Some ideas, such as Leonardo da Vinci's helicopter, are ahead of their time in that it would not be possible for da Vinci to construct a functional model. But what ideas are behind their time? This is to ask: which technologies could have arrived earlier because their prerequisites were already present?

Brian Potter, an engineer, asserts that the Wright brothers' flyer could have been constructed the late 1880s instead of 1903. The constituent technologies for the turbojet, which first appeared in 1937, were known in the 1920s.

Much depends on how one defines "plausible" and the risks that inventors are willing to take. Japanese physician Hanaoka Seishū (1760-1935) was the first surgeon in the world to use general anesthesia in 1804, but blinded his wife and crippled his mother while trying to get the dosage right.

-via Marginal Revolution

Mike Matthews founded Grandma Stand in 2012 to honor is grandmother, Eileen Wilkinson, who had a lot of wisdom to share. He built an outdoor stand and set it up in public places in New York City. There, Grandma Eileen listened and chatted with passersby.

Grandma Eileen passed away in 2018 at 101 years old. Matthews took down the stand. But in 2024, he decided to re-establish the stand new new grandmas staffing it.

Matthews now has 20 volunteer grandmothers participating in New York City, as well as 20 other locations around the United States.

The Grandma Stand project is the subject of a new documentary that you can watch on PBS.

-via Kottke

Is there a talent or swimsuit competition? I'm not sure, but we know that the competition is stiff from a hard calcium carbonate shell.

CU Boulder Today, a publication of the University of Colorado at Boulder, reports that the Senckenberg Institutes in Germany holds an annual competition which declares one mollusc to be "the coolest."

There are over 86,000 identified species in the phylum Mollusca, but only one can claim this annual honor.

Among the top contenders is the moon clam (Ephippodonta lunata), which can be found off the coast of southwestern Australia. The moon clam was nominated by CU Boulder researchers, so the campus is abuzz with excitement that the moon clam has made it to the final five possible winners.

-via David Thompson | Photos: Western Australia Museum

It's like a scene straight out of the movies: a car crash in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, left a motorcycle dangling from a traffic light.

Thankfully, the motorcyclist was taken to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries, and the driver of the car was unharmed.

(Photo: Sohrab Sandhu/CBC)

Redditor /u/Candid-Acadia-2301 made these impressive dumplings that look just like goldfish. These beautiful treats are filled with minced chicken and molded by hand. They added orange food coloring to one batch of dough, then dotted white dough with that color so that, when rolled out, the visual effect is a mixture of orange and white.

This is the Lycurgus Cup, a glass vessel dating back to Roman Empire of the fourth century. It is made of intricately-carved glass with a strange property. Under normal light, it appears to be an opaque jade green. But lit from the back, it glows a translucent red! This is dichroic glass, and displays different colors because of nanoparticles of gold and silver embedded in the glass. It is the only intact example of such glass, although a few shards of broken glass have been identified as dichroic. This property was only understood more than a thousand years later when scientists recreated it using nanotechnology. However, experts believe that the colloidal gold and silver were introduced into the molten glass by accident, since nanoparticles are too small to be seen by the naked eye. 

The real miracle, as I see it, is that a glass cup from the fourth century has survived fully intact instead of being smashed to smithereens, which is what's happened to most of the glassware I've owned. The Lycurgus Cup is indeed cracked, and held together by its metal rim around the top. The mythology depicted in its carving tells a story in itself, as detailed at the DeBrief. -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: Chappsnet) 

Two brothers play guitar while they pass the time watching their flock of sheep. The sheep appreciate the music, especially the littlest lamb. The older brother, Joseph, attributes his talent to his father's guitar instead of his years of practice. The younger brother, Isaac, is appalled to learn that Joseph is planning to leave home for a career in music. Is he upset at losing his best friend, or is he worried that he won't be able to step into his brother's shoes? Joseph is simply spreading his wings as an adult, but leaving home is never easy. Isaac has never been without his brother, and it shakes his entire world.   

The sweet story called Farewell is Luke Lee's final film as a student a Calarts before he graduates. We wish him well in the animation field. You can see more of his work at YouTube or at Instagram. -via Kuriositas 

Tusken Raiders in Tuscany, my acrylic painting pic.twitter.com/ooIWp1fjRF

Here at Neatorama, we lovethe works of Travis Chapman, a traditionally-trained painter who composes realistic images of pop culture. He usually plays with the source concepts as puns. Here, for example, are a pair of Tusken Raiders, a species from the Star Wars planet of Tatooine.

I've always referred to them as Sand People, but my teenagers say that's no longer acceptable terminology. They're just "Tuskens" (calling them raiders is derogatory).

Anyway, these Tuskens have acquired through their labors sufficient funding for a journey to sunny Tuscany on Earth, where they can sample the local wines.

