Stoned & Studying

A Late-Night Source for Space, Extra-Terrestrial Life, Movies, Art, History, with a Smattering of Music.

[noirlac]

[catchymemes]

Human vs Animals

[weaselle]

Every year, in a small Welsh town, there is a race between riders on horseback and runners on foot. Evidently he above subject came under some discussion in a bar, and a bet was made, which resulted in a challenge people have recreated every year since. The race features dozens of horses versus a similar number of runners, and while a horse usually wins, it is always pretty close, and SOMEtimes, sometimes a human runner wins.

The race is 22 miles long. It is shorter than a standard human marathon. This is so that it is fair to the horses. A typical marathon is 26 miles long. A healthy distance for a horse to undertake in a single day for the purpose of travel is between 20 and 30 miles, but only if they walk at least part of the way. The years a human runner has won the race, the weather has been hot, as heat also favors human runners.

Interestingly, if the race is only ten to fifteen meters, 30 - 45 feet, a human can also win against a horse, which takes longer than a human to get up to full speed.

This fact of human capability for pursuit hunting and distance running is also part of why we have partnered with dogs for so much of our time on this planet. Dogs and wolves also engage in pursuit hunting, and sled dogs in particular can run miraculous distances due to some very interesting biological processes. 

[silly-jellyghoty]

Interesting

[auncyen]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon

[beardedmrbean]

Gordie is still out there still doing his thing I think

[theofficiallorddgc]

[allthingseurope]

Lake Fusine, Italy (by Saso Tusar)

[thetursithan]

In the 2000s, phones had quirks and class....

[alexaloraetheris]

In the ye olde days, when technology allowed phones to become small but there was no general concensus on what a phone should/ought to look like, it was like the wild west of phone design. The crazier it was, the higher the prestige. Phones back then did two things and they did them with flamboyance.

And then Steve Jobs ruined everything.

[home-and-having-tea]

You ever think about how unified humanity is by just everyday experiences? Tudor peasants had hangnails, nobles in the Qin dynasty had favorite foods, workers in the 1700s liked seeing flowers growing in pavement cracks, a cook in medieval Iran teared up cutting onions, a mom in 1300 told her son not to get grass stains on his clothes, some girl in the past loved staying up late to see the sun rise.

[quecksilvereyes]

there are scriptures all over the world painstakingly crafted hundreds of years ago with paw prints and spelling mistakes or drawings covering up mistakes. a bunch of teenage girls 2000 years ago gathered to walk around their hometown, getting fast food and laughing with their friends. two friends shared blankets before people lived in houses. a mother ran a fine comb through her child’s hair and told it to stop squirming sometime in the 1000s. there are covered up sewing mistakes in couture dresses from the 1800s, some poor roman burnt their food so well past recognition that they just buried the entire pot. there are broken dishes hidden in gardens of people no one even remembers anymore

[theropoda]

children eleven thousand years ago enjoyed jumping around in puddles made from the footprints of a giant sloth. children loved muddy puddles so long ago there were still megafauna alive

[captainlordauditor]

There’s a record of an emperor of Japan in the 9th century talking about his cat - how pretty it is, and how it stalks birds and curls up in a circle and meows mournfully for company and escaped its collar. All completely normal ordinary cat things. And then it ends with him saying “it is superior to all other cats”. I am delighted to be united across 1200 years with this fellow cat owner with exactly the same feelings about his cat that I have about mine.

[amnhnyc]

Did you know? Fireflies aren’t flies at all: they're beetles! Of all of the insects in the world, fireflies are among the few to have evolved an extraordinary language of light. Many fireflies use a system of flashes in some of the same ways we use words: to attract, to say, “Here I am,” even to deceive. They emit light from a tiny organ, called a lantern, on the underside of their abdomen, where a biochemical reaction takes place within specialized cells called photocytes. The reaction releases energy in the form of light.

Photo: Jessica Lucia, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, flickr

[the-wolf-and-moon]

Earth Under Saturn's Rings

[the-wolf-and-moon]

NGC 2170, Angel

[without-ado]

"Return to the Moon" Artemis Ⅱ 2026

l Andrew McCarthy 1,2 l Alex G Perez 3,4 l Alexander Gerst 5

[retroscifiart]

Art by Jay Rogers (acrylics, 2018)

[the-wolf-and-moon]

 NGC 6302, Butterfly

[the-wolf-and-moon]

Pleiades

[retroscifiart]

Art from UFOs The Greatest Mystery by Hilary Evans (Albany, 1979). One of the many UFO themed books cashing in at the tail end of the UFO craze.

Artists in order: Terry Hadler, Terry Hadler, Angus McKie, Terry Hadler, Kevin Tweddell, Stephen Crisp, Peter Knifton, Neil Breeden, John Gosler

[world-beauty]

SN 1006 Supernova Remnant

Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI

[itspileofgoodthings]

“How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been; how gloriously different are the saints.”

— Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis  (via itspileofgoodthings)

[the1920sinpictures]

1929 Completed Chicago Daily News Building and staircase, located at 400 West Madison Street. It was ground breaking for using air rights over railroad tracks and featuring Chicago's first public plaza at an office building. From Art Deco, Avant Garde and Modernism, FB.