One of the many minor quibbles with Star Wars is how lightsabers work. Lasers don't go to a certain length and then stop! But in a fictional world there are very good reasons to have them work that way. A laser with an unlimited length would present so many problems, they would be unusable. This skit from Corridor illustrates just a few of those difficulties. -via Tastefully Offensive
The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder were a romanticized version of her childhood memories, written for children. As with many people, the good times stand out the most when recalls their childhood. The real hardships associated with pioneer living were glossed over, considered too harsh for young readers, or possibly too ordinary to stand out in Wilder's mind. The reality was that getting by was no picnic for settlers of the American heartland.
Pioneer food was often stodgy, plain, or altogether absent. While Laura’s family is concerned throughout the book with packing away stores to make it through harsh winters, Wilder tends to gloss over the risk of famine or even death. In summertime or fall, pioneers might feast on bear meat (Laura’s favorite), buffalo, venison, elk, and antelope, unconstrained by the big game laws of the Old World. But in winter, when nothing grew or could be hunted, pioneers were vulnerable.
Families like the Ingalls family had it especially tough. As historian Erin E. Pedigo observes, Pa’s “dreams of wide open space with few neighbors and accumulated wealth from working the land were far bigger than his abilities,” and his family paid the price. Out on the open frontier, or deep in the woods, there was no market economy or community to fall back on during difficult months.
Read how the Little House books put a happy face on a harsh life at Atlas Obscura.
This little cat is named Giselle, but she's called Potato, and she goes by realstumpycat on Instagram. She is blind and has multiple deformities due to inbreeding among dwarf Munchkin cats. The breeder turned her over to the Massachusetts SPCA, where she was adopted by a cat lover named Holly who has experience with special needs cats. Holly tells us more about Potato's ailments.
In addition to her skeletal deformities, her organs are to big, her rib cage is way to small and her head is to big which adds weight to her spine.. Her heart is being protected by her tiny rib cage but her lungs are squished and makes it difficult for her to breath.. Things like car rides and even picking her up stresses her out a lot and make her breathing even worse.. Although she has become very playful, she gets tired quickly and needs to rest her lungs.. She has been treated since the day she was surrendered by her amazing pain specialist, Dr. Moses.. This is the woman that agreed to give this girl a fighting chance at a better life and I thank her for all her honesty and compassion for Mrs Potato Cat.. We have a medication routine with her feedings and she is on 2 meds daily so she is not uncomfortable currently.. We have spent a lot of time trying to get an idea of all her ailments so we can be prepared as things change over her lifetime.. She was also blind from birth most likely, she knows no different and it’s doesn’t bother her at all!
Despite her abnormalities, Potato is as cute as can be, and gets along fine with the other household cats. You can see more of Potato at Instagram. -via Laughing Squid
We've seen many times that a fake product dreamed up for April Fool's Day turns out to be such a hit that the vendor was behooved to make it real. That happens a lot at Think Geek, and this year it happened at Bravissimo, a clothing retailer catering to women with large breasts. They posted the diagram above for April Fool's Day, and the response was overwhelming. All their customers wanted the lilo, or pool float with room to lie face down! So, despite the fact that Bravissimo makes clothing, they went to work to make it real.
In case you can't see it in the picture, the text in the depression says "Cup holders. Bravissimo style!" You can order one here. That's what you call dedication to your customers. Strangely, their boob-crumb-o-matic didn't elicit that much response, and will not be offered for sale. -via Bits and Pieces
Two people seemed suspicious to the Reddi Mart store owners in Spruce Grove, Alberta, on Monday. One RCMP officer showed up to question the couple, and then all hell broke loose. The one constable and the store owner were busy with the guy, so the woman tried to escape the building, but security cameras are everywhere, and more police arrived. They were both eventually charged with using a stolen credit card plus multiple crimes caught in this video. You can read the news story here. -via Slate, who helpfully added music to the original footage.
Kate Wagner at McMansion Hell is doing a series called 50 States of McMansion Hell, where she looks at terrible architecture of the various states of the union. In Texas, she had way too many to select from (2000, she said), and so is giving the state a two part roundup, with eight homes in the first post. That will be followed by another eight and a tournament bracket for readers to vote for the "Most Terrible in Texas." Check back next week for part two, or you can look for a post on your state by using this tag http://mcmansionhell.com/tagged/texas and changing the last word to your state. -via Boing Boing
The kitten just got back from the vet, still a bit groggy from being under the influence. He's just been neutered! What's even worse, he tells the cat what happened. No doubt the cat has forgotten all about when it happened to him long ago. This is the latest Simon's Cat short from Simon Tofield.
Believe it or not, the Eddie Murphy movie Coming to America was released 30 years ago today. Murphy plays an African prince who wants to find a bride who will love him for more than his fabulous wealth, so he travels to New York in a fish-out-of-water story. Along the way, he meets a cast of wacky characters played by stars and by actors who eventually became stars, plus quite a few played by Murphy himself. Let's learn some more about the film.
7. IT WAS CUBA GOODING JR.’S FIRST FILM.
According to IMDb, his character is known as “Boy Getting Haircut” in the famous barbershop scene.
8. JAMES EARL JONES AND MADGE SINCLAIR, THE KING AND QUEEN OF ZAMUNDA, ALSO VOICED THE KING AND QUEEN IN THE LION KING.
The duo must’ve truly impressed Disney, because the on-screen couple landed the coveted gig of voicing Mufasa and Sarabi, respectively, in the 1994 animated masterpiece.
