Ouija board is parlor game, albeit one with no rules, strategy, or goal. What it does have is whiff of the supernatural, which is enough to make it a long-lasting hit. Vox brings us the history of the Ouija board, as part of its series called "Overrated." -via Tastefully Offensive
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The metamorphosis of Escher is an online interactive adventure
Take a tour tough the interactive documentary of the famous artist M. C. Escher. Never before has Escher’s work been available online in such great detail. You can move through his work, zoom in and learn more about Escher’s life, his technique and his work from the perspective of art history through audio tours.
Use the Metamorphosis Machine to make your very own piece of Escherian art. Rotate, mirror and move around your creation and then morph this into a new image. You can add your created work to a digital Collaborative Artwork; an infinite online metamorphosis.
Meanwhile, an unfortunate man boogie-boarding in Cape Cod was the first person bitten by a shark in Massachusetts since 1936. He has died of his injuries.
Who remembers hama beads? Lol #rxjs @benlesh pic.twitter.com/xNnrlaCyOk
— Tracy Lee | ladyleet (@ladyleet) May 26, 2019
Tropical storm Florence, formerly a hurricane, is busy lingering over North Carolina and South Carolina, dumping floodwater over a large portion of both states. People who live near the coast know that hurricanes happen, and that each one brings different problems. In South Carolina, they also know that hurricane forecasts will bring sightings of the Gray Man.
Over the last week, some South Carolinians were talking about a different, folkloric warning sign, a ghost known as the Gray Man, believed to appear in the small town of Pawleys Island as a harbinger of hurricanes. While there is disagreement surrounding details (common to many ghost stories)—like who the Gray Man is supposed to have been and when he first appeared—the tale’s basic contours are generally accepted. In sum, a man was returning to his beloved on Pawleys Island after a long time away, but died in quicksand before arriving. Since then, he has been said to appear shortly before hurricanes, as a signal that it’s time to leave the island. He is also believed to preserve the homes of those he meets.
Read about the ghost story that goes back almost 200 years at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Pollinator)
When I was five and six years old, I was enthralled by a Saturday morning show called Fireball XL5, which started me on a lifetime love of science fiction. Fireball XL5 had earlier been a short-lived British series, one of many produced by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson using a style of puppetry they called Supermarionation. Relive those weirdly animated series, from the obscure Supercar to the hits series Thunderbirds, with pictures, videos, and a peak behind the scenes at Messy Nessy Chic.
Every year, students from the Musashino Art University in Tokyo and the city of Niigata have collaborated to create fantastic large sculptures made from rice straw. Check out the fantastic photos over at the Wara Art Facebook page. Don't miss the build photos.
We learned the other day that when cats sneer, that doesn't necessarily mean they are disgusted with you. But there are other behaviors that may lead you to think your cat doesn't like you at all. That's because you're not thinking like a cat. Gizmodo asked various cat experts about how cats relate to humans. UC Davis veterinarian Mikel Maria Delgado tells us:
For whatever reason, people seem really obsessed with projecting their own anxieties about their relationship with their cat onto the cats themselves. Maybe that’s because they’re comparing cats do dogs. Cats have fewer facial muscles than dogs, so they have fewer expressions that mimic human ones, whereas dogs have more facial expressions, and these expressions are closer to ours than cats’ are. Cats present a more neutral palette for people, so when someone’s encountering a cat it may not be obvious to them what the cat is feeling just from looking at them.
That said, cats will often have preferred people in the home, and some of that is likely due to socialization. A cat whose exposed to many different types of people when they’re young will be more adaptable to different types of people when they get older. A kitten who is fostered in a quiet home with only one very quiet woman will probably be more comfortable with women later.
Delgado has more to say, as do other cat experts, on the behavior of cats vs our expectations.
(Image credit: Chelsea Beck/Gizmodo)
This is a most interesting, humane, culinary solution if you have a mouse in the house (or seven). Bonus if you happen to dine on peanut butter and vermin sandwiches!
