YouTuber WUZU clay uses polymer clay to construct a Minecraft temple, set in an ocean, encased in acrylic for preservation. The process is painstaking, but in this video it is sped up by edits for our enjoyment, without narration. The precision in planning, measuring, and construction is engrossing. There are just enough bubbles in the acrylic to make it really seem to be underwater! -via Boing Boing
Sportswriter Stefan Fatsis is also a competitive Scrabble player. Earlier this month, he was competing in his 116th Scrabble tournament while contemplating retiring from the game. But one night during the tournament, he and some other Scrabble experts discussed a game that day in which top player Will Anderson could have scored a bingo (using all of one's tiles, for a 50-point bonus) by using the word "highveld" but didn't see it. Highveld is a South African term that is in the Collins list of words used in Anderson's tournament, but not in the North American list used in Fatsis' tournament.
Finally, Sokol, who had told us about Anderson’s miss, pointed out that the North American lexicon includes only one of those -VELD words: bushveld, a veld with “abundant shrubby and often thorny vegetation,” according to Merriam-Webster. Interesting! So what was your record today? Make any fun plays? How’s the salad?
Fatsis has never heard of "bushveld" until that discussion. The very next day, Fatsis played against Anna Miransky. At one point in the game, against all odds, his tiles were DEHLSUV. And there was an open B on the board. You might guess what happened, but you'll enjoy reading the whole story. You don't even have to be a Scrabble player to appreciate it. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Fancy Font Generator)
Get a complete greenhouse without the need for a big investment. Usually, prices run between $1000 to $5000, or $20,000 if the structure is customized. Well, you can now get one for just $90. Amazon has released the Home-Complete Walk-in Greenhouse, which can fit eight durable shelves for storage and display. Its price point may make you suspicious of its quality, but according to the 3,500 five-star reviews, the purchase is worth it. "I found it to be easy to assemble and quite roomy inside," wrote one customer.
Image credit: Amazon
This museum asked their security guards to curate their newest exhibition. Baltimore Museum of Art’s latest show, titled “Guarding the Art,” showcases 25 artworks from their collection, selected by 17 members of their security team. Suggested by board member Amy Elias, the aim of the exhibition is to bring new life to the museum’s way of presentation and obtain new perspectives along the way. “It [the exhibition] gives visitors a unique opportunity to see, listen and learn the personal histories and motivations of guest curators. In this way, the exhibition opens a door for how a visitor might feel about the art, rather than just providing a framework for how to think about the art,” she explained in a statement.
Learn more about how the curatorial process happened here.
Image credit: Christopher Myers
What?
A dog was abandoned at the Stanly County Animal Shelter in North Carolina because they saw him hump another male dog. In a Facebook post by the shelter, Fezco, the pupper, was introduced. According to the post, the four-year-old animal gets along with people and other animals.
Fezco’s behavior, while unacceptable and odd to his previous owners, is absolutely normal, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. “Mounting, thrusting (humping) and masturbation are normal behaviors exhibited by most dogs … They mount and thrust against other animals, people, and objects, such as wadded-up blankets, dog beds, and toys. Sometimes, dogs just rub against people or objects (without mounting them), or they lick themselves,” the organization wrote on their website.
Image credit: WCCB News via The Advocate
It’s nice to appreciate paintings and other forms of art as they are, displayed in a museum on their own. However, learning an anecdote behind its creation, or the context of the time they were created adds another layer to our appreciation and understanding of them. Take, for example, Claude Monet’s Water Lilies series. While these paintings look quiet, beautiful, and serene– Monet’s efforts to actually paint them made him curse out an entire town. The inspiration and source of his paintings were his gardens in Giverny. But, locals objected to the creation of those gardens, worrying about the environmental impact of introducing non-native plant species to the area, because the artist wanted an Asian-influenced water garden.
Check out more fun and surprising stories here!
Image credit: wikimedia commons
In a survey done by GetResponse, an online marketing platform, 1000 people revealed the most passive-aggressive sounding phrases they’ve heard or used in emails. You’d be surprised at the phrase that made it to the top! I was shocked because I sometimes used them without wanting to sound passive-aggressive. Check the full video here to learn about the top six if you want to avoid using them in the future.
(via Flipboard)
Image credit: Kaitlyn Baker
A new website from the Tolkien Estate has a treasure trove of information about JRR Tolkien, beloved author of The Lord of the Rings. Part of the process of creating his fictional world was envisioning it, and Tolkien painted quite a few landscapes of Middle-earth for both The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings, plus the settings for his other books. Some, but not all were used in the book illustrations.
