Quote of the Day: “Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.” – Voltaire
Photo by: Kenny Eliason (cropped / colorized)
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Astronomers have found hundreds of mysterious filaments pointing towards the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, which could uncover fresh secrets about the dark abyss at the centre of our galaxy.
The strange horizontal strands are 25,000 light years from Earth and have been likened to spokes spreading out on a wheel.
“It was a surprise to suddenly find a new population of structures that seem to be pointing in the direction of the black hole,” said Professor Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, of Northwestern University.
“I was actually stunned when I saw these. We had to do a lot of work to establish that we weren’t fooling ourselves. And we found that these filaments are not random but appear to be tied to the outflow of our black hole.
“By studying them, we could learn more about the black hole’s spin and accretion disk orientation. It is satisfying when one finds order in a middle of a chaotic field of the nucleus of our galaxy.”
Known as Sagittarius A*, the black hole is a staggering four million times the mass of our Sun.
Positioned radially, the filaments measure less than 10 light years in length and look like the dots and dashes of Morse code, punctuating only one side of Sagittarius A*.
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The new discoveries are being made possible by enhanced technology, particularly from the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory’s (SARAO) MeerKAT telescope.
To uncover the filaments, estimated to be about six million years old, the researchers used a technique to remove the background and smooth the noise from images to isolate them from surrounding structures.
“The new MeerKAT observations have been a game changer,” said Prof. Yusef-Zadeh, lead author of the paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. “The advancement of technology and dedicated observing time have given us new information. It is really a technical achievement from radio astronomers.”
He believes the filaments, pointing radially toward the black hole, appear to be tied to activities in the galactic center.
They appear to emit thermal radiation, accelerating material in a molecular cloud. There are several hundred vertical compared to just a few hundred horizontal.
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The new discovery is filled with unknowns and work to unravel its mysteries has just begun. For now, he can only consider a plausible explanation about the new population’s mechanisms and origins.
“We think they must have originated with some kind of outflow from an activity that happened a few million years ago.
“It seems to be the result of an interaction of that outflowing material with objects near it. Our work is never complete. We always need to make new observations and continually challenge our ideas and tighten up our analysis.”
Black holes are formed when a dying star collapses inward under the pressure of its own weight. The pull of gravity is so strong that even light can’t escape. This is what makes them invisible. This leads to a supernova, a star’s extremely powerful explosion.
Supermassive black holes can be billions the size of our sun and astronomers believe they can be found at the centre of all large galaxies.
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Expert Chris Sim, who cooks community meals for more than 2,000 people every year, says hosts need to learn to delegate, not sweat the small stuff and create a meal ‘timeline’.
He honed his expert know-how for putting on a foodie event by volunteering in the UK with FoodCycle for the last six years. The charity aims to reduce food poverty and social isolation with community meals—and Chris transforms surplus food into restaurant-standard meals, inspired by cuisines from around the world.
Much like the contestants on Top Chef, when Chris and his fellow volunteers turn up each Saturday, they have no idea what surplus ingredients they will receive until they enter their community kitchen. They then only have three hours to create three courses for 40-50 guests.
Pre-planning is essential when you cook for a big party. Creating a timeline of preparation can help create a process that should get everything served on time. The timeline could include everything from when the food needs to go into the oven to dressing the table, chopping and food preparation, and chilling the wine.
“When you are preparing food and a lovely occasion for many people, as soon as you relinquish a little bit of control, things tend to run a lot smoother,” said the chef from London, England.
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“From the outset, pull in helpers and give a few tasks for others to own while you can focus on what you’re best at.
Sim’s dinner party advice comes as a new poll of 2,000 adults found 72% of people enjoy hosting dinner parties.
The survey from OnePoll, also asked what qualities make a good host or hostess and 74% believed ‘being welcoming’ was important. Likewise, 64% said ‘being relaxed’ was crucial. Being attentive was most important for over half of respondents.
Not surprisingly, when it comes to hosting a great dinner party, the quality of food is a top trait for 57%.
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The poll was commissioned by the community dining charity, FoodCycle, which hopes to rally home chefs and dinner party hosts to help meet their target of engaging 10,000 volunteers.
They found that 23% would like to extend their hosting or cooking skills by sharing them with the local community.
“Over the last year, we’ve seen a 59% increase in the number of community meals being served,” said CEO Mary McGrath. “Volunteers Week, which started June 1, presents the perfect time for people to get more involved.”
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Chris’s Top Tips for Hosting the Perfect Dinner Party:
A 98-year-old dementia patient and veteran of World War II got to relive his career by riding in a retro ambulance and donning the old uniform—which opened the floodgates of precious memories.
Albert Gibbs, who worked on ambulances in London for a quarter-century, was visited by two paramedics in a 1960s ambulance, wearing familiar gray uniforms—just like the ones he used.
They were dispatched to a care home in Essex where Gibbs lives, so the great-grandfather could relive his days as a medic.
