic reminder of how different the Mediaeval view of the world was from our own."

It may be "the first good archaeological" evidence, but it's still a bit circumstantial. It's possible that these individuals were criminals, or from some other unknown commonality. The etchings and mutilations might also represent an unknown ritualistic practice, and possibly one specific to this village. More evidence, both from other grave sites and in written texts, would go a long way to further these claims.

One thing that's fairly certain, however, is that the fear of the undead goes back a long way.

[MIKA27]

Rare Images Suggest Thunderstorms From Space Are Even Weirder Than We Thought

Lightning is a beautiful but dangerous beast: While we're pretty good at observing it from the ground — and occasionally, being struck by it — there's still some mystery about how the electrical discharges in the upper layers of our atmosphere actually work. The names given to these discharges (such as red sprites, pixies, elves) sound like the musings of a Dungeons & Dragons zealot rather than legitimate scientific phenomena. But at long last, scientists have been able to study images and video of one these elusive happenings — called blue jets — and the results are as spellbinding as lightning itself.

On a 10-day trip aboard the International Space Station (ISS) back in September 2015, Denmark's first astronaut — Andreas Morgensen — helmed a project around studying lightning, aptly named Thor. He was able to capture images of some of the rarest electrical storm phenomena, including this video of a massive storm above India, where elusive blue jets can be seen. Blue jets are columns of electrical discharge that fan out above cloud tops and disappear after a few tenths of a second, and yeah — we have no idea why they're blue.

While the video has been circulating for about two years, recently, a team of scientists published their research on these blue jets in the Geophysical Research Letters. Some scientists have been sceptical to accept blue jets as legitimate occurrences, since they hang out above clouds, making them difficult to observe. But according to these researchers, Morgensen's work gives us the first ever glimpse at a pulsating blue jet reaching 40km.

"We have ruled out the possibility that the discharges are scattered light from lightning flashes inside the cloud since all of these are observed to have a relatively weak blue component," the team wrote. "The observation of blue surface discharges with these characteristics is, to our knowledge, the first of its kind."

The research shows that these images are a good starting point for understanding how blue jets and other disturbances in the stratosphere could affect Earth's radiation balance. Later this year, NASA will send an observation facility called Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) to the ISS in order to study upper atmospheric storms and their impact on Earth's climate. While it's not as catchy — or cool — as "Thor", ASIM will provide scientists with much-needed information on these bad and beautiful phenomena. Still a win in my book.

 

 

[MIKA27]

THE BEST WHISKIES OF 2017 HAVE BEEN ANNOUNCED

Whisky is the new currency that makes the world go round. From the foothills of Scotland to the artisan distilleries of Japan, the choices in liquid gold these days are simply staggering.

Lest we forget, every year the World Whiskies Awards also like to hold a little contest to find the world’s newest and most coveted drop based on taste across a dozen different variations. Well that day has arrived and the best whiskies of 2017 are in.

Presented in partnership with UK-based Whisky Magazine and The Drinks Report, the winners this year hail from Japan, Canada, the UK and the USA. And proving once again that the rise of Japanese whisky is no flash in the pan is this year’s winner of Best Grain, The Fuji-Gotemba Single Grain 25 Year Old Small Batch.

Virtually unknown outside of Japan, The Fuji-Gotemba Single Grain is produced at Kirin’s Fuji Gotemba distillery which started operations in 1973. Its distinct taste is derived from the ample use of pristine waters flowing down from Mount Fuji’s melting ice (we know right – you can’t even make this stuff up).

The ageing process then takes place in x-Bourbon barrels for 25 years before going through two distillation processes to come to the final product  – in very limited batches of around AU$2,000 per 700ml bottle.

The full list of winners this year also includes:

World’s Best Grain: The Fuji-Gotemba Single Grain 25 Year Old Small Batch (Japan)
World’s Best Rye: A.D. Laws Secale Straight Rye Bottled in Bond (USA)
World’s Best Blended Limited Release: J.P. Wiser’s Dissertation (Canada)
World’s Best Wheat: Bainbridge (UK)
World’s Best Bourbon: John J. Bowman Single Barrel Bourbon (USA)
World’s Best Blended Malt: Johnnie Walker Green Label (UK)
World’s Best Blended Whisky: Suntory Hibiki 21-Year (Japan)
World’s Best Single Cask Single Malt: Venture Chichibu Whisky Matsuri 2017 (Japan)
World’s Best Single Malt: Craigellachie 31 Year Old (UK)

See the full list of winners now over at World Whiskies Awards.

