Meet The World's Most Famous Actor No One Has Actually Seen

Here's a riddle for you: which actor do Batman Returns, Hocus Pocus, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth all have in common?

The answer might not immediately spring to mind and that's because you've probably never seen his face.

Tall and slender Doug Jones has acted in all these films and more with him having received over 150 credits over 30 years as an actor.

In almost all of these roles he has been dressed in masks, costumes or make-up, playing a motley crew of menacing figures such as beasts, demons, and aliens.

Now the 57-year-old prolific actor has finally shown his face in a fascinating interview with Buzzfeed.

"I'm hired because I'm a tall, skinny guy - with other talents, I hope," he told Buzzfeed. "But the creature effects guys love to start with a skinny, long palette, because they can build on it and not make it too bulky."

Doug has continued to find work as an actor due to how willing he is to be utterly unrecognisable to fully inhabit his characters.

In his early career he starred as one of Danny De Vito's Penguin's goons in Batman Returns, along with the zombie Billy Butcherman in Hocus Pocus.

He then starred as one of the perpetually grinning gentlemen in the Buffy episode 'Hush', villains who stole people's voices so they could gradually steal their hearts.

"You know that thing when you're at a wedding and you're smiling for pictures over and over again, and you're [saying], 'I can't feel my face anymore'?" Jones said, pressing into his cheeks. "Well, we had that for like eight days in a row."

Doug has had most of his big break thanks to the visionary director Guillermo del Toro' who has cast him in six of his feature films.

Jones first played a giant cockroach in 1997's horror thriller Mimic before playing the intelligent sea creature Abe Sapien in Del Toro's version of Hellboy.

Sadly, due to marketing reasons, his voice for the character was dubbed over by David Hyde Pierce in the final film, the first of several rejections he has had to handle in his long career.

Del Toro didn't forget Jones though as he cast him as two characters in his masterpiece Pan's Labryinth, both as the Faun and the more famous Pale Man, the guy who only sees through eyes on the palms of his hands.

"To me, it was another sign of what kind of actor Doug is," said del Toro. "A guy who commits - and when he commits, he's of a piece with the part."

Jones' performances were so good that Pan's Labyrinth was nominated for six Oscars and won three, including for Best Makeup, largely on the strength of his two portrayals.

While Jones admits that spending a life behind a mask and with rubber in his ears can be isolating and lonely, his career is slowly coming good.

Del Toro let him voice Abe Sapien in the Hellboy sequel Hellboy 2: The Golden Army and he even got his first series regular role as the friendly alien Cochise in three seasons of TNT's Falling Skies.

He will star alongside Michael Shannon and Sally Hawkins in Del Toro's upcoming film The Shape of Water, and is playing the vampire Nosferatu in a remake due out next year.

So next time you watch a film with an otherworldly tall character - keep an eye on the credits. It might well be Jones underneath all that make-up.

https://www.ladbible.com/entertainment/ ... n-20180304

[Zbignieww]

This ancient dinosaur would give today’s blue whale a run for its money



The things that fascinate us most tend to be wonders we have never seen up close.

It’s our natural response to be curious, to question what it must be like to fly by Jupiter and its moons or live among dinosaurs.

Dinosaur bones have preserved information from millions of years ago, which scientists can use to model what they looked like, the way they moved and how they lived.

We’ll never see long-extinct dinosaurs — unless some John Hammond figure creates his own Jurassic Park for real. But science is bringing us ever closer to what the world was like when dinosaurs reigned and revealing the wild land before time.

Dino-mite!
Meet Cooper, the largest dinosaur fossil ever recovered in Australia and one of the largest creatures to ever roam the planet.

They say the waiting is the hardest part, and Cooper has certainly paid those dues. The titanosaur, which lived 90 million years ago, was first discovered in southwest Queensland in 2007, but the skeleton remained a mystery as its enormous bones resided in buildings hundreds of miles apart from each other — until now.

The plant-eating dino was roughly as long as a basketball court and as tall as a two-story building, sporting a long neck and tail similar to Brachiosaurus.

