In the final months of the Soviet Union's existence, filmmakers there produced a TV adaptation of Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings. After all copies had been lost for thirty years, one recently resurfaced and has been uploaded to YouTube.
Can you believe it's been ten years since the birth of Nyan Cat? It was the perfect meme: a cat, a pop tart, pixelated animation, and a rainbow. Once the song was added, it took over the internet. I mean, really: Neatorama has six pages of posts in the search result. On its tenth anniversary, we may as well find out how Nyan Cat came about and what's happened since then. Input magazine talked to artist Chris Torres about April of 2011, when he had just started a new job that had nothing to do with memes.
At the time, Torres was also a digital artist with a small following on his website LOL Comics. A few weeks earlier, after a disastrous magnitude-9.0 earthquake hit Japan, unleashing a massive tsunami, he set up an impromptu charity livestream, doodling viewers’ requests while taking in donations earmarked for the American Red Cross. One fan requested a cat, while another requested a Pop-Tart. Torres decided to combine the two ideas into one doodle: a grey cat that looked like his own pet, Marty, but with a pink Pop-Tart body.
As the meme took off, Torres found himself in a battle to reclaim his creation that was running wild, making money for other people. It eventually came to the point he had to choose between Nyan Cat and his "real job." Read the story of Torres' viral kitty here. -via Digg
Tom Scott took a trip to The Deep, an aquarium in Hull, UK, to see what goes on behind the scenes. He found out that taking care of sharks in captivity is a lot more complicated than setting up a big saltwater tank. It requires a sophisticated life support system. You might think, "Wouldn't it be better to leave sharks in the sea?" And I would say, "Yeah." But what they do is pretty interesting.
Cats can feel an array of emotions shared by humans. But, despite what animal behaviorists say, I'm convinced that guilt is not among them.
We’ve seen many examples of unnecessarily gendered products and the “pink tax,” which is when a product designed to appeal to women costs more, even if there is no difference besides the color. Here are a couple of examples from history that played to the stereotype and backfired. The Dodge La Femme was a full-size sedan designed just for women. That mainly meant color and accessories. The 1955 La Femme was two-toned pink, inside and out.
The interior of the car also received attention and features. 1955 La Femme interiors were upholstered in a special tapestry material featuring pink rosebuds on a pale silver-pink background and pale pink vinyl trim. The La Femme came with a keystone-shaped, pink calfskin purse that coordinated with the interior of the car. The purse could be stowed in a compartment in the back of the passenger seat,[3] and its gold-plated medallion faced outward. This brushed-metal medallion was large enough to have the owner's name engraved on it.
Each purse was outfitted with a coordinated set of accessories inside, which included a face-powder compact, lipstick case, cigarette case, comb, cigarette lighter, and change purse, all made of either faux-tortoiseshell plastic and gold-tone metal, or pink calfskin and gold-tone metal, and all were designed and made by “Evans”, a maker of women's fine garments and accessories in Chicago.
On the back of the driver's seat was a compartment that contained a raincoat, rain bonnet, and umbrella,[4] all made from a vinyl patterned to match the rosebud interior fabric. Marketing brochures stated that the car was made "By Special Appointment to Her Majesty... the American Woman."
The Dodge La Femme reappeared in 1956 in lavender and purple tints. However, neither model sold all that well, and only about 2500 cars were produced in total. All these years later, that small run means that the Dodge La Femme is a rare, sought-after vehicle. There’s even a registry for them. -via Weird Universe
Almost exactly the same thing happened with Lionel trains. Alan Polinsky wrote in response the Pink Tool Set post and told me about the Lionel Girls’ Train Set of 1957. The pink engine and pastel cars were supposed to appeal to little girls, but did not sell well. It turns out little girls wanted their trains to look as realistic as boys do. While the product itself was a bust and went out of production, that very rarity caused those pink engines to become collector items fifty years later. If you have one, you can get a pretty penny for it on eBay. -Thanks, Alan!
(Image credit: Greg Gjerdingen)
In 1944, 36 men participated in an experiment in starvation, in order to study the challenges confronting the many people who were starving due to World War II. We learned a lot about how the body reacts to a dangerously restricted diet, including the aftereffects when the subjects' eating returned to normal. A followup article looks at what happened when the experiment was over.
Recall that during the starvation period the men became obsessed with food. Food haunted their thoughts and dreams and took over their conversations.
But many of them remained preoccupied with food even after they gained back the weight. Some said that their perspectives and perceptions of food were forever changed. They faced more intense hunger more frequently than they did before the study. One described himself as, “being hungry and eating almost continuously for years after.”
What we learned: Our brain remembers “famine,” whether from a diet or a real famine. Once we’ve lost weight — and even if we’ve regained it — the brain puts more focus on food so we’re more likely to eat and be better prepared for the next famine.
That's just one of the effects that severe weight loss can have, some of which last years after the deprivation diet. Read about others at Medium. -via Digg
Technabob introduces us to the Concours d'Lemons, which is a series of car shows featuring the ugliest and most ridiculous car mods. Its Instagram page is filled with creative delights such as this Volvo station wagon converted into a Super Star Destroyer. It represents a greater emphasis on crew safety by the Galactic Empire.
