We've posted some completely awful recipes and pictures of the Jell-O craze of the 20th century, although those were mostly recipes from the company. Real people make delicious and fruity Jell-O salads from sweet things like fruit, whipped cream, and marshmallows. Or at least they do after one or two experiments with vegetables in gelatin. But at the height of the Jell-O salad fad, the company made things easier with specific flavors made to go with veggies. Celery and mixed vegetables flavors were introduced in 1964. See more of the advertisements and read a couple recipes for the new flavors at ClickAmericana. Yum! See their other vintage recipes here. -via Metafilter
We tend to try common home remedies for common ailments, because going to a professional will take a big chunk of time and money, and you might not even get in anytime soon. These classic self-treatments got a reputation because they seem to work -possibly because many ailments get better on their own with time, and the placebo effect probably helps. Sci Show looks at the research and debunks some of the more common home remedies that just don't work under rigorous study. -via Mental Floss
It's been said that hiring decisions are made within the first 90 seconds of meeting a prospective employee. It's more likely that people who don't make a good first impression are just eliminated from the pool at the outset. That's where Sharp Dressed Man comes in. The Baltimore organization provides suits and styling for men going to job interviews. It was founded by Christopher Schafer.
The goal of the group is to support men re-entering the workforce from prison or rehab. Schafer is a custom tailor in downtown Baltimore, who designs suits with a starting price tag of $3,000. The idea for 'Sharp Dressed Man' came to Schafer when he was looking for a way to dispose of his high-end suits his clients were no longer in need of. During the week he collects donations from clients and locals and then on Wednesday's men can come in for a free suit fitting, haircut, and hot meal.
The organization uses a network of partner agencies for donations and referrals. While you don't know anything about the men in these pictures, nor the job they are interviewing for, you can imagine the guy at the top going from busker to college professor, and the guy above going from lawn maintenance to banker. Read about Sharp Dressed Man at their website, and see 72 ranked pictures of clothing transformations at Bored Panda.
In the weird world of the distant future, all the earth's creatures are manufactured from the junk we left behind. A friendly bonehead robot is sent on a quest to seek immortality in a factory. This stop-motion adventure from Brett Foxwell was ten years in the making. He shows us how he did it here. -via The Awesomer
An official movie poster for the Star Wars film Revenge of the Jedi is going up for auction. Hey, wait a minute- there was never a movie named Revenge of the Jedi! And that explains why this poster is rare. It was issued ahead of the 1983 film Return of the Jedi. Wikipedia has the story.
The original teaser trailer for the film carried the name Revenge of the Jedi.[30] In December 1982, Lucas decided that "Revenge" was not appropriate as Jedi should not seek revenge and returned to his original title. By that time thousands of "Revenge" teaser posters (with artwork by Drew Struzan) had been printed and distributed. Lucasfilm stopped the shipping of the posters and sold the remaining stock of 6,800 posters to Star Wars fan club members for $9.50.
Of course, the Sith were not at all above seeking revenge, so the title was recycled for the 2005 film Revenge of the Sith. Anyhow, the poster is expected to bring somewhere from $1800 to $3200. Since it's being sold by Sotheby's, you'll have to pay in pounds. -via Boing Boing
Australian comedian Troy Kinne demonstrates how a phrase can mean two completely different things depending on what phase of life you are in, specifically before and after you have children. This video contains NSFW language. -via Tastefully Offensive
Of the many horrors you can have on a job, one that you can do very little about is a bad boss. But did you ever work for a supervisor that was so bad you had to write to an advice column about him/her? Alison Green answers questions at the advice column Ask a Manager, and has read some pretty awful workplace stories.
The owner of the company has a brother who needs a liver transplant. Two weeks ago, a company-wide memo went out that all employees would be required to undergo testing to see if they were a suitable liver donor for the owner’s brother. No exceptions.
Last week at the branch the owner works out of most of the time, his assistant went around to schedule days off for everyone so they could go get tested. People who declined were let go. … I’m in remission from cancer. I’m ineligible to donate and any kind of surgery would put a major strain on my system. Even if I was healthy, I would still object to possibly being forced into donating an organ just to keep my job.
Believe it or not, that's not the worst of the eight worst stories about nightmare bosses at Slate.
Combine table tennis and soccer, and you get Headis. Headis was invented in 2006 when a German student, René Wegner, wanted to play football, but since the field was occupied, he suggested playing at an available ping pong table. That's using your head! The new sport caught on like wildfire, and before you knew it, there were Headis World Cup Tournaments. -via Metafilter
Wikipedia is the extensive crowd-sourced nexus of knowledge on the internet. Anyone can sign up and edit, and anyone can re-edit your edits. Some of the editing battles have gone down in history for their rancor, duration, or silliness. And no detail is too small or obscure to fight about. For example, the picture that accompanied the article on economist Guy Standing, shown above, originally sported the caption "Guy Standing sitting at the BIEN conference in 2012."