The discovery has led researchers to believe there is a “whole new dinosaur frontier” waiting to be discovered in Australia.

https://kion546.com/news/national-world ... its-money/

[PennySerenade]

Habs flag flies proudly over Toronto city hall as mayor makes good on bet



MONTREAL -- The Montreal Canadiens' playoff run has been filled with moments fans never thought they would see; the team coming back from a 3-1 deficit in the first round. Big Shea Weber on a breakaway. Stoic Carey Price cracking a smile. And now, the Habs logo flying proudly over Toronto city hall.

More than a week after his city's Maple Leafs were eliminated by the Canadiens in dramatic fashion, Toronto Mayor John Tory made good on a bet with his counterpart in Montreal.

He took to Twitter to congratulate Mayor Valerie Plante on her victory as he raised the bleu-blanc-rouge flag.



The two mayors had engaged in a friendly wager before the historic series between the two Original Six squads. Under the terms, the loser would fly the winning team's flag over city hall, as well as send the winner some of their city's most acclaimed food (in Tory's case, peameal bacon sandwiches) and some locally brewed beer. Both mayors also made charitable contributions as part of the bet.

Last week, Ontario Premier Doug Ford similarly made good on a bet with Quebec Premier Francois Legault, donning a signed Guy Lafleur jersey.

Ford had also magnaminously wished the Canadiens' good luck on their playoff run, saying “Bring the Stanley Cup home to Canada!” It's a feeling that other Ontarians seem to have adopted – the CN Tower was recently lit up in Habs' colours.

[lush]

Dot Watch Could Be the First Braille Smartwatch
Published 9 June 2021*

A South Korean startup launched the smartwatch in 2017.


Image via Dot Incorporated

Smartwatches enable users to not only tell the time, but be notified of calls, receive and read messages, and even monitor their heart rate. For a long time, smartwatch options for blind and visually impaired people relied on audio messages. Enter Dot Watch, which uses braille to tell the time, date, receive message alerts, notifications, and more.


In early June 2021, Reddit users praised the “World’s First Braille Smartwatch” in a post that got tens of thousands of votes, though this is a product that has existed since at least 2017.

According to the South Korean company Dot Inc., this is the first smartwatch of its kind that relies on braille technology to tell the time, date, and receive message alerts. Indeed, any reported instances that we found of smartwatch products for the visually impaired entail relying on sound to tell the time or read out messages.

Eric Kim, CEO of Dot, launched his business in 2014 and by 2017 had started selling the smartwatch. In an interview with Nikkei Asia, he said, “I was surprised to see that few things have changed in the braille market for the last few decades. Visually-impaired people still use big and expensive devices and materials to read and get information.”

Park In-beom, an employee who was born with a visual-impairment joined the company and helped test the product. While collecting feedback from other blind customers, he learned they were happy they could check messages on the device without being overheard by others. Usually they have to hear messages through a voice recording, and some in South Korea set the voice in English or to a fast speed setting to avoid being overheard, Park said.

The device features a braille display made up of 24 small pins. According to its website: “The DOT Watch has been developed specifically for visually impaired people. Its touch display, in which 24 dots rise and fall, spells out words in braille allowing you to check the time privately.”

A number of blind and visually impaired people have reviewed the watch online. One user shared both positive and negative feedback on the watch, saying that ultimately she thinks “it doesn’t do enough.”


Another user showed how the watch told him that he received a WhatsApp message from another person, gave him the person’s name, and informed him it was a voice message.


We found many examples of watches that simply tell the time using braille, but none that integrate that into a smartphone. The watch even has a braille dictionary and vibrates to notify users of a call and displays the name of the caller.

[HogwartsExpress]

Woman recovers wallet lost 46 years ago in California

A woman from Ventura was reunited with a wallet she lost 46 years ago after an employee working on remodeling Southern California’s historic Majestic Ventura Theater discovered it inside a crawl space.

“I would have never imagined,” said Tom Stevens after locating the wallet among old candy bar wrappers, ticket stubs and soda cans.