The shipbuilders in the UK sold it last year, warning potential buyers that many features were not yet fully functional:
Chase down Rebel scum and tame Princess leia in this somewhat to scale Galactic Empire Destroyer. Featuring functional Turbo Lasers and Hyperdrive (disclaimer sub warp engine non fucntional)
The ship sustained a direct hit from a X Wing to one of the Shield domes and some hits to the general body from an asteroid field.
A dog in Russia grabbed the reporter's microphone and ran away during a live broadcast pic.twitter.com/R1T8VZ5Kpt
— Ali Özkök (@Ozkok_A) April 2, 2021
This video from Mir TV in Russia appears to depict reporter Nadezhda Serezhkina wrestling a Golden Retriever for control of her microphone. The show host cut away from the technical difficulties.
Later, the program revealed that Serezhkina and the dog were able to reconcile their differences, as humans and dogs should.
-via Super Punch
Many of the customs of modern-day Easter came from ancient spring festivals celebrating the equinox, a time when flowers bloom, birds lay eggs, and bunny rabbits appear everywhere the minute you start up the lawn mower. Over time, the Easter bunny has been illustrated and photographed in ways that render him/her cute, creepy, or downright bawdy. See a collection of these Easter bunny images through the years at Flashbak. -Thanks, WTM!
Turn the crank on this automata and see a panda working out, an octopus treating a sick fish, babies rocking in their bunks, and a monkey on the toilet. Toymaker Chi-Chun Yin of AnadouMuZuo Studio in Taiwan spent six months making this lovely submarine. -via The Kid Should See This
One of the criteria for "habitable" islands is the presence of fresh water. Bermuda has none: no springs, no lakes, no mountains streams. Yet it was so beautiful that those who wanted to live there were determined to find a way. Now the island is home to 65,000 people. Where do they get their drinking water?
Bermudians are some of the most water-conscious people in the Western world, and this consciousness is built into their homes. The blindingly white, limestone Bermuda Roof—an architectural rain-catch concept with roots dating back to the 17th century—is singularly responsible for making human life possible in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The roof of each home is mandated, by law, to catch and redirect rain into underground cisterns that serve as islanders’ primary source of freshwater. While initially conceived as a means of survival, the elegant roofs have become an aesthetic landmark. “Architecturally, Bermuda really hasn’t changed,” says Guilden Gilbert, a born-and-raised Bermudian. “It’s unlikely that you’d see any modern design in island architecture, which I think is actually a good thing.”
The roofs are not only handy for water collection, they are tough. Some of them have been there for hundreds of years! Read about Bermuda roofs and their crucial functions at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: (WT-en) Legrospaumé)
The A.V. Club goes down the Wiki wormhole to bring us the story of Vin Mariani, a French wine popular in the 1860s. Cocaine was a common ingredient in those days, and Vin Mariani, which incoprated cocaine in its recipe, was promoted as an aid to "health and vitality." Besides, Pope Leo XIII liked it!
Biggest controversy: Believe it or not, not enough cocaine. Chemist Angelo Mariani, who created the wine, marketed the drink in his native France with 6 milligrams of cocaine per ounce. But when Mariani tried to export his wine to America, he had to change the formula. Not to meet any kind of regulations—there were none regarding cocaine at the time—but because his drink was mild compared to the competition in the U.S. He had to add 20% more cocaine just to deliver the same buzz American coke wine did.
The effect of Vin Mariani on America didn't stop with the wine itself. It indirectly led us to Coca-Cola. Read how that happened at the A.V. Club. -via Strange Company
Around 66 million years ago, an impact from outer space changed the world. Its effects wiped out non-avian dinosaurs and countless other animal species. Plants, too, although plant fossils in tropical areas haven't been studied as much. However, a 12-year study led by paleobiologist Carlos Jaramillo looked at fossil pollen from Colombia in order to trace the history of the Amazon rainforest. The Chicxulub impact led to the rise of the rainforest as we know it, but that just makes us wonder what it looked like before.
Their findings paint a picture of a sudden, cataclysmic annihilation of life after the impact—but also of a phoenix-like rebirth in the millions of years afterward. Prior to the meteorite, the authors determined, South America’s forests featured many conifers and a brightly lit open canopy supporting a lush understory of ferns. Dinosaurs likely played key roles in maintaining these Cretaceous forests by knocking down trees and clearing out vegetation, among other things. Within moments of the Chicxulub meteorite’s impact, however, this ecosystem was irrevocably altered. Fires, which likely burned for several years, engulfed South America’s southerly forests. Along with many of the animals they supported, a total of 45 percent of the continent’s tropical plant species disappeared, according to the authors’ calculations.
It took six million years for the forests to return to the level of diversity they had before the meteorite, and the species that slowly grew back were completely different than what came before.
One might argue that the new species were not only different, but better. Read more on the study at Scientific American. -via Damn Interesting
(Image credit: Shao)
Remember Conceptis' free "60 Logic Puzzles to Keep from Going Corona-Crazy" PDF from last April? One year later. Volume 2.
This time last year no one thought that words like masks, pandemics and Zoom would become everyday vocabulary. It's been a crazy year, and while waiting for things to normalize we're releasing another print-friendly PDF book for you all to enjoy. Included in this book are a variety of fun puzzles that will have your mind engaged and challenged. We hope you enjoy the free book and share it with your loved ones!
