Authorities in Western Australia are searching for a radioactive capsule, which they believe fell off a truck while being transported. The capsule is smaller than a penny, while the search zone is a stretch of vast desert highway about as long as California’s coastline. The capsule, a small silver cylinder measuring 0.3 inches by 0.2 inches, came from a Rio Tinto mine and formed a part of a sensor used in mining. It contains a small amount of cesium-137 and is dangerously radioactive, according to the authorities. An hour of exposure at about a meter away is the equivalent of having 10 X-rays, and prolonged contact can cause skin burns, acute radiation sickness and cancer, they said.
The Bureau of Linguistical Reality is coining new words to describe our world
From Clive Thompson: “The Bureau of Linguistical Reality is a project started by two artists and anthropologists, Alicia Escott and Heidi Quante. They founded it in 2014 specifically for the purpose of collecting, translating and creating a new vocabulary for the Anthropocene. In essence, they devote themselves to coining new words to help describe the new dislocations, emotions, and phenomena being caused by global warming and global weirding. They’ve traveled around the world, setting up an official-looking table — at which they sit, often wearing matching uniforms — and talk to members of the public about their climate experiences, working with them to craft new words.”
Bangkok’s real name is the longest city name in the world
The full name of Thailand’s capital city is Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit. Translated, it means: “The city of angels, the great city, the eternal jewel city, the impregnable city of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarma.”
This theater group performs Shakespeare inside a video game
The Wasteland Theatre Company is not your average band of thespians. Dotted all across the world, they meet behind their keyboards to perform inside Fallout 76, a video game set in a post-nuclear apocalyptic America. The Fallout series is one of gaming’s most popular, famous for encouraging players to role-play survivors within the oddly beautiful ruins of alternate-history Earth. As you explore the crumbling husks of towns hollowed out by an atomic bomb, tumbleweed scuffs scorched sand, rusted signs advertising Nuka-Cola creak in the breeze, and you’re constantly on the lookout for irradiated things that want to maul you.
The Indian princess who fought to give women the right to vote
Sophia Duleep Singh was a daughter of the last Sikh ruler of the Punjab, Maharajah Duleep Singh, and grew up in Elveden, on the Norfolk-Suffolk border. The young princess made history in the early 1900s by risking her royal status to campaign for women’s rights. The Maharajah Duleep Singh was exiled to England after his kingdom was annexed by the British in India in the 1840s. Despite failed attempts to return to India, he used his financial compensation to buy Elveden Hall, where his wife and children then settled. In 1910, Princess Sophia led a 400-strong demonstration to Parliament with prominent suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, a protest that became known as “Black Friday”.
When three ex-Special Forces soldiers tried to conquer Venezuela
They were to sail undetected through hostile waters for about 16 hours before landing just north of Caracas. From there they would fan out. One group would take over a broadcast station, which would activate a number of sleeper cells. The two Americans would commandeer an airport, while another group would capture Maduro, the feared Bolivarian dictator who has starved his people and exacerbated one of the largest refugee crises in the world. Finally, they would exfiltrate the deposed leader via plane to the U.S., which had placed a $15 million bounty on his head. Pretty much everything went wrong.
A time-lapse trip through Dutch canals
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