Stevens told the Ventura County Star he then went on social media to try to locate the owner based on clues in the wallet, including old photos, a 1973 Grateful Dead concert ticket and a California driver’s license for Colleen Distin that expired in 1976. There was no money in the wallet.

“Does anyone know Colleen Distin?” he asked on the theater’s Facebook page. “While doing some maintenance we have found her wallet. There are a bunch of pictures of people, and they are super cool from that era also. Someone may want them. So if you are, or if you know Colleen, drop us a line and we will have it here for you!”

Stevens’ boss, Loanne Wullaert, suggested posting the information on social media.

“We’re at almost 1,000 shares, a ridiculous amount of comments and then it went to all these other sites,” Wullaert said Monday. “I think it’s cool that people care and are interested.”

Distin, who grew up in Ventura and remains a resident, said she heard from a lot of people online and received a call about the post on social media. She responded May 25, a couple of hours after the posting, that the wallet was hers.

Distin on Friday went to pick up the red wallet, now brownish with age, and said it was like opening a “time capsule.”

Distin said she lost the wallet in 1975, when she was in her early 20s, at what was then a movie theater.

Distin said it must have fallen through a hole in her purse, which she had placed on the theater floor. At the time, her wallet held a $200 check and family photos.

“I remember calling the next day when I realized it was gone. They said no one found it, but to call back, which I did,” Distin said.

“I’m shaking,” Distin told KCAL-TV as she looked through the wallet. It contained poetry and notes, photographs of high school friends, the $5 ticket to a Grateful Dead concert at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and photos of Distin’s mother, who died several years ago.

“It’s really wonderful,” Distin said in an emotional voice.

Distin said she was initially reluctant to talk publicly about her experience but she said there was such a positive response that she gave in.

“It says a lot about our society, that people are looking for a human story and something to feel good,” she told the Star. “People need to see the gratitude. I think there’s so much other negative stuff that I think this is what touched people.”

source:https://apnews.com/article/california-arts-and-entertainment-technology-oddities-6c95d4e74df6e5a324621375ce7866ff

[johngriffen]

I sometimes get REALLY DEPRESSED reviewing the news these days.
It's always about a global pandemic threatening life as we know it,
protests around the world, stupid politicians, natural disasters,
or some other really bad story.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

Welcome to The mobi weekly news magazine
IN OTHER NEWS
SUNDAY JUNE 13
What is it?
Here is your chance to become an "ACE REPORTER" for our weekly news magazine.
It is your job to fine weird, funny or "good feel" stories from around the world and share them with our readers in our weekly magazine

How do you play?
Just post a story that you have come across that made you smile, laugh, feel good...
BUT NOTHING DEPRESSING

EXAMPLE POST

​Naked sunbather chases wild boar through park after it steals his laptop bag

A naked sunbather was seen chasing wild boar through a park after it stole his laptop bag.
Amusing photographs from Germany show the man running after the animal to try and claim the plastic bag back.
But the cheeky boar and its two piglets appear to be too quick for the sunbather, who can't keep up with their speedy little trotters.
As the incident unfolds, groups of friends and family sat on the grass watch on and laugh.
Heads are seen turning in surprise and amusement in the hilarious photographs.
The incident happened at Teufelssee Lake - a bathing spot in the Grunwell Forest in Berlin, Germany.

[/quote]
Rules:
Each Edition of IN OTHER NEWS will be open for 7 days...
You can post as many stories as you like, but you will only get paid for One Story in any 24 hour period
So in other words, you can only earn WRZ$ once a day.
Each news day will start when I post announcing it
OR at:
9:00 AM CHICAGO TIME (UTC -5)
2:00 PM GMT (UTC -0)
on those days I space out and forget to post or can't due to Real Life
Stories may be accompanied with images - but No big images, please! 800x800 pixels wide maximum
Videos are allowed, but please keep them short, and post a short summary for those that don't like to click on videos
No Duplicate stories - Where a post has been edited resulting in duplicates, then the last one in time gets disallowed.
And please limit this to reasonably family friendly stories

Reward:
Each news story posted that I feel is acceptable (must be a real story, too few words or simply a headline are not considered acceptable) will earn you 50 WRZ$
If you post multiple stories on any given day, you will only earn 50 WRZ$ for the first story of the Day
All payments will be made at THE END of the weekly news cycle.
Special Bonus - Each week I will award "The Pulitzer Prize" for the best story of the week
The weekly winner of the "The Pulitzer Prize" will receive a 100 WRZ$ bonus
It's just my personal opinion, so my judgement is final

So help bring GOOD news to the members of mobi, and join our reporting team...

