This picture from December made an impression. These dresses at Target evoke memories of Little House on the Prairie, which is a trend no one asked for, but they inspired some Facebook users, particularly the group BYC (BackYardChickens), to use them for historical recreations. The pictures were so good that they went viral, and now the #targetdresschallenge has leaked out and gone viral.
Target must be ecstatic that they are selling so many dresses, even if it's for comedic purposes. See lots more of these images at #targetdresschallenge or a representative roundup at Buzzfeed.
Sparta was a dominant military city-state in ancient Greece for about 500 years. It was most notable for winning the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE) against Athens. Eventually, the Roman Empire came along and enveloped Sparta in 146 BCE. But the Romans knew of Sparta’s legendary history, and took advantage of it.
The Euryclid Dynasty capitalized on this legacy by reorganizing their city into what was essentially an ancient Roman tourist trap. The city had most of the things Romans enjoyed such as games, gladiatorial combat, theater, baths, brothels, and taverns. Like most other tourist hotspots there was probably a proliferation of tacky souvenirs and the like. However, what interested the Romans the most was Spartan culture, especially their strange militaristic warrior traditions. Ancient Spartan traditions became a show for wealthy Roman patricians who paid good money to see them. The hottest show in town was the Spartan coming of age ceremony held at the Temple of Artemis Orthia were a Spartan boy would be whipped to near death, at which point if he survived he would be considered a man and a warrior. The Spartans rebuilt the temple into a theater so that large audiences could view the ceremony. Because seeing children being beaten to near death is the height of entertainment amiright!
Companies all over the world are in a race for robotic advancements. Joining the race is the Asian car manufacturer giant Hyundai Motors. Hyundai’s mobility department New Horizons teamed up with US software company Autodesk to develop a motorized robot. They called the concept T-I-G-E-R, which stands for Transforming Intelligent Ground Excursion Robot.
The main goal of the company is to create an android that would aid humans in navigating remote and complex terrains which are too difficult for ordinary vehicles to access.
TIGER has a structure similar to Hyundai Motor's "Elevate" walking car concept that was unveiled at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The TIGER is 80 centimeters long, 40 centimeters wide and weighs 12 kilograms. It has four legs with extendable wheels that make it capable of moving in any direction over complex terrain.
This project is still in the experimental stage, but who knows? It might be really part of interplanetary explorations in the future.
Hair styles come and go, but no matter what the era, there will always be outliers who do things differently for attention, or maybe just by mistake. Robert E. Jackson (previously at Neatorama) has an extensive collection of vintage photographs. He shares some of men from the earliest days of photography up through the mid 20th century who have hairstyles that don’t quite fit our vision of those eras.
This conch shell was discovered in 1931 during an excavation in France and has been sitting in a museum for decades. Now it has made a comeback to the headlines after producing near-perfect musical notes.
Archaeologists from the University of Toulouse hired a French horn player to play the old instrument. The sound was deep but the notes were lucid.
Carole Fritz, one of the archaeologists, was quite anxious that the shell would snap during the experiment as it is already 18,000 years old. Luckily, it did not.
“Hearing it for the first time, for me it was a big emotion — and a big stress,” said archaeologist Carole Fritz.
She feared that playing the 12-inch (31-centimeter) shell might damage it, but it didn’t. The horn produced clear C, C sharp and D notes.
To date, it is the oldest wind instrument of its type.
The artist probably is a big fan of Hermes and got the idea of turning the orange peels into baby footwear. He or she must have thought of a good way to put the abundant supply of orange peels, which were probably from the Chinese New Year celebration, into good use. Oranges are really popular during this time of the year as they are believed to bring good luck.
Of course, these sandals are just made for fun and are not recommended for use.
John D. Boswell, better known as Melodysheep (previousy at Neatorama), brings us a visually-stunning illustration of the things that can happen in a fraction of a second across the known universe.
When we look up at night, the universe seems pretty quiet. But that perspective is an illusion; in reality, there are millions of world-shattering events happening every instant across the cosmos. This short film explores just how much is going on every moment in our ridiculously enormous universe.
In the fraction of a second it takes to blink your eyes, thousands of stars will be born, hundreds will explode and die, millions of planets will form, and our universe will expand by half a million kilometers in diameter.
When you put it that way, it makes one’s individual world seem kind of small and insignificant. But since our own is really the only perspective we have, keep blinking. You don’t want your eyes to dry out. -via Laughing Squid
First spotted in 2018, scientists are now learning more about an orbiting rock that is the furthest known object in our solar system. (True, Voyager 1 is further out, but it’s man-made and not in orbit) This rock is so far out of the neighborhood that it’s been nicknamed FarFarOut.
It's about 400 kilometres (250 miles) across, which is on the low end of the dwarf planet scale, and initial observations suggest it has an average orbital distance of 101 astronomical units - that's 101 times the distance between Earth and the Sun.
Since Pluto has an average orbital distance of around 39 astronomical units, FarFarOut is very, well, far out indeed. It has been given the provisional designation 2018 AG37, and its proper name, in accordance with International Astronomical Union guidelines, is still pending.
That orbit, however, isn't an even circle around the Sun, but a really lopsided oval. After careful observation, scientists have calculated its orbit; FarFarOut swings out as far as 175 astronomical units, and comes in as close as 27 astronomical units, inside the orbit of Neptune.