Paramedics Craig Henty and Terence Thomson drove up in an original 1967 Morris Wadhams ambulance, complete with period uniforms, that instantly took Gibbs right back to the old days when he was based in East London.
“I wore the same uniform and the same hat,” he exclaimed, as his memories sparked details.
“I recognize your badge. It’s from the north-east sector, where I used to work. I was stationed at Ilford, but sometimes also worked in Romford.”
He also recalled some important moments from his 25-year career, saying, “I delivered five babies and saved a person who fell under a train.
Elaine Dettmar, Gibbs’ daughter, said: “That was a huge part of my dad’s life – it was moving to help him relive it.
“As he talked and engaged, more memories were coming out.” (See short video below…)
Before visiting, Craig and Terence researched the archives from Albert’s time at the Service through its Historic Collection and traced thank you letters from patients that Albert had cared for and photos, too.
The head nurse at the Elizabeth House Care Home, Tracy McGuinness, said many dementia sufferers can benefit from visual and sensory cues to stimulate their brain and trigger memories of their lives—which keeps their brain engaged and can reduce cognitive decline.
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The pictures included images from a work holiday that Albert organized to Spain.
“I had a holiday club that people called ‘Gibbs Tours’, and I once arranged a weekend in Benidorm and got 43 people to go, including ambulance workers, nurses, doctors, and their families,” he said.
Gibbs also had a cheeky, mischievous side.
“I had a good time and a lot of laughs at the service, especially when I rang the ambulance bell on the Woolwich ferry.
“We weren’t allowed to do that, but I did it once and then sped down the ferry. It got me into some trouble.”
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He became a medic in 1965 and joined a new London-wide service that was formed when nine existing ambulance corps merged, uniting nearly 1,000 vehicles and 2,500 staff. Known today as ‘London Ambulance Service’, it is the busiest emergency ambulance service in the world.
Craig Henty, London Ambulance Service paramedic and head of Historic Collections, said: “I sat with Albert in the back of the ambulance for a chat and it felt as if we had just finished a job together.
“His mannerism and familiarity with the vehicle are classic of someone who works in an ambulance. He even rested his feet on the rail in front of him and that’s exactly what an ambulance crew would do.
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“I was amazed to see that the experience brought him right back.”
You can donate to the Historic Collection—which includes horse carriages and blitz ambulances from the Second World War, and is maintained entirely by volunteers—by visiting their website. The uniforms and vehicles are available for hire to film/TV crews, weddings, funerals, and other events.
DON’T FORGET to Share The Sweet Service to Inspire Others on Social Media…
Our partner Rob Brezsny provides his weekly wisdom to enlighten our thinking and motivate our mood. Rob’s Free Will Astrology, is a syndicated weekly column appearing in over a hundred publications. He is also the author of Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How All of Creation Is Conspiring To Shower You with Blessings. (A free preview of the book is available here.)
Here is your weekly horoscope…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY – Week of June 3, 2023
Copyright by Rob Brezsny, FreeWillAstrology.com
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
I am weary of gurus who tell us the ego is bad and must be shamed. In my view, we need a strong and healthy ego to fuel our quest for meaning. In that spirit and in accordance with astrological omens, I designate June as Celebrate Your Ego Month for you Geminis. You have a mandate to unabashedly embrace the beauty of your unique self. I hope you will celebrate and flaunt your special gifts. I hope you will honor your distinctive desires as the treasures they are. You are authorized to brag more than usual!
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
One study reveals that British people own a significant amount of clothing they never wear. Other research suggests that the average American woman has over a hundred items of clothing but considers just 10 percent of them to be “wearable.” If your relationship to your wardrobe is similar, Cancerian, it’s a favorable time to cull unused, unliked, and unsuitable stuff. You would also benefit from a comparable approach to other areas of your life. Get rid of possessions, influences, and ideas that take up space but serve no important purpose and are no longer aligned with who you really are.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
In July 1969, Leo astronaut Neil Armstrong was the first human to walk on the moon. But he almost missed his chance. Years earlier, his original application to become part of NASA’s space exploration team arrived a week past the deadline. But Armstrong’s buddy, Dick Day, who worked at NASA, sneaked it into the pile of applications that had come in time. I foresee the possibility of you receiving comparable assistance, Leo. Tell your friends and allies to be alert for ways they might be able to help you with either straightforward or surreptitious moves.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
Great shearwaters are birds that travel a lot, covering 13,000 miles every year. From January to March, they breed in the South Atlantic Ocean, about halfway between Africa and South America. Around May, they fly west for a while and then head north, many of them as far as Canada and Greenland. When August comes, they head east to Europe, and later they migrate south along the coast of Africa to return to their breeding grounds. I am tempted to make this globetrotting bird your spirit creature for the next 12 months. You may be more inclined than ever before to go on journeys, and I expect you will be well rewarded for your journeys. At the very least, I hope you will enjoy mind-opening voyages in your imagination.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