IN OTHER NEWS

[ozswede]

Heroic Teens Save Elderly Pensioner from Seaview Kitchen Fire

A band of heroic teenagers have been praised by the Hampshire & Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service after their quick-thinking actions helped save an elderly woman from a kitchen fire in Seaview yesterday evening.

The group of 5 friends, who earlier this week travelled to the Isle of Wight from Farnham to visit a relative, had been out enjoying dinner and a walk along the beach to make the most of the Island’s scenery on the last evening of their trip. What they hadn’t expected amongst the sea, sun and sandy beaches was to come across what could have become a tragic incident.

Sacha Hewson, Mark Meyer, Izzy Meade, Matt Pritchard, and Elliott Brown – all aged between 16 and 18 – had left Seagrove Bay at around 21:30 before taking a leisurely stroll back to their grandmothers, walking via Gully Road and Solent View Road. It was when they reached the junction of Rowantree Drive and Caws Avenue that their evening took an unexpected turn.

An eagle-eyed member of the group stopped in their tracks when they noticed smoke beginning to wisp from the front door of the home of a 97-year-old woman. Without hesitation, the teens realised something was amiss and that they needed to act.



After banging on the front door of the detached bungalow, several of the group made entry to the home and began to shout out in order to alert and locate anyone within the property. They swiftly located an elderly woman who was seemingly unaware of the developing incident in her kitchen.

Member of the group, Sascha Hewson, told Island Echo:

“We were walking back from the beach and walked past the lady’s house and we noticed there was smoke filtering of the front door. We went into her house and started calling out for anyone inside to make them aware of what was happening.

“We found the lady, who is very hard of hearing, and she was unaware of the fire alarm and the smoke and didn’t know what was happening.”

Meanwhile, Mark Meyer made his way to the source of the rapidly developing smoke in the kitchen, which he discovered to be coming from a microwave.

Mark, knowing the consequences of putting water on an electrical fire, quickly unplugged the appliance before opening it and using water from a nearby kettle to douse the smoldering heat pack inside, before removing the microwave from the property.

The teens proceeded to open windows and doors to vent the smoke, whilst others used an address book to try and contact the relatives of the woman, who was in a state of confusion. After much trying, they eventually got through to a relative who arrived at the scene shortly after.

It was Izzy Meade that made the decision to call an ambulance after realising that the woman could be in a state of shock and may have been suffering from exposure to the smoke. A paramedic crew from the Isle of Wight Ambulance Service attended the property, with the control room then contacting the Fire Service. A fire appliance from Ryde was mobilised to the scene shortly after.

The woman was taken to St Mary’s Hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation but has now thankfully returned home with no injuries.



Firefighters left the scene at 22:47 and returned this morning to conduct a safe and well check to ensure the woman’s ongoing safety.

HIWFRS Group Manager Jeff Walls said:

“The early action taken by members of the public prevented this incident becoming more serious.

“Whilst we would warn against the public putting themselves in harms way, the quick-thinking on this occasion stopped the fire from developing, allowing the occupant to evacuate and escape conditions which could have deteriorated and become challenging for crews.”

“Across Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service, we help people to stay safe in their own homes through our prevention activities and community safety initiatives such as our Safe and Well service.

“Safe and Well is a free home fire safety visit, tailored to an individual’s needs that can support the most vulnerable residents to help protect them and their home from fire.”

Positioning, maintaining and testing smoke detectors in your home could save your life.

Source

[HogwartsExpress]

Chicago man jumps into Lake Michigan for 365th straight day



A Chicago bus driver looking for a way to relieve stress during the coronavirus pandemic jumped into Lake Michigan for a 365th straight day on Saturday.

