Scribes decorated medieval manuscripts with all kinds of weird thing, like rabbits, cats, Star Wars characters, and lots of snails. Snails very often appear to be doing battles with knights -or, more accurately, the knight is attempting to do battle with the snail. Vox takes a closer look at this phenomena.
It could have been a political insult at the beginning, which turned into an inside joke over time. A medieval meme, as it were. -Thanks, Phil Edwards!
After 12 seasons, the TV series Bones came to an end last night. The show focused on forensic anthropologist "Bones" Brennan and FBI agent Seeley Booth and the crimes they solved together. The series was based on the work of Kathy Reichs, a forensic anthropologist turned crime writer turned TV producer, so it had a sense of authenticity other crime procedurals lack. Fans of Bones will want to check out the list of the most dramatic moment of each season at TVOM. And of you haven't followed the show, it might set you up for binge-watching with home video.
Janelle Shane spent some time teaching a neural network how to generate recipes. She set it to learn from 30,000 existing recipes, but learning to cook is hard. After all, it can't taste the results. But even before the recipes are completed, it had a difficult time learning ingredients, measurements, and processes. The results are quite interesting. For example, here are some ingredients the machine suggests.
1 ½ teaspoon chicken brown water
1 teaspoon dry chopped leaves
1/3 cup shallows
10 oz brink custard
¼ cup bread liquid
2 cup chopped pureiped sauce
½ cup baconfroots
¼ teaspoon brown leaves
½ cup vanilla pish and sours
½ cup white pistry sweet craps
1 tablespoon mold water
¼ teaspoon paper
1 cup dried chicken grisser
15 cup dried bottom of peats
¼ teaspoon finely grated ruck
And this is a thing that it came up with repeatedly for some reason, and was quite adamant that I use:
1 cup plaster cheese
Shane also fed recipes into a different neural network that had already been trained on the works of H.P. Lovecraft.
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 32 minutes. Test corners to see if done, as center will seem like the next horror of Second House.
Whip ½ pint of heavy cream. Add 4 Tbsp. brandy or rum to possibly open things that will never be wholly reported.
Cook over a hot grill, or over glowing remains of tunnel mouth.
With blender on high speed, add ice cubes, one at a time, making certain each cube is the end.
Dice the pulp of the eggplant and put it in a bowl with the vast stark rocks.
NOTE: As this is a tart rather than a cheesecake, you should be disturbed.
She later fed her cooking network some text from H.P. Lovecraft to see what would happen. Yeah, that was just as funny. Read an archive of the experiments at Postcards from the Frontiers of Science. -via Metafilter
A Japanese photographer who goes by Nyan Kichi has made friends with a colony of feral cats. He's found that the cats particularly love to play in an area where the street has a lot of drain holes.
They've made a game of jumping into and peeking out of these holes!
They don't seem to enjoy Nyan Kichi's attempts at a gentle game of Whack-a-Mole, but they don't mind having their pictures taken at all. See a selection of the best pictures at The Dodo, and see all the pictures at Instagram. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Urban Spree)
Tequila Cloud is an art installation that is a cloud made of tequila, that rains tequila on command. In case you're thinking of renting one for your next party, there's only one, and it was on display earlier this month in Germany.
The Mexican Tourism Board installed the cloud in Berlin at the Urban Spree compound in an art gallery and said “real tequila was turned into gas to create a floating cloud that rains tequila on command.” The art installation seems to be a cloud with lights to simulate lightening that is filled with tequila gas vapor that then rains down and fills a basin with tequila. If you’re not patient enough to collect your shot from a freakin’ cloud, there’s a handy tap that dispenses them, too.
Lucky visitors got to drink for free. Now, if the relations between the U.S. amd Mexico ever improve, we might get a chance to see it ourselves. See more pictures of the Tequila Cloud at Uproxx.
When Hollywood does history, they often go to great lengths to portray an iconic moment accurately, especially when there is film or photographs of the original event. They get pretty darn close, as this comparison from Vugar Efendi shows us.
For most of these, I am more familiar with the actual film or photographs than I am with the movies. I'm impressed at how well they copied the existing archives. Then again, if a movie didn't resemble the real history, it wouldn't have made it into this video. If you have trouble reading the captions, try it in fullscreen mode. -via Laughing Squid
A discarded water heater got a few accessories for decoration. The resulting "robot" isn't very talkative, but that doesn't matter here at all.
