Woman loses thousands of dollars to romance scammer posing as astronaut in distress, police in Japan say

While I do feel bad for this poor lady, the story is actually kind of hilarious. 

In short: the guy said he was an astronaut *in space* and needed money to buy oxygen. 

Ummmm. From where, exactly? The convenience store around the corner? Another space station? 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/woman-romance-scam-fake-astronaut-distress-japan/

Rare ancient gold discovery made by Florida student at archaeological site

The student archaeologists went into the field and were given some parameters on what to do. And one student managed to make a find from 1,500 years ago almost right away. 

Quite a lucky find. And definitely worth sharing. 

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/archaeology-student-finds-rare-ninth-century-gold-within-the-first-90-minutes-of-her-first-excavation

100-year-old chemistry rule proven false, textbook updates needed

I love the fact that scientists understand that what we know and observe is sometimes subject to change based on new information. 

It's what mouth breathers use to try and undermine scientific endeavor, because they really do not understand what makes it great. 

Here's a case where a chemist wrote rules around chemical bonds. And that rule held up to scrutiny for about 100 years and thus chemistry always taught it to us. 

But now, we've discovered that this rule is *not always* true and it upends some of what we know. 

I appreciate that the article notes this:

Next time someone says something is impossible, ask whether anyone has actually tried it recently. You might be surprised by what is possible when you stop assuming and start experimenting.

Yes! Experiment and learn! 

https://www.earth.com/news/100-year-old-chemistry-rule-bredts-rule-double-bonds-bridge-ring-system-proven-false/

Ancient Greek skull rewrites human evolutionary timeline | The Jerusalem Post

Setting aside for a moment that this article was at least partially written by AI and its sourcing is a little hard to track down, the notion that a skull was found in Greece that doesn't (appear to) conform with what we know about early humans and their migratory patterns, is interesting. 

And finding a skull of a humanoid that old is always intriguing. 

But some things I noticed while researching the article sources: 1. scientists are apparently a little split on what humanoid this skull descends from and how it got into this cave. So there may be more to this story than we are seeing here. 2. People called out the misleading nature of the headline and the story supporting it. And 3. People in The US, unlike other places that simply want to know more, also reacted to finding a skull from a humanoid that is many tens of thousands of years old because "there is no such thing as evolution," "the earth is only 3,000 years old so the method to date it must be wrong," and "god created man. Full stop"

Why can't we simply accept some science and seek to understand more?!

https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/article-866012

Scientists Engineer Yeast to Create Honey Bee Superfood – Colonies Grew 15-Fold

What an interesting way to help prevent - and likely reverse - the problem of bee colony collapse. 

If we can engineer food that helps them grow, then maybe we can save the plant life that ultimately depend on the bees. 

That's cool. 

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/scientists-engineer-yeast-to-create-honey-bee-superfood-colonies-grew-15-fold/

Qu'ils mangent de la brioche

You're the person in charge of (arguably) the greatest nation. By definition, the president is expected to be the representative of all American people.

And he's really not leading or representing any of us, except maybe those that are in on the grift.  Instead, we have rising prices. Dehumanization. People suffering. And on and on.  

And this is what he chose to rail about.  Essentially acting like an entitled arse. It is one of the "let them eat cake" moments…

"Let them eat cake" is a quote attributed to queen Marie Antoinette before the French Revolution. The story goes that the queen said this when told her starving peasants had no bread, highlighting her obliviousness to their plight.

It's unclear if she actually uttered the phrase, but the context is that she really didn't understand the people who she was supposed to be leading. 

  

Disneyland Handcrafted.

Disney has announced a potentially interesting documentary series called "Disneyland Handcrafted," about the design and construction of the original Disneyland, which is in the midst of its 70th anniversary.

The documentary is by Leslie Iwerks, who descends from Disney "royalty" - her father was Don Iwerks, inventor of the CircleVision 360 camera, and her grandfather was Ub Iwerks who was one of the original animators who worked for Walt, and he helped create Mickey Mouse.

But Leslie is no slouch.  She is an Oscar- and Emmy-nominated documentarian who created the "The Imagineering Story" series for Disney+.

The new documentary will run on Disney+ and YouTube this fall. 

Trailer here: https://youtu.be/7rP3FVnGtfg