Dan O’Conor said he started jumping into the lake at Montrose Harbor on the city’s North Side last year to relieve stress.

“It was during the pandemic, it was during the protest, it was during an election year. ... So it was somewhere where I could come down here and block all that noise out and kind of be totally present with me in the lake, and find some moments of Zen,” said the father of three.

He continued jumping into the lake through the fall before the hard part: Hacking a hole in the ice on the frozen lake that was big enough for him to jump through during the winter. He said when he got home after one such jump, he found about 20 scrapes and cuts on his body.

He was encouraged by the response he got for his undertaking.

“People started asking me what this was benefiting and how they could support — and when I say people, I’m talking strangers online, you know. When I started posting the videos on Twitter and Instagram ... I got more wind in my sails there because people started commenting like, ’This makes my day, it’s nice to see this,” he said.

Saturday was special because it was the culmination of doing it for a full year.

“I just wanted to celebrate just that drive to dive for 365,” O’Conor said.

source: https://apnews.com/article/lake-michiga ... 7411f97945

[Fatima99]

Three 'alien abductions' in a week in Sedgley - but council 'aren't doing anything'

EXCLUSIVE: Mystery surrounds a sign that appeared in the woods claiming three alien abductions had taken place in one week. UFO believers claim the West Midlands lies at heart of alien activity in UK



Mystery surrounds a sign that appeared in the woods in a small town claiming three people have been abducted by aliens in the last week.

Its writer then accuses the council of not doing enough to stop the abductions.

The large panel, with black stencilled writing, reads: “ 3 alien abductions here in one week. When are the council going to do something?”

It has sprung up in Sedgley in the West Midlands.

UFO believers reckon the county lies at the heart of alien activity within the UK.

Dozens of UFO sightings have been reported in the area in recent years and websites have been created so that members of the public can log extraterrestrial spots.

One witness, called Lisa, was in her front garden in Solihull when she saw an orange flickering ball in the sky.

She wrote on a website: “My immediate thought was that it looked like a plane on fire, but it clearly wasn’t.

“It moved far too fast to be a plane - we live near the flight path so we are used to seeing planes. I watched it for probably only a few seconds and saw as it travelled across the sky, not down, reduced in size and then disappeared.”

She was convinced that the mysterious aircraft was proof of life on other planets.



Amateur astronomer Adam trained his telescope on Jupiter to watch a satellite trail across the sky and saw something he had never seen in 18 years of skygazing.

He wrote: “Suddenly a white light flew across the sky at a speed I have never seen before in any man-made tech. I didn’t hear a boom as expected with such speed, just a faint hum.

"It was no meteor - it was also very low and the light was very bright. I saw it for three seconds before it had travelled across the entire sky and out of sight.”

Adam is convinced he had witnessed extraterrestrial life, but never told anyone, for fear that he would not be believed.



Another UFO watcher witnessed what he believed he saw alien activity from his 16th floor flat in Birmingham.

Scott wrote on one website: “There was a huge light in the sky. It was the size of a full moon moving slowly towards Wolverhampton. It was bright yellow in colour and almost perfectly round.”

A council officer contacted by the Daily Star Sunday said: “There is something definitely going on with UFO activity in the West Midlands - but no one would ever go on the record to confirm that. But as for alien abductions in Sedgley- not so sure about that.”

Councillor Karen Shakespeare, cabinet member for the public realm said: “We have been made aware of the sign which will be removed.

I always said oop North was a strange place - Fatima99

[hija]

English landowners will be paid to plant trees



Landowners in England are to be paid thousands of pounds to create woodlands that boost biodiversity and reduce flooding, the UK government announced on Wednesday.

The Forestry Commission scheme will cover the costs of saplings and planting, and pay bonuses of up to £2,800 a hectare for woodland that helps wildlife recover, £2,200/ha for woodland with long-term public access, and £1,600/ha for riverside trees. It has a £16m budget for the first year.

The scheme is part of a post-Brexit shake-up of farming policy. Forestry Commission chair, Sir William Worsley, said: “This grant gives everyone the opportunity to see woodland creation as a financially and environmentally rewarding option.”

