š¦ Todd Perkins of Washougal, Washington, spared no expense to create this Jurassic Park-themed vacation rental house, which comes complete with five animatronic dinosaurs. Welcome to Jurassic Retreat!
Famous author Ernest Hemingway had a brother who was 16 years younger. Leicester Hemingway was a writer who always lived in his older brother's shadow, but he had some small share of the Hemingway brashness and creativity. Leicester once founded his own micronation called the Republic of New Atlantis. He was the president, and the "land" consisted of a bamboo raft anchored off the coast of Jamaica. New Atlantis had a flag (shown above), a constitution, and its own currency called the Scruple.
The definition of scruple is to hesitate on a moral basis, which was intended as a joke that those with too many Scruples should question their ethics. Additionally, the Scruples used in New Atlantis would not be printed paper bills. Instead, Scruples were shark teeth and other specially-marked nautical items.
New Atlantis has a purpose, which was marine research, and a money-making scheme in postage stamps. But it still didn't last long. Read the story of Leicester Hemingway's New Atlantis at Cracked.
Vatican City consists of only 109 acres, but it boasts the arms of its famous Swiss Guard. Perhaps their uniforms and polearms look out of date, but they are modern, professionally trained soldiers--proper heirs to the Papal troops who fought with bloody savagery during the 1527 Sack of Rome.
The Swiss Guard is one of the long-established but tiny armed forces fielded by the microstates of Europe: Vatican City, San Marino, Monaco, Liechtenstein, and Andorra. In this video, historian Mark Felton describes them.
I find microstates fascinating and have read much about them, but still learned something that I didn't know: Andorra maintains a 12-man army equipped with weapons passed down as heirlooms within families. Gun ownership is common, so the Andorran government is prepared to call upon the entire adult male population, if necessary, to protect the nation.
For years, David Bird was a designer for LEGO. After going freelance, he still designs characters, but these are his own. Bird makes small woodland creatures he calls "becorns," made from acorns, pine cones, sticks, and other natural materials. He sets the becorns outside and waits for real woodland creatures to approach, and then photographs the encounters. Bird says this technique requires lots of patience and birdseed. You can see some of the process in a promotional video.
For this one, the frog was already there, and stayed still while Bird placed the becorns around him. Continue reading to see more of Bird's delightful becorns and their new friends.
Three years ago, Morgan Cooper made a short film reimagining The Fresh Prince of Bel Air as a drama that delved into the social issues that caused Will to relocate from Philadelphia to southern California. It was so good that it caught the eye of Will Smith, the original Fresh Prince, who pushed to make the concept into a real movie or possibly a TV series. That series is now a reality. Bel-Air will premiere in February on NBC's Peacock streaming service. Cooper is the co-producer, co-writer, and director of the series, along with T.J. Brady and Rasheed Newson. Will Smith is the executive producer. The first three episodes will drop on February 13.
This is a message to all those who make internet fan films- keep on working at it; lightning may strike for you one day. Or else you'll get better with experience and might get noticed. -via Boing Boing
Foothill Division Officers displayed heroism and quick action by saving the life of a pilot who made an emergency landing on the railroad tracks at San Fernando Rd. and Osborne St., just before an oncoming train collided with the aircraft. pic.twitter.com/DDxtGGIIMo
The pilot had the bad luck of completing the crash landing of his Cessna on train tracks. This was in the Pacoima neighborhood near Whiteman Airport, a general aviation facility, at 2:10 on Sunday afternoon. Those tracks served Metrolink, a commuter rail service in southern California. Although responding police asked Metrolink to stop trains on that stretch, they were unable to communicate the need quickly enough. It was necessarily to pull the pilot out as quickly as possible.
Peat bogs are wetlands with soft ground composed of living and decaying moss. This kind of landmass is one of the greatest stores of carbon. Flanders Moss bog, which can be found in Scotland, is an 860-hectare (2,125-acre) site that has been hacked away and drained to make space for farmland.
Researchers in Scotland are now tracking these bogs using the latest satellite technology, which provides information on how healthy they are and how much carbon they hold. This monitoring helps restoration efforts to lock carbon in the country. Check out The Guardianās full piece on Scotlandās peat bogs here!
Apollo, stop randomly giving the gift of prophecy to random people!
It could just be a coincidence, but The Sovereign Individual, by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Moog, actually predicted the rise of our present financial technology and techniques. From the metaverse to digital currency to e-commerce and more, this 1997 book was oddly spot on in describing these concepts. It is unknown if the industry actually based its techniques on this book. Learn more about this book and its predictions here!
These keycaps look amazing! Keycap maker Hirosart created these amazing keycaps that contain dioramas of Pokemon in their natural habitats. From fiery, volcanic settings for fire-type pokemon to different waterscapes for water-type pokemon, the artistās talent and skill can be seen in these small landscapes that fit in a single key. The amount of detail in each of the keys explains its price, sold at $50 per key and $175 for a spacebar.
Itās an amazing coincidence! Animal shelter volunteer Hannah Rountree reunited with her childhood cat Spunky three years after the cat disappeared. The fifteen-year-old was on her second day at the Saving Grace Pet Adoption center when she spotted a cat that resembled Spunky. It turns out that the feline was actually her childhood friend, who was returned to the shelter by his new family because he didnāt want to catch mice.
The two are now reunited and Spunk returned to his old home, equipped with a microchip on his person in case he gets lost again!