One of the central myths of Western culture is the Holy Grail. For over 800 years, storytellers have spun legends about the search for a precious chalice with magical qualities, including the power to heal and offer eternal youth. Sober scholars are more likely to say that the Holy Grail isn’t an actual physical object hidden away in a cave or catacomb, but a symbol of a spiritual awakening or an enlightening epiphany. For the purposes of your horoscope, I’m going to focus on the latter interpretation. I suspect you are gearing up for an encounter with a Holy Grail. Be alert! The revelations and insights and breakthroughs could come when you least expect them.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
June is Dare to Diminish Your Pain Month for you Scorpios. I hope you will aggressively pursue measures to alleviate discomfort and suffering. To address the physical variety, how about acupuncture or massage? Or supplements like boswellia, turmeric, devil’s claw root, white willow bark, and omega-3 fatty acids? Other ideas: sunshine, heating pad, warm baths with Epsom salts, restorative sleep, and exercise that simulates natural endorphins. Please be equally dynamic in treating your emotional and spiritual pain, dear Scorpio. Solicit the help of empathetic friends. Pray and meditate. Seek out in activities that make you laugh.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
A hungry humpback whale can hold more than 15,000 gallons of water in its mouth at once—enough to fill 400 bathtubs. In a funny way, their ability reminds me of you right now. You, too, have a huge capacity for whatever you feel like absorbing and engaging with. But I suggest you choose carefully what you want to absorb and engage with. Be open and receptive to only the most high-quality stuff that will enrich your life and provide a lot of fun. Don’t get filled up with trivia and nonsense and dross.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
Funny story: A renowned Hollywood movie mogul was overheard at a dinner party regaling an aspiring actor with a long monologue about his achievements. The actor couldn’t get in a word edgewise. Finally, the mogul paused and said, “Well, enough about me. What do you think of me?” If I had been in the actor’s place, I might have said, “You, sir, are an insufferable, grandiose, and boring narcissist who pathologically overestimates your own importance and has zero emotional intelligence.” The only downside to speaking my mind like that would be that the mogul might ruin my hopes of having a career in the movie business. In the coming weeks, Capricorn, I hope you will consistently find a middle ground between telling the brazen truth to those who need to hear it and protecting your precious goals and well-being.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
When faced with important decisions, most of us benefit from calling on all forms of intelligence. Simply consulting our analytical mind is not sufficient. Nor is checking in with only our deep feelings. Even drawing from our spunky intuition alone is not adequate. We are most likely to get practical clarity if we access the guidance of our analytical mind, gut feelings, and sparkly intuition. This is always true, but it’s extra relevant now. You need to get the full blessing of the synergistic blend. PS: Ask your body to give you a few hints, too!
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
Has your intuition been nudging you to revise and refine your sense of home? Have you been reorganizing the domestic vibes and bolstering your stability? I hope so. That’s what the cosmic rhythms are inviting you to do. If you have indeed responded to the call, congratulations. Buy yourself a nice homecoming present. But if you have resisted the flow of life’s guidance, please take corrective measures. Maybe start by reorganizing the décor and furniture. Clean up festering messes. Say sweet things to your housemates and family members. Manage issues that may be restricting your love of home.
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
History tells us that Albert Einstein was a brilliant genius. After his death, the brain of the pioneer physicist was saved and studied for years in the hope of analyzing the secrets of why it produced so many great ideas. Science writer Stephen Jay Gould provided a different perspective. He said, “I am less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” I bring this to your attention, Aries, in the hope it will inspire you to pay closer attention to the unsung and underappreciated elements of your own life—both in yourself and the people around you.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
Human life sometimes features sudden reversals of fortune that may seem almost miraculous. A twist in my own destiny is an example. As an adult, I was indigent for 18 years—the most starving artist of all the starving artists I have ever known. Then, in the course of a few months, all the years I had devoted to improving my craft as a writer paid off spectacularly. My horoscope column got widely syndicated, and I began to earn a decent wage. I predict a comparable turn of events for you in the coming months, Taurus—not necessarily in your finances, but in a pivotal area of your life.
WANT MORE? Listen to Rob’s EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES, 4-5 minute meditations on the current state of your destiny — or subscribe to his unique daily text message service at: RealAstrology.com
(Zodiac images by Numerologysign.com, CC license)
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Quote of the Day: “The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious.” – John Sculley
Photo by: Mohamed Nohassi
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
A smartphone app has been developed that monitors blood pressure by using a simple and cheap 3D-printed plastic attachment that clips in front of the camera flash.
High blood pressure is an underlying trigger for many of the world’s deadliest medical conditions, and the new device, which could cost as little as 10 cents, could help make regular checks more easy, affordable, and accessible.
A key advantage is it avoids the problems of blood pressure cuffs. Using one that is too large or small, or using one incorrectly, can give inaccurate readings and thus a false sense of security, or of alarm.
A paper describing the invention was recently published in Scientific Reports, and the next steps would include making the technology more user-friendly, especially for older adults, testing its accuracy across different skin tones, and creating a more universal design.