[goldie0608]

High Schooler Paralyzed During Football Game Draws Standing Ovation as He Walks at Graduation



A Pittsburgh high schooler who was paralyzed three years ago during a football game received a standing ovation at his high school graduation as he rose from his wheelchair and walked 10 yards to receive his diploma - much to the shock of his friends and classmates.

"That felt better than any touchdown I ever scored," Hayden Hamilton told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette of the emotional response his walk received on Friday.

It was on the very same field at Laurel High School where Hayden graduated that his life changed forever when, as a sophomore on the football team, he was severely injured during a tackle on Aug. 31, 2018, according to the Post-Gazette.

Hayden, now 18, suffered a serious spinal injury during the incident, and was paralyzed from the neck down - but in the years since, has managed to break past his initial limitations, his therapist Ryan Lacey told the newspaper.

"He was told he wouldn't be able to do certain things that he's doing now," Lacey said. "It's a great story."

Among those things was the impressive walk to receive his diploma, which Hayden did with Lacey by his side and with the help of leg braces and a walker with two wheels, the Post-Gazette reported.

It reportedly took the senior, who was voted Homecoming King in the fall, about two minutes to rise from his wheelchair and slowly walk the 10 yards to his diploma.

"I think it's cool that I did this on the field where it all happened," Hayden told the Post-Gazette. "I just wanted to be able to walk off that field again because I never got to do it that night [of the injury]. I'd say that was the main goal, to walk off that field once more."

Though Hayden's parents Chad and Melissa had seen him walk (he sometimes walks up to 300 feet in therapy), graduation was the first time many - including his girlfriend, friends and former football teammates - saw the teen take steps of his own since that fateful night.

"We had no idea. I was shocked," friend Kobe DeRosa told the Post-Gazette. "He deserved that standing ovation 100 percent."

The emotional moment was captured on video by Post-Gazette reporter Mike White, who then shared it to Twitter. It has since been celebrated by stars like Mark Wahlberg and former Steelers player Ryan Shazier, who had to learn to walk again after he suffered a spinal cord injury during a game in 2017.

"Hayden this is amazing man I'm so proud of you," Shazier wrote on Twitter.

As for what's next, Hayden told the Post-Gazette he'll likely take classes at Butler Community College in the fall with the hopes of one day attending a four-year college. But when it comes to walking, he's content taking it one day at a time.

"When I was hurt, I was paralyzed from the neck down and I couldn't even feed myself," Hayden told the outlet. "I couldn't do anything. I'm not worried about walking independently without a walker. I just want to make myself better every day."

https://youtu.be/PqOztOBiGRM

[prokroustis]

Your dog is as good at maths as a two-year-old child, say top boffins

Ever wondered why your pet dog looks miffed when you give them fewer treats than usual? Scientists might be able to explain it, as new research suggests they can count



If you need help doing a few simple sums, you might want to ask your pet dog.

According to top boffins, the average pooch is better at maths than a two-year-old child.

It could explain why your beloved mutt casts an angry glance your way when you pop fewer treats in its bowl.

For decades, scientists have been trying to discover if dogs can count and do simple maths.

Like their human owners, dogs are great at numerosity - estimating the number of things in a group, for example how many dogs are in a park.

In tests carried out by Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, it was observed that dogs’ understanding of numerical quantity lights up the same brain activity as in a human, in the parietal cortex.

Dogs are opportunistic and will snatch food closest to them, reports the Mirror.

But researchers noticed that if two bowls of treats were placed an equal distance apart from the pooch, he would choose the bowl that contained the most food.

Working dogs, especially Border Collies, Spaniels and Labradors, are among the breeds that demonstrate a particular understanding of counting.

In trials, dogs were sent to retrieve a number of ducks. Those who brought back two ducks knew they had to go back and find the missing one.

This seemed to be an inherited skill rather than learned, as researchers ran the experiment with pet dogs as well as trained hounds - although the trained dogs did better at the challenge.

