It's not so much of an Irish tradition, but an American tradition for St. Patrick's Day to enjoy some alcoholic drinks that are green, contain Irish whiskey, or are somehow connected to Ireland in some way. Your choices go far beyond green beer. The drink here is called an Irish Breakfast, and it was developed by the mixmasters at Datz in Tampa, Florida. It contains several kinds of liquor, coffee, "Guinness mint whipped cream," and Lucky Charms as a garnish. It's not quick or simple, but other cocktail recipes in this roundup at Uproxx will be easier to whip up in a hurry.
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The NCAA basketball tournament is cranking up, with first round eliminations this week. Fans do everything they can to help their team, although for most of us, that's only possible in the realm of superstition. However, for students in the end zones, one very concrete way to help your team is to distract a player attempting to make a free throw. Over the years, these distractions have become more and more elaborate. Check out a collection of the funniest free throw distractions at TVOM.
Tay Ninh, Vietnam, is the birthplace of the religion known as Caodaism, founded in 1926, which combines tenets of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. Jürgen Horn and Mike Powell went to Tay Ninh to see the Great Divine Temple of Cat Dai and attend the evening service, which they caught on video.
My curiosity in Cao Dai skyrocketed during the service, when I saw a plaque on the wall about the religion’s three venerable saints… one of whom is Victor Hugo. Alright, Caodaism, you have my attention! Tell me more.
Caodaists believe that humanity is in a “Third Period” of religious awakening, and that the Creator (Cao Dai) speaks directly to us. They believe that during this third age, all religions will merge, and that humanity will finally achieve worldwide peace. They’re vegetarian and practice non-violence, and they also believe in the reincarnation of the soul; that by gaining merits during this life, you can ascend to a higher plane on your next go-around, with Nirvana being the ultimate goal. The disembodied left eye of God is Cao Dai’s main symbol, and placed prominently in the facade of all its temples.
Learn more about Cao Dai and see pictures of the temple at For 91 Days.
Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have been analyzing old films of nuclear weapons tests, using more modern equipment to get more accurate data. As they go through the thousands of old films, they've found many hadn't been properly stored for long-term preservation, so they are digitizing the collection. Physicist Greg Spriggs said that about 6500 films have been found, 750 have been declassified, and this week, 63 of them have been uploaded to YouTube.
The goal in preserving and digitizing them, Spriggs said in a news release, was to keep the films for future study, lest they decompose and disappear forever.
“You can smell vinegar when you open the cans, which is one of the byproducts of the decomposition process of these films,” Spriggs said. “We know that these films are on the brink of decomposing to the point where they’ll become useless. The data that we’re collecting now must be preserved in a digital form because no matter how well you treat the films, no matter how well you preserve or store them, they will decompose.”
But once a sequence is on YouTube, there will be copies of it everywhere. And we get to see them.
Read about the film preservation project at Atlas Obscura, and see the newly-released videos at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's YouTube channel.
The following article is from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Nature Calls.
You may not have known it, but there’s a myth out there about arachnid urine. We looked into that— and some other animals myths, too.
Myth: Wolves howl at the moon.
How it spread: People all over the world developed myths involving wolves and the moon. (In Norse mythology, for example, the wolves Skoll and Manegarm chase the sun and moon around the sky, and will do so for eternity.) It’s not hard to see why such myths came to be: Wolves are nocturnal, doing their hunting— and howling— at night. Over the eons people came to associate these feared and respected night hunters with that other great symbol of the night, the moon. Not only that, but wolves point their snouts to the sky while they howl, which makes them look like they are “howling at the moon.”
The truth: Wolves howl to communicate with other wolves, whether there’s a moon out or not. Scientists who study wolves say their howls can mean different things, including a call for the pack to gather, or a message to rival packs to stay away.
Myth: Peonies need ants to open their flowers.
How it spread: This is a popular myth among gardeners. It spread because it’s common to see ants swarming peony buds in the morning, and before and while they’re opening.
The truth: Peonies can open just fine without ants. Ants swarm the flowers because peonies secrete a nectar that ants love to eat. (The same myth is also associated with hibiscus flowers— and it’s untrue in that case, too.)
Myth: Elephants love peanuts.
Isn't that how it goes: you get all deep and philosophical just as someone farts. That will bring you right back to earth! Chris appreciates the gifts he has. Life is good when you find someone who is somewhat like you, and then you raise children together to be somewhat like you, too. This is the latest from Lunarbaboon.
Almost all the characters in Disney animated movies are fictional, but someone, somewhere is going to look like each one of them. When the resemblance becomes apparent, it can lead to a comedic light bulb going off in your head. If you are one of those people, you could spin that into a career as an impressionist, or just make it work for cosplay.
Check out a roundup of real people who look like Disney characters at TVOM.