[MIKA27]

Cabin at Longbranch

Deep in an ancient forest located on Puget Sound you’ll find the Cabin at Longbranch, a project that has evolved considerably over the course of almost half a century and multiple remodels. Originally built by 18-year-old Jim Olson as a 14-square-foot bunk house in 1959, the Cabin at Longbranch was always intentionally subdued in color and texture to let the luscious surroundings shine in contrast to the house.

The cabin has morphed into a sprawling weekend getaway and retreat, but the focus on nature remains the same. Sliding doors, windows, a domed skylight over the bed and mature trees that grow through parts of the structure enforce this purpose and make sure you’re connected to nature at all times. And rather than covering up previous additions and remodels, Olson purposely reused and integrated existing structures, which creates a sort of architectural history as you move from room to room. We can’t imagine working on a project for five decades, but if you told us it would look like this we’d commit in a heartbeat.

[MIKA27]

Diamond Atelier Mark II Series

Munich´s expert motorcycle customizer Diamond Atelier has recently launched a new series with a timeless shape that will please Cafe Racer enthusiasts. The limited edition run is called Mark II Series, and is based on a BMW Monolever 247 frame. Each bike can be ordered in three stages, each to the client’s specifications, you can choose an 800cc or a 1000cc engine. The standard model comes with a modified original 41mm BMW fork, 285mm BMW brake discs, powder coated original wheels, and street tires. The stage two option adds custom wheels and semi-slick tires, while the stage three has a Supersport upside-down fork, CNC-machined triple clamps, Wilbers rear shocks (to suit the rider´s height) and 320mm aftermarket brake discs. Owners can also choose the color of the motorcycle, choose between 17” or 18” wheels, and a solo or two-up seat.

[MIKA27]

LEIF ESnowboard

LEIF ESnowboard is a snowboard for all seasons, allowing you to carve up the pavement as if you were sliding down a mountain slope! Capable of reaching 23mph and with a 10-mile range, the six-wheeled electric snowboard is powered by a wireless remote and captures the exhilaration, mechanics and feel of snowboarding, allowing you to carve, coast and slide just like a real snowboard. Forget the pain of taking that last run, now, you can practice your switch riding, carving and sliding - all year long!

 

[MIKA27]

JOHNNIE WALKER TRIPLE GRAIN SCOTCH WHISKY

As one of the most iconic brands in whisky, you might not think of experimentation when you think of Johnnie Walker. But the truth is, they've been tinkering with recipes for decades, with the latest evidence coming in the form of their Blender's Batch series. Johnnie Walker Triple Grain American Oak Scotch Whisky is the latest in the series and the first to hit U.S. shores. Inspired by the time Johnnie Walker's master blender spent in Kentucky blending bourbon and rye, Triple Grain was aged for at least 10 years in American oak, including bourbon casks, and is made using five whiskies, including grain from the now-closed Port Dundas distillery as well as malt from Mortlach.

[MIKA27]

Boeing's Proposed Deep Space Explorer Will Be Our Stepping Stone To Mars

With everyone in such a rush to get the hell off this planet, we're gonna need some pretty sophisticated digs to ferry us to the Moon, Mars and beyond. Thankfully, Boeing's all over it: On April 3, the company revealed its concepts for a lunar outpost and a deep space explorer. I'm not one to dole out compliments, but damn do they look good.

While details are still pretty thin on the timeline for these bad boys, there are a few things we know for sure: Boeing plans to use NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) — which, upon completion, will be the most powerful rocket the agency has ever built — in order to send a habitat into the Moon's orbit. This outpost, dubbed the Deep Space Gateway, will be similar to the International Space Station (ISS) in that it will create a space to do scientific research while providing a destination for transportation vehicles to dock. In theory, Boeing's Deep Space Transport vehicle could stop there on its way to the Red Planet, likely carrying humans.

"The ability to simultaneously launch humans and cargo on SLS would allow us to assemble the gateway in four launches in the early 2020s," Pete McGrath, director of global sales and marketing for Boeing's space exploration division, said in a statement.

