Artist Melanie Scott did this doodle of Guilala from 1967's The X from Outer Space!
source: twitter
Recently, I shined my dress shoes for the first time in a year. Since I wasn't wearing them daily to the office, there seemed like little reason to keep them shiny. Other people are making similar fashion changes as the pandemic recedes. This is having an impact on the fashion industry. The Wall Street Journal (sorry, but it's a paywalled article) reports:
In the past few weeks, pants with buttons and zippers have begun outselling those with drawstrings or elastic waistbands at L.L. Bean Inc. At Saks Fifth Avenue, sales of dresses, blouses and sandals are exceeding levels not seen since spring 2019. And employees at Haggar Clothing Co.'s distribution center are working overtime to replenish trousers and blazers at department stores and other retailers that sell its clothes.
"The fact that sales came back so strongly, so quickly before offices reopened speaks to the need for people to dress up as they get out there and socialize," said Michael Stitt, Haggar's chief executive officer.
Industry analysts are developing a consumer behavior model called "2-mile fashion". People can be very casual about what they wear within two miles of their home. Beyond that limit, they tend to dress up:
It found that when people stay within 2 miles of their home, they tend to wear sweatpants and carry just a few credit cards. If they travel farther than 2 miles, they put on pants and grab a wallet. The radius varies depending on whether people are in the suburbs or cities, but the habits stay the same.
"We embraced the idea of 2-mile fashion," said Brad Seabaugh, a Randa senior vice president, meaning that people wear different things whether they are close to home or farther away.
Some of these changes may be permanent as people try to carry comfortable, at-home fashion into the outer world:
That led Randa to bet big on several types of products, including slippers with soles that can be worn outdoors, large wallets and cargo pants. Randa executives figured that with men no longer carrying messenger bags or backpacks, they would shove everything in their wallets or pockets. A cargo pant with seven pockets is currently one of Haggar's bestsellers.
-via Super Punch | Image: Wish
BBC Earth has compiled clips of various bird species from their shows into one video showcasing extreme bird behavior, including fishing with bait, adoption, and cooperation with other species. It's 15 minutes long, but you can watch it in parts, because there are a lot of birds here, all interesting. -via Laughing Squid
I found this image on Totally Gourmet, but the origins of the photo remain mysterious. It looks straightforward enough: dump at least a dozen eggs into a bundt pan and bake them into a gelatinous ring of eggs. Although it's too late to do this for Easter, there are later opportunities to surprise guests with this innovate recipe that seems to frighten faint-hearted people of the Internet.
To enjoy a science fiction action film, one must always approach the story with a certain suspension of disbelief. Filmmakers, and storytellers in general, take certain liberties to keep the plot rolling, and even more so for a series of films spanning four decades and an entire fictional galaxy. Overanalyzing the minutia of the Star Wars universe has become a cottage industry, but some questions are better left without a thorough explanation. For example, how does the Force work?
In the original movie, Obi-Wan gives one simple, succinct explanation of the Force: It gives a Jedi power because "it surrounds us, penetrates us, binds the galaxy together." Otherwise, the old General opted to show, not tell, what the Force could do (bamboozle Stormtroopers, mostly). Yoda did much the same in Empire Strikes Back, moving rocks and adding a touch of spiritual poetry: "luminous beings are we, not this crude matter."
Then came The Phantom Menace, where Lucas unveiled the concept of midichlorians — tiny cellular creatures that are present in large quantities in the blood of the Force-sensitive. Fans feared that a deeply spiritual concept was now being given a biological explanation. Lucasfilm tried to explain that midichlorians are markers of the Force, not the cause of it, but the damage was done. (Lucas never cared about the backlash, and his plans for the sequel trilogy, shelved by Disney after he sold the company, delved even deeper into the microbial world.)
Midichlorians were completely absent from the later films, and rightly so. Mashable explores seven mysteries of the Star Wars universe and why they don’t need to be explained.
Modern drivers are very much used to going 100 km/h (62 mph), although we do it on paved highways in enclosed vehicles with windshields. None of those things were in play when Camille Jenatzy broke the land speed record in an automobile in April of 1899. Jenatzy drove an electric car he designed himself, called Le Jamais Contente (The Never Satisfied) that resembled nothing so much as a torpedo.
