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

[MIKA27]

Fuchun Boat Rooms

Fuchun Boat Rooms are a touring option should you be travelling to China one of these days, especially if you’re going anywhere near the Hangzhou area. These houses aim to recover the spirit of the Chinese river people that lived on these parts for hundreds of years, starting in the early Ming dynasty and up to the middle of the Qing one. These houses were created by a team of architects from the prestigious China Academy of Art, they’re pretty much wooden cabins that are built on a steel structure that ensures an overwater view and inspire a boat-life spirit but because they’re solidly fixed on to the ground you get no motion sickness, which may happen on a real boat-house. Its pure oriental design will surely provide a unique ambiance and create interesting memories of your stay making it all the more special. 

[MIKA27]

Forest Whitaker Is A Badarse Father In Netflix's Apocalyptic Action Film How It Ends

A mysterious disaster strikes the United States. A pregnant daughter goes missing 3200km away. Time for a road trip.

That's the basic setup of How It Ends, an upcoming apocalyptic disaster movie from Netflix. It's directed by David M. Rosenthal, and Forest Whitaker stars as a father with a military background who takes his daughter's husband (Theo James) on a trip to rescue her when a mysterious event knocks out power and communications. Here's the trailer.

Gotta say, for a Netflix movie, that looks highly entertaining - sort of like an apocalyptic Taken. We can only hope the disaster has something to do with a government coverup or aliens, because that would just be the icing on the cake.

How It Ends, which co-stars Kat Graham, Kerry Bishé, Mark O'Brien, Nicole Ari Parker and Grace Dove, premieres July 13.

 

[MIKA27]

The Alien Ain't Messing Around In The New Trailer For The Predator 

The newest promo clip for Shane Black's upcoming Predator movie shows us the extraterrestrial hunter in all his bloody, click-noise-making glory.

The tone of the original Predator movie is strong in these sequences, with a crew of military badarses who give each other crap and the creepy inevitability of death by a creature from beyond this solar system.

There's a twist this time, though, and that looks as though it's going to make The Predator an altogether different entry in the beloved sci-fi horror franchise when it hits theatres on September 13.

[MIKA27]

THE 1957 LE MANS WINNING ECURIE ECOSSE JAGUAR D-TYPE – AUTOMOBILIST PRINT

This print by Automobilist showcases one of the most iconic Le Mans winners of all time – an Ecurie Ecosse Jaguar D-Type. This particular car was the winner of the 1957 race, with Ron Flockhart and Ivor Bueb taking turns at the helm.

This poster print measures in at 50 x 70 cm (19.7 x 27.5 in) and it’s offset print on beige rough 180g/m2 paper. Each is rolled in a protective tube for shipping to ensure it arrives in perfect condition, and its dimensions are commonplace, allowing you to get it framed almost anywhere.

[MIKA27]

Nicolas Cage Has Ascended to His Purest Form

Watch the trailer for his batshit new movie, Mandy.

September the 14th, 2018 is a date that will go down in cinema history, as it is when Nicolas Cage will finally ascend to his peak being. When his new film Mandy is released in theaters, audiences will gaze at Cage in his truest form—covered in blood, screaming nonsense into our faces. He will growl, he will shriek, he will swing some sort of mythical homemade axe.

Here's the plot synopsis, which clears up absolutely nothing:

Quote

Pacific Northwest. 1983 AD. Outsiders Red Miller and Mandy Bloom lead a loving and peaceful existence. When their pine-scented haven is savagely destroyed by a cult led by the sadistic Jeremiah Sand, Red is catapulted into a phantasmagoric journey filled with bloody vengeance and laced with fire.

But—and I can't stress this enough—I don't care, because Nicolas Cage will be screaming and swinging an axe. This is already my favorite movie of the year.

[MIKA27]

2019 ASTON MARTIN DBS SUPERLEGERRA

In Italian, “leggera” means “light.” Thus, Aston Martin’s latest car, the DBS Superleggera, the vehicle long-planned to replace the Vanquish, is made to be super-light, and from the looks of it, near super-sonic, too.

The Aston Martin DBS Superleggera was loosely based on its predecessor the DB9, but a few major tweaks will make the Superleggera cruise at an altogether different pace from any Aston Martin before it. Crafted totally from carbon-fiber, the car has shed 160 pounds of curb-weight, clocking in at just over 3,700 lbs. That frame will be ferried by a 5.2-liter twin-turbo V12, which will produce an estimable 715 horsepower and 664 lb-ftof torque. Word from the Aston Martin pipeline is that the Superleggera’s 0-62 mph pace clocks in at a blistering 3.4 seconds, and does 0-100mph at 6.4 seconds. The DBS incorporates some of the best aspects of those who roared before it, like the DB11 – from which the Superlegerra gets its curlicue and Aeroblade – and the Formula 1 racers that inspired its double-diffuser, creating an incredible 180kg downforce, the most of any Aston Martin, in its illustrious history. This superior GT vehicle will certainly justify its name when it becomes street legal later this year, a date that fans of the glorious car brand eagerly await. $305K

[MIKA27]

WILD TURKEY MASTER’S KEEP REVIVAL BOURBON

Even before prohibition, the master distillers at Wild Turkey have been doing it the right way, allowing us to toast life’s ups and downs with finely crafted bourbon. Recently, they’ve released something special in their Master’s Keep Revival Bourbon Whiskey.