According to Boeing, both the Deep Space Gateway and the Deep Space Transport vehicle will utilise solar electric propulsion technology. The Deep Space Transport vehicle will have some sort of unspecified system to protect passengers from the harsh radiation from deep space, as it could pose a significant risk to their health. Then again, anything that has to do with the cold, unfeeling vacuum of the final frontier is going to come with some sort of risk.

Though it will definitely take a while to get this space station and its intrepid explorer into space, I'm sure it will be worth the wait.

 

 

[MIKA27]

New Alien: Covenant Footage Teases The Grim Fate Of Noomi Rapace's Prometheus Character

We've known for a while that Noomi Rapace would be reprising her role as Prometheus' Liz Shaw in Covenant — but now a rather oblique piece of viral marketing seems to have dropped a big hint about her appearance in the film.

Yesterday, Fox dropped a new TV spot for the movie, set to John Denver's classic "Take Me Home, Country Roads". Check it out:

It doesn't offer much that is new, but the quick flash of a hashtag at the end — #emoh_em_ekat — takes you to a similarly-named Instagram account, which has an extended bit of footage from the TV spot.

Not only do we get to see Shaw's name on those ominously dangling tags from the earlier trailers, we also seemingly get to see a hologram of Shaw herself, at the controls of the mysterious Engineer ship the Covenant crew discover, singing along to Denver's tune. Considering we don't see a body on the ship, there doesn't appear to be much hope for seeing Rapace's character again safe and sound. You can even see a tiny glimpse of what appears to be a Xenomorph tail appear behind her hologram in the footage, so it seems like poor Dr Shaw got taken out by the new film's beast.

Alien: Covenant hits theatres May 11.

[MIKA27]

Idiots Try To Ship Venomous Snakes And Spiders To Australia, As If It Needed More

When a suspicious looking box labelled "two pair shoes" arrived in Australia from Northern Europe recently, the Australian Border Force sent it through an X-ray. They didn't find shoes, of course. Instead, the box contained a terrifying assortment of venomous snakes, spiders and scorpions — as if the country needed more of those.

The box included everything from two enormous Brazilian salmon pink tarantulas (which are famous for eating birds) to six venomous "temple vipers". All of the animals were euthanised when they were discovered in Australia, though some of the spiders died in transit.

"Anyone who claims to be an animal lover and conceals reptiles or arachnids in small packages and sends them through the mail does not have the best interests of the animals — or Australia — at heart," a spokesperson responsible for biosecurity in the country said in a statement.

Spiders that have been euthanised after being shipped from Northern Europe and arriving in Australia in mid-March (Australian Department of Agriculture and Water Resources)
 

As anyone who's seen the classic 1995 Simpsons episode "Bart vs Australia" or the classic 2016 Johnny Depp episode "Pistol and Boo vs Australia" knows, biosecurity is taken pretty seriously Down Under.

Well, pretty seriously until there is an opportunity for puns.

"No spider is a match for our biosecurity web, we get our tails up when there are scorpions in the mail and if you try send exotic snakes — beware if we find intentional non-compliance, we bite back with the full force of the law," Deputy Secretary of biosecurity Lyn O'Connell said in a statement.

Snakes that have been euthanised after being shipped from Northern Europe and arriving in Australia in mid-March (Australian Department of Agriculture and Water Resources)

But the list of invasive animals is no joke. The inventory list of animals that had to be put down by Australia's Department of Agriculture and Water Resources after arriving in Melbourne includes:

• Three ball pythons, also known as royal pythons
• Two hognose snakes
• Six vipers, identified as Wagler's temple vipers — a venomous pitviper species native to South-East Asia
• Two Colombian giant tarantulas
• Five Mexican redknee tarantulas
• Two Brazilian salmon pink tarantulas — considered to be the third-largest tarantula in the world
• Four Asian forest scorpions

It's unclear who sent the box of snakes and spiders to Australia and the intended recipient has not yet been named. Sometimes these types of animals are used for questionable medicinal purposes and strange skin creams, though at this point we can only speculate as to why they were headed for Australia.

Since Australia already has more than its fair share of animals that are capable of killing humans, we might humbly suggest that any smugglers try to send Australia something it actually needs next time. Like, for instance, a decent internet connection. That would be nice.

With an average internet speed of just 10.1 Mbps, Australia doesn't even crack the top 50 countries in the world, which is pretty embarrassing for a developed nation. But I suppose it's a bit harder to ship a box of Fast Internet™ than it is a box full of deadly snakes.

