Apennine Colossus (Colosso dell'Appennino), a 11m statue created around 1580 by sculptor Giambologna. It is located in the gardens of the Villa Demidoff (formerly Villa di Pratolino) in Vaglia, just north of Florence, Italy 🇮🇹
Built over 420 years ago, the Apennine Colossus statue built with a brick core encased by a carved stone exterior. There's even a secret room behind his head with a fireplace that blows smoke through his nostrils. Completed around 1580, the Apennine Colossus was designed by Flemish sculptor Giambologna for the Villa di Pratolino, the Medici family's lavish estate outside Florence. Standing approximately 35 feet (10.7 meters) tall, the giant represents the Apennine Mountains, the range that stretches the length of Italy. More than a statue, it was an engineering marvel that blended sculpture, architecture, and hydraulics.
The Colossus was hollow, containing several rooms and mechanical features. A chamber inside the head included a fireplace, and when lit, smoke escaped through the giant's nostrils, creating the illusion that the mountain itself was breathing. Water also flowed through the structure to power fountains and animate hidden water features throughout the surrounding gardens, which were among the most spectacular in Renaissance Europe.
Although much of the original Villa di Pratolino was demolished in the 19th century, the Apennine Colossus survived and remains one of Giambologna's largest and most extraordinary works, attracting visitors more than 440 years after it was built.
#archaeohistories
Researchers studying yellow-bellied marmots in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory turned to OnlyFans for funding. The OnlyMarms project has raised about $4,000 from subscriptions so far
NAILED IT: Bill Maher: “You think we have immigration problems? Did you see what happened in Spain yesterday? 60K people in one day bum-rushed the border. And got through. And this poor Spain, at the same time they are having horrible fires. Spain is the new California.”
“No, it is. The northern part is on fire, the southern part gets overrun by migrants, and everybody speaks Spanish. It’s the new California.”
🚨Huge Update on Our Hero Lifeguard Ryder Williams 16yrs
Ryder says he refused to let go of the child because he knew the boy would almost certainly die if he did
Ryder’s father Shane “I almost started crying because how determined he was to save that boy’s life makes me so proud.”
Shockingly, Ryder made ANOTHER rescue that day under circumstances MORE difficult than the ones seen on the viral clip, pulling 2 more people to safety
Ryder has proven to be extremely humble, stating he doesn’t understand all the attention because he was just doing what anyone else would.
Several bystanders went against policy to help Ryder save the drowning boy, but the surf rebuffed them, and they retreated.
Ryder’s parents attribute his incredible water skills to years of playing intense water polo, where he played the position of hole set, which means constantly fighting off opponents. His parents joked about being uncomfortable “with everyone trying to drown our boy”.
Ryder and his family have been involved to the White House by President Trump, where Ryder will receive a civilian award 🥇
The most interesting part of the red card saga isn't the ruling. It's how differently Americans and Europeans process the idea that they might have been wronged.
Europeans are fundamentally different from Americans in one particular way: they expect life to be aggravating and at times unfair. It's just a fact of moving through the world. I joke that in Europe, the customer is always wrong. You didn't read the fine print. The only pharmacy in town is closed every other Tuesday for three hours, and even if the times weren't posted, that's still your problem. Too bad if you want the bill, because the waiter's on his union-mandated half-hour smoke break, and you're just going to have to wait.
To quote the great Mark Knopfler: sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug. There's something freeing in that. Things are less in your control, so there's less angst in managing your expectations.
In America, things couldn't be more different. We simply can't accept a wrong left unrighted.
The flight attendant sneezed handing you a drink on your one-hour flight? 15,000 frequent flyer miles. Didn't like your appetizer? A replacement is on the way, and the whole course comes off the bill. There's a reason our interstates are lined with trial lawyer billboards.
Europeans have turned complaining into a continental pastime with no expectation that the universe owes them a remedy for their grief. You gripe about the train being late, your friends nod solemnly and everyone goes back to their apéro. In America, we launch a full-blown investigation of the train system, sue the government (and its contractors) that allowed for the tardiness and hold a Congressional hearing on the state of national infrastructure.
So to an objective observer, the red card shouldn't have happened, and VAR was a travesty. To Americans, our star player shouldn't be unfairly banned from a match we couldn't afford to lose for a card he so obviously didn't deserve.
Who cares that FIFA used a little-used reversal to fix it. Who cares that other people are mad about it. We. Were. Wronged. It was unjust. It must be corrected. We would accept nothing less.
Europeans waxing poetic about the sanctity of the game are, of course, talking about a governing body whose last tournament host was decided via confirmed cash bribes — one that imposed dress codes on women, shrugged off widespread allegations of modern slavery and reconfigured the entire tournament calendar to suit the host country. Which is exactly the point. If you've made peace with all of that, at least enough to watch the tournament four years later, a probationary suspension isn't actually a scandal.
Maybe that's the real divide. Over millennia, Europeans have made peace with being the bug. Americans have never once considered it, and apparently, we're not about to start now.
New: Joe Rogan is shocked when Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas explains how Bill Gates tricked all of America into becoming office workers:
SRINIVAS: “Microsoft built this concept of the office worker because they wanted to sell office software.”
ROGAN: “Wow. This type of lifestyle is a very recent thing that we’ve just now accepted as normal.”
SRINIVAS: “It was the mission of Bill Gates to put a PC on every desk and get people glued to them.”
ROGAN: “What a freaking wizard. Boy did they nail that one.”
SRINIVAS: “It wasn’t about making computing beautiful like the vision Steve Jobs had.
All they cared about was selling computers so they could sell software. When you sell more software that’s when you become rich.”
ROGAN: “They’re so sneaky man.”
SRINIVAS: “That’s why we all got trained into using Microsoft Word and Excel.
Once you learned that then you could work for a company that has a PC on their desk who’s paying Microsoft money to use software.”