“Because of their low cost, these clips could be handed out to anyone who needs them but cannot go to a clinic regularly,” said senior author Professor Edward Wang, director of the UC San Diego’s Digital Health Lab.
“A blood pressure monitoring clip could be given to you at your checkup, much like how you get a pack of floss and toothbrush at your dental visit.”
To measure blood pressure, the user simply presses the clip. A customized app guides them on how hard and long to push during the measurement.
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The clip features an optical design similar to that of a pinhole camera. The smartphone’s flash lights up the user’s fingertip. It’s then projected as an image of a red circle.
By looking at the size of the circle, the app can measure the amount of pressure the fingertip applies, while the brightness of the circle depicts the volume of blood going in and out, and an algorithm converts this information into systolic and diastolic blood pressure numbers.
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“Using a standard blood pressure cuff can be awkward to put on correctly, and this solution has the potential to make it easier for older adults to self-monitor blood pressure,” said co-author Dr. Alison Moore, a geriatrician at the UC San Diego School of Medicine.
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A unique opportunity for a fixer-upper is coming by way of the US General Services Administration (GSA)—6 historic American lighthouses.
Going up this year via public auction, the federal government has a unique way of ensuring lighthouses retain their historic status which can even involve auctioning them off to private citizens with an affection for the now-obsolete structures.
Lighthouses are beautiful, attractive pieces of seaside scenery, although perhaps it’s a tad difficult to explain exactly why it’s almost impossible to find someone not moved by the sight of one.
The US has hundreds of lighthouses that once ensured sailors could safely come into harbor but are now derelict since the invention of GPS technology. The GSA routinely sells off lighthouses to nonprofits interested in conservation, state and local governments, educational agencies, and even federal ones.
However if no buyers come up, the GSA will auction them off to the public at prices ranging from $10,000 to nearly $1 million, reports NPR.
Since the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act was passed in 2000 more than 150 lighthouses have been sold or handed over to various organizations. This includes 81 that are now owned by government agencies and nonprofits and another 70 that have been sold to the public.
“Costs for upkeep of lighthouses are relative to what the new owner plans to do,” the GSA states in a notice of the May 2023 “Lighthouse season”
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“A total restoration could be thousands of dollars while a simple cleaning is much less. New owners should expect to have to paint, clean, and possibly restore broken or missing items. Most lighthouses do not have any utilities, so there would be a cost associated with making the lighthouse livable.”
This year, 6 lighthouses are being placed on Notice of Availability, and 4 are going direct to public auction. Should any of the 6 not find owners, they too will be sold to the citizenry.
These include the Lynde Point Lighthouse, Old Saybrook, Connecticut; Nobska Lighthouse, Falmouth (Woods Hole), Massachusetts; Plymouth/Gurnet Lighthouse, Plymouth, Massachusetts; Warwick Neck Light, Warwick, Rhode Island; Little Mark Island and Monument, Harpswell, Maine; and Erie Harbor North Pier Lighthouse, Erie, Pennsylvania.
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Sales to the public will feature the Penfield Reef Lighthouse, Fairfield, Connecticut; Stratford Shoal Light, East Setauket, New York; Cleveland Harbor West Pierhead Light, Cleveland, Ohio; and the Keweenaw Waterway Lower Entrance Light, Chassell, Michigan.
“People really appreciate the heroic role of the solitary lighthouse keeper,” John Kelly of the GSA’s office of real property disposition told AP. “They were really the instruments to provide safe passage into some of these perilous harbors which afforded communities great opportunities for commerce, and they’re often located in prominent locations that offer breathtaking views.”
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When one is dealing with elephants, everything becomes a bit bigger, a bit more extreme—such as in this video when CPR is delivered via two veterinarians jumping up and down on the animal’s ribs like a moon bounce.
Similarly, Chhouk, an 11-year-old Asian elephant living at the Wildlife Alliance conservation organization in Cambodia, walks with a 44-pound prosthetic foot made out of recycled car tires and tow truck strapping.
Chhouk’s foot had to be amputated after it was caught in a poacher’s snare, but thanks to some $1,450 in funding every year from the Paradise Wildlife Park in the UK, the multi-ton animal gets a new prosthetic every 6-months, allowing him to walk, swim, and even run without difficulty.
“The level of care that he gets is brilliant and he has a great life now. There’s no better feeling,” said 27-year-old Cam Whitnall from England who runs the Paradise Wildlife Park and Big Cat Sanctuary with his family.
“Because he’s still growing, it needs replacing often and we’ve been sending payments to cover that. They’re made out of recycled rubber and some Velcro to tie it up,” he said. “They weigh about 20kg (44 pounds) and we actually got them to send one over and it’s sitting in my office currently.”
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Recently Cam got to visit Wildlife Alliance in Cambodia and found the whole setup for Chhouk was exceptional. The keepers use a little contraption to isolate his leg in order to attach the prosthetic, but as a video taken by Cam shows, Chhouk helps the process along as if he were a human putting on a shoe.