There's also a section on Tolkien's maps, which kept him going in the right direction in his stories, and another featuring his beautiful calligraphy. That's in addition to information about his life and writing. This site could keep a Tolkien fan busy for a while. -via Kottke
A tornado ripped through Elgin, Texas, on Monday. The storm left plenty of property damage, a few injuries, but no fatalities reported so far. Thousands are still without power. The most viral of images from the storm is a video of a red Silverado pickup truck that crossed paths with the tornado. The twister flipped the truck on its side, spun it around, and then righted it. Astonishingly, the man inside was able to drive away. The owner of the truck has stayed anonymous so far, but we get to see what shape the truck is in, and hear froma couple of witnesses.
The man obviously had his seatbelt on. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Chevy seeks out the footage to use in an ad. Silverados are quite protective. Recall this story from several years ago, in which the truck was destroyed but the driver was fine.
-via Digg
It’s a worm on a chip! Well, a roundworm to be more precise.
A team of researchers from Myongji University in Korea studied a species of tiny roundworms called Caenorhabditis elegans to find out if they can turn the small creatures into diagnostic tests for lung cancer. Prior lab studies have shown that this kind of worm tends to move toward samples that belong to patients with cancer. “It’s well known that the soil-dwelling nematode, C. elegans, is attracted or repelled by certain odors, so we came up with an idea that the roundworm could be used to detect lung cancer,” lead researcher Shin Sik Choi explained.
The researchers created a plastic chip with a well at both ends of the chip, in which one would contain a culture from lung cancer cells and the other would contain the healthy cells. The roundworms are placed at the channel between these two sections. Early results on testing the chip showed that a significantly higher volume of worms moved to the lung cancer cells than the healthy cells. This could be used to detect cancer cells with 70 percent accuracy. “We will collaborate with medical doctors to find out whether our methods can detect lung cancer in patients at an early stage,” Choi added.
Image credit: Nari Jang
Yikes.
Canadian artist Andrew Martin created a fan-art sculpture of one of the Tiki drummers from the Disneyland attraction called the Enchanted Tiki Room. Martin actually created the artwork during a seven-hour livestream in 2018, and made the design available online so people could 3D print the sculpture. It turns out that common people aren’t the only ones who took advantage of that opportunity. At least, that is what the artist is accusing Disney of.
A friend of Martin’s messaged him through Instagram, telling him that Disney was selling a sculpture that looks a lot like his 2018 artwork. "I'm like, 'that does look a lot like mine,' and then did a one-to-one comparison of mine just to make sure. And it's 100 percent the one I did," he said.
The art is now no longer available on the company’s online store, but it has been spotted to be sold at some park stores. Disney has not responded to the allegations after multiple requests for comment.
Image credit: Courtesy Andrew Martin
Congratulations! The United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s 10th World Happiness Report has ranked Finland as the top country that made its residents happy. The country has won this title for five years in a row, which is an amazing feat. The rankings are based on the country’s gross domestic product per capita and social support, as well as how a country’s citizens gauge their freedom to make life choices. Learn more about the report here.
Image credit: Baptiste Valthier
An anonymous Turkish man broke a wall in his basement in 1963, which led him to discover a complex network of tunnels, halls, and chambers. This vast abandoned subterranean city, which was up to 18 stories and 280 feet (76 m) deep– was enough to house 20,000 people. Located in Derinkuyu, Turkey, no one knows exactly why it was built, who was it built for, or when and how it was abandoned. Read more about the possible reasons why here!
image credit: Yasir999, CC BY-SA 4.0
The Academy Awards ceremony is this Sunday night, and once again there are a bunch of movies that you haven't seen up for an Oscar. It was just so much easier to stay at home and binge on a television series you've seen before. In this day and age there may be a lot of movies nominated that you've never even heard of. To alleviate this problem, Screen Junkies presents their annual Oscars Honest Trailer. What that means is that this video has a mini-Honest Trailer for each of the ten films competing for the Best Picture Award. Sadly, Spider-Man is not among them. See all the nominees for this year's Academy Awards here.
Art is often considered a form of worship. Hundreds of small towns in Europe have churches and chapels containing priceless Renaissance (and older) artworks that are not as well-known as those hanging in art museums. The church in Castrojeriz, Spain, had a half-dozen 17th-century Flemish tapestries created by a follower of Peter Paul Rubens named Corneille Schutz. The tapestries depicted the muses of the liberal arts. The largest was 13 feet tall and 20 feet wide! And in November of 1980, a thief came in and took them all.
The tapestries were tracked down one by one over the next few years, and so was the art thief. René Alphonse Ghislain van den Berghe had stolen thousands of artworks, and then spent many years helping police to recover them. But the largest of the Castrojeriz tapestries had been vandalized. It was missing a two-foot-square section of the lower left corner, which depicted an angel. It took more than 40 years for the missing piece to be found, but now it has been turned over to the curators of the collection.
Read the tale of the notorious art thief and the missing piece that has finally been reunited with its puzzle at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: Carlospalacios)