Via VideoSift
If you've seen your cat give you "that face," you probably felt bad about it, because the same sneering expression on a human indicates disgust, horror, or at least a hateful thought of some kind. But that's not what's happening from the cat's point of view. Hank Green of SciShow is here to explain. -via Geeks Are Sexy
More than 100 Pink Cadillacs lined up outside of Greater Grace Temple in Detroit #ArethaHomegoing #ArethaFranklinFuneral #ArethaQueenForever pic.twitter.com/a4aK1KasoX
— #LaquanMcDonald (@ifuaskmee) August 31, 2018
You may have spent all day Friday watching Aretha Franklin's star-studded funeral service on TV, but even so, you didn't get to see the procession outside. More than 100 pink Cadillacs were there to escort the hearse from the funeral home to Greater Grace Temple in Detroit on Friday morning.
The cars are a reference to her song, "Freeway of Love," in which she sings: "We goin' ridin' on the freeway of love in my pink Cadillac."
The turnout is all thanks to Mary Kay national sales director Crisette Ellis asked that any employee who owns a pink Cadillac show up for Franklin's funeral service, according to the Detroit Free Press. (Sales representatives for the cosmetics company famously drive pink cars.)
Per the paper, many of the Cadillacs that turned up to the service were driven by Mary Kay employees, though other pink Cadillac owners also turned up to pay homage to the Queen of Soul.
You can see many more pictures of the Cadillacs and some video, too, at Mashable.
Once upon a time, going to a concert was all about the music. Then Alice Cooper came along and turned the concert stage into a circus, playing a character in terrifying makeup, singing terrifying songs in a powerful show that no one could forget. And all while using a woman's name for reasons no one could fathom. Those concerts propelled his songs to the top of the charts.
“[When] that curtain goes up all of a sudden I am not that same guy,” Cooper told me recently about his onstage transformation from Vincent Furnier into the man we all love and fear as Alice. “I become that character and the game is on. And that character is a villain and he goes out there with absolutely no attitude of ‘Gee, I hope you like us tonight.’ He goes out there with the attitude of grabbing ’em by the throat and shaking them for an hour and a half.”
He's been doing that for 50 years now. Alice Cooper shares stories from his long career in an interview at Uproxx.
(Image credit: Eduardo Gabriel via Flickr)
In case you've ever wondered why the comic strip Garfield isn't funny, comic artist Jim Davis will readily admit to the fact that it wasn't even designed to be funny. The cartoon cat is wildly popular in spite of this ...or specifically because of this. Simon Whistler of Today I Found Out explains the thinking behind Garfield. Despite the apparent length, the story is less then 12 minutes.
Mother Ship
In 1959, Jackie Gleason had a home built in Cortland Manor, New York, that resembled a flying saucer. It was completely round, and everything in it was round as well: the counters, bar, fireplace, staircase, even the shower doors curved along with the building. That house, dubbed "Mother Ship," along with a guesthouse (also round) called "Spaceship," and a third house that isn't round, on eight acres is now for sale. Gleason's eight-foot diameter round bed is included. Jackie Gleason was interested in UFOs for quite some time, although he wasn't quite a believer.
Spaceship
Despite a fear of flying, Gleason developed a fascination with UFOs and flying saucers, possibly as part of his attraction to parapsychology, witchcraft, extrasensory perception, reincarnation, mental telepathy, clairvoyance and all things paranormal. An avid reader, Gleason amassed a vast library (over 1,700 titles) of paranormal books and materials which now reside in the University of Miami library and are catalogued at LibraryThing. Gleason appeared regularly on a paranormal-themed overnight radio show hosted by John Nebel, where he revealed his skepticism by offering $1 million to anyone who could offer physical proof of aliens visiting Earth.
No one ever took the million, but there is a story involving Richard Nixon that got some traction despite Gleason wanting to keep it secret. There is no evidence that it's true, but you can read the story at Mysterious Universe. -via Strange Company
The Queen of Soul has passed. Aretha Franklin died of pancreatic cancer this morning at her home in Detroit. Born into a musical family, she began singing professionally as a teenager in the 1960s, and eventually recorded music in a variety of genres: pop, soul, jazz, gospel, blues, and even opera. According to the New York Times,
Ms. Franklin had a grandly celebrated career. She placed more than 100 singles in the Billboard charts, including 17 Top 10 pop singles and 20 No. 1 R&B hits. She received 18 competitive Grammy Awards, along with a lifetime achievement award in 1994. She was the first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in 1987, its second year. She sang at the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009, at pre-inauguration concerts for Jimmy Carter in 1977 and Bill Clinton in 1993, and at both the Democratic National Convention and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral in 1968.
Franklin was an inspiration to generations of singers, and continued recording into her 70s. Aretha Franklin was 76.
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