High school was easy. Just ask this high school senior, who said what he thought of his high school experience for posterity in his yearbook quote:
"High school was easy. It was like riding a bike. Except the bike was on fire & the ground was on fire & everything was on fire because it was hell."
Wait till real life, kids. Wait till real life.
Via Cubiclebot
Ready for summer? Here's a video clip by AJ Aguirre and Ben Hammer of Round III Media that'll surely put you in the mood for summer!
Aguirre and Hammer went to BSR Cable Park in Waco, Texas, and filmed people having fun sliding down the park's "Royal Flush" giant slide. The video clip has everything that a viral video should have: beautiful women in bikinis, athletic guys doing athletic things, and did we mention a giant water slide? As of today, the video clip has been viewed over 14 million times. Now if that isn't a royal flush, we don't know what is.
Photo: Jeanne Mclauchlan
He's not the ferryman Charon and that isn't the River Styx, but you get the picture.
Paddlers on Lake Burley in Canberra, Australia, spotted a man dressed as an undertaker in a stand-up paddle board that looks like a coffin decorated with bright plastic flowers. "In the distance, as we came towards the Carillon we noticed a figure emerge from the thick fog," paddler Jeanne Mclauchlan told The Canberra Times, "It was a figure of a man dressed in a tuxedo and top hat on a stand-up-paddle coffin, complete with flowers, paddling toward us."
And where exactly is the mysterious man going?
"We asked 'coffin man', 'Where are you going?' His response was 'To Queanbeyan cemetery as I have a 3pm grave site to prepare'."
Via Arbroath
"Never tell me the odds!" seems to be the apt sci-fi quote to apply in this situation as described by The Gentleman's Armchair.
If I remember correctly, that quote was spoken in one of the last seasons of Star Trek by Han Solo, while piloting Serenity and running away from the Cylons. Yes, I'm sure that's it!
What's all this doomsaying about libraries becoming obsolete? We know that libraries will thrive in the future because they're present in 23rd Century. In fact, Star Trek shows at least 3 librarians at work in the distant future.
In the original series episode "All Our Yesterdays," Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to a seemingly vacant planet orbiting a star about to go nova. They discover that they are in a library. Despite the desperate circumstances, the librarian, who introduces himself as Mr. Atoz, is ready to help them.
Lifelong character actor Ian Wolfe, who plays Mr. Atoz, does a remarkably good job of carrying out a reference interview under conditions of extreme stress. He is friendly, welcoming, an advocate for the utility of libraries, and maintains the confidentiality of his patrons.
Brooke Barker, an artist in Portland, Oregon, loves to draw and loves animals. She feels sorry for a lot of animals who lead a rough life. She illustrates those problems at Sad Animal Facts, which put an amusing spin on what our animal friends have to put up with.
(Photo: j0be)
He is imminently logical and fascinating. He's the interstellar man of mystery. He's Spock, the half human, half Vulcan science officer on board the USS Enterprise. Spock has inspired generations of trekkies to imitate him, including for cosplay. For example, here's Betty Page Spock by Madeline Masquerade next to Rosie the Riveter Kirk. Let's look at even more great Spock cosplays.
My kids love to eat McDonald's Happy Meals. For them, the best part of each one is the toy inside. What will it be? It's always the first thing that they check.
The prize is almost always a small plastic toy. That's fun sometimes. But if you're past childhood (in the legal or psychological definition), then it may not be enough. BuzzFeed suggests 12 Happy Meal toys that McDonald's could market to adults--and specifically 20-somethings. These include an app that reminds you to call your parents, a jar of Nutella, and a neck pillow.
Flickr member MANDUH HUG'n'KISS refinished a coffee table for a Batman fan. It's beautiful! When Justice is having company over for afternoon tea and snacks, this is exactly where they will be served.
-Thanks, Clarissa!
Japanese household bathrooms are very different from what you might find in a typical American home. They are far more multi-functional and high-tech. For example, the bathroom is divided into three sections: there's a shower/bath area and a toilet area, which are separately accessible from a sink and vanity area. Consequently, three people can use the same bathroom at the same time!
The shower and bath area is a thing of wonder. There's a deep bathtub that is heated continuously with controls that can be activated from different parts of the house. I want one of those!
In this video, a young girl shows how the different parts of the bathroom function. It's part of a series of videos in which she introduces Westerners to Japanese bedrooms, toilets, and kids' homework, among other aspects of modern Japanese life.
-via Core77
A KTVU reporter and photographer were robbed at gunpoint this morning || http://t.co/cwrydsC69f || pic.twitter.com/KaXSwJo1Q0
— Jacob Wycoff (@4cast4you) July 2, 2015
Cara Liu, a reporter for San Francisco's Fox affiliate KTVU, was recording a live news report from Pier 14 when three armed men stole camera equipment belonging to another station, KNTV, which was also on the scene. KNTV, an NBC affiliate also filming a report, had its cameraman Alan Waples pistol-whipped. The robber came back to steal KTVU's equipment before fleeing.
KNTV caught a look at the man on film who allegedly committed the robbery and of his weapon. According to Deadline,
"There were three attackers involved in the incident, the latest in which news crews were accosted by robbers in the Bay Area. The heists have prompted stations to hire security guards, many of whom are former police officers, to accompany crews, particularly for stories in Oakland."
(Photo: Ron Knight)
The chestnut-crowned babbler bird (Pomatostomus ruficeps) is a small bird native to Australia. Researchers think that its chirps and calls are radically different from those identified in other birds. The babbler bird vocalizes words. The BBC reports:
Co-researcher Dr Andy Russell from the University of Exeter said: "It is the first evidence outside of a human that an animal can use the same meaningless sounds in different arrangements to generate new meaning.
"It's a very basic form of word generation - I'd be amazed if other animals can't do this too."
Dr. Russell and his colleagues found that the chestnut-crowned babbler makes two distinct sounds, dubbed A and B. Combinations of A and B in different orders seemed to express concepts that other members of the species could understand:
In flight, they used an "A-B" call to make their whereabouts known, but when alerting chicks to food they combined the sounds differently to make "B-A-B".
The birds seemed to understand the meaning of the calls.
When the feeding call was played back to them, they looked at nests, while when they heard a flight call they looked at the sky.
-via Marginal Revolution
Carmine Migliaccio, a comedian in Italy, has trained his cat to drop dead when shot with a finger. With a single bang, he whimpers and crumples to the ground. Don't worry! He'll be up and playing with the keys in a moment.
-via Laughing Squid
These aren't just prints made to look like art from Edo Japan. They're actually made in both the antique style and technique, using old printing methods.
Lucasfilm commissioned artist Masami Ishikawa and a traditional printer to develop several amazing images, lifting scenes from all six movies and reproducing them in a novel way. You can see more prints and a production video at Kotaku.
The cameras are extremely expensive. But if anyone is beautiful enough to do this without appearing vain, it's Mother Earth. Smile for the camera as cartoonist Dan Meth snaps a photo.
-via Tastefully Offensive