Finely aged for 12-15 years, this whiskey was finished in at least 20-year-old Oloroso Sherry casks, which were hand-selected by none other than Master Distiller Eddie Russell. The outcome is a rare, one-of-a-kind 101 proof sipping whiskey with a delicious mix of aromas, including cherry pie, raisins, citrus, nuts and a touch of oak for a smooth taste. On the palate, it brings a soft, creamy hint of spice and sweet tropical fruits, as well as a lasting finish of dried apricots and honey. This is truly a must-own bottle for any earnest whiskey collector. $150

[MIKA27]

DUCATI XDIAVEL S ‘FLATOUT TITAN’ BY ROUGH CRAFTS

As the owner of Taipei-based Rough Crafts, Winston Yeh’s keen eye for design is almost instantly recognizable throughout the industry. And with a special request from a customer that’s close to 6’5” tall, Yeh needed something bigger than what he was used to building for this inquiry. So, he settled on a Ducati XDiavel S – their largest cruiser available – and raised the tail to achieve this.

Now dubbed “Flatout Titan,” that aptly-named ride now stands 34.6 inches off the ground. This was accomplished via a custom shock linkage, a custom-fabricated subframe, and some Marzocchi forks. Additionally, Yeh outfitted the new bike with a pair of carbon wheels now wrapped in Pirelli Diablo Rosso II tires, a pair of Beringer brake calipers up front, a hand-shaped aluminum tank and tail now with a sleek LED rear light from Doghouse Racing, Rizoma foot controls, handlebar risers, Motogadget grips and turn signals, and some timing belt covers, frame covers and a rear sprocket hub kit compliments of AEM Factory. All complete with over 150 horses at the helm. That’s one lucky customer.

[MIKA27]

What Beer Was Like Before Hops

German beer purists would have you believe beer was divinely begotten from malt, water, hops, and nothing else. If it wasn’t divine, then it was at least bureaucratic, thanks to the Reinheitsgebot, a law that regulates beer production and has for more than 500 years. It’s a law so old it predates the discovery of yeast, which you’ll remember is what actually makes beer alcoholic.

Nothing against the Germans here. Their beer styles are synonymous with high quality and some of our favorite days have been spent in German beer gardens. German beer is an invaluable contribution to drinking culture and it’s amazing the ingenuity Germans have shown when they’re that limited on potential ingredients.

But there are plenty of beer drinking cultures not governed by the Reinheitsgebot and their history isn’t as widely publicized. They were using all kinds of different flavors and aromas to make their beer distinct, delicious, and wholly unique, without a hop in sight.

Thousands of Years in Four Paragraphs

There doesn’t seem to be a solid origin date for beer. Speculation and educated guessing puts the first fermented drinks around twelve thousand years ago, when nomadic tribes started settling down and becoming agrarian civilizations. Staple crops haven’t changed much since then (we’re still eating a ton of corn, rice, barley, and wheat) and it wouldn’t take much for someone to stumble upon the fermentation process. In fact, if we can contribute a bit to the speculation, we find it unlikely that there was ever a formal invention process for beer.

The first written recording of beer as we’d (kind of) recognize it comes from Sumeria in Lower Mesopotamia a little more than five thousand years ago, in a document that’s a sort of half recipe, half prayer. Ninkasi was a Sumerian goddess whose name translates to “lady who fills the mouth.” In other words, she was the goddess of bread, though her other major contribution was the invention of beer and the education of mankind in the ways of brewing.

The earliest mention of hops as an ingredient in brewing doesn’t pop up until thousands of years later. In 822 A.D., in Picardy, Northern France, Abbot Adalhard of the Benedictine monastery of Corbie recorded rules for the proper functioning of his abbey. In those rules, he mentions guidelines and requirements for the collection of wild hops for brewing. Germany didn’t adopt hops for another three hundred years.

For anyone doing basic math at home, a drink we would recognize as and call “beer” existed without hops for at least four thousand years, though that number could be closer to eleven thousand. That’s a mind-bogglingly long time for beer to exist without hops. What’s more, it means hop purists are actually historical anomalies with a fierce devotion to one of the youngest aspects of brewing.

Drinking Like the Neolithic Scots

One of the oldest ale styles still in some form of production is the Scottish Heather ale. There’s evidence that people were brewing it roughly five thousand years ago on the Orkney Islands off the Northeast Coast of Scotland. Most of that evidence comes from archaeological digs in Neolithic settlements. In the settlements, pottery shards yielded grain, heather, fern, and pollen residue, all confirming the existence of fermented brews. These were also supposed to be the magic potion that kept the Romans from getting deeper into Scotland all those years ago.

The heather tips are added during the boil, the same way hops are, and the end result is a heavy, dark, full ale that’s much, much closer to a Scotch Ale than anything else. In fact, it’s highly likely that the mildly popular Scotch Ale is just the Heather Ale modified to slightly fit with modern drinking sensibilities. Modern craft brewers in Scotland are keeping the style alive, and seeing as how there still aren’t any Romans in Scotland, the drink seems to still be working.

Gruit Ale: An Herb Garden in a Glass

While it’s absolutely true there were ancient brewers that didn’t bother making their beer with anything beyond malt and water, there were plenty of them who were flavoring or aromatizing their beer with local plants. This beer was known as gruit ale and was traditionally made with bog myrtle, yarrow, and wild rosemary. Depending on where you are, these three herbs are fairly common. Common enough at least that people knew what they were looking for, never hurt for supply, and liked their taste well enough to keep the plants around.

Surprisingly enough, gruit ales have their roots in German culture. The word “gruit” comes from the German word “grut,” which means herb. As far as we can tell, there’s nothing wrong with Germans brewing gruit ale. They just won’t legally be allowed to call it beer.