Rebecca West of De Montfort University and Robert Young of the Catholic University of Minas Gerais in Brazil proved that dogs understand simple arithmetic. They used a technique known as preferential viewing, which was previously used to test if babies and infants can count.

The scientists showed 11 dogs a treat, then put it behind a low screen. They then showed the dogs a second treat and placed it with the first. When the screen was removed to reveal two treats, the dogs showed no interest.

But when the researchers removed a treat, or added an extra, so the dogs saw one or three treats, they showed signs of surprise. The dogs, just like infants in the human tests, had done the maths and knew instinctively that the answer in front of them was wrong.

He claims that according to several behavioural measures such as obedience, adaptation, and motivation, dogs have an intelligence equivalent to a child of two-and-a-half - and maths is only part of it.

But why would dogs need to count? It’s not just so they can keep track of the treats you’re giving them. In the wild, a mother dog needed to know how many pups she had, so she would know when to go in search of any stragglers.

According to canine psychologist Dr Stanley Coren of the University of British Columbia, dogs “may not be Einsteins but are sure closer to humans than we thought.”

That instinct has stayed with domestic canines even today - you might notice that your dog seems to count your family when you go out or come back home.

As for the age-old question as to who’s smarter, cats or dogs - science doesn’t yet have an answer.

Studies testing the ability of felines to do simple maths are hampered by the cats getting bored and walking away.

Among the customers inside a U.S. Post Office in Florida — this 7-foot alligator



Most post office lobbies in Florida are open 24/7 so that people can drop off mail or parcels in collection boxes after hours.

We say “people” so as to be clear because, apparently, human beings aren’t the only ones that make use of the federal facilities’ open door policy.

According to the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office, its deputies were called to a U.S. Post Office facility in the 8500 block of Philatelic Road in Spring Hill on Florida’s west-central coast around 3:30 a.m. Wednesday, June 9.

Someone who had stopped by the post office to mail a package reported a suspicious, er, customer.

Officers found a 7-foot alligator roaming in the lobby area.

But how did the gator get in? This particular post office has automatic double doors that allow customers — including creatures without opposable thumbs — entrance into the lobby.

According to the sheriff’s office, a trapper safely escorted the alligator from the lobby. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has a hotline to report nuisance gators at 866-392-4286.

No word on what the gator was mailing or hoping to pick up. Gator bites from Amazon, perhaps?

Naturally, the sheriff’s office’s Facebook post turned many into late night comics — such as this bon mot:

“Well, it IS mating season, maybe he was looking for his mail order bride???”

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/ ... stage_lead

[PennySerenade]

Toronto artist constructs disco tree to slow down traffic



TORONTO -- A Toronto resident constructed a “disco tree,” made out of 650 hard drive platters, to solve a local traffic problem.

“I originally started to put large pieces of art on my front lawn because it helped people to slow down. They would stop and think,” says Paul Fegun.

Since 1971, Fegan has lived on Brenda Crescent in Scarborough. In recent years, he noticed cars would accelerate on the formerly quiet residential street. Often, he says, traffic on Danforth Road or Kennedy Road and St. Clair Avenue results in speeding and congestion in the neighbourhood.



For three weeks, Fegan gathered and deconstructed hundreds of hard drives, which he estimates contain between 600 and 1,000 terabytes of data. Then, he loosely screwed them onto the tree outside of his house. Like chimes, the hard drives sway in the wind.

“It’s like looking at a sequined dress,” he says.



Fegan notes that the tree has been dead for a decade, but due to childhood nostalgia, he decided to give it an afterlife, rather than knock it down.

Prior to becoming an artist, Fegan worked in IT for 25 years, which explains why much of his art is made up of electronics. “Now, I dismantle the stuff that gave me headaches,” he says.

This afternoon, Fegan spoke to his local city councillor to discuss potential solutions to slow down the traffic. They discussed putting up city signage encouraging drivers to slow down, but Fegan decided, “I’ll just make my own [signs],” he said. “They’ll be big.”

