Gabi Rizea is a Romanian artist who wields a chainsaw as his sculptor's blade. The above work from a few years ago is what has most captured the Internet's attention and drawn appreciation from around the world. As an optical illusion, the pouring bucket of water supported by the liquid creates a surrealistic impression.

There are parts of rural Vermont without consistent cell service. So, ABC News reports, an electrical engineer named Patrick Schlott has refurbished old pay phones and installed them in public locations so that people can, when needed, call the outside world.

Schlott finds the pay phones for sale on auction sites for a few hundred dollars. With modification, they will transmit sound over the internet. There are now three in place, one at a general store and two at public libraries. One of those library locations has experienced at least 370 calls, thus demonstrating a real need for this old fashioned technology.

-via My Modern Met | Photo: RandTel

Scientists in the Atherlton tablelands of northeastern Queensland, Australia have named this insect Acrophylla alta. At 15 inches long, it may be the heaviest in Australia. Its huge size may serve as an evolutionary advantage by making it more durable in cold weather.

 The Guardian reports that researchers captured a female from the forested canopy and harvested its eggs. The scientists hope to also capture a male, although they have been so far difficult to locate. The implication is that these scientists have a great interest in breeding giant insects for purely research purposes. There's no way this project could have negative, unintended consquences.

-via Aelfred the Great

Tell us what you hate most about television shows these days, and Ryan George has that covered, plus a whole list of other annoyances that infest our screens. TV shows can exist on network TV, premium cable, streaming services, or just plain YouTube, and there's no way you can keep up with them all. And if someone convinces you their favorite show is worth a watch, you discover it's on a service you're not yet paying for. If it's a show that's been going awhile, you have to catch up. How long can you stay with it hoping it gets better? Or if you jump into a popular show in season three or four, you may notice that the writers have run out of ideas and the cast is getting bored -or getting hired away. Let's take a look at Plinker Donkle, the TV series that stands in for all of them.

This past Monday, Cécile Dionne (left) died at the age of 91. That leaves her sister Annette Dionne (right) as the sole surviving member of the Dionne quintuplets. While Annette has family members, her identical sisters were the only constant in her life. 

The Dionne Quintuplets were born on May 28, 1934, in a farmhouse near Callander, Ontario. They were the first quintuplets to survived infancy. The five sisters were born prematurely, so after first being warmed in a basket by the stove, antique baby incubators were shipped in because the house had no electricity to power modern versions. Their parents, Oliva and Elzire, already had five children and were desperately poor. To prevent the five girls from being exploited, the Canadian government took custody of them, and promptly exploited them. A nursery was built to house the quints, and soon was expanded to accommodate the thousands of people who flocked to see them. Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Émilie, and Marie were Canada's biggest tourist draw, eclipsing Niagara Falls for some time. 

Their parents fought to regain custody, only achieving that when the quints were nine years old. But they never felt integrated into the family, which by then included another three children. Émilie died in 1954, Marie in 1970, and Yvonne in 2001.  

 -via Fark 

These guys are the epitome of a certain engineering stereotype- young, bright, tech-savvy, and disconnected from normal life. They don't want to extend the effort of putting their garbage directly into the waste baskets, nor do they want to take out the trash. But instead of getting a larger trash can, they design and engineer waste baskets with cameras, motion sensors, servo motors, and wheels that will move to the spot where the trash is being flung. Yes, that's the equivalent of driving a hundred miles out of your way to avoid making a left turn. But while they are impressing you with their clever technology, they are also quite funny, and that makes the whole project worthwhile. 

Once their labor achieved a waste basket that will follow you around and position itself under the garbage you are dropping, they went ahead and outfitted all the waste baskets with different kinds of high tech silliness. Being a mother who wanted to shake these young men for their sanitation habits, my favorite is the can that wants to destroy you for not throwing away your own trash. -via Born in Space 

A woman with a 20-year psychiatric history began taking an immunosuppressant. Suddenly, her seeming schizophrenia vanished. https://t.co/AHKtnfI9U8

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) July 28, 2025

Schizophrenia is the condition that divided psychiatry and neurology. Neurologists can find brain cancer and other physical conditions and psychiatric drugs and therapy can help many mental illnesses, but schizophrenia was considered an incurable lifelong condition that can at best be controlled by drugs, but only in some patients. Worst of all, no one knew what caused it. However, there is a growing awareness that some patients labeled as schizophrenic may be suffering from an autoimmune disorder. Occasionally, a person with schizophrenia is treated for another illness, and drugs meant to suppress the immune system actually cure the delusions. Mary was one of them. After more than 20 years of delusions, she emerged from treatment for leukemia with no psychiatric symptoms at all. 

The good news is that there are pilot programs designed to identify schizophrenia patients who could benefit from immunotherapy. But there's still the question of how someone with many years of delusions in their past can reintegrate with family, friends, and the world once they have been cured. Mary's daughters didn't feel they knew their mother at all after the delusions were gone. Mary herself doesn't know how to confront her years of insanity and her behavior as her children were growing up. Read her story and the potential of immunotherapy for schizophrenia in an article from The New Yorker. -via Strange Company 

You haven't thought about cream soda in a long time, even if you drink a variety of sodas. You don't see cream sodas in stores much at all. If you were to think about them, it would be to wonder why they are called cream sodas, since there is no cream or even milk in them. The name itself seems to work against the drink's popularity. If you've had one, you might think that the reason it's not popular is because it's too darn sweet. Like that ever stopped any other soft drink. 