 

 

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Netflix's Defenders Assemble On August 18

A new teaser for Marvel and Netflix's big crossover has just confirmed that we have another four months until Matt Murdock, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Danny Rand start teaming up — because The Defenders is coming August 18.

A new video teaser that hit Netflix's YouTube — and then vanished pretty quickly — yesterday features Luke, Jessica, Danny and Matt recuperating in an elevator, security footage style. Eagle-eyed Ms Jones notices the camera and takes it out with a punch... just as the camera timestamp reads 08:18:20:17, or 18 August 2017 (in US format).

The teaser trailer is now live again. Check it out below. 

f that wasn't enough, the footage also has an IP address snuck into it — http://23.253.120.81 — which takes you to a fake website for the Netflix Marvel universe's newspaper of choice, the New York Bulletin. It's filled with faux articles referring to Iron Fist at the moment, but at the very bottom, the site includes a confirmation blurb stating, "Watch 'Marvel's The Defenders' All Episodes Streaming Only on Netflix August 18."

[MIKA27]

The Tale Of Longhorn Speedway, The Forgotten Ghost Track In The Shadow Of Circuit Of The Americas

Other than a weekend flea market that draws a decent crowd, things are pretty quiet at the corner of U.S. 183 and FM 812 in southeast Austin. There's a VFW post, a small Circle K gas station and scattered Mexican restaurants.

Not much directly lines the highway, either, except for dirt roads and some high grasses that could be a vibrant green or a stiff, dead brown depending on the time of the year. But if you look down the gravel road leading to that flea market and strain your eyes just enough, some faint white lines will come into view — lines that used to mark the lanes on a race track.

Not far underneath the low-flying aeroplanes descending into Austin-Bergstrom International Airport lies the old quarter-mile Longhorn Speedway, a former local short track which resides, defunct and wilting from age, under five miles away from Circuit of The Americas — the shiny, new 5km international motorsports facility that hosted nearly 270,000 spectators over its Formula One weekend in the fall of 2016.

Over the years, Longhorn has joined hundreds of other race tracks across the U.S. and become what's commonly known as a "ghost track" — a racing facility that, for whatever reason, eventually closed its gates and was left to crumble. The phenomenon stretches from local race tracks to ones that used to host NASCAR's top divisions, such as North Carolina's old North Wilkesboro Speedway that operated from 1949 to 1996 and hosted 93 races in what's now known as the top-level Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series.

The main grandstands at Longhorn used to face away from the highway, the spectators a sea of colored dots amongst a small press box and a flag stand on the start-finish line. Just past that line, spectators would see a Miller logo painted across the asphalt. Sometimes it would be red and sometimes black, depending on the specific product it advertised from the brewing company.

In 1966, a family of three could get into the show for $US3.50 total.

The grandstands that sit outside of the first turn, now rusted and being overtaken by weeds.

A History Of Speed

For decades, the starting grid used to line up for photos in front of those grandstands before firing up their engines to race around the old track. Throughout the early days, male race winners sported their high-waisted, light-wash jeans and thick mustaches while standing next to sash-wearing trophy girls with short pumps, gold hoop earrings and voluminous, roller-curled hair.

The big, gold earrings worn by trophy girls, whether they were Miss Miller Genuine Draft or Miss Miller High Life, flowed seamlessly with the plastic gold trophies they handed to the race winners. Longhorn’s distinctive winning race flags often had black-and-white checkers bigger than the rose-tinted sunglasses—and the regular glasses, for that matter—of the era, and purse money would likely go into getting the car ready for next weekend’s race rather than thickening up the winner’s wallet.

The race cars, often wearing few company logos and culminating in a week’s worth of one’s own hard work and grease rather than sponsorship funding, used to head into the first turn at Longhorn in front of another set of occupied grandstands. Drivers would see at least two more sets of crowds as they battled their way around to the backstretch, most of their cars wearing the dents of weekends past and giving off the rough, unpolished vibe that short-track racing often does.

The drivers weren’t so polished, either. In a practice session before the first race under the new name of Capital Speedway, driver Chief Swinford told the Austin American-Statesman that his 1955 Chevrolet handled “like a washtub with a fat woman sitting on it.” Another driver, Homer Newland, muttered “unprintable words” about driving 3,600 miles on his admittedly zigzagging way from Detroit to Austin while managing to stay under the speed limit.