[Zbignieww]

Ancient 'megalake' that covered more than one million square miles across Europe and Asia 10 million years ago became an 'aquatic version of the wastelands from Mad Max' due to extreme drying

Study reveals the rise and the fall of Paratethys - Earth's largest-known megalake
It contained more water than 10 times the volume of all modern lakes combined
But it succumbed to cataclysms that turned the region into a 'toxic waste-world'

The largest lake ever to exist on Earth – the Paratethys megalake – suffered a 'disaster' that killed off most of its lifeforms less than 10 million years ago, a new study says.

At its vastest, Paratethys had a surface area of more than a million square miles (2.8 million square km) – slightly larger than the present-day Mediterranean Sea, according to a team led by experts at Utrecht University, Netherlands.

For a modern day comparison, Paratethys would stretch from the eastern Alps to what is now Kazakhstan in central Asia.

It also contained a water volume of more than 1.77 million km3 – representing more than a third the volume of the Mediterranean today.

But between 9.75 and 7.65 million years ago, up to a third of the megalake water was lost to evaporation, the lake fragmented, and the central basin, now the Black Sea, became particularly toxic and barren.

Most lifeforms in the lake – including miniature dolphins and seals – became extinct, and those that survived were sick and deformed, the study authors say.


Location of the Paratethys megalake. For comparison reasons the present-day geography is shown (this was not how Europe appeared at the time)

The researchers based their estimations on geological and fossil records within the Black Sea, where the Paratethys originally existed.

As well as the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, Aral Sea, Lake Urmia, Namak Lake and others are remnants of the Paratethys.

'It must have been a post-apocalyptic prehistoric world – an aquatic version of the wastelands from Mad Max', said study author Wout Krijgsman at Utrecht University.

Paratethys formed as a lake some 12 million years ago, after a giant sea disconnected from the ocean, and life evolved there over 5 million years – cut-off from the rest of the world.

Paratethys was previously a sea, connected to the rest of the world's water, up to 34 million years ago, but the moving tectonic plates closed it off.

It contained more water than 10 times the volume of all modern lakes combined.

The megalake's unique array of creatures included dolphins and whales – among them, the smallest ones in the Earth history – as well as crustaceans and algae.


Water volume comparison between the Paratethys megalake and other waterbodies (lakes and ice-sheets). Paratethys contained more water than 10 times the volume of all modern lakes combined

The 10-foot (three metre) long Cetotherium riabinini is the best known of these dolphin-sized dwarf baleen whales, researchers say.

But the fauna were later nearly totally obliterated by cataclysms that turned the region into a salty waste world.

Over its five million-year lifetime, shifts in climate shrank the lake as it went through 'desiccation' – extreme drying and removal of moisture.


Artist's impression of the extinct dwarf whale Cetotherium riabinini, compared with a six-foot-tall human

A final period of desiccation – spanning between 7.65 million and 7.9 million years ago – sounded the death knell for the megalake.

This 'most severe' drying period, called the Great Khersonian Drying, saw water levels falling by as much as 820 feet (250 metres).

Paratethys lost one-third of its water and 70 per cent of its surface area during this final drying period, researchers reveal.

As a result, the remaining water was stored in a central, highly salty lake, surrounded by smaller 'mini lakes' unsuitable for the lifeforms within.


As well as the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, Aral Sea, Lake Urmia, Namak Lake and others are remnants of the Paratethys. Pictured, cliffs on the promontory of Cape Kaliakra on the Black Sea, Bulgaria

'These crises were similar to the desiccation of lake Aral, but hundreds of times larger in magnitude,' said lead study author Dan Palcu at University of São Paulo.

Once the fourth-largest inland expanse of water in the world, Aral once covered an area of 26,000 square miles – larger than the state of West Virginia – but it had largely dried up by the 2010s.

The demise of Paratethys had some benefits, hwoever – ancestors of today’s giraffes and elephants would have been forced to migrate towards the present-day African savannah.

According to Nature, the megalake also likely formed a spectacular waterfall as it drained into the Mediterranean Sea between 6.7 million and 6.9 million years ago.

The study, entitled 'Late Miocene megalake regressions in Eurasia', has been published by Nature in Scientific Reports.

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