If you're going to be breaking into houses, lifting large bags of cash at the bank, or running from the police, you've got to be in shape! It take training to be a thief! Two anonymous and ridiculously sterotypical criminals put in their time at the gym, where onlookers are fairly bemused. -via Laughing Squid
Move over, usual box-esque architecture! Triangles can be an ideal choice when designing a building or a home. According to Yanko Design’s Srishti Mitra, a triangle’s three sides can provide steady support and reinforcement. To prove that triangular architecture is gaining traction in the field of architecture, Mitra lists some of the very best designs:
Liyanage’s Cliff Cabin, as he calls it, suspends from the side of a mountain, hovering in midair. In his 3D conceptualization, Liyanage visualizes Cliff Cabin locked in place above four support beams that are bored into the cliffside to create a secure enough foundation for Cliff Cabin to rest atop. In addition to its bottom support, four high-tensile cables are attached to the cabin’s roof and balance the cabin by drawing it back away from the cliff’s edge, evenly distributing the weight of the cabin. Globular spheres lock the cables in place and add an elegant and tidy touch to the cabin as a whole. Cliff Cabin takes on a primarily triangular shape, with right triangle glass facades sharpening the cabin’s sides and protruding out to their center of convergence.
To view the full list, check the article here!
Image credit: Thilina Liyanage
When ancient Egyptians were buried in their huge and lavish tombs, a lot of their riches were left in their graves. These items were believed to follow the deceased to the afterlife. One of the items that were left to facilitate the transition to the afterlife are sandals. Now these funerary sandals aren’t like our regular leather ones, no! Sandals for dead royals were often crafted in shimmering gold:
Among royal burials, these rich golden sandals were often occupied by small golden “caps” for the fingers and toes. These are called finger and toe stalls. They protected the extremities of the mummy in burial. According to ancient Egyptian beliefs, the dead were supposed to be entombed as complete bodies—sometimes including prosthetic limbs. Non-royal mummies also were buried with stalls of lesser metals and even clay. Today, most stalls date to the 18th dynasty of the New Kingdom. From about 1550 to 1290 BCE, this period includes the famous boy king Tutankhamen.
If average people used average finger and toe stalls, what sort of sandals were they buried with? Braided papyrus and leather were common materials. A sturdy sole was attached to the foot by straps much like modern sandals. Sandal makers specialized in crafting these items for the living and the dead. Among the many paintings of everyday life included along tomb walls, these ancient cobblers make appearances. Today, most extant sandals are funerary in nature, preserved underground in tombs. While many of the examples below date to the 18th dynasty, the sandals and use of stalls continued well into the period of Roman Egypt.
image credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
If the professor takes their time and effort to draw extremely detailed figures on an actual blackboard for class, I’ll certainly pay attention! A young teacher at Shude University of Science and Technology in Taiwan went viral online thanks to his detailed anatomical blackboard drawings. Zhong Quanbin only uses a ruler and chalk to produce some extraordinary artworks:
Interestingly, even though most of his detailed artworks focus on the human body, Zhong Quanbin doesn’t teach human anatomy. He teaches Anatomy illustrations and Drawing Skills at the Department of Visual Communication Design, at Shute University, and he is so good at his job that he has been commissioned by several medical schools, both in Taiwan and in China or Japan to teach their students how to draw the human body.
“Yes, we have a textbook. But we don’t read it, we draw it,” Zhong said about his class at Shute University. “Students, majoring in this area, cannot learn by just reading the pictures on books. Instead, we learn while drawing something. In my classes, students have to draw what I am demonstrating on the chalkboard.”
Image credit: Zhong Quanbin/Facebook
You start to watch this film, and you'll say, "Hey! This isn't stop-motion animation! This is a stunt skiing video!" Well, why not both? The guys are doing their thing in real time, but the environment around them animates to fill their need for speed -and height! It's an experimental film from Swiss filmmaker Sämi Ortlieb and his fun-loving friends. You can read more about this project here. -via Digg
The Legend of Zelda franchise has released a lot of games. With the re-release Skyward Sword for the Nintendo Switch, new players have a chance to play older games and appreciate the aesthetic and gameplay that led to the 2017 hit, Breath of the Wild. Part of the franchise’s charm is the small villages or towns that the player encounters along the way during their adventures. While I haven’t played all the games in the series, my personal favorite village is Lurelin from Breath of the Wild. The fact that the area is like a secret location you may or may not ever encounter during your gameplay is nice. Alexandria Gribble lists her top ten villages from all Zelda games. Check her full list here!