I remember that well, when I recognized the voices in The Lion King. Mufasa and Sarabi even looked like the King and Queen of Zamunda. Read more trivia about Coming to America and enjoy a couple of clips at Mental Floss.
A Report of Connected Events is a video that connects those events in a surprising way. It's more than a mashup or a supercut. Iconic moments from your favorite films are blended together, often in the same shot, under an essay about the power of storytelling. Metafilter has a list of the movies used in the comments.
Liminal Seattle is an interactive map of strange, bizarre, and possibly supernatural things in Seattle, Washington. Submitted reports include legends, ghosts, UFOs, odd animals, time distortion, visions, and more, most of them from first-hand experience, many with pictures. From the submission guidelines:
– We give precedence to personal accounts. No “my sister’s cousin’s uncle saw this.”
– Historical accounts are fine, as long as they aren’t too well known. Nothing you heard on a Ghost Tour or read somewhere. Exceptions will be made for REALLY WEIRD stuff.
The threshold for "really weird" becomes evident when you click on an icon and read the stories. This happened at the corner of S152nd St. and 40th Ave. South:
A crow a dropped a chicken McNugget directly on my head. Still unsure if he liked or hated me…
But some are pretty darn weird. This one's from Belltown.
I was living in the basement of this nearly 100 y/o building – facing the alley so things always seemed a little more dark and spooky.
The day before I had dutifully washed my dishes and had them drying on a rack on the counter. This is important cuz they had been sitting there for 24+ hours (No heat issues, no slipping) when randomly one of my glass tumblers explodes. I think this is weird but think nothing of it until two more spontaneously shatter several minutes later.
The unit also had creepy “moving” sink holes, ala every now and then my floor would dip/sink when walking over it but not always.
Check out all the stories at Liminal Seattle. You can submit your own, too. -via Digg
This video contains spoilers, but it won't make much sense anyway if you haven't seen Avengers: Infinity War. How It Should Have Ended came up with multiple ways the plot could have been resolved without all that fighting and stuff. Of course, that would have left us with much less of a movie, and we wouldn't all be wondering about and waiting for the next installment. The real fun of this video begins afterward, when it spreads beyond the Marvel Cinematic Universe into other pop culture worlds. -via Geeks Are Sexy
In the US, the American Revolution is taught as a David and Goliath story of a small ragtag army of colonists taking on the British Empire and winning our freedom. That's not wrong, but we did have a lot of help. You have to wonder why the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch were so interested in American independence. The answer is clearer when you pull the lens back to see the conflict on a global scale.
In a global context, the American Revolution was largely a war about trade and economic influence—not ideology. France and Spain, like Britain, were monarchies with even less fondness for democracy. The Dutch Republic was primarily interested in free trade. The leaders of all three countries wanted to increase their nations’ trade and economic authority, and to accomplish that, they were willing to go to war with their biggest competitor—Great Britain.
To the French, Spanish and Dutch governments, this was not a war about liberty: It was all about power and profit. If American colonists won their independence, that would cause harm to British interests and open new trade opportunities in North America and elsewhere for those who allied themselves with the colonists.
An exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, The American Revolution: A World War, looks at the American Revolution through the eyes of the other world powers of the time. Read an overview at Smithsonian.
Disney imagineers have been woking on animatronic stunt men. Watch them progress from a simple stick figure to full-on robotic acrobats. Disney doesn't need artificial stunt men when we already have real stunt men and CGI in movies, but these are for the theme parks. They are called Stuntronics. Principal R&D Imagineer Tony Dohi spoke about them.
“So what this is about is the realization we came to after seeing where our characters are going on screen,” says Dohi, “whether they be Star Wars characters, or Pixar characters, or Marvel characters or our own animation characters, is that they’re doing all these things that are really, really active. And so that becomes the expectation our park guests have that our characters are doing all these things on screen — but when it comes to our attractions, what are our animatronic figures doing? We realized we have kind of a disconnect here.”
So they came up with the concept of a stunt double for the ‘hero’ animatronic figures that could take their place within a show or scene to perform more aggressive maneuvering, much in the same way a double replaces a valuable and delicate actor in a dangerous scene.
Read more about the Stuntronics robots at TechCrunch. -via reddit
On February 4, 1929, Kate Jackson was attacked at her home in Wales and suffered a head wound. She died six days later. Whodunit? Was it her husband, who relied on her money, but didn't ask about its source? Was a someone connected to her adopted daughter, whose background was never revealed? Was it the former lover who paid Kate thousands of dollars in extortion money over the years? No, he was in prison, but it could have been someone connected to the union he embezzled the money from. Could it have been a jealous lover, another extortion victim, or maybe a wronged spouse? Who was it that wrote those threatening letters, like this one?
"Lest you forget. This is to tell you that we are watching you and we will get you. You husband-stealer. You robber of miner's money that would have fed starving children; you and that man of yours, I suppose he is somebody's husband, too. When we get you we will tar-and-feather you, and for every quid you have taken from us you will get another lump of tar and one more feather. We will show people you are as black outside as you are in. We don't mind doing quod [prison time] for you, you Picadilly Lily. We will get you yet."
The story of Kate Jackson's murder does not provide an answer, but her web of lies and deceit make for a fascinating story at Mental Floss.
So many annoying habits are things that drivers complain about, but also do themselves and they aren't even aware of it. Then there are some habits that you might not even realize are bothering the drivers around you. When driving, you should always be aware of your surroundings, that's a given, but you should also be aware of the problems you are causing for other drivers. The one that drives me up the wall the most is that one where someone pulls out in front of you and drives slowly, even when there was no one at all behind you. Why couldn't they wait a second and a half for you to pass? -via Digg