Some paint schemes had the classic flames, others a neon design to stand out. In Longhorn’s four decades, there was at least one Confederate flag on a car: that of Tom Fowler, who advertised being a “the only hell mama ever raised” on his rear quarter panel. There was the occasional race car with a missing fender, and the only paint scheme on some of the others came from a spray can. It was a local operation, and that was just part of the charm.

But it was more than just a local operation in many ways, as are—and were, for many of them—other short tracks across the country.

The Texas racing scene from all those years ago has become a blur for those who used to frequent the track, and they can’t remember whether Terry Labonte, a native Texan and future Cup Series champion, raced at Longhorn. The same goes for Indy car legend A.J. Foyt, who did make at least one trip there as a spectator.

But Labonte did race at other local short tracks across Texas, and even won the first local Late Model track championship at the nearby San Antonio Speedway in 1977. Small-town tracks like Longhorn are exactly where most of those big names get their start, and they serve as the beginning of the pipeline for oval racers nationwide. They’re the club sports of the racing community.

Each time a local track closes, the entry into that pipeline becomes a bit more choked.

“One by one, every track has faded to black.” -Neil Upchurch, former PA announcer at Longhorn Speedway.

Longhorn closed in 1998 or ’99, depending on whom you ask. Unofficial results online date well into May of 2000. It also originally opened as “Austin Speed-O-Rama” in 1960, only to go through multiple name changes and leaseholders during its nearly 40 years in operation.

A father-son pair by the names of A. B. and Louis Wusterhausen opened the track, owning and managing for eight years before the Statesman reported that a local racing group took over the lease. A. B. died before the lease handover in 1968, and his former race track became known as “Capital Speedway” under its new owners.

The group, led by a drag racer by the name of Jim Tibbitts, promised a prize purse of at least $1,200 per race once their reign began—“much more than any regular race [had] ever payed in Central Texas” at the time, according to the Statesman.

But the reign of that group didn’t last long, and the track quickly went back to its former name—this time, without the hyphens. Business partners Jerry Green and Charles Hester took the speedway over just three years after the racing group did in 1971, promising “exciting, fast-moving” shows and kids’ nights with free rides in figure-eight races.

The pieces of asphalt that used to make up the figure-eight configuration can no longer be seen from outside of the race track.

‘They Were Just Family People’

“Longhorn Speedway” was the name under which it eventually closed, with grandstands left to rust and asphalt to crack even further under passive ownership by an Austin realty group.

On the front straightaway at Longhorn, the only structure that remains is a skeleton of the flag stand. There are no main grandstands and there is no press box, giving a clear view from the highway to parts of the backstretch asphalt if you’re looking hard enough.

Another three sets of the once-packed grandstands at Longhorn remain, rusted, contorted with age and visibly fighting off the inevitable forces of overgrown weeds and gravity that continue to overtake them. What were once ramps leading up to the seats are now inaccessible due to the overgrowth, and, even if they could be reached, would buckle under the sheer weight of a person.

These days, barbed wire lines the property. The old track is so stifled by tall, dead grass that it becomes hard to tell fence from weeds after a while. Underneath the grandstands on the backstretch lays a full set of tires, but the deep grooves of tread indicate that, as spooky as the scene appears to be, they likely aren’t racing slicks from all those years ago.

Nearly 20 years after Longhorn’s closure, the earth underneath its racing surface is even beginning to overtake the track itself. Weeds have begun to creep through the cracks that so characteristically form in asphalt racing surfaces over time, leaving little doubt that the track will all but disappear—as if it isn’t forgotten enough already.

Grass making its way through the cracks coming out of the second turn and onto the backstretch.

Records on past winners, track record holders and the like are scarce, drivers who raced out there in the 1960s and ‘70s almost impossible to track down. The only tangible things that remain, really, are the photos.

But once you find someone, the memories come to the same general conclusion.

“It was a really good speedway,” said Denise Beier Zuniga, who regularly attended everything from weekly races to demolition derbies, figure-eight racing and stunt shows at Longhorn as a child after moving down from Pennsylvania in the late 1960s. “It could fit a lot of people; it was always crowded. The atmosphere was always charged and fun.

“It was just that atmosphere of a community, being able to connect with the drivers. They were all family people, and a lot of times you would be able to go to school with their kids, or you knew somebody who knew somebody.”

