Fashion trends of the past were often so ridiculous that we have to wonder whether future generations will laugh at what we wear today. Yeah, they probably will. Taking a look at some trends of the past, we see that they are often a scheme to flaunt one's status at the expensive of others. Sometimes that idea backfired spectacularly. BlueJay explains four really weird fashion trends from previous centuries in a rather amusing way. -via Nag on the Lake

Tom Scott, a traveler and teacher about the world’s curiosities, muses philosophically about what makes a place fascinating to people. It is usually a combination of the very familiar and the unfamiliar. For example, we’ve probably all eaten at McDonald’s at some point. But very few of us kayaked up to the restaurant for our Big Macs.

In Germany, a canal that connects to the Elbe River features a McDonald’s. You can drive up or walk up, as usual. But you can also boat up, too. Be sure to watch to the end for Scott’s punchline.

Exit question: can you swim up to the dock and get service?

What a sweet dog! 

Meet Moose, a 1.5-year-old golden retriever who lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is a friendly boy who enjoys interacting with everyone around him, including a new mailman who delivers parcels to their house. Moose loves his new friend to the point that he waits outside to say hi to the mailman and get a hug from him. The pupper does this every day; it’s so cute! “It was adorable,” Meghan Gruszynski, Moose’s owner, told The Dodo. “I loved how much he loved our boy and loved how much Moose loved saying hi to him.”

Image credit: via Carolyn Mullet 

Thanks to a monsoon rain in Arizona, hundreds of odd-looking critters have popped out in a temporary lake in the area. These prehistoric-looking creatures that emerged from tiny eggs are called Triops. The reason for their sudden appearance is a unique trait of their eggs. According to Central Michigan University, their eggs can lie dormant for decades in the desert until enough rain falls to create lakes that provide real estate and time for the hatchlings to mature and lay eggs for the next generation. 

Image credit: L.Carter/NPS

Whether or not you love Korean dramas, the impact and success of Netflix’ Squid Game is undeniable. From dozens of posts and videos about the show’s lore, characters, and story, it is safe to say that viewers love the show. 

If you’re one of those people who crave more content about a series after watching it or you’re just drowning in the feels given to you by the show, check out Buzzfeed’s Isha Bassi article where she shares some top-tier memes made by the fans from the show. 

Image credit: Netflix 

Has anyone ever accused you of relying on ellipses or dashes too much? Have you ever wondered if you use too many exclamation points? We now have a way to visualize the answers to exactly those questions.

Clive Thompson made a tool that strips all the letters from a passage of writing and shows you only the punctuation. Why? Because you can learn a lot about style that way. In explaining the application, Thompson himself realized that he used a lot of parentheticals, long ones with punctuation inside them, which indicates he digresses from the subject more than he would like. In another example, look at the image above. On the left is the punctuation in Adam J. Calhoun's analysis of Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. On the right is Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. It only rakes a glance to see how the writing styles differ, just by punctuation.

You'll find the tool called just the punctuation here. I put in some of my own writing, and found that I don't use nearly as much punctuation as I expected to see. This is all the punctuation from an entire Mental Floss feature article from years ago.

' . ' , , , , . ' ? , , . , , , . , - , . , . , ! , , . ' , ' . , , , . , ' , . . ( ) , . , . . . . . , ' . , . , . , , . . , . . . . , ' . . , . . , , . , . ; ' . . ' - , . . , . , ' ' , . . ( ) , .


-via Metafilter 

What a nice show of camaraderie!

A passing stray dog noticed another dog that was tied outside a store in Novorossiysk, Russia. Thinking that the ‘trapped’ pupper was abandoned like him, the stray dog was determined to free the other from its restraints. 

Fortunately, the dog tied to the fence was just left there by his owner who went inside to shop. Definitely not abandoned. Not knowing this, the passing dog was seen doing his best to free the pupper by Dmitriy Timchenko, who was able to capture the entire interaction. “I’ve seen this stray dog around town many times,” Timchenko said to The Dodo. “He always uses the crosswalk to cross the street. He’s a very smart dog.”

Image credit: Instagram / Dmitriy Timchenko

Remember when buying a box of sugary cereal meant there was a free toy inside? Remember your brother spilling cereal all over the kitchen to get the prize, and then your siblings would fight over it? It still happens, but those prizes are fairly rare these days, limited to special movie premieres or something. The premiums began to appear in cereal boxes in 1948 and were often disappointing, but some were surprisingly cool. Mr. Breakfast compiled a list ranking the 50 best cereal box prizes, and some of them make me wish my parents had bought sugary cereal. Coming in at #15:

In the 1950s, Wheaties cereal offered a snazzy little 2-inch high microscope with an adjustable focusing lens designed by General Scientific Corp. "Kids! Explore the Wonders of Nature with your 6 Power Microscope Free in this Box! Magnifies objects to 6 times normal size. See things invisible to the naked eye on leaves, flowers, insects (and) rocks."

