History is cool and all, but it's missing something....furry. Now that's been remedied thanks to artist Christina Hess.
With Hess' amazing talent and ornate style, the portraits really capture the aesthetic of the historical portraits they are meant to imitate. She even has some takes on modern icons such as Steve Jobs and Elvis, which are still as delightfully accurate to the subject matter.
Via Geek Girls
Thankfully, only five people were slightly injured. The outcome could have been much worse.
This escalator is in the city of Ningbo in Zhejiang Province, China. On February 19, the escalator suddenly reversed, throwing people back. Officials took it offline. They don't know why it switched directions without warning, but are investigating it.
-via Rocket News 24
Tom Charlton snapped this terrifying photo of a Ophiophagus hannah in the Krabi Province of southern Thailand. He mentions to a friend on Facebook that he found the snake in a stream outside the friend's bungalow. My recommendation: move.
-via The Soul Is Bone
(Image: "Devil's Due", Star Trek: The Next Generation)
We watch movies and television programs, so we see actors all of the time. But unless we work in the entertainment business, their craft remains a mystery. A good actor makes it look easy, but not everyone is a good actor.
What makes for a good actor? Marcus Geduld, a theater director, responded to that question on Quora, which was then re-posted on Slate. Geduld says that there are 5 qualities that denote the good actor:
First, for me, an actor is good if he makes me believe he's actually going through whatever his character is going through. I'm talking somewhat about physical stuff (“He really is getting shot!” “He really is jumping off a moving train!”) but mostly about psychological stuff (“He really is scared!” “He really is in love!”). If an actor seems to be faking it, he's not doing his job.
Second, the actor has to surprise me. This is the most nebulous requirement, but it's important. Except for really small parts that aren't supposed to call attention to themselves (e.g., a bank teller who just cashes the hero's checks), it's not enough for actors to just seem real. Seeming real is a requirement, but a second requirement is that I can't predict their every reaction before they have them.
One good demonstrations of the actor's craft that I encountered recently was this video by Patrick Stewart illustrating different ways to play the character of Shylock, my favorite character from Shakespeare. Stewart demonstrates different ways that an actor can express different meanings while using the same script.
-via reddit
This distinguished gent is smiling with reason: he's snagged the Guinness World Record for the world's longest eyebrow hair. Zheng Shusen, 80, of China has one that's 7.5 inches long. It's so long that it slips into his mouth when he's eating, so he tucks it behind an ear to keep it safe. Zheng explains its significance:
In his application to for the record title, Zheng wrote: “In China, a long eyebrow hair means health and long life. When I found out that my eyebrow hair was a lot longer than other people, my family started to say that it was a good symbol for an old man ... it was at this point I thought I might be the Guinness World Records title holder.”
You can read more about Zheng's accomplishment, as well as other world record hairs, such as the longest nipple hair and the longest ear hair, here.
Say what you want about Reddit, but it does seem to be a virtual space in which those who are skilled in Photoshop turn up in droves. For example, Redditor Your_Post_As_A_Movie uses random images uploaded to the site and transforms them into brilliant movie posters, examples of which are seen above and below. So many of them are great that it was difficult to select which ones to feature. See a collection of these creations here.
It's not uncommon for people to fall asleep at work, but most of the time they go and grab a cup of coffee or tea and take a walk to wake up, getting away with passing out while on the clock.
But bad employees like TheOrangeDuke (aka sleeping beauty in the image above) don't care about getting caught, and they'll sleep for hours at their desk even if it's only their second day at work.
When his fellow employees found TheOrangeDuke crashed out at his desk they took the logical next step- they submitted his photo to Reddit for a hard day's work in a Photoshop Battle.
His fellow employees were clearly sympathetic about his lack of sleep, and even though they poked fun at TheOrangeDuke they secretly wished they were snoozing too.
(Image Via Professor_Rix)
But then things turned ugly when TheOrangeDuke's boss showed up in his dreams, threatening to slash his wages and make his employed life a living nightmare if he didn't wake the hell up!
See Guy Falls Asleep At Work, The Internet Takes Him On Photoshop Adventures here
(Via Reddit)
Many people on dating sites like Tinder tell lies to help them hook up, and it's so common nowadays that everyone assumes our dating profiles are as padded as our resumés.
But those who like to keep it real don't mind letting a potential match take a peek behind the curtain and see who they really are, even if that means they get left swiped more often.
Insecure daters could learn a thing or two about how to live fierce and fearless from these brave Tinder users, and their profiles are a refreshing change of pace from the usual pack of lies.
If you're totally conceited then be up front about it, that way your dates will know what they're getting themselves in to before they come face-to-face with royalty.