Image credit: Nintendo
Dave Raymond initially worked as a mascot for the Philadelphia Phillies, an American baseball team. Raymond used his 17-year experience portraying the lumpy, green birdlike creature that is known as the Phillie Phanatic to establish the mascot industry and the industry standard for handling, creating, and portraying sports mascots for publicity and entertainment:
Raymond told the Flyers this at the outset. It was the very first thing he said: “You guys know we’re going to get creamed, right?” He said they could roll out the next Phanatic, and it wouldn’t make any difference — a team like theirs needed to prepare for a reaction that could last up to three months. But Joe Heller, then the Flyers’ vice president for marketing, said the team was ready for it, and Raymond knew right then that it was going to work, because the only projects he has worked on that have ever failed, he says, are the ones that didn’t have the full support of their organizations. That’s his first principle: complete commitment to the initiative.
The second is building a back story. That’s the best way to combat the criticism you’re going to get. “It will always be Why,” Raymond says. “We hate it. It looks terrible. Why did you make it look like that?” Your story is your answer. The one that the Flyers came up with was about a monster that they discovered beneath their stadium while doing renovations. Upon finding his lair, the team invited him up for a game. Not a polished tale, not a polished character, but polish is not what the Flyers wanted.
The biggest question, of course, was what this creature would look like. It had to convey the brand’s image, Raymond explained, but more important, it had to look unlike any other mascot out there. The ones with the most distinct appearances are the ones that make the most memorable impressions. That’s Principle No. 3. The Flyers, Raymond says, are the personification of hockey itself: “plodding and big and hulky and weird.” So the team’s designers gave their monster a massive, bulging body and a severe underbite. They gave him an excessive orange neck beard and swinging, deranged eyeballs. They gave him a bellybutton that could change colors. And then they gave him a name — a name that might have been a bit too on the nose, had they given him a nose. They named him Gritty.
Image credit: Victor Llorente for The New York Times
Well, this is strange. The bodies of some Tibetan monks remain fresh after their death. To be more specific, when these monks died, their bodies remained in a meditating position without decaying. This phenomenon, which lasts for two or three weeks, is being investigated by experts:
The scientific inquiry into just what is going on with thukdam has attracted the attention and support of the Dalai Lama, the highest monk in Tibetan Buddhism. He has reportedly been looking for scientists to solve the riddle for about 20 years. He is a supporter of science, writing, "Buddhism and science are not conflicting perspectives on the world, but rather differing approaches to the same end: seeking the truth."
The most serious study of the phenomenon so far is being undertaken by The Thukdam Project of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Healthy Minds. Neuroscientist Richard Davidson is one of the founders of the center and has published hundreds of articles about mindfulness.
Davidson first encountered thukdam after his Tibetan monk friend Geshe Lhundub Sopa died, officially on August 28, 2014. Davidson last saw him five days later: "There was absolutely no change. It was really quite remarkable."
Image credit: Chantal Lim
For every film produced by a major Hollywood studio, there are several that didn't get made. Sometimes it's just a rejected idea, sometimes a film lingers in development hell for years, and sometimes the project burns through millions of dollars before being abandoned. We often don't even find out why a movie doesn't get made. But quite a few of these unfinished projects became legends anyway.
2. Superman Lives
The names attached to this would-be Superman movie have made it notorious among film fans. Tim Burton was set to direct, with Nicolas Cage starring as the title hero and Kevin Smith co-writing the script. The project was eventually killed, but not before the studio burned $30 million on it. The most that survives of it today is test footage of Cage in the iconic suit.
16. Sylvester Stallone’s Poe
Prior to his days as an action star, Sylvester Stallone came close to portraying a literary icon. Stallone had planned to write and star in an Edgar Allan Poe biopic—titled Poe—early in his film career. He eventually accepted that he wasn’t the right person to play the macabre writer, but he got far enough to do some costume tests.
Read about many other movies that got off the ground somewhat but never made it into a theater at Mental Floss.