When asked to describe the feeling of traveling faster than anybody had ever done before on a road vehicle, Jenatzy said: “The car in which you travel seems to leave the ground and hurl itself forward like a projectile ricocheting along the ground. As for the driver, the muscles of his body and neck become rigid in resisting the pressure of the air; his gaze is steadfastly fixed about two hundred yards ahead; his senses are on the alert.”
Jenatzy reached the speed of 105.88 km/h (65.792 mph) that day, a record which stood for three years. Read the story of that vehicle at Amusing Planet.
Japan has a mascot for every product, agency, sports team, town, company, and public service campaign. The cute costumed characters draw attention and engender fan clubs, as each mascot has their own backstory and personality. Over the past year, a new masked superhero has joined their ranks- a pink cat called Koronon, who promotes health measures to fight COVID-19. Koronon walks the Ikebukuro and Shinjuku districts of Tokyo, handing out face masks and reminding people to keep a social distance.
The soft creatures can also be a balm. “Mascots help take the edge off when grim and serious matters are being discussed,” says Carlier. Kaila Imada, an editor at Time Out Tokyo who has previously reported on mascots, echoes that sentiment. “I think part of it is about bringing a bit of joy,” Imada says. Taizo Hayashi, designer and manager of Koronon (and Al-pha Co., an event promotion company), says he hopes the mascot helps make “the world peaceful” by providing a bit of light-heartedness against a backdrop of tough times.
While Koronon (whose name loosely translates to “no corona”), appears to be the only mascot created in response to the coronavirus in Japan, it isn’t alone in its fight against the pandemic. Throughout the country, mascots have been repurposed to educate the public on issues surrounding the virus.
Read more about Koronon and how other mascots are dealing with the pandemic at Atlas Obscura.
We know that the Wright Brothers are credited with the first flying machine, actually the first successful, manned, powered, heavier-than-air flying machine. You might not know that there were dozens of engineers and inventors working on the problem of powered flight in the years leading up to Wilbur and Orville’s breakthrough in 1903. You probably have not heard of the Aerodrome, a flying machine that made a spectacular flight in 1896, although with no pilot aboard.
History would be made that day, May 6, 1896, as this apparatus—a flying machine, known as Aerodrome No. 5—was started and then launched from a spring-loaded catapult. The Aerodrome would take off and travel for 90 seconds some 3,300 feet in an effortless spiral trajectory and then gently land in the river.
The third Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Samuel Pierpont Langley, an astronomer who also enjoyed tinkering with his own creations, was aboard the boat. His winged invention had just made the world’s first successful flight of an unpiloted, engine-driven, heavier-than-air craft of substantial size.
This experiment led to a manned flight of Langley’s followup aircraft called the Great Aerodrome, which had a pilot, in October of 1903. Because you know the Wright Brothers and not Langley, you can infer that it was not successful. Read the story of Langley’s flying machines at Smithsonian.
In the evening of Christmas 1895, two friends got into an arguments at a saloon in St. Louis. It ended when Lee Sheldon shot and killed William Lyons. It was reported in a newspaper that Lyon had taken Sheldon's hat and would not give it back. Alcohol was involved.
There were four other murders that Christmas night in St Louis, but this was the one that counted. Work songs, field chants and folktales describing how Lee 'Stack Lee' Shelton killed Billy Lyons started to spring up almost immediately. The earliest written lyrics we have date back to 1903, and the first discs to 1923. There have been well over 200 versions of Stack's story released on record since then, giving him a list of biographers which includes some of the biggest names in popular music. Duke Ellington, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis and James Brown have all recorded the song at one time or another, as have Wilson Pickett, The Clash, Bob Dylan, Dr John and Nick Cave. Even Elvis Presley had a stab at it in a 1970 rehearsal session which later surfaced as a bootleg CD.
The new century's seen other media join in too. In 2006, Derek McCulloch and Shepherd Hendrix published a fat graphic novel telling Stagger Lee's story in careful detail. Movie versions have come from Samuel L Jackson, who gives a storming live rendition of the song in 2007's Black Snake Moan, and Eric Bibb, who uses it to comment on the action unfolding around his character in the following year's Honeydripper.