Then I remembered that my dad was a science teacher and we had a full-size microscope. Here's #5, from 1989 or 1990:

To have a send-away offer to get a watch from a cereal wasn't unusual, but to have a working watch actually inside the box was very exciting for kids. To make matters even more incredible, it didn't display just the time. It could also show the date! From what we could find looking at pictures, there were as many as 8 different styles available over a couple years. The best ones had the Honey-Comb logo and graphic interpretations of the cereal pieces.

Yeah, you can imagine that toys containing batteries didn't last long considering the expense, but they have resurfaced as recently as 2008. Check out the list of the top 50 cereal box prizes for a walk down memory lane or a glimpse at what you missed out on. -via Fark

The calm waters off of Puerto Madryn, Argentina are famous for the many visits of southern right whales. UPI tells us that tourists flock there during whale watching season, which runs from May to December. So far, there have been 1,600 sightings of these majestic leviathans this year.

One paddleboarder got a very close look at one. In the perfectly calm waters, a whale approached and looked at the human for a few minutes. Then he gave the back of the board a push with a fin, submerged, and left.

The human, Analia Giorgetti, tells BBC News that she wasn’t scared. She describes it as a “magical moment” that coincidentally occurred on her birthday, so it was a birthday present from the whale.

-via Lawrence Everett

Last month, a giant model of the Moon decided to make a run (or more accurately, roll) for it.

The inflatable Moon was for a local Moon festival celebration, which took place during the full harvest Moon in September. It broke free of its anchor and was blown down the street by the wind as two hapless officials ran after it.

According to The Guardian, this wasn't the first time the Moon went rogue. A similar model blew away in 2016, when strong winds due to Typhoon Meranti caused it roll over cars in the streets of Fuzhou.

スペインの画家セルギ・カデナスの作品、見る角度によって老化していく人生を表したアートが凄い…pic.twitter.com/mXOgMXWvNY

— 最多情報局 (@tyomateee) October 9, 2021

Move from one direction to another and you’re looking at a completely different subject. Sergi Cardenas, a painter from Spain, has become famous for his shifting paintings. The young become old, people change genders, or one person is swapped with another.

Artsy asserts that Cardenas taught himself this amazing skill. He uses a pastry piping bag to apply long, thick lines of paint that serve as boundaries between the two different images on a single canvas. This practice, Indie88 explains, is called “lentricular art.” Cardenas adopted it when he took up painting at the age of 30.

This was not, though, Cardenas’s first foray into the art world. He was raised in it. Cardenas’s family has, for three hundred years, operated Ferros d’Art Cadenas, a decorative iron work foundary. Cardenas is a recognized master of that craft. But, as you can see, he wasn’t bound to it.

-via @sanka_kamaru

🍔 What would fast food mascots look like if they were stars in their own action packed animated series? Illustrator Coran Kizer Stone or Kizerilla re-imagined your favorite fast food mascots as warriors. Who do you think would win? Keep in mind that Taco Bell won the Franchise Wars.

🕹️ From kanji characters to playing card to video games: here's the evolution of Nintendo logo.

🍽️ A plate found in a drawer fetched a whopping $1.7 million at auction. BRB checking our junk drawer!

🚗 Here's how to save your car in a flood: put it in a giant waterproof Ziploc bag.

🦑 A cartoonist who never watched the Netflix series decided to draw Squid Game.

🚻 You'll never guess who just walked out of the public restroom.

View more neat posts over at our new Picto network of sites: Pop Culturista, Infinite 1UP, Homes & Hues, Pictojam, Supa Fluffy and Laughosaurus. Please check 'em out 🙂

Halloween will be here in three weeks, and the theaters are full of horror films. But you don't want to go out. The TV schedule is full of horror films, but you don't want to spend the time. Why bother when you can get everything in them in about a minute?

Alasdair Beckett-King (previously at Neatorama) presents a horror movie about a haunted house that has everything that every haunted house movie has, except maybe the long slow buildup that you already know from seeing all the other haunted house movies. There, now you've saved yourself a couple of hours. If you were expecting a surprise twist, you may notice that the husband and wife are the same person. Surprise!

This "Illusory Red" color optical illusion, tweeted by experimental psychologist Akiyoshi Kitaoka (previously on Neatorama many, many times) shows two flags of his school, Ritsumeikan University of Kyoto, Japan.

Overlaid on top of the image are bars of solid cyan, but your brain can still interpret the red "R" in the white flag on the left and the red background of the flag on the right.

But are you SURE those are red colors? Zoom in (or let me do it for you below) and you'll see that there's not a single red pixel in the "Illusory red" color optical illusion image.

In 2003, Starbucks introduced its Pumpkin Spice Latte. It became an enormous sensation, even after we found out that there is no pumpkin at all, or even butternut squash, in the drink. The entire flavor came from the spices, a combination which cooks have known as pumpkin pie spice for a long time. It's a blend of flavors we adore because 1. it tastes good, 2. it's associated with autumn, which we love, 3. it has no real connection with Halloween, so it can be enjoyed through the other holidays and by those who don't do Halloween.

You may get the idea that the pumpkin spice craze has gotten out of hand, but even when it dies back, and it will sooner or later, we will still consume the flavor combination one way or another. Possibly in a pie. Read a history of pumpkin spice at Moss and Fog. -via Nag on the Lake