Even with the establishment of different social networking sites, we can’t deny the charm Tumblr provides for its users and viewers on other platforms. Tumblr is a social networking site that was established in 2007, and it’s still active today! The website has been a treasure trove of hilarious posts, and even older posts still circulate around the platform, gaining new likes and reactions. Following the trend of current websites stealing-- I mean, borrowing content from Tumblr, Buzzfeed’s Kelly Martinez’ shares 18 Tumblr posts that are extremely funny. Maybe it’ll convince you to hop in and browse through Tumblr!
Image credit: Kelly Martinez
Motor World introduces us to the Kurogane Model 1 Fire Trike, a Japanese-built firefighting vehicle designed in response the devastation of the region of Kanto in 1923 by an earthquake that triggered a tsunami, then a massive fire. Over 100,000 people died. This tragedy inspired a more systematic firefighting system, including emergency response vehicles that could navigate the often narrow confines of cities.
At the time, the Japanese motorcycle industry was booming. In 1941, the Kurogane company unveiled this design. Very few such trikes survived World War II, but a Russian museum came into possession of one in Malaysia. With an 1100-cc engine and leaf spring suspension, it was fully capable of hauling heavy equipment over difficult terrain.
-via Stuff | Photo: Motor World
Have you ever thought about taking up cartooning? Or maybe you already do, but would like to expand your horizons. The Center for Carton Studies is offering a free One-Week Cartooning Workout, a free, self-directed course in stretching your creativity and making your cartoons better. The exercises for each day provide structure and tips without judgement or competition. You can even space the days out or spend several days on each exercise, if you prefer. Spoiler: there are actually eight days.
"The awful comic you make is always going to be better than the perfect comic you never make." -Inky Soloman, CSS Legend
Even if you've never considered making cartoons or comics, this could be a fun way to stretch your brain. And who knows, you might change your mind and take up a new creative outlet!
-via Metafilter
The word "jumbo," meaning big, didn't exist before the elephant named Jumbo. He was a star in his day, although he did not live the kind of life an elephant should. Tufts University has the biography of the world's most famous elephant. Actually, this is more than a biography, because Jumbo had quite a story even after he died. -via Kottke
Make way for the long-lost piece of Stonehenge! Hell, I didn’t know the iconic location had some pieces missing until now. The missing piece was taken by Robert Phillips in 1958 while performing restoration work on the monument. Phllips took the cylindrical core after it was drilled from one of Stonehenge's pillars. Now, after 60 years, scientists have a chance to study the inside of the monument through the core:
They found that Stonehenge's towering standing stones, or sarsens, were made of rock containing sediments that formed when dinosaurs walked the Earth. Other grains in the rock date as far back as 1.6 billion years.
"We have CT-scanned the rock, zapped it with X-rays, looked at it under various microscopes and analyzed its sedimentology and chemistry," said study lead author David Nash, a professor of physical geography at the University of Brighton in England.
"With the exception of thin-section analyses and a couple of the chemical methods, all of the techniques we used in the study were new both to Stonehenge and the study of sarsen stones in the U.K.," Nash told Live Science in an email.
Stonehenge's central circle of pillars was erected during the Neolithic period, about 4,500 years ago, according to English Heritage, a nonprofit organization that manages historic monuments in England.
"Sarsens were erected in two concentric arrangements — an inner horseshoe and an outer circle — and the bluestones [smaller monument stones] were set up between them in a double arc," English Heritage said on its website.
Image credit: Sung Shin
Jason deCaires Taylor is a British artist known for his underwater sculpture installations, such as the Molinere Underwater Sculpture Park, the first underwater sculpture park in the world, in Grenada, as well as the Cancun Underwater Museum in Mexico. Now, he has a new underwater sculpture installation, this time located in Mediterranean waters. His new installation, the Museum of Underwater Sculpture in Cyprus, features 93 sculpted figures, each made with materials that attract marine life. Taylor hopes that his work will “bring people closer to the marine environment and the conservation and protection of our marine ecosystem.”
His installation apparently cost €1 million (about $1.17 million).
Some of the figures featured include huge trees weighing up to 13 tons as well as children pointing cameras at shapes depicting the human race while playing hide and seek.
"I tried to incorporate as many references to climate change and habitat loss and pollution as I could, because those are really the defining issues of our era," Taylor tells CNN Travel.
"I'm kind of hoping that it leaves the visitor with a sense of hope along with a sense that the human impact isn't always negative. That we can reverse some of the things we've done.
(Image Credit: MUSAN/ Jason deCaires Taylor via CNN)