Closer look at our Masters of the Universe merch coming soon to theatres! ⚔️ pic.twitter.com/FArmxHb5vd

Masters of the Universe, the latest film in the He-Man franchise, premiers on June 5.

Movie theaters have been getting creative lately in their efforts to draw people to brick-and-mortar theaters. We've seen them offer moviegoers inventive popcorn buckets, notably for Dune 2, Despicable Me 4, Gladiator 2, Jaws, and Mr. Fantastic.

Promoters for Masters of the Universe are going even further. Yes, there's a popcorn bucket. It's shaped like Castle Greyskull. But I'm enraptured by the 1:1 scale Sword of Power. Remove the hilt and you can fill the probably not-battle ready sword with soda.

-via Rob Province

Catfishing is a term for nefarious scams involving false identities, but in this case, it's a word meaning fishing in categories. Articles on Wikipedia are categorized, and an article may appear in many different categories. Can you identify a Wikipedia article by its categories? Each category is a clue that narrows it down. The game Catfishing gives you ten chances to show your smarts, and those ten articles change every day. The game does not rely on exact spelling or punctuation, and will steer you if you are close. There's even an option to award yourself half a point for being "close enough." 

It's not easy. I'm not great with remembering people's names, and one was a subject I know absolutely nothing about. At the end, I kicked myself for missing a couple I should have known. My final result was 6/10 last night, but I learned something, and even looked up a couple of subjects. Try out today's game! -via Metafilter 

The most mundane things can have a way more interesting history than you know. Consider the lowly screwdriver. They come in all shapes and sizes, but the one you grab the most has a handle that is comfortable and just plain works for whatever it is you use a screwdriver for. And that's no accident. Its design has more features than you've ever considered, and its development goes back over a hundred years. Every part of it has a purpose from its six sides to the flutes and pommel. Along the way, fancier ideas have been proposed as improvements, but they've never really been able to beat the shape you've come to know. 

Woodworker Rex Krueger knows tools. In this video, you'll learn about not only screwdrivers, but other tools that factor into the story, plus you'll learn how to use the features of a screwdriver to get tasks done more efficiently. (via kottke) 

Sometimes clues to a disease come from the people who don't get it. A 1950 study of the psychological lives of blind people revealed that there are no cases of people who had been blind since birth developing schizophrenia. Double-checking through larger health records confirmed the fact. Those who suffer an eye injury or otherwise become blind after seeing in childhood might develop the disease as much as anyone else, but those who were born with a malfunctioning visual cortex in the brain do not. 

The visual cortex plays a big role in detecting signals from the outside world and sorting them out. The brain spends a lot of energy ranking visual stimuli to calculate which is important and using those signals to make sense of the world. In schizophrenic patients, this ranking seems to go haywire, and the brain cannot ignore random signals. When there is no visual stimuli in the visual cortex, that part of the brain is often repurposed for other tasks. Does this reorganization of brain tasks provide some kind of protection against schizophrenia? The answer may lie in the complex way in which our brains work. Read about this intriguing research at the Conversation. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: Database Center for Life Science(DBCLS)) 

The Takeout has compiled a list of 11 tiny eateries in these United States, including the famous Squeeze-In in Sunbury, Pennsylvania.

This hot dog joint has been in continous operation since 1945. You might want to order your dog for takeout because it measure sonly 8 by 16 feet. If you insist on dining indoors, you'll have to squeeze in next to other customers at the handful of stools available. You can browse the menu here.

After 81 years, the Squeeze In is a cherished local institution with a devoted local fan base.

Photo: The Sqeeze-In

Boxers and other hand-to-hand fighters sometimes get "cauliflower ear", which is referred, medically speaking, as "auricular hematoma." It's a deformity that results most commonly from getting punched in the ear.

So a guy with cauliflower ears looks like someone who's been in some hard fights and is ready for more. From a particular point of view, it contributes to an aesthetically appealing appearance.

Oddity Central reports that some men in Russia are getting cauliflower ears not the hard way, but through cosmetic surgery. When matched with a muscular physique and a confident demeanor, they convey an overall impression of physical dominance.

Perhaps women find this look attractive.

A rat king is an entanglement of rats by their tails. It refers to a rare but real phenomenon among rodents but also a symbol of social and political disorder as outlined by Lucas Reilly in Mental Floss.

In this case, it's a dumpling dish prepared by the girlfriend of redditor /u/Curious_Psychonaut.

The dumplings are artfully arranged to resemble rats, including ears, legs, noses, and eyes. /u/Curious_Psychonaut provides no recipe, but let us hope that the dumplings contain actual rat meat for the sake of authenticity. Since you can buy rats at pet supply stores (people feed them to snakes), this should be an achievable quest.