Nevertheless, he’s still rewarded at the end with a big juicy coconut.
WATCH the process here…
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It’s been one of the busiest and deadliest seasons for summiting The Mountain So High No Bird Can Fly Over It, also known as Mt. Everest, and if not for a 30-year-old Sherpa named Gelje, it would have become deadlier still.
Gelje Sherpa and a colleague rescued a Malaysian climber who was on the cusp of freezing to death in Everest’s “death zone” where the lack of oxygen and -30C° -22°F temperatures prohibit extended human visitation.
He found the climber around the Balcony Area, which is 27,600 feet, or 8,400 meters above sea level, clinging to a rope.
Carrying him down wrapped in a heating blanket that was strapped to Gelje’s back, the descent took over 6 hours before he found another Sherpa, Nima Tahi Sherpa, to help him. From South Col, to Camp III, they got the climber down to an area accessible by a helicopter, which evacuated him on a long-line stretcher.
“It is almost impossible to rescue climbers at that altitude,” Department of Tourism official Bigyan Koirala told Reuters. “It is a very rare operation.”
Gelje was guiding a Chinese client to the nearly 30,000-foot summit of the mountain when he spotted the Malaysian climber on the 18th of May. A devout Buddhist, Gelje convinced his client to abandon the ascent so that he could rescue the man.
“Saving one life is more important than praying at the monastery,” said Gelje.
The Sherpa are the ethnic group that lives in the mountains of Nepal, but it’s also a very common surname. A slang term for a guide, it actually simply means “Eastern people.”
The Sherpa people hold dozens of world mountain climbing records and have epigenetic adaptations and spiritual beliefs suited for living at high altitudes. All but the most experienced and veteran mountaineers will have a Sherpa guide on their way up Everest.
WATCH the story below from Reuters…
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Quote of the Day: “We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us.” – Robert R. McCammon
Photo by: Ines Kopu
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
While this old parchment page may look like one out of a wizard’s spellbook, it’s actually what scholars believe to be the world’s oldest recorded stand-up comedy routine.
In the year 1,480, a household cleric and tutor to a noble family named Richard Heege went to a feast where there was a minstrel performing a three-part act. Heege recorded as much as he could remember, opening with “By me, Richard Heege, because I was at that feast and did not have a drink.”
That is illustrative of where the story goes from there—a performance relevant to the humor enjoyed in Britain today, and one which colors the high Middle Ages as a time of artistic liberty, social mobility, and vigorous nightlife.
Heege’s booklet contains three texts gleaned from the jester’s material: a Hunting of the Hare story featuring a killer rabbit, a mock sermon in prose in which three kings eat so much that 24 bulls explode out of their stomachs and begin sword fighting, and an alliteration nonsense verse entitled The Battle of Brackonwet.
Reminiscent of Geoffrey Chaucer’s writings, or Monty Python’s killer rabbit of Caerbannog sketch in their film Monty Python and The Holy Grail, The Hunting of the Hare is a rhyming burlesque romance, meaning the frivolous is important and the serious is treated lightly.
In it, two fictional peasants get involved with a series of hijinks that includes a cany coney who kicks one of them in the head.
In The Battle of Brackonwet, Robin Hood, killer bumblebees, and jousting bears color a tale full of nonsense within what would have been Mr. Heege and the minstrel’s local neighborhood on the border of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire where Mr. Heege lived.
The texts were found in the National Library of Scotland by Dr. James Wade, of Cambridge’s English Faculty, who recently wrote a paper on them explaining that such material is extremely rare, but offers a wondrous glimpse into life not only among England’s medieval middle-class, but the skill and appreciation for minstrels.
“Here we have a self-made entertainer with very little education creating really original, ironic material. To get an insight into someone like that from this period is incredibly rare and exciting,” Dr. Wade said.
“You can find echoes of this minstrel’s humor in [today’s] shows like Mock the Week, situational comedies, and slapstick. The self-irony and making audiences the butt of the joke are still very characteristic of British stand-up comedy.”
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During the Middle Ages minstrels roamed between fairs, taverns, and baronial halls to entertain with songs and stories either across the country or along a local circuit. Many had day jobs, such as a plowman or peddler, but gigged through the nights and weekends.
“These texts remind us that festive entertainment was flourishing at a time of growing social mobility,” said Dr. Wade. “[They] give us a snapshot of medieval life being lived well.”
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“People back then partied a lot more than we do today, so minstrels had plenty of opportunities to perform. They were really important figures in people’s lives right across the social hierarchy.”
It also shows that what we sometimes think of as a society of science-denying religious tyranny created not only these talented comics but people who enjoyed their work enough to copy it down.
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Mr. Heege worked for a noble family and would have been considered right and proper, yet he appears to have had a sense of humor and to have enjoyed literature that others may have dismissed as too lowbrow to preserve.
