And Instagram account called Please Hate These Things posts design fails from all over. Some of them you've seen before. Some are the deliberate results of questionable taste, while others you can tell have a long story behind them.
Your job is to learn from the real-world failure of some of them and learn to distinguish which are most likely Photoshop jokes.
Or you can see a ranked list of the 40 most egregious entries from Please Hate These Things at Bored Panda. Be aware that some of the images are NSFW.
All praise to Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times for this incredible literary achievement. In her article that is sadly behind a paywall, she describes the challenges of US veterans who use emotional support dogs as part of their daily lives.
The story is tragic, but the composition of the sentence is magnificent.
As would I, Mr. Michel.
The closing of the article is pretty good, too. Steinhauer quotes a flight attendant about the challenges of regulating service animals on board airline flights:
“We want clear guidance from the Department of Transportation,” she added. “We need to be matching species that are able to fulfill those service functions and that’s not a peacock and that’s probably not a sloth.”
-via Aaron Starmer
Mike Clifford made this amazing guitar out of, obviously, LEGO bricks. He used a Les Paul design in vector file format in Fusion 360, a 3D design program, to develop the shape. Then, after building a mold, he poured epoxy over the bricks. Clifford describes the process at Core77:
The most challenging part of this guitar build was creating a solid guitar blank from the Legos and epoxy. I put the Lego bricks on a backplate in a pixelated elliptical pattern. I then put the Legos face down into a partially cured layer of epoxy, then poured more epoxy to halfway cover the Legos. After this epoxy cured, I could remove the backplate that was holding the Legos together, pour more epoxy resin over them to fill in the backs of the Legos. While the epoxy was still fluid, I added a second layer of Legos, and finally came back to fill in the entire form with resin. After I had the epoxy Lego guitar blank, I could just use standard woodworking processes for guitar building, to shape the guitar from the epoxy Lego blank.
Water gets in our ears, whether from the pool or from the shower. If you’re one of those people who shake their head just to release the water trapped in your ears, it might be time to look for another solution. A new study suggests that there can be potential health risks that result from violently shaking your head. Researchers from Cornell University say that the forces involved in ejecting water from the ears can expose people, especially children, to brain damage. ScienceAlert has more details:
"Our research mainly focuses on the acceleration required to get the water out of the ear canal," says engineering student Anuj Baskota, the first author of a paper being presented this week at the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics annual meeting in Seattle.
"The critical acceleration that we obtained experimentally on glass tubes and 3D-printed ear canals was around the range of 10 times the force of gravity for infant ear sizes, which could cause damage to the brain."
It's worth noting these are preliminary findings for now, based on experiments simulating the amount of force involved, and not involving real people (thankfully). So they can't be taken as clinical proof of brain damage incurred from this activity.
image credit: via wikimedia commons
Many long-time cooks consider the Crock Pot to be an appliance of the 1970s, even though we still use them. Some still have their slow cooker from that time, while others have had to adapt to higher-temperature modern cookers. So you may be surprised to learn that the Crock Pot was patented in 1940. Really. However, the idea behind it is even older.
The Crock Pot’s story began during the 19th century in Vilna, a Jewish neighborhood in the city of Vilnius, Lithuania. Once known as the "Jerusalem of the North," Vilna attracted a thriving community of writers and academics. There, Jewish families anticipated the Sabbath by preparing a stew of meat, beans and vegetables on Fridays before nightfall. Ingredients in place, people took their crocks to their towns’ bakeries—specifically, to the still-hot ovens that would slowly cool overnight. By morning, the low-and-slow residual heat would result in a stew known as cholent.
Long before he invented the modern slow cooker, Irving Nachumsohn learned of this tradition from a relative.
Nachumsohn's invention was called the Naxon Beanery, which may explain why it didn't take off right away. Read how the Crock Pot came about, and how slow cookers became a must-have appliance at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: Janine)
Claws came first, and fingernails and toenails were a later adaptation. But nails developed for animal lineages that had already diverged from each other, so there must be reasons they were better than claws for certain species. This TED-Ed lesson gives us some ideas for why that happened. -via Laughing Squid
With Thanksgiving drawing near, people across the country must be preparing meticulously by now. Throwing a turkey into the oven and waiting for the timer to to pop are of the good old days now. Preparing a Thanksgiving meal has “become a taxing, high-stakes enterprise.”
