When it comes to making slo-mo hair flip videos, a person needs two basic elements: a person with long hair, and a camera that has a slow motion feature. Other elements are optional, but if you want to make your video unique, then you should go and do just that.
Check out this clip of a woman flipping her hair, and find out what makes this video unique, over at Reddit.
(Image Credit: u/jaxjax55/ Reddit)
What’s a famous mythical creature in your country? Have you ever wondered if other countries have the same kind of mythical beast in their fables and stories? No worries, as SavingSpot of CashNetUSA has put together a list of every country’s most famous mythical creature. This list is not just boring text, no, it comes in a stunning map, filled with wonderful illustrations, as Nerdist details:
First SavingSpot compiled a long list of famous mythical beasts using Heather Frigiola’s Monsters and Mythical Creatures From Around the World, Wikipedia, and “numerous independent sites.” To then find each nation’s most popular legend “the research team ranked them by total search results on Google, using the search terms “[Country] + [Mythical Creature].”
What they found was that many countries share the same monsters, even though they sometimes have slight differences. For example lots of countries fear dragons, but not all dragons look the same.
Image via Nerdist
Don’t worry, these ones aren’t real. They look real scary at first glance though, not gonna lie. Mister Finch takes scraps of brocade and cotton fabric to form creatures that look like they came straight out of a fairy tale, or a horror film. His creations contain so much detail that will unnerve viewers (or take a second look to check if it’s real). The Leeds-based artist’s recent pieces are oversized spiders that he photographs suspended from the ceiling, as Colossal details:
“I love the way this looks and enables me to dress and humanize them, which is something I’ve always wanted to do.”
Although the ongoing pandemic has stifled the artist’s foraging of fabrics and other materials in recent months, Finch notes that he’s been pulling textiles from his home stash and occasionally visiting fairs and markets. He’s also been scaling down his sculptures so that they’re easier to handle without assistance.
Finch published two books filled with his fairytale-style sculptures and settings in recent years—and currently is working on a third—which you can purchase in his shop along with cards and totes. Dive further into his eccentric projects on Instagram.
Image via Colossal
The San Diego Ballet will hold performances of Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker" at an outdoor stage, where the audience can park their cars and be able to watch the play. This adjustment, due to the pandemic, was a way that executive director Matt Carney found to provide work for their artists and to offer something to the public this holiday season, as KPBS details:
"We have a strong commitment to our company dancers in providing work for artists," said Carney. "And it never occurred to me to do nothing. And to cancel our season or to not offer anything — it just didn't seem like an option."
This season, the company will grace an outdoor stage in Liberty Station for just five live performances of "The Nutcracker," over two weekends. Audience members will park their cars spaced out and offset from each other in the lot, and will have enough room — an additional parking spot's worth — to set up chairs or a tailgate area, weather permitting. (The show is rain or shine and the stage will be covered.) Each performance will be limited to 30 vehicles. Carney said this separates them from other drive-in performances.
"The Nutcracker" and holiday-themed performances in general — like "The Christmas Carol" or "The Grinch," or singalong renditions of Handel's "The Messiah" — serve a much broader community than the season ticket holders or regular attendees.
"The holiday offerings are, oftentimes, an entry point into the arts for people," said Carney. "It's an important show because it's an entry point for people who don't normally see art throughout the year." Plus, it's a way for the company to inspire a sense of hope, tradition and normalcy for the community.
Image via KPBS
If you’re a big fan of watching dance videos or art films, this video of ballet dancers might spark your interest. To celebrate Harlem Week 2020, the Dance Theatre of Harlem created a beautiful dance film of ballet dancers dancing on the streets of New York to the tune of a Bach violin concerto. The short but enthralling video, called Dancing Through Harlem, was produced by Derek Brockington and Alexandra Hutchinson, choreographed by Robert Garland and filmed by Heather Olcott and Joe Samala, as Classic FM details:
Harlem is a neighbourhood of New York City which occupies a large part of northern Manhattan, and has for decades been one of the most important places of the African American cultural movement. For over a century, it's been a vibrant place for culture and the arts, starting with the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and since becoming a focal point for jazz, hip hop and creatives through the 20th century and beyond.
We love the vibrancy and vividness when great dance takes place on the streets and everyday settings.
image via Classic FM
The Hugo Boss Prize is one of the top art awards in the world. The award is given to one artist every other year. New-York based photographer Deana Lawson has won the prestigious prize, and is the first photographer to do so. Besides the trophy, Lawson will have an exhibition at Guggenheim Museum in New York in spring 2021 and take home a $100.000 cash prize, as Art News details:
Lawson’s photography centers Black men and women, and features them in poses and settings that appear to be highly naturalistic, but are in fact carefully staged in advance. They tend to feature individuals who appear to be families and couples, and they allude to histories of disaporas and racism in the process. “Photography,” Lawson once said, “has the power to make history and the present moment speak towards each other.”
It is a body of work that, because of its rigorous conceptual framework, has been hard to define. But, in its reworking of art-historical tropes and its emphasis on tenderness and intimacy, her photography’s aesthetic has proven influential. Zadie Smith once wrote of Lawson’s photography, “Black people are not conceived as victims, social problems, or exotics but, rather, as what Lawson calls ‘creative, godlike beings’ who do not ‘know how miraculous we are.’”