These ales fell out of favor mostly because of the tendency of random herbs to add different effects to beer. Depending on types, quantities, and mixtures, gruit ales would occasionally change their effects from simple drunkenness to something more devious. Usually any effect would simply intensify the intoxication, but some brews were known to push into the psychotropic.

Gruit didn’t start to fall out of favor until the Protestant Reformation, when a temperance movement began to grow as a reaction to Catholic indulgence. Protestant reformers saw gruit ale as yet another area of sin and corruption that was dragging the Catholic faith towards ruin. They also found unlikely allies in businessmen and royalty. It wasn’t that the latter two supported the temperance movement. Instead, they wanted to break the monopoly the Church had on gruit production. When they finally did, they also mortally wounded a millenia-old drinking tradition in Europe and ushered in the limitations of hopped beer.

Ben Franklin’s Personal Spruce Recipe

On one of Benjamin Franklin’s many overseas excursions, he jotted down his “Way of Making Beer with Essense of Spruce.” It’s an odd recipe and one that takes a few liberties with what you can call a “beer.” The sugars come mostly from molasses instead of any kind of grain, along with the lack of hops we’ve been talking about all this time.

One of the benefits of using spruce in your beer is how surprisingly healthy spruce is. There’s a decent amount of Vitamin C in it, which you presumably don’t lose much of if you use it in brewing. Spruce also grows easily all over the place and doesn’t come with the same restrictive climate needs hops have. Both those together mean you could whip up Franklin’s recipe for extra cheap and in large amounts. And if you did that, you could, say, keep the army of a burgeoning nation on its feet and relatively healthy.

This is a beer you can drink today too, with a few updates made to reflect the current market (i.e. less molasses and more grain). Yards Brewing Company in Philadelphia put together an Ales of the Revolution series, in which they sell three beers inspired by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. Washington and Jefferson’s are both great beers, but they’re disqualified from inclusion in this article thanks to the inclusion of hops in their recipes.

Poor Richard’s Tavern Spruce, however, includes no hops in its modern recipe and is a great introduction to beer without hops. It’s a heavy but easy to drink ale, with strong caramel malt and intense spruce flavors. It was the first hopless beer we ever knowingly tasted and is what started us on the journey that’s culminated in this article. If you can find the Tavern Spruce near you, we highly recommend you pick it up. It’ll help show you beer can afford to lose the hops sometimes.

[MIKA27]

Roborace's Robocar Will Attempt The First Fully Autonomous Hillclimb At The Goodwood Festival Of Speed

The dog bone-looking thing you see above is the self-driving race car from Roborace, the world's first driverless racing series. It is bringing the Robocar to the 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed to attempt the first-ever fully autonomous hillclimb.

The course is 2km long with nine turns total. The car relies solely on its automated systems via sensors that give it 360-degree vision and navigate hay bales along the course, as well as the S-bend around a wall near the top.

A custom, fully immersive VR experience will be set up at the Roborace booth, where visitors will be able to watch the run from the Robocar's point of view. The car itself weighs just under 1,361kg and has a combined 500-plus horsepower.

 

[MIKA27]

Japan's Hayabusa2 Spacecraft Has Officially Entered Orbit Around The Ryugu Asteroid

After nearly four years of travelling through space, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft has successfully rendezvoused with the Ryugu asteroid, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency confirmed Thursday. Let the next stage of this historic sampling-and-return mission begin!

Yesterday, mission controllers at JAXA triggered Hayabusa2's chemical propulsion thrusters, bringing the spacecraft into orbit around Ryugu, an asteroid that's just shy of 1km wide. Confirmation of the rendezvous was made at 9:35AM JST (10:35AM AEST). JAXA says Hayabusa2's thrusters worked normally, and that the spacecraft is maintaining a constant distance from Ryugu.

"From this point, we are planning to conduct exploratory activities in the vicinity of the asteroid, including scientific observation of asteroid Ryugu and surveying the asteroid for sample collection," explained JAXA in a press release.

The 590kg Hayabusa2 probe, launched on 3 December 2014, is now about 290 million km from Earth. The probe will survey Ryugu for the next 18 months, during which time its sampling device will collect bits of dust and rock from the asteroid's surface. It will also dispatch four small probes onto the asteroid's surface. Hayabusa2 will head back home in December 2019, arriving at Earth with its precious samples a year later.

The Ryugu asteroid has progressively come into focus over the past several days, revealing a shape akin to a diamond or a spinning top. It's bulging at the equator, and craters are clearly visible, as are chunks of large rocks.

Ryugu is spinning very slowly, about once every 7.5 hours, which is good news for the mission. For JAXA mission planners, the challenge now is to figure out the best spot for Hayabusa2 to shoot its sampling device - a copper "impactor" - into the asteroid.

"We have an impactor which will create a small crater on the surface of Ryugu," Makoto Yoshikawa, Hayabusa2's mission manager, told the BBC.

"Maybe in spring next year, we will try to make a crater... then our spacecraft will try to reach into the crater to get the subsurface material."

By studying the bits and pieces that make up Ryugu, scientists are hoping to gain some important insights into the composition of the early Solar System and the conditions that gave rise to life on Earth. Asteroids are ancient objects, often containing traces of water and organic (or carbon-rich) materials.

But that's for a later day. For now, let's celebrate today's very important milestone.

[MIKA27]

GLENGLASSAUGH’S $9,000 51-YEAR-OLD SINGLE MALT WHISKY IS COMING TO AUSTRALIA

Australia’s taste for luxury whisky hasn’t gone unnoticed with Glenglassaugh announcing 10 bottles of its coveted 51-year-old single malt whisky is heading to local soil this August. The liquid gold has been sitting in cask 3301 in Glenglassaugh’s coastal warehouses at Portsoysince since 1963 before it was handpicked by the whisky maker’s previous Master Distiller, Billy Walker, for cask-strength bottling. 

