M.J. Rose

This almost seems too fringe to be true (Nibiru anyone?) — but wow, won’t it be interesting if the Sun really does have a chaos-causing twin out there somewhere?

Image Credit: NASA, ESA and J. Muzerolle, STScI

From Futurism,

Astronomers Discover That Our Sun Likely Had an “Evil” Twin That Killed the Dinosaurs

Scientists believe that most, if not all, sun-like stars are born with a twin. Evidence also suggests that our solar system’s sun’s twin may be responsible for knocking the comet that killed the dinosaurs toward Earth.
“We have long known that the dinosaurs were killed by a catastrophic comet impact with the Earth’s surface but what if there was some foul play afoot? Astronomers have discovered that our sun may have been born with a twin, and an evil one, at that. One hypothesis states that every 27 million years, the evil twin, aptly dubbed Nemesis, returns to wreck havoc on the solar system. They believe that the star lobs a few meteors in our direction as it makes its may through the outer limits of the solar system.

Research has lead scientists to believe that most stars are born with at least one sibling. According to UC Berkeley astronomer Steven Stahler, “We ran a series of statistical models to see if we could account for the relative populations of young single stars and binaries of all separations in the Perseus molecular cloud, and the only model that could reproduce the data was one in which all stars form initially as wide binaries.”…

For the rest, click here.

Well someone had to be the makers of all the stuff those secret societies require, right?

From the ever-beloved Atlas Obscura,

DeMoulin Museum
“Spanking machines, fake goats, and more devices of humiliation are on display in this museum of fraternal initiation devices

Today the DeMoulin family is known as the largest maker of band uniforms in America, but their museum is devoted to their origins as manufacturers of bizarre initiation devices and costumes for a once-booming number of secret societies.

The DeMoulin’s odd business of fraternal machinery began in the late 1800s when Ed DeMoulin began working with his men’s group, the Modern Woodmen of America, to begin crafting goats that new members would have to ride as part of their initiation. Ed had previously patented a hilarious “trick camera” that would squirt water at the unknowing subject, so his move into the prank goat industry was a natural fit. The company’s popularity soon grew and other fraternal orders such as the Odd Fellows began looking to the “goat factory” for their goofy initiation needs. Soon the DeMoulins were making spanking machines, lung tester gags, and of course their rocking goats…”

For the rest, click here. (Pictures!)

A one-of-a-kind artist who hoarded many one-of-a-kind things.

The menacing tassels.

by Cara Giaimo for Atlas Obscura,

Edward Gorey, Pack Rat

The famous illustrator was a devoted collector of… well, almost everything.

“In 1976, Edward Gorey put out one of his trademark works of everyday dread. Called Les Passementeries Horribles, or “The Horrible Trimmings,” the book consists solely of illustrations of enormous, menacing tassels of all shapes. A velvety, tentacled clump looms over a child with a pail. A beaded braid chases a man in a wheelchair.

Twenty-four years later—just after the artist’s death—Rick Jones, the director of the Edward Gorey House in Yarmouth, Massachusetts, was poking around in the building’s garage when he found a small shoebox. He opened it up. “Bingo, it was a shoebox full of tassels,” says Gregory Hischak, the house’s curator. Now dusty and crumbling, each one corresponded with a page in the book. Gorey had held onto his inspiration, years and years after he used it.

This wasn’t unusual. When he wasn’t writing, drawing, illustrating, and designing—and even when he was—Edward Gorey was collecting. Over the course of his life, the artist gathered, and kept, everything from tarot cards to trilobites to particularly interesting cheese graters. “We ask the docents not to use the word ‘hoarder,’” says Hischak, grinning as he surveys the House’s newest exhibit, which focuses on Gorey’s pack rat tendencies. “But he really did hoard interesting things.”…

For the rest (and more pictures), click here.