In 2019, a proper turkey must — at minimum — be submerged for 24 hours in salty-sweet brine to safeguard guests from dry breast meat, the ultimate culinary failure. Ambitious cooks will deep-fry their (brined) turkeys in a cauldron of scalding oil — adding a bracing element of danger to the holiday meal — or they’ll smoke them over hickory chips on the backyard grill. While crispy, golden skin remains the hallmark of a perfectly cooked turkey, today’s cutting-edge birds often feature fancy glazes made of cider, citrus, coffee, curry, etc.
Don’t want to go through the trouble of brines, barbecues, glazes, and cooking oil? Try going classic and seemingly travel back through the ages — to the time when Thanksgiving occurred over candlelight, ovens were still wood fired and not electronically-powered, and the people that gathered at the table probably did not bathe. Transport your family and friends to 18th century Thanksgiving and have an unforgettable time with them.
Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library has resources to guide your gastronomic time travel.
“The Beinecke Library houses one of the world’s largest and most dynamic collections of rare books and manuscripts, including many historic and culturally significant cookbooks, and we’ve been delighted by how faculty use these resources in teaching,” said E.C. Schroeder, the library’s executive director. “Diligent researchers doubtlessly will also discover any number of intriguing recipes on which to base a crowd-pleasing holiday meal.”
In the library’s collections you’ll find “The New British Jewel or Complete Housewife’s Best Companion,” a slender volume from 1785 that offers “a choice variety of useful family receipts [recipes],” plus gardening tips, home remedies, and, helpfully, “a method of restoring to life people drowned, or in any other manner suffocated.”
More details about this one are at YaleNews.
(Image Credit: YaleNews)
We humans are great at navigation. It’s how we managed to travel across the landmasses and sail across the wide oceans throughout the course of time. Our ability to navigate has enabled us to navigate our way around places (including space), and get from the bedroom to the bathroom and back to our beds at night. It is a natural, innate ability which we neither notice nor question.
But what is the mechanism responsible for our dependable senses of direction, especially in new and different environments? This is what UC Santa Barbara neuroscientist Sung Soo Kim zones in on.
“It’s a very flexible system,” Kim said of a network of neurons that fire in synchrony, serving to convert sensory cues into a stable sense of direction we hold in our brains. For example, he said, “When you walk into a really new environment, within a few moments, your sense of direction is already established. Once established, it becomes stable and you’re not confused about the direction you’re facing.
“Even if the lights are turned off,” added Kim, an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, “your brain maintains that sense of direction and updates it as you move around.”
Get more details about this over at The Current.
(Image Credit: Pexels/ Pixabay)
We live in a time where there is a concern over “fake news”. But it seems that we are not only concerned about fake news, as a new study finds that people distinguish between dishonest and biased information sources. A source may lose its credibility with people, even if they believe the source is honest, researchers found out.
That means untruthful – or “fake” – news isn’t the only issue for consumers.
“If you want to be seen as a credible source, you have to be objective, as well as honest and knowledgeable,” said Laura Wallace, lead author of the study and postdoctoral researcher in psychology at The Ohio State University.
The findings are significant because most research has suggested that source credibility is a combination of trustworthiness and expertise, Wallace said. Bias had not been considered, or was viewed as part of trustworthiness.
See more details about this study over at Ohio State News.
(Image Credit: Wokandapix/ Pixabay)
People love playing games. Some gravitate towards free games, while others are willing to spend huge amounts of money just to amplify their playing experience. In the case of a Chinese gamer, he upgraded his character by spending money (and no one is here to judge). He spent $1.4 million on his character in the MMORPG Justice Online. Due to unseen circumstances, he got a big scare from nearly losing his million-dollar character because of a friend. Geek.com has the details:
But in this case of Justice Online, the original player lent his pricey character to a friend. The friend then apparently tried to sell the character back for about $55,000, but accidentally listed the price as $552 instead. This led to yet another player snapping up the great unintentional bargain before any other sales could go through.