Today it stands as one of the oldest casks in Glenglassaugh’s inventory to bear the Scottish distillery’s unique highland coastal character. Keen? You better fork out the cash for this exceptional dram. $9K

[MIKA27]

New Red-Band ‘Mile 22’ Trailer Is Somewhat Violent

Mile 22 opens in theaters on August 17th.

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DON WAGYU A5 OZAKI STEAK SANDWICH

The Japanese Sando — a sandwich where the beef is breaded and flash-fried to give it a crispy exterior and soft interior — is quickly gaining popularity in the States. When it opens tomorrow, Wall Street-based Don Wagyu will be serving the most expensive version in America. The nearly $200 sandwich starts with a five-ounce cut of wagyu, sourced from a single farm and aged 36 months. It's then breaded with panko, fried, and placed on crustless squares of white bread. Joined on the menu by two more affordable options, it's served with nori-dusted fries and housemade pickles and is best washed down with one of Don's available whiskeys, sakes, or beers.

[Fuzz]

6 hours ago, MIKA27 said:

DON WAGYU A5 OZAKI STEAK SANDWICH

The Japanese Sando — a sandwich where the beef is breaded and flash-fried to give it a crispy exterior and soft interior — is quickly gaining popularity in the States. When it opens tomorrow, Wall Street-based Don Wagyu will be serving the most expensive version in America. The nearly $200 sandwich starts with a five-ounce cut of wagyu, sourced from a single farm and aged 36 months. It's then breaded with panko, fried, and placed on crustless squares of white bread. Joined on the menu by two more affordable options, it's served with nori-dusted fries and housemade pickles and is best washed down with one of Don's available whiskeys, sakes, or beers.

Correction. It is a wagyu katsu sando. A "Japanese Sando" is a Japanese sandwich, which could literally be anything. Those wacky Japanese have so many different kinds, some that would leave you scratching your head... but also salivating at the same time.

[MIKA27]

The Futuristic Skyscrapers Of 1923 Were Supposed To Solve Traffic, But Had A Notable Lack Of Dwayne Johnsons

The skyscraper of the future, as imagined in the July 1923 issue of the magazine Science and Invention 

We’re still waiting on our flying cars. But back in 1923, the magazine Science and Invention assured readers they were just around the corner. And to top it off, the buildings of tomorrow would be built to “solve” the traffic problem.

An article in the July 1923 issue of Science and Invention highlighted the ideas of New York architect and engineer Harvey W. Corbett. As president of the Architectural League of New York, Corbett insisted that skyscrapers would continue to stretch toward the heavens. And flying cars would enable the people who lived and worked in these skyscrapers to come and go as they pleased.

Skyscrapers were surprisingly controversial at the turn of the 20th century. Driven by concerns over fires, some cities adopted stringent anti-skyscraper laws in an attempt to save lives. And we can still see the effects of those laws today. Sydney, Australia passed the Height of Buildings Act of 1912 after a 14-story building was erected in the city in 1911. The law restricted new buildings to 150 feet (or about 13 stories tall) because firefighters were unable to reach much higher than that. This caused Sydney to grow outward rather than upward. The law wasn’t amended to allow taller buildings until 1957.

It wasn’t just concerns over fires. Los Angeles adopted a height restriction of 150 feet in 1906 after San Francisco’s horrific earthquake caused as many as 3,000 casualties earlier that year.

But the most ambitious architects and urban planners seemingly didn’t think about things like fire safety and earthquakes. They were apparently much more concerned with the latest technologies and the construction of towering buildings that were supposed to make cities like New York look hyper-modern.

Detail of a 1923 illustration showing the skyscraper of tomorrow (Science and Invention) (Illustration: Novak Archive)

The drawing above showed how the skyscraper of tomorrow would reach 304.80m and make the Woolworth building (at just 241.40m) look small. The skyscraper of tomorrow not only had height, it also had girth. When the Woolworth building opened in April of 1913 it was the tallest building in the world. President Wilson famously pushed a button in Washington D.C. to help illuminate the building on April 24th to show it off to the world.

The futuristic skyscraper that was imagined in Science and Invention had all the modern conveniences. As you can see, the flying cars of the future could land on the top of skyscrapers because each building would be fitted with “landing platforms.” But that wasn’t the only way the New York of tomorrow would benefit. The article predicted that there would be three or more levels of traffic.

Detail of a 1923 illustration showing the underground network of transportation in the future (Science and Invention) (Illustration: Novak Archive)

From the July 1923 issue of Science and Invention:

Quote

 

No doubt in the future we will have at least three levels of traffic; one underground, that on the surface, and another above the surface. The underground arteries of traffic will comprise subways, under-river tubes, etc.

Motor trucks and other vehicles will have possession of the street or ground level with passageways through arches built under the large buildings, while an elevated roadway above the street level proper, will accommodate pleasure vehicles and pedestrian traffic.

 

The designers who dreamed of tomorrow’s skyscrapers looked to the sky and also underground. New Yorkers of today, plagued by a dysfunctional subway system, probably hope that city and state leaders would revive such old fashioned concerns.

People here in the year 2018 are still imagining what the skyscrapers of the future will look like. As it happens, the Dwayne Johnson action flick Skyscraper opens on Friday. The physics may not add up for much of it, but neither did the physics of 1923, when these flying cars of tomorrow were promised to soon be filling the sky like mosquitoes.