(Via Reddit)
See 14 Tinder Users Who Were Very Candid With Their Profiles here (barely NSFW due to language)
Marketing disasters are some of the most buzzed about incidents in the world of product branding and advertising, because people barely remember most good ads but they always remember a failure.
And yet companies will continue to blunder when it comes to marketing because they believe constantly changing their look and advertisements keep them fresh in the eyes of consumers.
Who can forget the time Nike decided their line of clothing created to honor female Olympians need the slogan "Gold Digging" emblazoned across the chest, now that's keeping it fresh!
The best a big brand can hope for is that nobody will notice when they fail miserably with their latest marketing campaign, which happens more often than you'd think.
Heck, nobody stopped drinking Bud Light after they put the rapiest sounding slogan ever on their bottles- "The perfect beer for removing 'no' from your vocabulary for the night".
I bet the people responsible for that ad campaign wish their crappy beer could remove memories as well as vocabulary words!
See 8 Massive Disasters In Marketing No One Noticed here (contains NSFW language)
If there's any truth to My Fair Lady then English tutors who taught people proper pronunciation liked to use clever poems as training tools, which would make the poem "The Chaos" by Gerard Nolst Trenite the ultimate tongue trainer:
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer...
Miss C first posted about "The Chaos" back in 2010, a poem which was written in 1922 to demonstrate how ridiculously difficult proper English language pronunciation can be.
And now we have a video example to help guide us through the over 100 lines of pronunciatin' pain.
Read "The Chaos" by Gerard Nolst Trenite in its entirety here
-Via The Poke
Wine Enthusiast offers this luxurious fire extinguisher of perfect vintage. It's a Bordeaux that will extinguish the fire in your mouth and your kitchen. The completely functional fire extinguisher measures a foot tall and comes in a deceptively ornate wine bottle-like container. When there's an actual fire in your home and you're desperately searching for a way to put it out, remember: look for the Château la Falque.
-via Dude I Want That
(Photo: Kars Alfrink)
Sheesh, did something die in here? No, but we're more likely to think that strangers rather than friends in close proximity smell badly.
Researchers at St. Andrews University asked students to assess sweaty t-shirts, one of which was labeled with St. Andrews University, another which was labeled with a rival school, and one with no label. The participants tended to rate the shirt from their tribal group--that is, their own university--as less stinky. Tom Jacobs explains in the Pacific Standard:
The key result: Participants whose identity as a St. Andrews student was made salient "went to wash their hands more quickly, and used more soap," after smelling a shirt with either their rival's logo or no logo.
They rushed to the hand sanitizing station after smelling the shirt with the rival school's logo, getting there in three and one-half seconds (on average). In contrast, those who smelled a shirt with their own school's logo ambled over; it took about six seconds. It seems they were significantly less bothered by the stink.
These results make sense from an evolutionary perspective in that members of a prehistoric tribe couldn't collaborate very easily if they found one another revolting. "Groups involve not only a gathering of minds, but also of sweaty, smelly, tactile bodies," the researchers note. "It is impossible to work with people if you cannot stand their physical presence."
-via Debby Witt
She promises to finish what he started, but she's thinking of a savage battle above the sands of Tatooine. Cosplayer Ashleigh of Lost Weasley Child offers this mashup of Princess Leia's iconic slave outfit from Return of the Jedi and Kylo Ren from The Force Awakens.
As the movie Demolition Man teaches us, eventually all restaurants will be Taco Bells--even the most luxurious. Cassie and Daniel are just 16 years ahead of schedule.
For their Valentine's Day dinner, they dressed formally and plated their food with china, crystal, custom-printed menus, and fine silverware.
Daniel explained to Obsev how they pulled off this romantic scene in such a non-traditional setting:
“We’ve been together for five years now and we’re always looking for new ways to celebrate being together,” Daniel told Obsev. “With Valentine’s Day coming up, we did what any couple did and thought up a bunch of ideas that we’d either already done or just didn’t feel right. She finally threw up her hands and jokingly said, ‘Let’s just go to Taco Bell!’ As soon as she said it, I knew we had to make it happen.”
The Taco Bell night out only came together with the help of the staff, who, Daniel said, were “really accommodating” and even “cleaned off a prime window side table and dimmed the lights a bit to set the mood.”
You can see more photos of their fine dining here.
-via First We Feast
With great hair comes great responsibility and Instagram member Jordan Glindmyer has come through for us with this mohawk that looks like the crest of Spider-Man. He's one of many top-end hairstylists who are participating in the #superpoplocks hashtag on Instagram. In it, you can see hair recreations of the world's finest superheroes and supervillains by the world's finest stylists. Here are some of the best:
