They say birds of a feather stick together, but that's certainly not the case when it comes to Ingo the dog and her owl friends.
It seems Ingo originally was friends with one little owl named Poldi and his collection of buddies has drastically grown from there -though the pictures seem to prove that Ingo and Poldi are still the closest of the group.
You might say they get a real "hoot" out of the relationship.
Fortunately for all of us, Ingo's owner, Tanja Brandt is a professional photographer who is there to capture every unique and beautiful encounter between Ingo, Poldi and all the other owls they encounter.
Even though species normally evolve in tiny increments, when one develops something that is different from their ancestors, there has to be a first one to try it. YouTube comedian CalebCity imagined how that very first plant decided it would be carnivorous and then evolve into a Venus Flytrap. He plays the roles of two plants and a bumblebee.
Female combat pilots were virtually unheard of before World War II, and while the Women Airforce Service Pilots were making history in the U.S. the Russian Night Witches were preparing to bomb Nazis by night.
The 588th Night Bomber Regiment, aka the Night Witches, were an all-female group of brave Russian fliers who went on bombing raids by the light of the moon in plywood biplanes like true heroes:
All told, the pioneering all-female 588th Night Bomber Regiment dropped more than 23,000 tons of bombs on Nazi targets. And in doing so, they became a crucial Soviet asset in winning World War II.
The Germans nicknamed them the Nachthexen, or “night witches,” because the whooshing noise their wooden planes made resembled that of a sweeping broom. “This sound was the only warning the Germans had. The planes were too small to show up on radar… [or] on infrared locators,” said Steve Prowse, author of the screenplay The Night Witches, a nonfiction account of the little-known female squadron. “They never used radios, so radio locators couldn’t pick them up either. They were basically ghosts.”
The squadron was the brainchild of Marina Raskova, known as the “Soviet Amelia Earhart”—famous not only as the first female navigator in the Soviet Air Force but also for her many long-distance flight records. She had been receiving letters from women all across the Soviet Union wanting to join the World War II war effort. While they had been allowed to participate in support roles, there were many who wanted to be gunners and pilots, flying on their own. Many had lost brothers or sweethearts, or had seen their homes and villages ravaged. Seeing an opportunity, Raskova petitioned Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to let her form an all-female fighting squadron.
On October 8, 1941, Stalin gave orders to deploy three all-female air force units. The women would not only fly missions and drop bombs, they would return fire—making the Soviet Union the first nation to officially allow women to engage in combat. Previously, women could help transfer planes and ammunition, after which the men took over.
In this week's episode of Scatterbrained from Mental Floss, John Green and the gang tell us about shopping malls: their history, purpose, features, and a lot of little things you never realized before. It's a fact-filled primer on shopping malls! There are also tidbits on the most famous department stores that anchored those malls, plus the small shops that exist nowhere else, and the restaurants that were designed just for malls. Shopping malls will never again be what they were in the 1980s and '90s, but they still exist, and their heyday spawned other forms of community shopping.
Animals aren't known for having vivid imaginations, but the wildlife which we share the world with has captured the human imagination since the very beginning, inspiring artists to create some really wild artwork.
And while some people don't consider digital image manipulation to be a true artform French artist Julien Tabet does some really wild stuff with photos of animals using Photoshop- and his altered images are definitely creative and artistic.
The Weeki Wachee mermaids were magical creatures to me as a child, even though I was old enough to know they were real women. Women with awesome jobs, in my eyes. Like many little girls, I wanted to grow up to be a mermaid. But not badly enough to move to Florida as an adult. I had no idea they were still putting on shows three times a day in 2018!
Tom Scott takes us on a tour of Weeki Wachee Springs State Park in Florida, and gives us a bit of the history of the famous -and now gloriously retro- mermaid show.
The 80s and 90s were definitely the raddest decades ever, with the awesomest characters, most tubular movies and TV shows, and the absolute greatest toys and video games ever made, which is why my love of all things retro will never die.
If you're a fan of radical retro style then you've gotta head to the NeatoShop and grab a shirt or three with some amazing old school inspired artwork from the top indie artists who love retro as much as we do!
The 80s introduced us to the world of personal computing
Making s'mores out of Peeps is the true fusion of spring and summer confections. You can do that without even going outside with the Peeps S’mores Skillet Dip! A hot cast iron skillet under a broiler replaces a campfire, and a rainbow of Peeps provide the eye candy. That won't last long, as you swish a roasted, melty Peep with the melted chocolate using a graham cracker. Or maybe a fork, if you want a neater s'more. Since Easter is the last of the candy holidays until Halloween, you might want to stock up on Peeps so you can have this again and again. Get the complete recipe, with a video, at Hello Giggles. -via Pee-wee Herman
Love is supposed to be a good thing in our lives, a positive force that brings out the best in two people and makes them grow in ways no other force of nature can, but more often than not love just hurts the ones who dare to love.
Some people take the pain in stride, others let it twist them up inside, but Cindy's mom took the pain of love lost and turned it into a curse- which she passed down to her poor little daughter. Can Cindy move past the black cloud her mom cast down upon her head and let the light of love shine down upon her?
CINDY- A Love Story is a twisted animated short with amazing looking art created by Marco Bucci and Bryce Sage, a fairy tale for those who feel like every romantic relationship they ever have is doomed.
Who knew an anthropomorphic pickle, a killer hobo and a horde of rats would make such a great cast for an action TV show? Rick Sanchez, that's who knew, and that's why he decided to turn himself into a pickle, create a really cool robo-suit so he could move around and stuff, since pickles are armless and legless. Rick's fighting for the rights of strange scientists everywhere to make life more interesting by performing weird and totally unnecessary experiments that may or may not f$#k with the integrity of entire dimensions. Because life without the "if" is just le...
Add some extremely odd adventure to your geeky wardrobe with this Pickle Vs. Jag t-shirt by Donovan Alex, it's an action packed way to show love for your favorite cartoon show and keep cool like a pickle Rick at the same time!
Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!
In late 2016, Sam Garland (Poem_for_your_sprog) wrote a funny poem that spawned an entirely new genre of poetry, now called bredlik. You can see many examples in the subreddit /r/ilikthebred or at Twitter. For World Poetry Day last week, O. Westin had the wild idea of fusing bredlik with the iambic pentameter of a classic sonnet. The result is a poem about poetry.
My naym is pome / and lo my form is fix’d Tho peepel say / that structure is a jail I am my best / when formats are not mix’d Wen poits play / subversions often fail
Notice you can read the left side by itself and get a completely different poem. You can also read the right side alone, but the real effect comes by reciting it as a whole. There are four stanzas with a twist at the end. You can read the poem, and the thinking behind it, at Micro SF/F. -via Metafilter
There's something about the name "floppy diskette" that has always sounded a bit crude, and I couldn't help but crack a smile at the mention even when people shortened it to "floppy".
Does that mean I have a perverted mind?
Perhaps, but no matter how pure your mind is you'll agree that "floppy diskette" is an unfortunate name for a product after hearing this woman repeat it over and over again in this video tutorial edit from back in the good ol' days of computing.
Neatorama is proud to bring you a guest post from Ernie Smith, the editor of Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail. In another life, he ran ShortFormBlog.
From literary advocacy to union battles to communism claims, the origin story of the organization that publishes Consumer Reports kind of has it all.
Last year, a consumer advocate showed up in the most unlikely place: On YouTube, the home of the no-questions-asked unboxing channel. Cody Crouch, aka iTwe4kz, reviewed a set of earbuds from a company called Kanoa. In a Nike hat and a Puma sleeveless shirt, Crouch (who was clearly frustrated) trashed the earbuds at length and questioned the behavior of the company that was banking on him to give a good review. The company, blaming Crouch’s bad review for spooking investors, shut down, with thousands of paying consumers left in the lurch. However, it’s now widely believed that the company was running a scam, only made a few pairs of headphones, and used Crouch’s review as an out. Now, there’s talk of class-action lawsuits. This might sound like a crazy story, but it’s nothing compared to the tale that gave us the modern consumer advocacy movement. Strap in and we’ll get to testing.
The standards nerds who formed the basis of the consumer rights’ movement
The thing about watching a video from a guy like iTwe4kz is that you’re watching, really, for his opinion, which is likely to be loud, brash, opinionated, and not entirely impartial. That’s not a knock on him. That’s just the way YouTube works—we watch videos for the opinions shared.
But the problem, of course, is that biases swing in all directions, and in a world where you’re getting marketing at every single second. A lot of people read this in their inboxes. And a lot of the messages surrounding it are often promotional or marketing in nature.
And the problem, over the years, has gotten worse. How do you rein it all in?
Robert E. Jackson found and compiled a collection of Easter bunnies from back when you expected them to look weird and creepy -and we liked it! Yeah, back in the day, we didn't have any of these 3D printed bespoke furry costumes. We just had papier-mâché heads from someone's kitchen and recycled pajamas.
Or people just put on bunny ears and did the Bunny Hop. Or we skipped all that nonsense and put our kids on ten-foot rabbits and took their picture. See all 16 images at Flashbak. -via Boing Boing
Surreal animated shorts are often too bizarre and too obscure for most viewers to sink their teeth into, but Hen, His Wife is easily accessible to all- even if not everyone understands the symbolist subtexts.
Hen, His Wife is a bizarre short created by Pilot animation studio back in 1989 about a guy who ignores his wife, who is an anthropomorphic chicken, but there's a lot more going on beneath the absurdist surface story:
Igor Kovalyov, one of the studio’s founders, directed a tale so densely symbolic that it's tough to interpret. In terms of narrative, the film is about a family couple in which the husband, dressed in prison-like garments, ignores his dutiful wife – an anthropomorphic hen – until a stranger arrives and jolts them from their absurd coexistence. The plot itself, however, makes little sense without interpreting the abundant symbols of impotence, autoeroticism, and sexuality. Kovalyov’s wordless, surreal drama easily captures one’s attention, leaving a lingering unease in its wake, even without Freudian analysis.