[MIKA27]

See The South Pole Message That Alerted Astronomers To The Cosmic-Ray-Spewing Blazar

Scientists just made a huge announcement: Telescopes around the world recorded a source of mysterious, ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, the highest-energy particles that hit the Earth. It all started with a text message.

The recent discovery has, at least partially, solved a hundred-year-mystery—the identity of a space object that could possibly send particles with energies a billion times higher than the particles produced at the Large Hadron Collider. The answer was more or less what scientists had predicted it would be, but finding the answer was an enormous feat that required international coordination. It relied on a worldwide notification system that is used in case of incredible space events. It was a feat of this new era of “multimessenger astronomy.”

“We’re fortunate to live in an era when we can make discoveries that simply would have been impossible only a decade ago,” France Córdova, director of the National Science Foundation, told Gizmodo in an email.

Multimessenger astronomy means exactly what it says—astronomy that uses information conveyed by multiple kinds of messengers. “Light,” or electromagnetic radiation, comes in many forms, like gamma rays, x-rays, ultraviolet, visible light, infrared, microwave, and radio waves. This has traditionally been astronomers’ only tool to peer into the cosmos, but light alone can only tell us so much. Today’s discovery adds a second “messenger” to the toolbox: a very high-energy neutrino. Like light, neutrinos can travel in a straight line through the Universe without being bent by magnetic fields, but single high-energy neutrino that sparked today’s announcement added extra information, since only the mysterious, ultra-high-energy cosmic rays could have produced it.

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory spotted and calculated the path travelled by the neutrino on September 22, 2017, and its computers immediately realised the detection was noteworthy.

“IceCube decides what’s worth sending it out,” Anna Franckowiak, staff scientist at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron in Germany, told Gizmodo. “We send only the most interesting events, which usually means they’re high-energy events. That means there’s a high probability that it’s really a cosmic neutrino, and isn’t just a neutrino produced in the atmosphere.”

The experiment sent a notice over the Gamma-ray Coordinates Network (GCN) 43 seconds later to anyone signed up to receive these alerts. Four hours later, a more detailed message went out over the same network. The circulars and notifications can either come immediately over networks, or can come a few seconds after their issuance via text message or email. The second alert read:

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On 22 Sep, 2017 IceCube detected a track-like, very-high-energy event with a high probability of being of astrophysical origin. The event was identified by the Extremely High Energy (EHE) track event selection. The IceCube detector was in a normal operating state. EHE events typically have a neutrino interaction vertex that is outside the detector, produce a muon that traverses the detector volume, and have a high light level (a proxy for energy).

After the initial automated alert, more sophisticated reconstruction algorithms have been applied offline, with the direction refined to:

Date: 22 Sep, 2017

Time: 20:54:30.43 UTC

RA: 77.43 deg (-0.80 deg/+1.30 deg 90% PSF containment) J2000

Dec: 5.72 deg (-0.40 deg/+0.70 deg 90% PSF containment) J2000

We encourage follow-up by ground and space-based instruments to help identify a possible astrophysical source for the candidate neutrino.

 

Soon after, a few observatories, including the ANTARES neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean sea, the MAGIC Telescopes on the Canary Islands, the High-Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) in Namibia, and the Earth-orbiting Swift X-ray telescope, followed up with varying levels of success, issuing update notices of their own.

The eureka moment came on September 28, when scientists realised that the Fermi Large Area Telescope, which surveys the skies for gamma rays, found a potential source in their catalogue that matched the direction from which the neutrino arrived. That source was a blazar, the particle-spewing, supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy TXS 0506+056. They published an Astronomer’s Telegram documenting the source. Others began to observe the black hole based on this info, thus completing the multimessenger story.

If this story sounds familiar, it’s pretty similar what happened during the first discovery of two neutron stars colliding, which was announced to much fanfare last October. Gravitational wave observatories like LIGO also issue alerts over the GCN, but observatories must sign a contract to view them.

This type of multimessenger science is very new. After the 1987 supernova SN 1987A, this is perhaps only the third major multimessenger discovery, after the colliding neutron stars. It’s taken a lot of work to get to this point.

“These improbable impacts are what we’re focused on today, but think about everything the research community had to do to make the detection of neutrinos possible,” Córdova said. “We had to build a facility at the South Pole and equip it with incredibly sensitive instruments. We had to link that facility to global satellites. And hundreds of scientists had to put in years of work, building on decades of breakthroughs made by other researchers.”

Multimessenger astrophysics is a “big idea” that will guide the National Science Foundation’s long-term plan. It hopes to see more multimessenger proposals from the astrophysics community. “But on top of proposals we need funds,” NSF program director Vladimir Papitashvili told Gizmodo. There’s no getting around it, the government helps fund these big projects.

But for now, we’ve got the GCN and Astronomer’s Telegram linking together telescopes and observatories across the world, sending texts and emails in order to push forward the most exciting things happening in astronomy.

[MIKA27]

Mansion From Blade Runner And House On Haunted Hill Goes Up For Sale In Los Angeles

One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most famous mansions, known as the Ennis House, is up for sale in east Los Angeles. And even if you don’t know the house, you certainly know the movies that the famous building has appeared in, including Blade Runner (1982), The House on Haunted Hill (1959) and The Replacement Killers (1998). The 560m2 house can be yours for the low price of just $US23 million ($31 million).

Finished in 1924 and drawing inspiration from ancient Mayan temples, the house was built for Charles and Mabel Ennis, owners of a men’s clothing store. The house was sold to radio announcer John Nesbitt in 1940 and had roughly eight different owners through the rest of the century.