Songs about Stagger Lee varied widely in their details over the past century, so what was the real story? Paul Slade did a deep dive into the story of Lee Sheldon, first setting the stage in late 19th-century St. Louis and then following what is known of the crime and what might be inferred. He also looks into the evolution of the song-story and what different versions meant for their time. -via Strange Company
Animation has come a long way from hand-drawn stick figures on celluloid. You may argue about which era was best for content and aesthetics, but you have to be impressed at the evolution of techniques, materials, and technology that shape our extensive catalog of animated media. This supercut follows animation over its more than 100—year history. -via Digg
An archaeological study at Dartmouth College had researchers digging up the site of an old outhouse, rehydrating fecal samples, and filtering them to find possible evidence of parasites. This wasn't just any old outhouse, though. It had belonged to the home of a professor and trustee at Dartmouth, and was later sold to a wealthy businessman. In other words, the upper crust.
Despite their wealth and influence, the study reveals some of the same “bathroom drama” researchers would expect to find in urban and lower income areas. Not only did the team unearth bottles containing digestive health elixirs, but fecal fossils still contained eggs of parasitic organisms — like tapeworms.
“Our study is one of the first to demonstrate evidence of parasitic infection in an affluent rural household in the Northeast,” says co-author Theresa Gildner, now an assistant professor of biological anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, in a university release. “Until now, there has not been a lot of evidence that parasitic disease was anywhere else other than urban areas in the early 19th century.”
Not only that, but New England is far from the tropical climates that parasitic worms prefer. The study shows that it would have been a rare person who was able to escape parasite infestation in the 19th century. Read more about the research at Study Finds. -via Strange Company
Impress your prom date when you make them a Cheddar Bay Biscuit Corsage and matching Boutonniere! pic.twitter.com/0iC8MfE1jS
— Red Lobster (@redlobster) April 27, 2021
Like a dark cloud of tangible suffering, prom season has descended upon high schoolers the United States. Prepare yourself accordingly by making a corsage with the help of Red Lobster. That restaurant chain is famous for its signature Cheddar Bay Biscuits, which can become corsages and boutonniere in a pinch.
This video shows you how. Consider yourself warned.
-via Dave Barry
A private Facebook group called "a car club where everyone acts like boomers" is a humor forum where members post as if they were the Boomer gearheads they make fun of. There's a lot of upper case text and grousing about computerized vehicles -you get the idea. Then someone shared a Facebook marketplace post in which Gary Rider is selling his air compressor to raise funds for a liver transplant. Yeah, there are things to make fun of here, like the spelling of "toward," but the group saw more.
A group member named Patrick Thompson, a voice actor and podcast host who was one of the folks who helped spread word of Rider’s struggles, chatted with me over Facebook Messenger video, and described the group as a “crap-posting car group” and “boredom killer.”
By now you should understand that “a car club where everyone acts like boomers” is far from an official, well-organized operation. It’s a bunch of people poking fun at old folks. But that’s what makes what happened after Alexander Keeling and others first posted Rider’s compressor listing (see post above) so amazing. The entire community of people who normally just joke about boomers actually banded together to help one out. And in a big way.
A big way is right. The group members pumped up Rider's fundraising efforts to $52,000! Jalopnik spoke to Rider, who said he's "sold" the air compressor hundreds of times, but each time the buyer tells him to keep it. Read the story of the disabled welder and the group that came to his aid at Jalopnik.
(Image credit: Gary Rider)
People are finally starting to see each other after a year of isolation. For many of us, that means trying to gain back lost social skills, so let's make small talk about the only thing that's happened to us recently. I've had a version of this conversation quite a few times lately, which Nick Smith distills into less than a minute. -via reddit
Veermaster Berlin's Instagram page is worth a long scroll through. His cocktails are visually stunning masterpieces. Each one is a carefully presented work of art.
I'm especially taken with this cocktail made with Highclere Castle Gin. Highclere Castle is the magnificent home where the exterior scenes for Downton Abbey were shot. Here's the recipe:
Highclere Castle Gin
Homemade Red Chili infused Yuzu Marmalade and Kafir Lime Leaves Syrup
Elderflower Vanilla Cordial
Dry Vermouth
Sakura Bitter
Egg White
The garnish consists of herbs, forget-me-not flowers, chili powder, and a sheet of gold.
-via In Love with Drinks