But vanilla-flavored cream soda was once very popular, especially at soda fountains where it was mixed up on the spot. With the rise of bottled and canned sodas, every regional bottler had their own version of cream soda. It declined in the latter half of the 20th century for various reasons explained by Tom Blank of Weird History Food. Cream soda is still around, although its main draw these days is the nostalgia factor. But watch out- the nostalgia factor is gaining ground because people in troubled times go for comfort foods from their childhoods, and drinks, too.  

Smokey Bear, an icon of the US Forest Service and other state forestry agencies, has promoted wildfire prevention since 1944 and the firefighting manpower shortages of World War II. News 6 Orlando reports that state agricultural law enforcement officers arrested a man accused of stealing Smokey Bear signs from state forests to resell them on Facebook Marketplace for about $1,900 each.

Wilton Simpson, the Florida Commissioner for Agriculture, shared on X this photo of Smokey taking part in bringing down this criminal. At 81, Smokey is a bit old to engage in hunting down criminals, but he clearly takes protection of his forests personally.

-via Dave Barry

It’s been a couple years since I got a vintage Dickel Whiskey bottle… I keep meaning to paint the leather red to match how it appeared in original Star Trek. pic.twitter.com/WdAe9ZgKwI

— Subcommander Tal (@SubcommanderT) July 31, 2025

Actually, it's a brandy, not a whiskey. It's Saurian brandy, but Captain Kirk is currently concerned with the quantity of alcohol, not the favor of it.

The prop masters for the Original Series adapted a 1964 model of George Dickel brand sippin' (there's no 'g' at the end) whiskey for this futuristic bottle. It also appeared on Deep Space Nine. The bottles, where are, of course, no longer in production, are highly-prized collectibles among Trekkies. Other iconic Star Trek alcohol containers are, too.

Artist Kate Bingaman-Burt is always delighted when she sees one of these charming hand-painted signs screwed to a telephone pole around town. Whenever she shared an image of one of them on Instagram, people responded with similar delight. She finally decided to text the business number and ask who painted the signs. She got a response from Landon, who cleans roofs, home exteriors, gutters, and patios, who said he paints all his own signs. That led to a long back-and-forth about the signs, and the two got to know each other.

Bingaman-Burt organized their texts into an interview. We find out more about Landon and the joy he gets from painting his signs (they get stolen a lot). The story is not just about one man who not only cleans but also gives color to Portland, but about how two friendly people who are complete strangers can reach out over something that may seem small, but ends up bringing joy to the rest of us. -via Metafilter 

Everyday customs and conventions stick around because doing things the same way is much easier than changing. Sure, you can come up with a better way, that will save time, effort, or money, but the process of change itself can be more trouble than its worth. So we've ended up saying "knock wood" instead of saying, "Oh no, I hope I didn't jinx myself by saying that." Everyone knows that's what you mean. YouTuber Chill Dude Explains goes through ten very different examples of things we do even though we've long forgotten why. 

It includes the QWERTY keyboard, which we've covered recently. Some, like the scrubs that surgical teams wear make plenty of sense once you think about it, although you've never had a reason to think about it before. But the most common background story is what you would expect- customs to appease deities or keep demons away. -via Laughing Squid 

Tequila is a liquor made from distilling the fermented juice of the blue agave plant, which is native to western Mexico (mezcal is made from other types of agave). Its popularity exploded during the 17th century under Spanish colonization. But who invented tequila? Mexico already had pulque, or fermented agave, but when did distillation begin there? 

There have been three theories. Maybe people in Mexico knew about distillation before the arrival of the Spaniards, although the evidence for this is rather thin. Or the Spaniards brought the technology to Mexico, which is plausible but also suspiciously Eurocentric, as Spaniards wrote that theory. But there is credible evidence that agave distillation was brought in by Filipino sailers, who not only traded with western Mexico, but sometimes settled there. Early tequila stills resemble the devices used in the Philippines to distill coconut sap. Read the very plausible story of how Mexico-Phillipines trade brought us tequila at the Conversation.

(Image credit: Roman664) 

In pop culture, hearing crickets means that no human is speaking. But even if they were speaking, you'd be able to hear any cricket in the vicinity. Ze Frank explains that sound, but first we learn about the amazing jumping abilities of grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets. Closeup and slow-motion shots show us their wild spring-loaded joints and amuse us when it all goes wrong. Katydids and crickets have ears in their forelegs, and grasshoppers have ears on their abdomens. Then we get to how they produce those annoyingly loud sounds. Katydids and crickets rub their wings together, and grasshopper have to be different- they use their legs to talk. What do they say? Well, these are mating calls, so you can use your imagination. But those sounds don't only attract mates, they also attract predators. The acting award in this True Facts video goes to a praying mantis named Nancy. 

There's an 80-second skippable ad at 4:10. When I first watched this, the skippable ad was interrupted by an unskippable ad.  

Some people think you must go to the beach or an amusement park during summer vacation, but the really cool destinations are caves. Cool, both literally and figuratively. Temperatures deep underground stay in the 50s both winter and summer and you don't have to wear sunscreen. Besides, caves contain fantastic geologic formations that teach you about earth science while you are sightseeing. About twenty years ago, I took my kids on the longest tour at Mammoth Cave that was open to children. They never got hot, tired, or bored. Even staying in a cabin with no AC was pleasant. There are no mosquitos at Mammoth Cave National Park because the ground is porous and the water table is low. And there are bats.

While I am quite proud of Kentucky's (and America's) biggest cave, there are opportunities to tour caves all across the contiguous United States. And they don't require steel-toed boots or crawling on your belly- just a light jacket and sometimes a reservation. Read about the features of ten of America's most spectacular cave trails at Mental Floss. 

(Image credit: w_lemay)