Matt and Nancy are getting married in May. Matt happens to be the sheriff. When the wedding invitations went out, the recipients were startled, and some of them probably hyperventilated before they read the fine print. The bride's nephew EXSUPERVILLAIN shared the themed invitation with some rather sloppy redaction. With a username like that, he was probably more startled than anyone. -via reddit
Every day, teachers go to school to fight the good fight to ensure that the next generation has a basic education, whether they want it or not. The challenges happen today, and the rewards may come years later, or not at all. The frustrations of teaching go down a little easier when you can crack a joke to other teachers who get it, so teachers online share their best jokes with each other.
But not all teachers have the time to catch all of these, so you might want to share these jokes with a teacher, or maybe a student or parent who might gain some understanding. See 51 Pictures That Are Guaranteed To Make Every Teacher Laugh at Buzzfeed.
Disney's live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast opens nationwide this weekend. The story of a woman who marries an animal who is then magically transformed into a man is a fairy tale with many roots going back to ancient folklore. You can say it's a "tale as old as time." The first English print version was published in 1757.
By November 1907, the phrase “beauty and the beast” was so well known that a headline in the Los Angeles Times used the phrase in jest. Rumormongers whispered the phrase in response to the scandalous trial of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle for the murder of Virginia Rappé, which ended in Arbuckle’s acquittal in 1922. And a play on the phrase appeared as the final line in the film King Kong (1933), when the showman Carl Denham observes, “It wasn’t the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast”—a line that was repeated word for word in the 2005 remake.
Read about the evolution of the fairy tale we call Beauty and the Beast at Smithsonian.
The 1972 film The Godfather was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won three. It made stars out of several actors who were barely into their careers at the time. But it wasn't an easy movie to make. The studio didn't really want to invest much into it. Paramount had bought the rights to the book before it was even written, and when it became a hit, they didn't think they could do it justice. The casting was a mess and took forever. And the Mafia didn't like the whole idea.
Paramount promoted The Godfather as the first Italian mob drama made by Italians, but some Italians were offended. Italian-Americans were continually portrayed as criminals in the movies and they were fed up. Joseph Colombo, of the crime family that bore his name, formed The Italian-American Civil Rights League in 1969. They demanded the words "mafia" and "Cosa Nostra" get pulled from the script and that all the money the movie made at its premier get donated to their fund to build a new hospital.
Colombo didn’t just see The Godfather as good excuse to squeeze money from the studio, it was as personal as it was business. The Colombo Family used to be called the Profaci Family, one of the first families of the Five Families that ruled the Commission. All that talk at the center of the book about “sleeping with the fishes” and “going to the mattresses” came from the Gallo-Profaci wars that rocked the early sixties.
The story of The Godfather includes a short history of that mob war, and how the real-life mobsters came around to the movie so much that several got roles in it. Read about the making of The Godfather at Den of Geek.
You might know something about makeup, but what do you know about its history? To develop the beauty enhancements we have today, early users put their lives, or at least their health, at stake, even if they didn't know it. Other early versions makeup were just plain gross. The things we go through to be beautiful! Learn more in the latest episode of the mental_floss List Show. The FDA makeup horror stories John Green refers to are found here.
Oh yeah, it's easy to tie your yoyo string in knots. The real challenge is to get it untangled without dropping the beat! The European Yoyo Championship was held over the weekend in Bratislava, Slovakia. American Evan Nagao took first place in the open finals division, and deservedly so.
We might not know exactly how intricate these tricks are, but the crowd is full of yoyo experts and fans, and listen to how impressed they are! -via Tastefully Offensive
Remember last year when Brian Kane installed Alexa in his Billy Bass? Mike McGurrin has taken that idea one step further -and creepier- by using a Halloween decoration skull with a moving mouth to be the face of th internet-enabled personal assistant Alexa.
If The Addams Family were a sitcom today, this would be their household assistant instead of Thing, who had no voice. In this followup video, McGurrin tries to trip his skull up, but she's always a step ahead.
Read how McGurrin did it at his website. -via Laughing Squid
In 1774, 25-year-old Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published a novel called The Sorrows of Young Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werther). He called his experience of writing the story of romantic heartbreak therapeutic, as he struggled with thoughts of suicide.
Inspired in part by the young Goethe’s sorrow over losing Charlotte Buff, an acquaintance who spurned him in favor of another man, Young Werther, written almost entirely in letters, traces the tragic infatuation the protagonist forms for his own unattainable woman, also known as Charlotte (love needs no pseudonym!). After months of agony, the story, and Werther, end when the brokenhearted lover pulls the trigger at midnight on Christmas Eve, proclaiming, “Charlotte, Charlotte! Farewell, farewell!” before committing what Germans sometimes call Liebestod (love-death).
The book was a best seller, sometimes referred to as the beginning of the Romantic movement. Over the next few decades it spawned merchandising opportunities, as young adult readers wanted to identify with Werther and his heartbreak. Sadly, that included some who took it far enough to commit suicide. But it's hard to know how many were triggered by the novel, how many would have taken their own lives anyway, or ultimately how many of these suicides there actually were. Goethe himself lived to the age of 82. Read about The Sorrows of Young Werther at Ozy.
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