How Surface Texture Affects Bloodstain Patterns. (Video)

How surface texture affects bloodstain patterns. (Video)

I would play/run/write/read this

Concept: a tabletop RPG setting that’s sort of a Star-Trek-meets-Paranoia mashup. It’s a utopian post scarcity sci-fi setting where nearly all production is handled by automated systems, and most people spend their days pursuing their weird hobbies. It’s not secretly dystopian or anything, but the automated systems aren’t very bright (true AIs are free citizens!), and a lot of those weird hobbies can get very weird indeed, so things sometimes Go Wrong in ways that only people with free access to bullshit space-magic hypertech they don’t really understand can manage.

Enter the player characters, an organisation of dedicated troubleshooters tasked with intervening in situations like this before the entire city is buried beneath a mountain of self-replicating squid (or whatever). Their job is complicated not only by the fact that every problem they face is by definition an outside context problem, but by the reality that most of the people they’re responsible for protecting a. don’t really believe it’s possible for anything bad to happen to them, because, well, nothing ever has, and b. are unaccustomed to dealing with authority figures, and consequently tend either to refuse to take them seriously, or else to wildly overreact – or both in succession!

Troubleshooters do have one advantage in their pocket, however: they’re aided by a semi-godlike AI that secretly guides society by publicly masquerading as an Internet search engine and personal organiser service. Their patron is very keen on preserving human self-determination, and consequently gives no orders, expressing its priorities solely in terms of what information it chooses to divulge or withhold; in practice, this generally amounts to a lot of passive-aggressive hinting that, oh, I don’t want to be a bother, but there’s a situation developing down at the boating club that might be worth looking into, you know, if we’re still doing the whole “valuing human life” thing.

On top of that, it refuses to reveal its existence to anyone other than the troubleshooters, which probably has a lot to do with their reputation for talking to themselves, and is generally just deeply weird to deal with. Still, it’s hard to justify refusing the input of a quasi-omniscient entity, so they all put up with it.

(Thanks to @acceptableduraz for suggesting that last bit!)

Hear The Oldest Flute In The World

In 2008, archaeologists discovered fragments of flutes carved from vulture and mammoth bones at a Stone Age cave site in southern Germany called Hohle Fels. They were carved and played by Homo sapiens. These flutes are ancient, dating back 42,000 to 43,000 years, making them the oldest flutes in the world.

The oldest Homo sapiens flutes, that is. There is at least one flute made by a Neanderthal that is older. Found at a Neanderthal campsite at Divje Babe in northwestern Slovenia, the Neanderthal flute is estimated to be over 43,000 years old and perhaps as much as 80,000 years old.

The video above features Ljuben Dimkaroski, who plays trumpet for the Ljubljana Opera Orchestra, and who helped archaeologists figure out how to play the prehistoric flute. Don’t worry! He is playing a clay replica, not the original.