Redditor shadeogreen recorded his daughter Rayna's adorable reaction to the robot. She wuvs that wobot! -via Metafilter
We are familiar with puppets that are controlled by a hand inside, hidden by a high stage, or marionettes controlled by puppeteers hidden above. In Vietnam, puppets move about by controllers hidden by the water they're standing in! Mike Powell and Jürgen Horn attended a performance of Vietnamese water puppets.
The concept of water puppetry is simple to grasp: hidden behind a backdrop, a team of puppeteers use long bamboo sticks and strings to control the puppets, who glide about a pool of water.
But although I understand the basic idea, what I have trouble comprehending is its execution. We saw scenes with at least eight puppets zipping about, often in perfect synchronization. How do the puppeteers, each apparently maneuvering a stick through the water, manage to do it so quickly and exactly? Are they jumping over each other? Passing the sticks down a line? As entertaining as the show was, I think I would have preferred to go backstage, to see them work.
Read more, and see a video of the water puppet performance at For 91 Days.
This escalator spells out the rules for you. If you are going to stand still, stay on the right. If you are walking, keep to the left. The discussion at reddit is split between people who assumed everyone knew this, and people who did not know this. It's most important in cities, especially subways and airports, where some people are in a real hurry. Some things I learned from the comments:
People in Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore are very good at following this rule.
In Australia, you stand on the left and walk on the right. Unless those guys are pulling our legs.
Some people in rural areas have never heard this rule, because they only see escalators in department stores and malls, where no one is in that much of a hurry. And escalators in rural areas are often too narrow for passing. Some people from cities think that's because rural people are fat and lazy.
In the District of Columbia, people on the escalator will scold you for breaking the rule. That makes sense, as they have a lot of tourists who get in the way of commuters.
Several commenter told stories of getting angry over people standing in their way, and then finding that the offender was blind, deaf, or missing a limb. Lesson learned.
While studies have shown that standing is more efficient overall, the etiquette remains. So even if you're from Wyoming, stand on the right, walk on the left, and do watch your step on an escalator. And remember, if the escalator stops, you can use them as stairs. Also, there's no need to make fun of people who don't know things.
On the advice of a playwright friend, actor Robert Harling sat down and wrote a play about the pain his family went through when his sister Susan died of complications from diabetes. He wrote about the strong Southern women who surrounded his mother during her grief. The experience was cathartic, yet he was afraid to tell his parents about it. But the play was produced in 1987, moved to Broadway, and then to the silver screen. In a fascinating oral history, the people that were involved in Steel Magnolias tell the story from Susan's death to the filming of the movie in Natchitoches, Louisiana.
ROBERT HARLING Julia was so eager to have the stamp of approval from Mama and Daddy to play their daughter. She’d come over, and Daddy would cook hamburgers and they’d talk, and she’d write poetry and she’d read us the poetry, and Dolly would come over and sit on the sofa and play her guitar. It was just beyond surreal. Dolly wrote a song called “Eagle When She Flies.” It was written for the movie, and Herbert was going to play it over the credits, but he changed his mind. There’s a line about the “sweet magnolia” that originally had been “steel magnolia,” and she played it for my parents as she was writing it.
SHIRLEY MACLAINE It was really hot. There was Dolly with a waist cincher no more than sixteen inches around and heels about two feet high and a wig that must have weighed twenty-three pounds. And she’s the only one who didn’t sweat. She never complained about anything. Never. The rest of us were always complaining.
ROBERT HARLING We were shooting part of the Christmas scene, and this was in the dead of August, and we were sitting out on the porch of Truvy’s beauty shop. We were waiting, and there was a lot of stop and start. The women were dressed for Christmas, and Dolly was sitting on the swing. She had on that white cashmere sweater with the marabou around the neck, and she was just swinging, cool as a cucumber. Julia said, “Dolly, we’re dying and you never say a word. Why don’t you let loose?” Dolly very serenely smiled and said, “When I was young and had nothing, I wanted to be rich and famous, and now I am. So I’m not going to complain about anything.”