There were a lot of people to know. In its day, former Longhorn Speedway PA announcer Neil Upchurch said the track’s premiere Late Model events—one of the most expensive and therefore exclusive divisions in short-track racing, which features stock cars that appear to the casual eye to be a few years behind the current-generation NASCAR race cars—would pull around two dozen race entries on any given Friday night in the late 1980s and into the ‘90s.

The backstretch that local and touring race cars used to come around to, meeting more than one set of grandstands as they did.

In comparison, modern Late Model car counts at local short tracks nationwide can sink into the single digits.

“When we had that many cars, we had to limit the starting field to 18 or 20 for manual-scoring reasons,” said Upchurch, referring to the days when positions on each lap had to be checked off by hand. “For that reason, qualifications actually fulfilled their name. You had to qualify to be in the feature race, because we couldn’t put all of the cars that were there on the track at once.”

When those cars were out at Longhorn, Upchurch said the grandstands were “absolutely packed.”

“[The stands] couldn’t hold any more,” said Upchurch, who also called races at the old Texas World Speedway in College Station and now-closed short tracks in San Antonio. “I don’t know that they ever stopped selling tickets—I never heard that one. Maybe they said, ‘We’ll sell you a ticket, but you can’t sit down.’”

These days, only occupants of the Longhorn grandstands are weeds and items littered by the local weekend flea market.

The ‘Best In Texas’

From how Upchurch and Zuniga described it, there wasn’t much of a reason to sit down. Upchurch said the Late Model drivers out at Longhorn were “the best in Texas,” recalling those like Jimmy “Fireball” Finger and Freddy Fryar as some of the most popular behind the wheel.

“The ‘Beaumont Flyer,’ Freddy Fryar,” said Upchurch, summoning back his announcer voice as if he’d called a race yesterday.

Zuniga remembers that voice as if it called a race yesterday, too.

“Ah!” Zuniga said. “I remember Neil!”

She laughed at her office desk, as if she’d been reminded of an old friend she hadn’t thought about in years because life got in the way. After all, Zuniga sat in those grandstands so many years ago that she can remember drivers showing up to race in T-shirts and jeans rather than fire-resistant race suits.

The mention of his name brought back even more memories. As if it happened just last Friday, Zuniga recalled wanting to be a powder-puff driver out at Longhorn. She planned to grow up, head out to the race track and participate in the races she saw all of the adult women running when she was just a child.

But she never got a chance to do it.

Denise Beier Zuniga used to think she’d be going to the races forever. The race track she used to frequent didn’t make it that long.

“Back then, you’re thinking that you’re going to be going to the races forever, until the day you die,” Zuniga said. “And I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do, I want to drive powder puff.’

“Sometimes it would be hilarious, because the husbands would hide in the car since some of the women didn’t know how to drive stick. They would do the gears for them, and I remember Neil Upchurch saying one time, ‘So-and-so, you need to get out of that car and let your wife drive, even if it is in first gear!’”

Just as she had after digging up nearly every other memory of the old track, Zuniga laughed. Upchurch did the same. He recalled the night Houston native Foyt made a visit, leaving locals stunned upon signing in at the pit gate.

“One gate lady almost fainted,” Upchurch said. “She couldn’t believe who just signed in.”

But it wasn’t all about the atmosphere or the memories made at Longhorn. It was the race track itself, too. David Umscheid, whom both Zuniga and Upchurch remembered as one of the best drivers to race out there in its day, said Longhorn was “the best racing track that [he] ran on.”

“What I learned there, I could take anywhere in the United States and race,” said Umscheid, who raced at Longhorn from 1978 through around 1990. “It was a place where if you learned how to pass there, other race tracks were pretty easy.

“Longhorn was just smaller. Things happened more quickly. There wasn’t as much room. You pretty much had to be on your game the whole race.”

Things also required so much concentration at Longhorn, Umscheid said, because the track was “not a true oval” in the sense that most oval race tracks are considered to be.

“One end of the race track is a little bit different than the other,” Umscheid said. “[Turns] one and two were a little more of a pointed corner, and three and four were a little rounder corner. You had to drive a little differently on the different ends of the race track.

“But as bad of a shape as the asphalt was at Longhorn, it was still more fun to race on, to me, than any of the other race tracks that we ran at.”

The asphalt at Longhorn, coming out of the second turn.

