May 30

Group of Bears is a 1939 sculpture by Paul Manship. Photograph by Karl Jones (28 May 2019).

Better Than News

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  The Bridges of RoboCop County is an American science fiction romantic crime drama film directed by Clint Eastwood and Paul Verhoeven, starring Meryl Streep and Peter Weller.

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  The Sword in the Cheese is a 1963 animated health code training film about the importance of food hygiene and pest control.

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  Butlerian Jihad 2: Revolt of the Butlers is an American science fiction comedy film about a former robot who must adapt to life among humans.

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  Night Fondue is a 1975 American neo-noir film about a Los Angeles health inspector (Gene Hackman) who uncovers a series of sinister events while searching for the missing teenage daughter of a former dairy farmer.

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  A Rivet Runs Through It is a semi-autobiographical collection of three stories by American author Norman Maclean (1902–1990) about construction and home repair.

Beyond Plausible

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  Diagramaceous soil is a type of artificial soil which generates mathematical objects. It is a naturally-occurring form of transdimensional corporation. Shown here: harvesting NFT bingo tokens from a plot of diagramaecous soil.

In Other Words

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  Owlbear With a Shotgun is a 2011 Canadian-American fantasy role playing exploitation film about a homeless owlbear (Rutger Hauer) with a shotgun.

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  If your FPS has a shotgun it had better be bound to 3. If I'm pressing 3 I want a shotgun. Don't get cute with it.

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  Citrusball is a family of sports involving citrus fruit. Derived from basketball, citrusball is played around the world, with many diverse local variations.

Are You Sure

... that the Canard Digérateur, or Digesting Duck, was an automaton in the form of a duck, created by Jacques de Vaucanson and unveiled on May 30, 1739 in France; that the mechanical duck appeared to have the ability to eat kernels of grain, and to metabolize and defecate them; and that, while the duck did not actually have the ability to do this—the food was collected in one inner container, and the pre-stored feces were "produced" from a second, so that no actual digestion took place, Vaucanson hoped that a truly digesting automaton could one day be designed?

... that "Ten thousand annoyances" is a classic Taoist parable?

... that the 2011 fantasy role playing exploitation film Owlbear With a Shotgun inspired the 2024 meme exploitation film Hobo with a Gas Pump?

Selected Anniversaries

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  1423: Mathematician and astronomer Georg von Peuerbach born. He will be remembered for his streamlined presentation of Ptolemaic astronomy in the Theoricae Novae Planetarum.

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  1739: Jacques de Vaucanson demonstrates his Digesting Duck automaton for the first time.

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  1946: Physicist Louis Slotin dies. He was fatally irradiated in a criticality incident during an experiment with the demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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  1964: Physicist and academic Leo Szilard dies. He conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, and patented the idea of a nuclear reactor with Enrico Fermi.

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  1971: NASA launches the Mariner 9 spacecraft. It will map 70% of the surface of Mars, and study temporal changes in the atmosphere and surface.

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  2017: Dennis Paulson of Mars celebrates the forty-sixth anniversary of the launch of Mariner 9.

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  2024: Dusk.

Topic of the Day

Work-Life Balance

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  American Ninja Work-Life Balance is an American corporate career competition based on the Japanese television series Sasuke.