The house’s unique appearance has made it a favourite for filmmakers in Hollywood, first appearing on screen in the 1933 film Female. Fans of the 1982 sci-fi classic Blade Runner will recognise the house as Rick Deckard’s apartment, a dark and moody place. The film, directed by Ridley Scott, used the spacious interiors in a strangely claustrophobic way.

As K.R. McNamara explains in the 1997 paper, “Blade Runner’s Post-Individual Workspace”, the Mayan design of the house is used ingeniously in the futuristic movie to blend with the “pyramid-style skyscrapers” of the film to “suggest that the city is a collective memoir of the thirties turn-of-the-millennium city”. Which is to say that Blade Runner’s visual style succeeds by drawing from the ancient to create a new future.

Black Rain (1989), another neo-noir directed by Ridley Scott, used the Ennis House’s interiors as a building in Osaka, Japan. Again, the desire was to create something mysterious and almost otherworldly about the atmosphere.

The 1959 horror movie House on Haunted Hill, starring Vincent Price, also used the house’s weird allure to full effect, though that film only used the Ennis House’s exteriors. The interiors for the classic William Castle-directed shocker were shot on a set, but you can feel the creepy 1920s vibe throughout. Viewers can tell there’s something not quite right about this house from the opening shots.

Today, the house doesn’t look so spooky in the light of day, though that’s probably up for debate:

And the house’s history isn’t just gloom and doom. The 2003 documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself points out that the house has also been popular in music videos from the 1980s and '90s. The music video for 3T’s song “Why” featuring Michael Jackson utilised the house, along with other videos from people such as Ricky Martin.

As Variety notes, the house was badly damaged in the 1994 earthquake and became terribly neglected until it was purchased in 2011 by billionaire Ron Burkle. The house has since been recognised both locally and nationally as a historic site and restored to its former glory.

The house is on the National Register of Historical Places, and when people can’t shoot their movie or TV show in the real thing they’ll often copy its style, as you might see in shows such as Game of Thrones.

If you have an extra $31 million just lying around, the house is being sold by both Branden and Rayni Williams of Hilton & Hyland and Ron De Salvo at Coldwell Banker.

[MIKA27]

Ant-Man's Michael Peña Saves The World In Netflix's First Extinction Trailer

 

Night after night, a father has terrible dreams. Dreams of death. Invasion. Destruction. Then those dreams start to become reality, and he’ll stop at nothing to save his family. That’s the plot of Extinction, a new Netflix sci-fi film that just got its first trailer.

The film is set to start streaming on July 27. The father is played by Ant-Man and the Wasp’s Michael Peña, and he’s joined by Luke Cage himself, Mike Colter, and Lizzy Caplan (who, oddly enough, played a SHIELD agent one time) in the alien invasion film. Here’s the trailer.

 

 

[MIKA27]

Discovery Of 14,000-Year-Old Toast Suggests Bread Can Be Added To Palaeo Diet

Archaeologists have uncovered the earliest evidence of bread-making at a site in northeastern Jordan. Dating back some 14,400 years, the discovery shows that ancient hunter-gatherers were making and eating bread 4000 years before the Neolithic era and the introduction of agriculture. So much for the “Palaeo Diet” actually being a thing.

Bread-making predates agriculture, according to a new study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That’s quite the revelation, given the conventional thinking that bread only appeared after the advent of farming.

The discovery means that ancient hunter-gatherers were using the wild ancestors of domesticated cereals, such as wild einkorn and club-rush tubers, to make flatbread-like food products.

What’s more, the new paper shows that bread had already become an established food staple prior to the Neolithic period and the Agricultural Revolution.

A research team led by Amaia Arranz-Otaegu from the University of Copenhagen analysed fragments of charred food remains found at a Natufian hunter-gatherer site in northeastern Jordan called Shubayqa 1.

The remains of the burnt bread, found in two ancient basalt-stone fireplaces, were radiocarbon dated to 14,400 years ago, give or take a couple of hundred years. This corresponds to the early Natufian period and the Upper Palaeolithic era. The Natufian culture lived in the Levant, a region in the Eastern Mediterranean, from around 14,600 to 11,600 years ago.

Prior to this discovery, the oldest known bread came from the 9500-year-old settlement of Çatalhöyük, located in Anatolia, Turkey. Çatalhöyük dates back to the Neolithic era, a time when ancient humans had already settled in permanent villages and developed farming.

The bread found at Shubayqa 1 pre-dates the Çatalhöyük bread by around 5000 years, and it’s now the oldest example of bread-making in the archaeological record.

Scanning electron microscope images of bread-like remains from Shubayqa 1.

For the study, the researchers analysed 24 charred fragments of bread from the Shubayqa 1 excavation site using a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Using SEM, the researchers were able to obtain the high-resolution images required for studying the fine structures embedded within the charred materials. These images were compared to experimentally produced bread, allowing the researchers to identify the archaeological specimens.

SEM analysis is quite time consuming, and the researchers only managed to analyse 24 fragments out of a total of 600 pieces that appear to be bread or bread-like remains.

Tobias Richter, an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen and a co-author of the new study, said the discovery was surprising on a number of levels.

“First, that bread predates the advent of agriculture and farming — it was always thought that it was the other way round,” Richter told Gizmodo.

“Second, that the bread was of high quality, since it was made using quite fine flour. We didn’t expect to find such high-quality flour this early on in human history.

“Third, the hunter-gatherer bread we have does not only contain flour from wild barley, wheat and oats, but also from tubers, namely tubers from water plants (sedges). The bread was therefore more of a multi-grain-tuber bread, rather than a white loaf.”