So, FarFarOut is only the most distant object in the solar system part of the time. That’s one weird rock. Read more about FarFarOut, including how it got that name, at ScienceAlert. -via Damn Interesting
Ashley Graham is one of the most hated characters in the Resident Evil franchise. She appears as the character that Leon Kennedy has to rescue in Resident Evil 4, and she is very much disliked for her annoying plea (“Leon, help!”), her bad AI, and her uselessness as a partner. But she also has her share of positive and adorable moments in the game like in this one, where she does a little fist pump when you kill an enemy.
Just don’t expect that these candies were made with love. After all, they are emotionless machines. Do not expect that they made good-looking candy hearts, either; they don’t have a conceptual idea of one.
So what can you expect from AI-generated candies, you ask? Well, expect that they’ll be interesting. VERY interesting.
Rather than go the passé Sweethearts route, Janelle Shane, a research scientist who writes about the ways AI can get weird, used machine learning to create candy hearts of her own. The resulting images aren’t a treat you’d want to give anyone. Instead, most look like they’re created by someone who doesn’t know what the compound word “candy heart” is, but knows the confectionery “candy” and the human organ “heart” and combined them. “The task of generating anything a human can ask for is a really broad problem, and AI usually does best on very narrow problems,” explains Shane. Basically, the attempt at a candy heart shows you can’t just get “close enough” and have it look right.
Check out the results of Shane’s experiment over at Fast Company.
The year was 1851. Gold was discovered in the city of Ballarat in the state of Victoria, Australia. Within just a few days, the sudden discovery immediately led to a gold rush which would last many years. This event would be known as the Victorian Gold Rush.
Aside from the city of Ballarat, gold was also discovered in the other cities in Victoria, such as in Beechworth, the city where many Chinese nationals would settle.
As the population in Beechworth grew, so [too] did the need for specialized services to cater to the cultural needs of the Chinese miners.
This site is complete with burning towers, altars, and footstones. The towers were constructed in 1857 and the altar in 1984. Mourners used the towers to burn offerings of paper prayers and gifts for the afterlife.
It’s estimated around 2,000 Chinese gold-seekers and settlers are buried in this section of the cemetery.
We produce tons of plastic waste annually. With this being the case, it is only normal for us to see plastic everywhere, and it is only normal that we feel the negative environmental effects that it causes. Fortunately, there are those who try their best to mitigate these effects, like Fernando Llanos and architect Oscar Mendez, the creators of Conceptos Plásticos (Plastic Concepts).
[Conceptos Plásticos] is based on the transformation of plastic residues and rubber in pieces like blocks, which are used for housing construction.
‘The objective of plastic concepts is to answer to different problematic that affect the community nowadays, contributing at the same time with the reduction of the pollution that plastic residues have on the environment and his incident on the global warming,’ said Ricardo Rico, business manager, Conceptos Plásticos.
Conceptos Plásticos empowers communities of recyclers around the world, starting in Colombia all the way to Africa. To create the LEGO-like building blocks, they use plastics that not everyone recycles and others that are difficult to dispose of. Each type of plastic gives the bricks a different property, so they are mixed in different ways to obtain the desired product. The resulting bricks are easy to assemble, durable and inexpensive. They are also stronger than traditional construction materials; are thermo-acoustic, meaning they can be used in both hot and cold weather; they are also anti-seismic; and do not spread flames.
Learn more about their project over at DesignBoom.
It’s the winter break at the National Sun Yat-sen University, which means that there are very few to no people in the campus. And because the university is pretty much empty at the moment, one macaque took that opportunity and snuck inside to work on something (you and I will probably never know what).
… Chang Morgan decided to drop by an empty office on campus the other day — only to discover, to his surprise, that it wasn't quite empty after all.
There, sitting behind a desk, was a wild macaque. The monkey, apparently having gained entrance to the building somehow, now looked to be focused on some challenging task, his little brow furrowed as if in deep concentration.
As random as the monkey's presence may seem there, it's actually not unheard of. According to school officials, the campus is located near a macaque habitat, and the animals are known to explore the school, both inside and out.
Christoph Niemann shows us in these illustrations that everything, even random objects around us can be a source of artistic inspiration. A bulldozer truck and a street light could turn into the arms of a determined woman, and a colored pencil could turn into a megaphone. We just need to have a creative mind.
Although Niemann usually lives in New York for part of the year, he’s been working from his studio in Berlin since the onset of the pandemic. “I’m spending a lot of time just drawing—cityscapes, animals I saw at the zoo (one of the few places that are still open to visit), and turning these drawings into silkscreens and linocuts,” he tells Colossal.
Prior to lockdown, he was visiting cities like London and Tallin creating visual essays, and although he misses travel, he’s enjoyed the increased focus and routine of recent months. “Since March last year, I’ve been at my drawing desk almost every single day. The things I do depend on input and inspiration. But craft, attention to detail, and routine are hugely important, as well. These latter aspects benefit a lot from having such a plain and steady schedule,” he says.
See some of Niemann’s illustrations over at Colossal.
In which “artwork” becomes “fartwork.” Moni Powers has a series of movie posters starring butts in place of movie stars, with reworked titles that give farts and butts center stage. Sure, it’s juvenile, but it’s a bit of fun on a cold February day.
