Simon Hayes of London was loading the dishwasher and left the room without closing the appliance door. When he returned, there was a juvenile fox inside, among the dirty dishes on the lower rack! This being the 21st century, Hayes’ first move was to make sure to get the incident on video. He moved the dish rack out of his way and tried to coax it out, but the kit retreated further into the washer. Hayes is a veterinarian and not afraid of wildlife, so he used a broom to scare the fox out.
The cub's mother could be heard "calling" it from the garden, he said.
He added: "I was surprised to see him there, but we regularly see foxes nearby.
"We saw three fox cubs in the garden last summer, and we have three cats and a dog and they regularly interact with foxes."
The back door had been open and the kit may have been attracted to the aroma of food on the dishes. -via Arbroath
Mad inventor Colin Furze (previously at Neatorama) has to stretch his imagination to outdo his earlier stunts. Now he’s built a “dome” of fireworks, so big that it has to be kept at a distance. These aren’t little firecrackers, either.
Despite the upcoming Independence Day holiday, I must admonish you to NOT try this at home. Watching the pretty video should be enough. -via Viral Viral Videos
A dog has fallen into a huge concrete drainage canal somewhere in Kazakhstan. There’s water rushing by, so he can’t just walk upstream or down. The sides are steep and there’s nothing to hang on to.
If you’ve ever tried to get an entire family with children organized and ready to go somewhere, you need to plan on it taking at least three times as long as it should. If you have more than two children, you’ll have to add more time per child. But here’s the secret: when they get to a certain age, you can just drive off without the one kid who refuses to cooperate. If you’re lucky, the incident will be noticed by the other children. That age (and you’ll know when it happens) could coincide with the age they don’t want to go out with their family anyway, so it works out. This is the latest from Lunarbaboon.
This comic from Jeff Lovfers at Don’t Hit Save uses a joke you’ve probably heard before in a different form. The comment thread at reddit that led me to it is mostly about the TV series Firefly, which would have been a fine excuse for not playing an online game with your friends. Other commenters didn’t get the joke because they assumed a “game” could mean basketball or something. But what really made the comic worth it was reading the story Lovfers left underneath it. He and his wife rented a somewhat disappointing Airbnb room in Florida and got there late at night and tired.
It had been a very long drive, so after taking out our contacts and brushing our teeth (good hygiene is important) we immediately went to sleep. At that point in the evening, I could have slept in a puddle at a concert.
About an hour later, I jolted awake. I could hear footsteps in the other part of the house. It was then, groggy and unable to see, that I suddenly realized...
We're in a serial killer's house.
The door with the metal plate, the missing carpet, the bathroom with an oddly industrial shower-- it all made sense. Between the noisy ac unit and the proximity to the train tracks, no one would hear our screams. All it would take is a well-timed train, then the door with the metal plate would burst open, a giant madman in a hockey mask would run in, hack us to bits, and then try on my blue Hawaiian shirt (I assume).
There would be no escape through the keyless bolt-locked front door. It would all be over in seconds. No more us, no more comic, no more blue Hawaiian shirt (he'd probably stretch it out, too).
It’s a great story. You need to go read the whole thing.
It’s not as easy to write a Star Wars script as you might think. These two fans throw everything into the mix at one point or another. But it boils down to tug-of-war between action and plot. Continuity? Forget it -we don’t have the budget!
Aggressive Comix looks at the difficulty of two guys agreeing on what direction to go with this film. It’s a wonder all the folks on the real Star Wars films could ever agree on anything. -Thanks, Yan!
Would you purchase a LEGO set that features Tom Servo, Crow, Cam-Bot, Gypsy, Dr. Erhardt, TV's Frank, Professor Bobo, Brain Guy, Dr. Clayton, Pearl Forrester, Joel Robinson, and Mike Nelson from Mystery Science Theater 3000? Of course you would!
The set doesn’t exist yet, but has been submitted to LEGO Ideas. Just two weeks later, the idea has over 2500 supporters, a quarter of the way to being considered for manufacture by the LEGO Company. The LEGO set not only has the cast of characters, but also the Satellite of Love tunnel with the control room on one end and the screening room on the other. It would make quite an icebreaker for your living room or party room. -via mental_floss
Alison Carrick of Haslingden, Lancashire, England, hadn’t ridden a bike in years, but got back in the saddle last month. She took a leisurely ride on May 29th and was surprised to be overtaken by riders in the Rossendale Triathlon! But she kept going.
She said: “I didn’t have a clue what was happening at the start.
“I realised it was a triathlon when I saw wet cyclists with numbers on their backs. I thought ‘Oh my goodness’, what does this mean for me. I just didn’t realise we were taking the same route.
“I should have stopped and made my way back but I just felt like I had to keep going.
“I kept thinking it can’t be that much further. I don’t think I realised how far the cycling part of it actually was.”
Spectators noticed the 55-year-old novice rider with distinctly different gear and started cheering her on. They even encouraged Carrick to continue when she saw the opportunity to stop. Other times, she couldn’t stop because of all the bikes racing past her. Carrick ended up staying the course for most of the race. Race organizer Graeme Courtney said he doesn’t know how she managed to do it, but he is encouraging her to enter the race officially next year. -via Arbroath
In this case, turn-of-the-century refers to the 20th century. A gallery of mugshots of women arrested in England 100 years ago all somewhat resemble Eliza Dolittle, without the movie star face of Audrey Hepburn. They were arrested of theft or larceny, so it’s easy to believe they were just trying to provide for their families and stay out of the poorhouse. The blog is in French, but the mugshots are in English. -via Everlasting Blort
A seagull in Wales was checking out the pickings at a food manufacturing plant in Wales and managed to fall into a vat of discarded chicken tikka masala. Employees at the plant pulled him out and a volunteer took the bird to Vale Wildlife Hospital in Gloucestershire for a clean up. They were able to turn the gull from orange to white, but the smell remained.