Richter said the method used for identifying the bread fragments is new, and that other researchers should use the technique to re-analyse older archaeological collections to search for even earlier examples of bread production.

“I think it’s quite important to recognise that bread is such a hugely important staple in the world today,” said Richter.

“That it can now be shown to have started a lot earlier than previously thought is quite intriguing, I think, and may help to explain the huge variety of different types of breads that have evolved in different cultures around the world over the millennia.

Dorian Fuller, an archaeobotanist at the University College London and a co-author of the new study, said it’s highly plausible that hunter-gatherers were able to make bread without the benefit of agriculture.

“Bread at it its most basic is flour, water and dry heat. The flour should also ideally include some protein, such as gluten, that occurs in wheat to hold the batter together and provide elasticity,” Fuller told Gizmodo. “So this requires a suitable flour, and wild wheats and barleys contain gluten.”

In addition, the necessary equipment to produce flour, such as stone tools to pulverise grains, were already in existence by the time this ancient bread was made, as some of the oldest examples date back 25,000 years or more. “So the fact that people would have ground stuff to process it is not surprising,” said Richter.

Lastly, the third element to making bread — dry, baking heat — would likely exist in a culture without ceramics, which describes this particular culture at the time.

Ehud Weiss, an archaeobotanist at Bar-Ilan University who wasn’t involved with the new study, says the new paper describes a significant discovery.

“One of the interesting aspects of reconstructing our ancestors’ diet is the technology they used,” Weiss told Gizmodo. “Here, it is clear these people grinded and mixed several types of foodstuff, cereals, and root food to create a baked product.”

Weiss says it’s important to remember that caloric return was a major issue with hunter-gatherers’ diet, especially in challenging environments. Ground and baked foodstuffs have a higher glycemic index (GI) than raw food, where GI is a relative ranking of carbohydrates in foods according to how they affect blood glucose levels.

“Today, we use GI as a tool to avoid food that will add too much sugars to our blood stream,” said Weiss.

“For hunter-gatherers who struggle in hostile environments to gain more energy from their food, the situation is, of course, the opposite. The ability to increase the caloric return from their food is, therefore, an important step in the development of human nutrition.”

Francesca Balossi Restelli from the Sapienza University of Rome, also not involved with the new study, wasn’t surprised by the finding, saying a discovery of this nature was expected.

“Certainly, finding charred remains of flour products is the much-needed demonstration of what the large quantity of mortars, pestles and moulders were already showing us,” Restelli told Gizmodo.

“If people were cultivating plants, if they had mortars, then they must have been baking ‘bread-like’ foods. The discovery described in the PNAS article is thus certainly extremely meaningful, but not totally unexpected. It is very nice news, as it confirms today’s trend of thought and research.”

University of Cambridge archaeobotanist Martin Jones is excited about the new paper, both for what it tells about about the dietary habits of palaeolithic humans, and in the use of a new technique to study the bits and pieces of plant material left behind by ancient humans.

“If we listen to many of the familiar narratives about how humans ate before the advent of agriculture, we hear a great deal about animals, and a bit about seafood,” Jones told Gizmodo. “We have got nowhere near as far with understanding how they worked with plants, and it is beginning to come clear that plant-based cuisine is very old indeed, and very significant.”

“Looking at pulverised plant material is still quite novel,” Jones said. “We archaeobotanists understandably feel more confident about identifying plants before they have been mashed to a pulp. But the SEMs here show how much cellular pattern is still discernible, and how fruitful it can be to persevere and give it a closer look.”

As a final note, this study reminds us, yet again, that the so-called Palaeo Diet isn’t an actual thing, or at the very least, not a coherent, unified diet that existed across multiple populations of palaeolithic peoples.

What’s more, this study doesn’t tell us which particular ancestral diet was the “healthiest”, and it’s doubtful that archaeology can tells us anything meaningful in this regard.

When it comes to a balanced, healthy diet, you should listen to the experts: Eat a lot of vegetables and fruit, choose whole grains, get your protein, and avoid highly-processed foods, especially those with added sugar.

 

[MIKA27]

An Earthquake Damaged A Pyramid In Mexico And Exposed An Aztec Temple Hidden Below

On 19 September 2017, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck central Mexico, killing nearly 370 people. But something good has come from this tragic event: The quake damaged an ancient pyramid, revealing a previously unknown Aztec temple underneath.

While checking for structural damage inflicted by the 2017 earthquake, archaeologists with Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) made a remarkable discovery: A temple located about 2m below the top of the Teopanzolco pyramid, a structure the Aztecs dedicated to Tláloc, the Aztec rain god.

It was not uncommon for ancient cultures to build upon older structures, but in this case, the archaeologists had no idea a temple was located within.

While performing their survey, the INAH archaeologists noticed that some stones on the top of the pyramid were loose. The hidden temple revealed itself as the scientists were searching for firmer terrain.

An INAH team member inspects the ancient temple.

The newly-discovered temple measures about 6m x 4m, and it dates back to the Middle Postclassic period, sometime between 1150 to 1200 AD. The temple was built by the Tlahuica culture, one of several Aztec peoples living in central Mexico shortly before and during the time of the Spanish conquest, which started in 1521.

The temple and the Teopanzolco pyramid built upon it, which dates back to about 1300 AD, are located in Morelos state, about 70km south of Mexico City. The newly-discovered temple is quite possibly the oldest evidence of human occupation at the Morelos site — an important finding that represents a very early stage of the Aztec period.

“Despite what the earthquake meant, we have to be grateful that this natural phenomenon revealed this important structure, which changes the dating of this archaeological site,” said Isabel Campos Goenaga, director of the INAH Morelos Center, at a press conference held earlier this week.