Yep. It's the same joke poor Guy has certainly heard every day of his life, and some people found it in bad taste. Some editors changed the caption, arguing that "Guy Standing sitting" was a pointless, discursive joke. Other editors changed it back, arguing they were just literally describing what was happening, and that deliberately avoiding the phrase or changing the pic was needlessly confusing. It seemed like a classic battle between the philosophies of "One should never be cute, even by accident" and "Relax, that guy is sitting."
The comments got heated. One user from Team Relax said, "It's accurate, though. The photo is of Guy Standing, sitting, so it isn't really vandalism." A rival from Team Never Cute countered, "It's still just a pointless joke. There's no actual reason for it really being there. I suggest changing the picture to him not sitting." But this argument would not be solved by finding a picture of Guy Standing standing. It would be solved with WAR.
The volunteer Wikipedia editors battled back and forth like this ... for three years.
An article at Cracked goes into much more detail about the fight over Guy Standing, plus five other ridiculously petty edit fights in the name of accuracy and usability at Wikipedia.
(Image credit: Stanislas Jourdan)
The Mushroom Shed - Cabin/Summerhouse from Garden #shedoftheyear
The British take their sheds seriously, and once again it's time to prove it with the 2018 Shed of the Year competition. The thousands of entries have been winnowed down to 24 finalists in the categories of Pub/Entertainment, Eco, Cabin, Unique, Workshops, Budget, Historic, and Unexpected. The overall winner will receive £1,000 plus various trophies and products from sponsors. Vote online until August 28, and the winners will be announced in September. Cast your vote, see all the entries, and peruse winners from previous years at the Shed of the Year website. Pictured here is the 2017 winner. -via Fark
In the 18th century, Europeans were amazed at the imports coming in from the New World at the same time they said goodbye to friends and neighbors who set off for America and never returned. Those long sea voyages meant scant mail, and it was rare for an artist to bring back their impressions. Oh, those artworks existed, but they weren't mass-produced everywhere. People wanted to see America, or at least pictures of it. A few printmakers set to work fulfilling their wishes, even though they were pretty much working blind.
During the 1770s and 1780s, German engravers Balthasar Friedrich Leizelt and Franz Xaver Habermann created a number of popular vues d’optique, a special kind of print designed to be viewed with an optical device called a zograscope that would make them appear three-dimensional. Many of these prints show various North American places and cities such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Quebec City. While the majority of 18th century city views were ultimately derived from some type of manufactured source (be it a drawing, painting or print), what is peculiar about Leizelt and Habermann’s vues d’optique is that they borrow from preexisting views of European places and cities rather than views of the North American cities they were trying to represent.
The difference was that European cities were built slowly over a thousand years, while American communities were built fairly quickly to accommodate European arrivals out of locally available materials. You can see some of Leizelt and Habermann’s works at Smithsonian.
The Cat Museum of San Francisco exists online and in temporary exhibitions, and hopes to occupy a permanent location in the future. The website explores the history of cats, in records and in pop culture. They also have a Facebook feed that pays tribute to a different celebrity, historical figure, or artist each day on their birthday or anniversary, as long as that person has ever been photographed with a cat or produce cat art. Shown above is a publicity photo of actress Dolores Del Rio, whose birthday was earlier this month, with her cat.
The next day was the anniversary of the birth of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who decorated his poem "Verses on a Cat" with a sketch of a cat. -via Nag on the Lake
On October 17, 2018, recreational marijuana will become legal in Canada. That doesn't mean driving while stoned will be legal. We've got well-refined tests for driving while under the influence of alcohol, but how would you test for how high someone is? There are certain signs, and these folks display all of them in a skit from the CBC show 22 Minutes. -via Boing Boing
Hanging was the most common form of execution until recently, although it wasn't always effective. A very small percentage of condemned criminals survived the ordeal, but since there have been so many hangings over the centuries, and because the stories were unusual enough to be recorded, those tales of survival are numerous enough for a list. Some of them were "executed" again, sometimes using an alternate method. Others were hanged over and over, and a few were impressive enough to be pardoned for their surprising will to live, like Half-Hanged Maggie.
In 1724, the hanging of Margaret Dickson at Edinburgh for the crime of infanticide aroused great interest throughout Europe. She was hanged, cut down, and placed into a coffin. Like the criminal Walter Wynkeburne six decades earlier, the rough cobblestones brought her back to consciousness as the cart carrying her coffin rumbled toward the Musselburgh graveyard. She was removed from the coffin about one-third of the way to the graveyard and prayed over by a minister, before being released. She lived for many years afterwards, had a large family, and was locally famous for selling salt on the streets of Edinburgh, having earned the nickname "Half-Hanged Maggie" on account of her ordeal. The nickname not only stuck-- it followed her to the grave, and was etched into her headstone.
Read the stories of seven other survivors of the gallows at Journal of the Bizarre. -via Strange Company
Prince got himself a lousy cup of coffee this time! The Instagram account Show Bits features simple drawings of musicians singing bits of their songs in what you might call a different setting. There are some actors, too. Here's David Lee Roth as a bag of microwave popcorn.
The scenarios were obviously inspired by the sounds, but it took someone with a real imagination to put them to work. And some are just puns.
Check out more at Show Bits. -via Metafilter