What else can we conclude when the man committed the minstrel’s rhymes of “Drink you to me and I to you and hold your cup up high — God loves neither horse nor mare, but merry men that in the cup can stare” to memory well enough to write it down?
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In 2019, an albino giant panda was spotted in a nature reserve in Sichuan, China, and quickly made rounds on the internet as the first and only one of its kind.
Based on the footage of the animal, its gait and stature are that of a healthy young adult, GNN wrote at the time, and researchers expected it to continue thriving in the wild.
Now it’s been seen again, and this time on video. Now believed to be 5 to 6 years old and still in good health, its fur has turned the color of light honey reminiscent of Winnie the Pooh.
There were fears it might be treated as an outcast by the famously-choosy members of the species, but the footage captured by wildlife conservationists in the Wolong National Nature Reserve shows it interacting with other black and white pandas.
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Though albinism can be found throughout the animal kingdom, it’s a very rare occurrence. Albinism usually comes as a result of a genetic mutation that prevents an animal from producing melanin. Apart from being more sensitive to light, however, albinism does not affect the reproductive or physiological functions.
“The picture clearly shows the unique morphological characteristics of the panda: the hair is white, the claws are white, and the eyes are red, passing through the lush native deciduous broad-leaved forest,” the nature reserve said in a press release regarding the 2019 sighting.
WATCH the bear footage below…
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In the ultimate pump-up story, a daredevil job seeker landed a new position after jumping out of a plane with a cardboard sign asking for work.
Chris Serrano, a creative director living in Florida, filmed himself skydiving whilst holding a piece of cardboard reading ‘Open4Work.’
He posted the clip on LinkedIn with the caption: “I got laid off last week. So I will be freefalling until I find a new gig—literally.
“If you’re looking for an award-winning creative that works hard, takes risks, and knows how to pack a parachute, reach out,” his post concluded, before going viral and amassing 49,000 likes on the professional social media platform.
Serrano’s post caught the eye of Manchester-based entrepreneur Jack Peagam the Co-founder and CEO of the social app Linkup who responded to the freefalling creative with a job offer.
“I was hoping for the best, but I had no idea this little stunt would go on to be seen by so many people,” Serrano admitted.
But in a twist from the usual email or letter, Peagam responded in kind with a video of himself skydiving with a cardboard sign which read “Hey Chris, sorry 2 see you got laid off. We’ve got work 4 U”.
Fast forward two weeks and the pair of thrill-seekers have released a new video showing Serrano signing a new contract with Peagam’s Manchester-based outfit—after diving out of a plane together.
MORE EXTREME SPORTS: Watch Breathtaking Alpine Ski Run Through Forest, Ice Cave, and Rooftops By Extreme Free-Skier
“Chris’ job-seeking ad featured everything I love about creative talent—it was bold, daring, and showed him to be one of life’s risk-takers,” said Peagam. “I can’t wait to see how he can help take our thriving app to new heights… maybe into space.”
“When I lost my job, I was a bit nervous as to what could be next, but taking a leap of faith from a plane is sometimes all you can do,” admitted Serrano. “I’ve been blown away by the support from everyone who shared my video.”
Linkup launched in February 2023 with a mission to be the first major real-life social app that connects users to meet new friends with similar interests, hobbies, and passions, in real life.
WATCH them put pen to paper while freefalling on his LinkedIn here…
In California, a little dog was saved from a prowling coyote when his friend, a 10 lbs. Maltese “hero in a fur suit” summoned all his wolfish instincts to chase the predator out of his yard.
It happened in a flash; just 10 seconds as Erin Macaluso recounted on Facebook.
Coming back from a nighttime walk, she and her husband forgot to put the cover on the doggie door.
“We are super vigilant dog owners,” she wrote. “Unfortunately, on this one night, we had just taken the dogs out to go potty, and forgot to put the cover on the doggie door.”
A coyote slipped through the bars of the metal fence, and, hearing his intrusion, Macaluso’s two dogs quietly went outside to investigate the noise.
They were a 12-pound Morkie, which is a mix between a Maltese and a Yorkshire terrier, named Harley, and Vinny, an 11-year-old Maltese with just three teeth.
Californians lose hundreds of pets every year to coyote attacks. With few larger predators to keep their numbers in check, they regularly roam directly into urban and suburban areas to snatch cats and dogs.
MORE ANIMAL CAMARADERIE: Parrots Kept as Pets Were Taught to Video Call Each Other—and They Loved It
In a video posted on Facebook, security camera footage shows a little dog immediately being chased around the yard by a coyote while another beast lurks beyond the fence. Then, a white knight bolts from the house towards the coyote and scares it away.
“Our little HERO Vinny is 10 lbs, 11 yrs old, and only has 3 teeth! But he’s always been scrappy,” wrote Macaluso in celebration of her tiny dog. In the post she encourages pet owners to never let their guard down. She claims to have lived in the town of Mission Viejo, California, for 30 years without ever seeing a coyote in the yard.