Not everything was fun. Like plenty of other short tracks across the country, there were areas where Longhorn lacked proper safety precautions.

“I wasn’t there at the time, but I know one time a sprint car, out of control, went over the turn-one fence and into the pits where a bunch of people were,” Upchurch said. “Miraculously, it didn’t hit any of them and he wasn’t hurt either—the driver of the car.

“But it did signal the necessity to make intrusion into the pits a little bit more difficult for an out-of-control race car. And they did. They put up some cyclone fencing or something like that.”

A Legend Comes To A Sad End

The pits are now a gravel parking lot for a food truck, the fence serving no other purpose but to keep trespassers from accessing the first turn on the now chained-off private property.

Despite working just a few steps from the old speedway, an employee of that food truck said he never encounters anyone with curiosity about the race track. Upon being asked if any visitors ever stop by, he turned his head toward the small part of the banked third turn that could still be seen from the former pit area.

“That thing?” he said. “No, nobody ever comes out here to look at that.”

The only time people pass by it, he said, is on the way to park at that outdoor flea market hosted near the property each weekend. It’s been that way for nearly two decades now.

But just over two decades ago, things were still going well at Longhorn—it stayed that way even through the 1990s. The racing surface, bad shape and all, still held up. The Late Model tours still swung through several times a year. The crowds still came, but they didn’t fill as many seats as in decades earlier.

Leaseholders began to change more frequently than they had in the past, and Upchurch said there would be the occasional season that would start later than usual while the new management sorted everything out. In its first year as “Capital Speedway” in 1968, Longhorn managers didn’t open the track until mid April—an entire two months after the year’s Daytona 500.

Even then, Upchurch said none of those blanks in racing were noteworthy in his memory.

Then, as the 1990s came to a close, the real problem set in—a problem far outside of Longhorn’s control. In Upchurch’s memory, that problem helped usher in “the final demise of Longhorn Speedway.”

The nearby Thunderhill Raceway in Kyle, Texas, which later changed names to Central Texas Speedway and later met the same fate as this track did, was newer and than the facilities at Longhorn.

Less than 30 minutes away, construction began on a new asphalt short track that would run local classes on three-eights of a mile in Kyle, Texas. The track opened as Thunderhill Raceway for the 1998 season, its facilities being nearly four decades newer than those at Longhorn.

“Everything at Thunderhill was… it was nice,” Upchurch said.

The leaseholders at Longhorn knew Thunderhill, which would later become known as Central Texas Speedway, was nice. But Upchurch said the race track continued to operate for over a year after Thunderhill opened, only for its management to realize that the track just couldn’t compete.

With that, the demise of Longhorn Speedway became final. The leaseholders gave up the track.

“It was strictly a business decision,” Upchurch said. “The market [in Austin] is not big enough for two short tracks.”

Zuniga visited Thunderhill after Longhorn closed. Her sons were really into racing at the time, and her father said they should take the kids down to the track to give them “the whole experience.”

But when they went, things were different. The crowd wasn’t as big; the atmosphere wasn’t the same.

“It didn’t feel as homey as [the racing] once did,” Zuniga said. “There were still the same drivers, Bobby Joe New, Larry Darity and all of them who used to race down at Speed-O-Rama and in San Antonio, but the feel was totally different.”

Within about a decade of Zuniga’s visit with her family, the feel at Central Texas Speedway changed yet again. With almost no notice, leaseholder Tim Self, whose NASCAR-bound son raced out at the track for much of his short-tracking days, decided not to renew his claim on the race track following the 2016 race season. The track closed immediately.

“One by one, every track has faded to black,” Upchurch said.

As he called races at different short tracks across the state, Upchurch saw the declining popularity of local short-track racing in Texas as it happened and said it wasn’t singular to Longhorn Speedway or the Austin market. He just can’t pinpoint when things all started to go downhill.

“The [decline] of racing in Texas was, in some cases, so slow that it was hardly noticeable,” Upchurch said. “The reduction and the closure of [asphalt] tracks has been a very slow cancer to creep along and eventually, we have one go down permanently.”

Eventually, all of the asphalt short tracks Upchurch frequented did just that.

The half-mile Meyer Speedway in Houston, which hosted a 1971 Cup Series race in which Bobby Allison and Richard Petty started on the front row in front of 9,000 spectators, went down in the late 1970s. San Antonio Speedway opened in 1977, but closed its gates a few decades later. There were plenty more.

