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Over 2,000 species of the beetle family Lampyridae (aka fireflies) are known for their unique ability to illuminate via bioluminescence. The males use this behavior to attract mates in flight, creating a courtship of light streaks captured in long-exposure photography.

cate♪Last dance of fireflies.

GlennCantor (theskepticaloptimist)Firefly

ikewinskiLupines and Fireflies No. 4

A R MillsFirefly

antoniseb2014-0625-Fireflies-brighter

Enjoy, and share, more photography in the Insects Are Beautiful group and Nature’s dancing lights gallery.

[whoviantrekkie]

[Images by Fiddler49]

By mastering the assembly of compound materials, the Mongols had created an incredibly powerful bow, as we saw in the previous entry. But the way that they used it, which differed from the European method, necessitated a secondary support object that was the result of early ergonomic observation.

The Europeans used what is known as the "Mediterranean draw" to pull their bowstrings back. This uses the first three fingers of the hand. However, the Mongols used their thumbs to pull the string back, and curled their index and middle fingers over the thumb to support it. This, they reckoned, was stronger and allowed for a cleaner release. Whether you're an archer or not, if you use your own hand to mimic the release of either pull, you can clearly see it's easier to instantly spread your thumb, forefinger and middle finger than it is to release the first three fingers of your hand; that's because the thumb and fingers oppose, and thus balance, each other.

But concentrating over 100 pounds of force against the thumb would damage that thumb. So to protect them, the Mongols had to create yet another object: The thumb ring. This hand-carved object could be made from wood, bone, horn or antler. Here's a shot of a modern-day one owned by this Hong-Kong-based archery enthusiast:

Considering all the things you can do these days with cameras, video and software- is there a chance this isn’t real? It’s….it’s….TOO PERFECT PURRFECT!

T.O.

airikjeong:

So my Chemistry teacher has an Asian grading scale…

• A - Average
• B - Below Average 
• C - Can’t eat dinner
• D - Don’t come home
• F - Find a new family

On Thursday, a freight train derailment near Superior, Montana sent three Boeing 737 fuselages tumbling into the Clark Ford River . Today, the cracked and scraped airplane bodies still litter the river's shores, and officials don't know how they're going to remove them.

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What? You think those Disney Princesses look fabulous without a little Photoshop help?

Jen Lewis of Buzzfeed showed us the cold, hard facts of the pervasive use of Photoshop in the unforgiving life of celebrities, where even fictional animated ones like Disney Princesses are under extreme pressure to look beautiful.

I suppose that a little Photoshop help isn't that big of a deal for Ariel (shown above). After all, didn't she undergo extreme surgery to get rid of that tail?

Here's a few more examples:

Jasmine: Covered Conjoined Head, Removed Sixth Finger

Cinderella: Removed Leno Chin, Tiny Hand, Tamed Sassy Eyebrow

Aurora: Flipped Upside Down Face

Belle: Fixed Lazy Eye

And Pocahontas, God bless her, is no longer Nick Cage:

View more over at Buzzfeed - via The Gloss

Zack Danger Brown of Columbus, Ohio wanted $10 to make some potato salad, so he went to Kickstarter. Now he has more than $2,000 to make potato salad, proving a long-standing theory here at Snacktaku — potato salad is pretty great.

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I decided to try making homemade waffle cones; Then this sorta happened…

These are stacked lemon bars topped with a honey meringue and buttercream dragon bees

Delivered by hand.

This is a sugar cookie glued together with caramel and glazed with milk, sugar and nutmeg

#poursomesugaronme

Chicken pot pie… I carved the beak and feet out of a carrot :D

Danzig birthday cake

Shortbread cookies glued with caramel, painted in chocolate and dusted with toasted coconut. AKA Samaoa’s

Birthday cake made for a Voodoo-Bayou themed party

The tongue is a candle I made :D

I was asked to make a wedding cake…

The top two tiers are red velvet and the bottom is German Chocolate with tons of salted & toasted pecans

I made these for Valentines day. Complete with Fudgy charms of sunshine.

Call them what you want — Coywolf, Coyote/Wolf Hybrid, Freakin' Terrifying — but the fact is, we've got a new predator and it lives in our forests, our suburbs and even our cities.

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This time-lapse was shot earlier this week in Hong Kong during a demonstration in support of democracy. It shows thousands of protesters walking down one of the main streets of the city in what seems an endless flood of people.

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Now that you're good and deafened from last night's Independence Day celebrations, it's time to do something productive with your recovery day—like, say, brewing alcohol-derived cannabis concentrates that will have you melting into your couch all day tomorrow.

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In a little over 10 years, we may be able to kick back in the driver's seat of the Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025, reading a book or checking our email as we venture from point A to point B. 

It's the self-driving truck of the future from Daimler, and at the present moment, one prototype exists. It was demonstrated Thursday in Germany, The New York Times Reports. The truck is "capable of responding to traffic while driving completely autonomously down a freeway at speeds of up to 85 kilometers per hour, or 52 miles per hour."

But this is different than Google's self-driving car. In fact, the steering wheel remains an integral part of the Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025. 

The Times says,

Unlike the pod-shape, two-seat driverless vehicle introduced recently by Google, the Daimler truck retains a steering wheel as a safety measure. This allows a driver to intervene for critical maneuvers, like overtaking a slower-moving vehicle in the left lane, much in the same way as the pilot of an airliner can intervene to guide an aircraft set on autopilot. The Google car is focused on urban transport and specializes in traveling short distances on demand for individual passengers.

It has not been priced yet.

You can read the full report from the Times here, and watch the video of a demonstration of the truck below:

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