If that’s true, the one time she left the doggie door unlocked, the coyotes were ready to pounce.
Harley the dog suffered major injuries but will make a full recovery, the vets said.
WATCH the video below…
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Quote of the Day: “The words you speak become the house you live in.” – Hafiz
Photo by: Amador Loureiro
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Researchers say this strange, dome-headed, bristle-bristling dino from 68 million years ago has traces of keratin, what fingernails and rhino horn are made of, sticking up from its skull.
The paleontologists who discovered the beast completed a CT scan on the partially-completed skull and revealed these keratin bristles, described as giving the animal the appearance of having a “brush cut.”
The animal is called Platytholus clemensi, and is a type of pachycephalosaur discovered in 2011 in Montana’s Hell Creek Formation. It was a plant-eating dinosaur that grew up to 15 feet long and walked on two legs.
Dinosaur skulls sport an amazing variety of bony ornaments, ranging from the horns of Triceratops and the mohawk-like crests of hadrosaurs to the bumps and knobs covering the head of Tyrannosaurus rex.
There is a theory that pachycephalosaurs bashed heads in courtship rituals much like some mammals do today. But despite a gash being discovered on the skull which had healed up, the researchers say there is no real evidence to support this, and the discovery of bristles is currently considered more like an elaborate headdress.
“We don’t know the exact shape of what was covering the dome, but it had this vertical component that we interpret as covered with keratin,” said Dr. Mark Goodwin of the University of California, Berkeley. “A bristly, flat-topped covering biologically makes sense. Animals change or use certain features, particularly on the skull, for multiple functions.”
The head wound is about half an inch deep but it could have been caused by anything from a falling rock to a chance encounter with a tree or another dinosaur.
“We see probably the first unequivocal evidence of trauma in the head of any pachycephalosaur, where the bone was actually ejected from the dome somehow and healed partially in life,” said Dr. Goodwin. “We don’t know how that was caused. It could be head-butting—we don’t dispute that.”
However his colleague and co-author of the paper describing the curious animal, Dr. John Horner at the University of California, Orange, believes that since Dinosaurs’ closest living relatives are birds, they should look at skull ornamentation among them, rather than their distant lizard precursors as a guide for what the purpose of these bristles was.
“That’s the first place everybody wants to go—let’s crash them together. And, you know, we just don’t see any evidence of it, histologically,” said Dr. Horner. “Any features, any accouterments that we find on the heads of dinosaurs, I think, are all display—it’s all about display.”
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He said that reptiles and birds, the closest relatives to dinosaurs, have head ornamentation for display and rarely butt heads like mammals such as sheep. While crocodiles bash their heads together over territorial and mating disputes, sometimes for hours, dinosaurs diverged from crocodiles more than 200 million years before this animal was living.
Pachycephalosaurs also lack a pneumatic chamber above the braincase, as found in bighorn sheep, which protects their brain from injury.
“I don’t see any reason to turn dinosaurs into mammals, rather than just trying to figure out what they might be doing as bird-like reptiles,” Dr. Horner said.
The study in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology said that blood vessels in the skull ended abruptly at the surface of the dome, indicating that the blood originally fed some tissue that was sitting atop the dome.
MORE DINOSAUR NEWS: Dinosaur With Biggest Claws Ever Discovered Was ‘Edward Scissorhands on Speed’ Scientists Say
And as the vessels were perpendicular to the surface they most likely fed a vertical structure.
“What we see are these vertical canals coming to the surface, which suggests that there might be keratin on top, but it’s oriented vertically,” Horner continued.
“I think these pachycephalosaurs had something on top of their head that we don’t know about. I don’t think they were just domes. I think there was some elaborate display on top of their head.”
MORE PALEONTOLOGY: Long Before Trees Overtook the Land, Our Planet Was Covered by Giant Mushrooms
The authors added that it could have been high, colored, or even subject to changes in color depending on the seasons. It suggests they were used for sexual display and courting, though they may have been used to butt the flanks, as opposed to the heads, of male rivals.
Dr. Goodwin said he suspects that dinosaurs likely distinguished gender by color, as do most modern birds, such as cassowaries, peafowls, and toucans, which have bright integumental colors around the face and head for visual communication.
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One of the most popular hiking apps has made 27,000 trail maps available for download for free in a bid to increase hiker safety.
Most hikers, if they’re honest, will at some point have experienced this situation: they thought they needed to follow one trail, but instead they followed another. Seeking to reorient themselves, they timidly pulled out their smartphone and see, as they suspected, there was no reception of any kind.
Last year, search and rescue missions were up 32% across the US. This is mainly down to the hikers being inadequately prepared. Access to offline maps would help ensure that all hikers can be best prepared for their hike.
To that end, the Irish hiking app HiiKER has released all trail maps in its database for download free of charge. They can either choose to download them directly to their smartphone or as a GPX file to their smartwatch—saving the battery of their device while away from electricity access.