“[San Antonio Speedway] came up a couple of times like a drowning person coming up for a breath of air,” Upchurch said. “And then, it finally just went down and stayed down.

“You would’ve thought that the biggest and best [track] in the remaining biggest market would have lasted the longest, but it didn’t.”

In response to the eventual closures that loomed over all of those race tracks, Upchurch said there are “certain sports, or attractions, that eventually just wear out.”

But the memories of Longhorn didn’t wear out, even though they’re nearly all that’s left for people like Umscheid and Zuniga. Umscheid admitted that Texas in general “has just had a hard time keeping tracks going,” but that doesn’t make things any easier when he passes by the speedway in its crumbling state.

“It breaks my heart,” Umscheid said. “That’s the first race track I came to watch races. And then, both of my kids turned their first laps there. It’s just sad.”

Zuniga passes by it every once in a while, remembering the days of demolition derbies, stunt shows and the Friday-night racing features. Zuniga’s husband was never into racing as a kid, but will ask her where things used to be.

She’ll give him short, direct yes-and-no answers. She’s sure that someday, they’ll pass by there and he won’t have anything to ask about—that the old place will be bulldozed and ready for new construction.

“It’s like losing an old friend,” Zuniga said. “It makes me sad. It really does.”

But Upchuch—he seems to have been more expectant of the outcome.

“I could see the demise of racing in the southwest even happening way back then,” he said, recalling that he wore out several cars to drive from his home to the announcing jobs he held simultaneously in Austin, San Antonio and College Station. “With that demise, I was not going to invest in a property because of a track, because the tracks may fail.

“And sure enough, all of them have.”

 

[MIKA27]

Remains of a 3,700-Year-Old Pyramid Discovered in Egypt

It almost seems like you can’t throw a stone or a chunk of solidified camel dung in an Egyptian desert without hitting a pyramid, yet new ones continue to be found. The latest is just a portion of a 3,700-year-old pyramid in the Dahshur Necropolis south of Cairo but it may hold information as to why this and other later pyramids did not hold up as well as the earlier ones.

Mahmoud Afifi, head of the ancient Egyptian antiquities sector in the country’s antiquities ministry, made the announcement of the discovery of the pyramid’s site this week. The Dahshur Necropolis is located on the Nile’s west bank about 40 km (25 mi.) from Cairo. It is significant to pyramid study because it contains two of the oldest and best preserved – the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid – built from 2613–2589 BCE during the reign of King Sneferu, who is believed to be buried in the Red Pyramid.

The Bent Pyramid

The Bent Pyramid gets its name from the “bend” inward the sides take about halfway up. This was the first try by the 4th Dynasty Pharaoh Sneferu at building a smooth-sided pyramid and it taught him some valuable lessons. The base was built on desert gravel and clay which offered poor support. The foundation flaw added to the problem of the lower blocks being cut so that their weight pushes to the center, requiring the design change that resulted in the bend.

The Red Pyramid

Sneferu fixed some of the problems in the Red Pyramid, so named for its lean to the right. Just kidding – it was made with red limestone. The 105 meter (344 ft) Red (also called the North Pyramid) was the first true smooth-sided pyramid. Sitting at Sneferu’s knee during the construction was young Khufu, who took notes and used what he learned to build the 490-foot Great Pyramid of Giza.

Corridor leading into the pyramid

The newly discovered partial pyramid is from the later 13th Dynasty which lasted from 1803-1649 BCE. What has been excavated so far is a corridor into the inside, a hall leading to a southern ramp and a room on the west side. Pieces include a granite beam and stone blocks which give some idea of the interior design. Most interesting is a 15 cm by 17 cm (6 in by 6.7 in) block engraved with hieroglyphics that are currently being deciphered. They may help identify this pyramid’s builder.

Other pyramids from the 13th Dynasty in the Dahshur Necropolis include the badly damaged pyramid of Amenemhat II and the badly damaged (is there a pattern here?) Black Pyramid. Perhaps the hieroglyphics found in the new dig can explain their downfalls as well.

Why didn’t these newer structures last as along as the earlier Dahshur pyramids? Did the pharaohs lose patience in waiting for quality construction? Did the workers finally figure out that they were in dead-end jobs?

Or perhaps someone spilled Egyptian coffee on the blueprints left by the aliens who helped build the first ones.