The walls of the temple were found next to the remains of a stuccoed column that once supported a roof. Intense humidity has obliterated most of the stucco walls, but the archaeologists managed to salvage some fragments for study.

The INAH archaeologists say it likely represents the first constructive phase of the Teopanzolco pyramid, predating the famous Templo Mayor, which dates back to the Late Postclassic period (1200 to 1521 AD).

Remnants of the ancient temple beneath the top of the pyramid

“The internal temple that we found in that sense is the oldest at the pyramid of Teopanzolco,” explained INAH archaeologist Barbara Koniecza. “We have already detected two construction stages, and where we stand is considered to be built in the oldest phase before the second phase of the Templo Mayor.”

Sadly, the 7.1 magnitude quake damaged the Teopanzolco pyramid, along with two temples. The floor of both shrines have sunk, and are now deformed, making the structures potentially unstable. More work is needed to assess the damage and to devise potential restoration strategies. Until then, the site, which has been closed to the public since last September, will remain off limits to tourists.

[MIKA27]

CUDA UNDERWATER JETPACK

If you’re looking for a new lake toy to propel your adventures this summer, look no further than the CUDA Underwater Jetback. Built to imbue its user with the underwater agility of Aquaman (or Mermaid Man), the CUDA Underwater Jetpack is incredibly fun to play with – and if nautical nonsense isn’t your wish – it’s an excellent way to snorkel and explore the waters.

Designed by student Archie O’Brien, the Jet Pack allows users to glide through water weightlessly. Wanting to improve upon the unwieldy, often quite heavy underwater propulsion devices on the market today, O’Brien designed the CUDA with aqua-dynamic properties. Using 3D printing, O’Brien manufactured the CUDA to be incredibly light and compact, so that you’ll encounter as little water resistance as possible wearing the CUDA. Built with rechargeable batteries, the CUDA moves through a flow system, in which water enters an upper valve intake and is pushed through stator fins, which reduce radial flow and allow you to go faster and navigate with ease. Smart tech infused in the CUDA warns users when their battery gets too low to return to their base and charge back up. O’Brien plans to add more tech and refine the CUDA before he brings it to market, a time which we await with much anticipation.

 

[MIKA27]

LED ZEPPELIN COFFEE TABLE BOOK

With Jimmy Page’s scintillating guitar solos, Robert Plants sultry, siren-like vocals, John Bonham’s earth-shaking drumming, and John Paul Jones’ bass-lines and keys holding it all together, Led Zeppelin laid conquest to the world of rock n’ roll from 1969-1980. During that epic era, the supergroup released some of the greatest albums of all time. For the first time, previously unseen photos and stories unheard will be made available in the new Led Zeppelin coffee table book.

Officially titled Led Zeppelin by Led Zeppelin, the illustrated photo book was created with full collaboration from the three remaining members, Plant, Page and Jones. This 400-page volume follows the band of Brits as they tour the world, debauching and inspiring the world around them. Never before seen pictures lend insight into the band’s state at certain times – a lot of glazed eyes and slack jaws can be seen in the preview. Any true Zeppelin fan must get their hands on this treasury. Pre-order today, and have the book by October 2, 2018.

[MIKA27]

OMEGA SPEEDMASTER ULTRAMAN WATCH

Omega’s 1967 Moonwatch appeared in the Japanese TV show Return of Ultraman as part of a monster-fighting kit, and it’s been sought after by serious watch collectors ever since. Today, Omega is bringing back that popular chronograph in the form of an exclusive Speedy Tuesday model.

This Speedster has the same shape and shade of orange as the original, but this time there is a new black stripe on the seconds hand that mirrors the suits of the TV show’s Monster Attack Team. In the show, Ultraman was only able to fight in superhero-mode for three minutes, so the first three minutes of the 3 o’clock sundial are highlighted in orange. Looking at the 9 o’clock subdial, you’ll see the silhouette of Ultraman himself, which can be illuminated with the UV light at the end of the strap changer. For a classic touch, there’s a vintage Omega logo on the dial and also a dot over 90, paying tribute to other classic Speedster models. Along with those retro touches, this quality chronograph has a 42mm stainless steel case, hesalite crystal, an anodized aluminum bezel and a NATO strap. Powered by the Omega Calibre 1861, an iconic movement with space credentials, this timepiece is as functional as it is fashionable. As a cherry on top, the caseback features some neat engraving, including the words “The First Watch Worn On The Moon.” It comes in a hexagonal box, which is a tribute to the futuristic table in the show, and is limited to 2,012 pieces. $7,100.00

 

[MIKA27]

AIRSHIP002 AIRBNB IN SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS

The Scottish Highlands are majestic lands, situated above the Atlantic Ocean. The area, while scarcely populated by people, is instead populated by towering mountains, yawning fields of grass, placid lochs – and this tiny, submarine-like home located by the Isle of Mull, called the Airship 002.

This beautiful home – where you can plant yourself, as you explore and hike throughout the sea of grass and immense mountain range – was designed by Roderick James Architects to evoke a sentiment of nautical nostalgia. Built in the shape of a submarine/ship, the insulated aluminum pod allows natural light to bathe its interior. The west wing of the domed domicile provides a glorious view towards unspoilt bounty of the Ardnamurchan Peninsula and the Atlantic Ocean. The kitchen is outfitted to look like a cross between retro American diner and ship galley, and the East Wing looks out onto the Sound of Mull, towards Tobermory (the Isle of Mull). With such splendid and expansive views, this contemplative home is the perfect place to mull things over.