“Hiker Safety is our absolute priority. Offering hikers Free Offline maps on HiiKER, means that everyone can feel confident that they’re on track, regardless of mobile service,” said Paul Finlay, CEO and Founder of HiiKER.
The app team claims that other incumbent Hiking apps such as Alltrails, Strava, and OutdoorActive charge for access to offline maps. As this service is critical to hiker safety, HiiKER is offering it to hikers for free.
Now used by over 600,000 hikers worldwide, the app which began life on the Emerald Isle three years ago is now one of the most-used hiking apps on the market, with over 27,000 hiking routes available to users.
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HiiKER also works alongside trail management organizations to ensure the data they include in their app is always up to date.
One such organization, the Continental Divide Trail Coalition, welcomed the news of the free offline maps.
SHARE This Great App And Its Resources With Your Hiking Friends…
An experimental cancer treatment developed in Israel has become so effective for an incurable form of cancer, the hospital administering it has a waiting list more than 6 months long.
Oncologists at the immunology department at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem used the revolutionary CAR-T, or Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Therapy, to achieve remission of multiple myeloma in 90% of the 74 patients who undertook the experimental treatment.
Multiple myeloma is a kind of bone marrow cancer that distinguishes itself by developing in several areas at once, including the pelvis, ribs, skull, and spine. It accounts for one-tenth of all blood cancers.
CAR-T cell therapies are changing the world of cancer treatments by utilizing the patient’s own immune system to target and kill cancer tumors. Until the 1990s, it was almost completely unknown how to accomplish this, since cancers disguise themselves to avoid immune responses.
“We have evidence of a very positive overall response rate with minimal side effects, and they are mild,” Professor Polina Stepensky, head of the department at Hadassah. “These are dramatic results. This is a huge hope for patients with a disease that has not yet had a cure.”
Jerusalem Post reports that the treatment will also be available across the US in the coming months, quoting Dr. Stepensky.
“IMMX Bio has acquired a patent license, and we are about to open a clinical trial in the US,” Stepensky said. “The plan is to reach commercialization and FDA approval as a drug within a year.”
The way this particular CAR-T cell therapy treatment works is by taking donated blood and separating out the red blood cells from the white blood cells. Then, a genetic engineering procedure is undertaken in which a deactivated virus is filled with the necessary signals to train the white blood cells, in particular the immune weapon known as a T cell, how to target the cancer tumors.
Hadassah is actually the second institution to make headlines recently over a multiple myeloma CAR-T cell treatment. GNN reported on the development at a state-run hospital in Barcelona in 2021 that achieved a 75% remission rate.
CAR-T cell therapy has also shown promise against leukemia, and lupus, which isn’t a cancer but rather an autoimmune disease.
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Looking for a cool way to get your kids involved in astronomy? Just show them this picture.
These images are composite pieces of technological artwork that would be invisible to the naked eye. Five space-based observatories teamed up with one down here on Earth to color in famous regions of space with X-rays and infrared light—neither of which can be seen by us.
The image in the top left is of NGC 346, a star cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud, 200,000 light years from Earth. The purple and blue haze on the left are X-rays, a form of high-energy light, left over from a supernova explosion. On the right, infrared data from the James Webb and the now-retired Spitzer space telescopes shows plumes of gas and dust that all those twinkling stars are either currently using, or have used to create their shining, burning forms.
The X-rays are being detected by the space-based Chandra X-ray Observatory, developed by Harvard, and humanity’s flagship X-ray observatory.
To the right side, NGC 1672 is a spiral galaxy, but one that astronomers categorize as a “barred” spiral, meaning that the arms close-in to the center appear more like straight bars rather than curved tentacles. Here, Chandra’s purple-colored X-rays reveal black holes amid the James Webb and Hubble telescopes infrared and optical light picture of this galaxy.
MORE SPACE IMAGES: Webb Telescope Reveals Yet More Details Never-Before-Seen in Cassiopeia – An Exploding Star
Messier 74 is also known as the “Phantom Galaxy” because it’s relatively dim and difficult to spot with telescopes in a region that is otherwise pretty close to Earth. It’s anything but dim in this image, captured face-on thanks to our planet’s position.
Webb outlines gas and dust in the infrared lights which we see as green, yellow, red, and magenta, while Chandra’s data spotlights high-energy activity from stars at X-ray wavelengths colored in Purple. Hubble’s optical data showcases additional stars and dust along the dust lanes.
MORE ASTRONOMY NEWS: Unprecedented Gamma-Ray Burst is ‘The BOAT’ – Brightest of All Time in Human History
Messier 16, also known as the Eagle Nebula, is a famous region of the sky often referred to as the “Pillars of Creation.” The Webb image shows the dark columns of gas and dust shrouding the few remaining fledgling stars just being formed. The Chandra sources, which look like dots, are young stars that give off copious amounts of X-rays.
Here, the X-rays are in red and blue, and highlight the huge activity given off by some stars in the area.
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