Lucy Kells, veterinary nurse at the hospital, said: “He really surprised everyone here – we had never seen anything like it before. He had fallen into a waste vat of curry that was outside, it was chicken tikka masala. The thing that shocked us the most was the smell. He smelled amazing, he really smelled good.
“He cleaned up surprisingly well at the hospital, we used washing-up liquid a few times.”
The seagull will be sent to a wildlife rehabilitation center when he is deemed healthy. -via Uproxx
This might actually work for romantic mood music sometime in the future if your date doesn’t listen too closely to the lyrics. You can see the rest of Obama’s Tonight Show appearance at their YouTube channel.
If you are between 25 and 34, this may hit close to home. Nikki Limo runs down the warning signs of that dreaded condition known as adulthood. It’s a gradual process, but the realization comes over you at once. It’s terrifying. Those of us who have accepted the inevitable can just laugh at your misery. This video contains NSFW language.
Pssh! If she was really suffering from adulthood, she wouldn’t be using oven cleaner on the stovetop. Believe me, you only do that once. And the part about not wanting to put in the effort to learn a new technology didn’t hit me until I was 50. Otherwise, this is pretty spot on. If all your favorite songs are oldies and you buy a refrigerator, your childhood is over for good. -via Digg
There are rules for a walking safari, our guide Roelof tells us softly, sternly. The sun beats down on the stiff yellow grass of the Maasai Mara—the part of the Serengeti that spills across Tanzania’s northern border into Kenya. It’s one of the many Africas people like me don’t know by name but recognize instantly: all brush and blue sky, and occasional lone-silhouetted trees.
It’s also hot. Really hot. The big cats—cheetah, leopard, lion—have all taken cover, giving the grazing animals scattered across the plains time to relax.
Maybe it’s because I don’t know any better; or because the guide giving me instruction cradles a rifle in his hands, a band of brassy bullets cinched around his waist. Or perhaps it’s because my friend James and I have another experienced guide, Zarek, walking behind us. But I’m not concerned about safety. Instead of listening to Roelof’s rules, I let my mind wander: I worry whether I’ve brought enough water. I worry that I haven’t read enough about Kenya before coming here. I think about how much I’ve already seen today: a lioness parading her scruffy cubs past our vehicle; loads of giraffe, gazelle, and warthogs; and a troop of elephants converging at a watering hole. I’m absorbed in the little things: looking at the flowers and bird’s nests and giant mounds built by feisty termites, who, I will later learn, can air condition the habitat and rattle in unison to scare off predators.
But Roelof is whispering at me now, so I try to listen. These are the rules I remember: Walk single-file behind the guide with the gun. Whisper; don’t talk. When you sense danger, snap your fingers. When there is danger, listen for instructions. And no matter what, don’t run. Never run.
Two hours later, when my heart is pounding and we’re scrambling up a cliff, it’s this last rule that will prove the hardest to follow.
Most people who book a safari in Kenya head for the Maasai Mara National Reserve—the roughly 580 square miles of protected park a short drive from where I’m standing. The rangers there work hard to prevent poaching of wildlife, and the Maasai—the local seminomadic people the park is named for—are restricted from grazing their livestock there. The result is untrampled land with excellent wildlife viewing. The problem is the tourists: When there are sightings—say, a cheetah feasting on a kill—it’s not uncommon for 30 oversized vehicles, all packed with snapping cameras, to converge on the scene.
I’m here in Kenya because I’m interested in what’s happening on the outskirts of the Reserve. The area where I’m staying is called Mara Naboisho. It’s one of eight or so conservancies that abut the National Reserve to the north. Seventy percent of Kenya’s wildlife live outside of the parks, so migrations of zebra and wildebeest travel through these areas regularly. Or at least they used to. As the Maasai population grew and families started fencing their land, the wildlife dwindled.
You’re invited to watch what is possibly the weirdest, most incomprehensible short film ever made (if you discount everything from Cyriak Harris). Sunspring was written by an artificial intelligence program. It’s only eight minutes long, but it will confuse you in every one of those minutes.
Ars is excited to be hosting this online debut of Sunspring, a short science fiction film that's not entirely what it seems. It's about three people living in a weird future, possibly on a space station, probably in a love triangle. You know it's the future because H (played with neurotic gravity by Silicon Valley's Thomas Middleditch) is wearing a shiny gold jacket, H2 (Elisabeth Gray) is playing with computers, and C (Humphrey Ker) announces that he has to "go to the skull" before sticking his face into a bunch of green lights. It sounds like your typical sci-fi B-movie, complete with an incoherent plot. Except Sunspring isn't the product of Hollywood hacks—it was written entirely by an AI. To be specific, it was authored by a recurrent neural network called long short-term memory, or LSTM for short. At least, that's what we'd call it. The AI named itself Benjamin.
They fed Benjamin a whole slew of well-received science fiction films and then gave it a couple of prompts to build a screenplay around. The filmmakers tried their best to render it as written. If you’ve ever worried about artificial intelligence taking over the world, this will assure you that we’ve got a long way to go yet. See the whole thing at Ars Technica.
The German supermarket chain Netto Marken-Discount gives us an ad in which cats go grocery shopping. They’ve managed to stick as many internet cat memes as humanly possible into one minute.
The ad doesn’t give us any particular reason to shop at this particular store, no comparisons with other stores, no sale prices, but by golly, you’ll remember the ad. -via Uproxx