šŗļø This is an amazing story: Thirty-three years ago, a four year old boy was kidnapped from his village and sold to a child trafficking ring. The man was finally able to find his long-lost mother by drawing a map of the village he remembered growing up in and sharing it on social media.
š± Jessica and Nikii Gerson-Neeves were excited to get a Vitamix blender as Christmas gift. The problem? Their cats are holding it hostage and an Internet saga is born.
If you watch the nightly news, it seems that Americans live in a highly divided society on the verge of splitting into two polar political opposites. From vaccine policies to mask mandates to views on the event of January 6th, Americans are split along old and familiar political fault lines.
So itās refreshing to me to find these 2021 poll results from the Pew Research Center and Gallup that show that Americans are actually quite unified in manyĀ areas: the majority of people across the country, from both blue states and red states, and across various socio-economic strata - actually agree with each other.Ā
Two thirds of adult Americans agree that extreme weather events are happening more often.
According to Pew Research, about 50% of adult Americans living in the western states, 73% living in southwest and central states, and 59% living in the middle Atlantic states see extreme weather events happening more often than in the past.Ā Overall, 67% of Americans across the country see higher frequencies of extreme weather events and 28% see these events as about as often as in the past. Only 4% think that there are more extreme weather events in the past than in the present.
94% of Americans approve of interracial marriage
In 1958, Gallup started asking the question of whether Americans approve or disapprove of marriage between Black people and White people. Back then, only 4% of people approved. In 1997, the approval rate passed the 50% mark and in 2021, the approval rate of interracial marriage reached an all-time high of 94%.
Remarkably, Republicans (who have consistently been least supportive of same-sex marriage in the past) finally reached majority supporting same-sex marriage for the first time (55%) in 2021.
66% of Americans support transgender people serving in the military
The American views on transgender issues remain more divided, but those that favor allowing openly transgender people serving in the military is a solid 66% according to Gallup.Ā In contrast, a majority of Americans (62%) think that transgender athletes should only be allowed to play sports in teams based on their birth gender, rather than their gender identities.
An interesting note is that the American view on transgender issues is very likely to change in the future, as the younger generations become a larger part of the population. This is because today, only 19% of adults aged 65 and older know a transgender person whereas half of adults younger than 30 personally know of one in their lives.
68% of Americans support legal marijuana
I suppose itās not surprising that Americans now solidly favor the legalization of marijuana - this view is shared by the majority of US adults across all genders, age, income, and education.
In 1969, when Gallup first asked whether Americans think that marijuana should be legal, only 12% agreed. That number crossed into the majority in 2013, and now reaches an all time high of 68%.
80% of Americans think that the country is no longer a good model of democracy
Perhaps all of the political divisiveness has taken a toll: according to Pew Research, 80% of Americans believe that the U.S. is no longer a good model of democracy.Ā Of these 80%, 72% said that the country used to be a good example, but has not been one in recent years, and another 8% said that the country has never been a good example of democracy.
Family is the top source of meaning in life for Americans
Letās end this with this global study by Pew Research, where they asked adults across 17 countries with advanced economies the open-ended question of what gives them the most meaning in their lives.
While that is not all too surprising (family is chosen by 14 out of the 17 countries polled), it does show that in some countries, family isnāt all what itās cracked up to be: In Spain, people valued health as the top factor, with family a distant fourth. In Taiwan, society is number one. South Koreans, it seems, are the odd fellow: they value material well-being as the top source of meaning in their lives!
Redditor TheTonz lives in Minnesota where the high temperature was -2F (-19C) on Friday. He wet a set of his kid's pajamas and set them outside to see how they would freeze. The result was a yard sculpture that was easier than building a snowman. On Saturday, the temperature had risen to 26 degrees (still below freezing) and the pajamas had melted "Matrix-style."
Hard enough for a child to stand on it. An adult trying that may have left them with broken pajamas. There may be more updates coming, you'll find them at The Tonz' reddit archive.
Sir David Attenborough is 95 years old, and has spent a lifetime teaching us about the wonders of nature. Yet he's not retired, and is still risking life and limb to bring us more Mother Nature. He is filming a new BBC Earth series called The Green Planet, which is about plants. You'd think that the subject matter would be a little safer for a man his age than chasing after animals, but no. Attenborough has been injured by a cactus. It's far from the first time he's been injured on the job.
Why would you want to touch a cactus? To prove how dangerous they are.
Point proved, I guess. And also because Attenborough is as hard as nails. He was once in a boat that got caught in an Indonesian whirlpool. He trapped a caiman in Guyana. He’s been crawled over by a bunch of wild mountain gorillas. He has met cannibals, and was knocked unconscious while filming dolphins in the Bahamas. There’s tough, and then there’s Attenborough.
You might be a little anxious about your first skiing trip because you might ski into a tree and break a leg. But you would never in your wildest dreams anticipate this nightmare.
On Friday, a skier at Beech Mountain ski resort in North Carolina ran over a hydrant and broke it. The hydrant was right under the ski lift. What's the worst that could happen? The ski lift stopped and restarted as the spray affected skiers going in either direction, drenching them in water in single-digit temperature conditions. Some opted to jump off, at a height of about 25 feet. You can see a much longer video of the incident here.
We don't know yet how the particular person in the Twitter video fared, but several people were injured by jumping off the ski lift to avoid the spray. Two were sent to a hospital by ambulance and are said to have non-life threatening injuries. Others sought medical help on their own. -via Fark