Image via Art News
A history of claiming to be the first Egyptian to conquer an incredible feat, Omar Samra decided that he would become the first Egyptian to travel to space...
Solar cells have greatly improved over the years. Back in the 1950s, solar cells converted only 6% of sunlight into electricity. Today, solar cells can now convert up to 22% of sunlight into electricity. Unfortunately, the efficiency of today’s silicon-based solar cells are nearly maxed out. However, this doesn’t mean that we can no longer improve our solar cells. Enter perovskite.
A group of materials called perovskites are being used to create the next generation of solar panels, which could eventually be twice as efficient as current models, and flexible enough to wrap around entire buildings.
[...]
Researchers at Oxford PV, a company spun out of the University of Oxford, made a major breakthrough in 2018. By coating silicon with perovskite they achieved 28% efficiency. The company believes it can eventually reach 40%, or higher.
Improved solar cell efficiency will enable installations to pump out more power with fewer panels, reducing costs, and the amount of land, labor and equipment needed to operate them.
Learn more about perovskite over at CNN.
(Image Credit: CNN)
It doesn’t seem that the pandemic will disappear soon. Some people are buying a lot of items and appliances to decorate or add more life to their homes for the winter holidays spent at home. During the early months we saw people flock to the shelves to buy toilet papers, disinfectants, fitness equipment, and bicycles. However, the trend has shifted, and people are now focused on buying kitchen equipment and decorations that can spark joy or calm the nerves. Check out The New York Post’s list on what people are buying for the winter. Maybe you can get an idea for what you can get for yourself this holiday season!
Image via The New York Post
There may be danger in the chemicals mixed with the commercial cleaners and disinfectants we find handy during the pandemic. While these products can help us sanitize areas in our home (or other places) that can keep us safe from COVID-19, they also pose a threat to our own health. The chemicals that give disinfectants and sanitizers their pleasing scents are linked to cause headaches, skin rashes, asthma, immune system dysfunction, and heart trouble.
Check the full piece here.
Image via Medium
There’s a charm to the emptied-out malls, beaches, museums, and other tourist spots where a lot of people would be if it weren’t for the pandemic. These once busy venues are now shadows of their former selves. As sad as that may sound for the businesses and workers that will lose money this year, it is for everyone's safety. Stacker compiled 50 photos showing how COVID-19 has affected the tourism trade. Check out Press of Atlantic City’s full piece on these gorgeous yet uncanny and calm photos here.
Image via Press of Atlantic City
This image taken by NASA’s Hubble Telescope shows the birth of a new star in the Cassiopeia constellation. Isn’t it amazing that we can get a glimpse of how the universe works outside the Earth? What seems like a lovely photo for us commoners tells astronomers a lot of things about how stars form in these stellar nurseries called Free-floating Evaporating Gaseous Globules (frEGGs).
(via LightStalking)
Image via LightStalking
Avee Shabazz of Birmingham, Alabama, wanted to help his daughter achieve her own financial freedom, so he bought her a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home for her thirteenth birthday. I only got a birthday cake for my thirteenth birthday, and Ajala Shabazz gets a house, wow (congrats to her though, a house is such a big deal!). Her dad wanted her to be comfortable as she grows up, as Atlanta Black Star details:
“The objective is to be comfortable,” said Shabazz. “Whatever that means to her is what it means to her. She determines that, right? If she’s cool with having a house without paying bills and working a job, that’s her choice, right? But if she wants to grow it into a multi-million- dollar empire, that’s her choice.”
Ajala says she was excited to receive the big gift, but she also admits she was a little scared.
“I felt like I was too young, you know?” Ajala said. “Like, people always say you’re too young to do this or do that and my dad just gave me a house when I was 13.”
She says she instantly thought of all the things that could possibly go wrong.
“I’m not very good when it comes to responsibility,” she admitted. “And when I’m given responsibility, I suddenly feel anxious and nervous. Am I going to screw this up? Is something bad going to happen? I just think of all the possibilities.”
But her dad stepped in to offer her some encouragement. He believes she is ready and responsible enough. Shabazz is a real estate investor and says Ajala simply needs to do what she’s watched him do over the years.
Image via Atlanta Black Star
Movies go through a lot of changes from the original concept to the finished product. For those that become big hits or go on to become classics, those changes are mostly for the better. Only years afterward do we find out what could have been -and by then the early ideas seem just plain bad.
Let's just be glad these horror films turned out the way they did -mainly because we can't imagine them as anything else. See how your favorite horror movie could have been very different in a pictofacts list at Cracked.
California — As helicopter pilot Dan Alpiner helped conduct water drops over the Creek Fire, he witnessed what he describes as an “unheard of” scene: an owl boarding the chopper mid-flight.
Dan was worried that the owl might fly around the cockpit, a scenario which would put both him and the bird in danger. But that didn’t happen, fortunately. The owl rode the chopper with him calmly for a few minutes, and it flew back out the window the same way it did when it entered the chopper — “safe and announced.”
I wonder what the owl was thinking. What do you think?
(Image Credit: Sky Aviation/ CBS 47/ UPI)