Fortunately, it all worked out. The sale was reversed. The character returned to its original home, and the innocent frugal player who bought the character got over $12,000 in damages. The whole mess makes you realize why China maybe wants to enforce stricter gaming curfews, even if we disagree.
image credit: via Geek.com
Frida Kahlo Finger Puppet and Magnet
Worried that you won't find the perfect stocking stuffer for your favorite artist? Behold the Frida Kahlo Finger Puppet and Magnet from the NeatoShop. This little finger puppet is also a magnet which makes a fun an practical gift.
The Frida Kahlo Finger Puppet and Magnet is great for hanging on the fridge, in a locker, or on any metal surface. She is a bold way to hang special art or that painful to-do list.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Magnets. New items arriving all the time.
The holidays are alsmost here. Don't miss out on creating the perfect customizable gift for someone you love. The NeatoShop specializes in curvy and Big and Tall shirts. We carry baby 6 months all the way up adult 10 XL shirts. We know that fun, fabulous, and artistic people come in every size.
In honor of this great GQ correction, what are some of your favorite newspaper/magazine/website corrections of all-time? pic.twitter.com/AKY8X2sNHx
— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) November 22, 2019
The only possible response to would be, "Thank you for your cervix." Parker Molloy was so taken with this recent correction that she shared some of her other favorite media corrections, and invited Twitter users to share theirs. That resulted in some doozies.
— Lola (@TinySodaCans) November 22, 2019
Mobius Strip of corrections.
— Vidya Heble (@purrsiflager) November 23, 2019
On July 17, 1969 -- the day after Apollo 11 launched.
— (((Eddie))) (@abracadocious) November 22, 2019
You can see the images easier in the Threadreader version, or see all the replies at Twitter.
-via Metafilter
Amina spent three months making this huge Snorlax out of blanket yarn for her friend. He's a lucky guy! To judge the size of this thing, consider that the guy is 5' 10" tall. You could have one, too, if you've got the bucks and can wait a couple of months. She is selling them through her Etsy store KnotAgainByAmina. -via Geeks Are Sexy
More often than not, we find ourselves inspired by extremely motivated individuals who accomplish impressive feats. But sometimes we get inspired by people who seem to be unmotivated by life, such as this kid who bounces unenthusiastically.
The original video of the kid, titled, "I will never be as cool as my 2 year old nephew in a bounce house," was uploaded by YouTube user Todd Blass in May 2017, but because the boy is an absolute mood a clip has resurfaced online and been transformed into a meme.
(Video Credit: Todd Blass/ YouTube)
Art museums and universities offer classes, activities and programs for people living with dementia. These events give these people mind stimulation and a sense of inclusion. Not only do these events help in a theoretical sense, but science actually agrees with these methods as a way to give people living with dementia a helping hand. In a new study by researchers from the University of Canberra, these programs actually do help people with dementia, as Hyperallergic details:
in a study that monitored 28 participants of the NGA’s Art and Dementia program before, during, and after the program. During that period, saliva samples were collected from participants to determine levels of cortisol, best known as the “stress hormone,” which plays an important role in dementia symptoms.
Elevated cortisol levels are associated with greater cognitive impairment, brain shrinkage, and a more rapid decline in cognitive function. According to the study, normal cortisol levels are usually high upon waking, then decrease during the day and drop significantly at bedtime. But in people living with dementia, this rhythm is disrupted, causing increased frailty, stress, agitation, and decreased cognitive performance.
“After the six-week intervention, we found the rhythm of salivary cortisol across the day to be improved,” D’Cunha told Hyperallergic in an email interview. “We also found the intervention improved some aspects of well-being. We think if both these physiological and psychological benefits could be sustained for long periods, it could help to improve quality of life.”
image credit: via Hyperallergic