Read the entire article chronicling the story of Steel Magnolias at Garden & Gun. -via Metafilter
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research, now in all-pdf form. Get a subscription now for only $25 a year!
by Joyce Flynn
Harvard University
One June, about 25 years ago, I was doing a one-month work-study gig describing records and tapes in Celtic languages for Harvard’s audio-visual collection and language lab, which was tucked away in the basement of Boylston Hall. I came across goofy mistakes in some main entries in Scottish Gaelic and in Modern Irish. Titles and artists that were plural nouns had been catalogued with Na (the equivalent of English ”The”) as the first word of the titles or of the performing group’s name. Because no one but staff was allowed in the stacks (the area where the records and tapes themselves were kept), this meant no library user would be able to find them by cruising the shelves.
In Search of Whodunnit
I tried to track how the same mistake could have happened so frequently. A staff member referred me to a one-page set of instructions about cataloguing Celtic materials. The guideline had been drawn up in Widener Library -- the university’s main library -- for cataloguing books.
The Widener instructions correctly gave the singular definite article An as a word to be disregarded in cataloguing (i.e., go to the next word in the title for purposes of alphabetizing). But the instructions didn’t mention the plural article Na.
(Image credit: Flickr user emc)
It turned out that a staff cutback had eliminated the Widener cataloguer familiar with the languages. The library had assigned cataloguing in Celtic to someone else. As a result, book titles beginning with Na, for something like Na Fir (The Men), had been catalogued under Na (”The”) as the first word in the title. Many items catalogued under ”N” belonged elsewhere.
When Captain James Cook and his crew landed in Hawaii (which they called the Sandwich Islands) in 1778, the meeting set off a culture clash that has repercussions to this day. The islanders had beliefs, customs, and rituals that sailors misread through the lens of their own culture. And once their reports were published, it was almost impossible to change the impressions of those outside Hawaii. The hula was a ritual performed by both men and women that included dance, poetry, and music for both religious and secular reasons, but what stood out to the sailors was that the women were topless.
In his journal, Captain Cook described the Hawaiians’ hula: “Their dances are prefaced with a slow, solemn song, in which all the party join, moving their legs, and gently striking their breasts in a manner and with attitudes that are perfectly easy and graceful.”
In The Natives Are Restless, Hale explains, “To be sexually adept and sensually alive—and to have the ability to experience unrestrained desire—was as important to ancient Hawaiians as having sex to produce offspring. The vital energy caused by desire and passion was itself worshiped and idolized.”
Cook and his men—and the merchants, whalers, artists, and writers who followed—mistook the hula’s sexually charged fertility rituals as a signal the Hawaiians’ youngest and loveliest women were both promiscuous and sexually available to anyone who set foot on their beaches. In her 2012 book Aloha America: Hula Circuits Through the U.S. Empire, historian Adria L. Imada explains how natural hospitality of “aloha” culture—the word used as a greeting that also means “love”—made Hawaiians vulnerable to outside exploitation. To Westerners, the fantasy of a hula girl willingly submitting to the sexual desires of a white man represented the convenient narrative of a people so generous they’d willing give up their land without a fight.
Contrary to this fantasy, the people populating the eight islands of the Hawaiian archipelago weren’t so submissive.
When word about Hawaii got out, everyone wanted to go -including missionaries who went to convert the islanders and instill a proper sense of shame about women's bodies. Read how Westerners made the hula into a permanent and profitable stereotype at Collectors Weekly. The article contains some vintage nudity.
After 15 years or so of Marvel movies raking in billions of dollars by using teams of superheroes in The Avengers, X-Men, and Guardians of the Galaxy, DC is finally ready to jump in with Justice League this November. The first full trailer debuted this weekend. The Avengers saw it, too.
Dr. Machakil edited this fan film that gives us a hint that the Avengers will be plotting a one-up soon. -via Metafilter
There have been many incarnations of the Power Rangers, which evolved from the Super Sentai series that originated in the 1970s. However, the internet generation is most familiar with the 1993-1996 series Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. The new Power Rangers film that opened this past weekend with middling reviews is supposedly based on that 1993 series -but it's not the same. Check out a list of six key differences between what you know and what the new movie has at TVOM. It is full of spoilers if you haven't seen the film.
Nature abhors a vacuum, so these cats are just acting natural. Redditor camrymonster says this is his first comic. He must already be an artist. He was inspired by his own cats.
Striped one is Thor. Grey one is Walter. Thors the favorite so he got the killshot. Stop peeing on the bathroom mat Walter
Let's hope camrymonster continues to illustrate Thor and Walter's adventures. -via reddit
