After showing us so many of the adventures of his typically-difficult cat, Simon Tofield has gone back in time to show us how he got that cat in the first place. Apparently, he was specifically drawn to the most difficult kitten at the shelter.
And then we get to see the trying times of kittenhood. There will be more in the story of Simon's Kitten to come.
Onions are a great addition to dishes, but preparing them is a task not many can handle well. If you haven’t shed any tears while peeling one, I would applaud you for being such a strong person, or ask if you’ve seen @James_Rembo’s onion-peeling hack. Apparently you can easily peel it with his method. Will you try it?
image via wikimedia commons
I honestly thought the title was just clickbait, and I bet you do, too. However, that fact is true. The pearl fish makes itself comfortable inside a sea cucumber, one of the strangest relationships in the animal kingdom. The fish enters the sea cucumber as it sucks in water through its anus. Strange, but true. Watch the rest of the video as Be Amazed lists facts you might not know.
Not the Internet type of troll. Copenhagen artist Thomas Dambo is known for creating giant outdoor trolls from salvaged or trashed wood. The Danish sculptor and self-proclaimed “recycled art activist” creates massive troll sculptures, each four to seven feet tall with comical yet creepy expressions. His trolls will soon be displayed in Dambo’s latest installation, “The Great Troll Folk Fest.” National Geographic has more details:
Over the next few months, with help from volunteers and staff (and funding via private donations), he’ll assemble and install 10 figures in all. The colossal 15- to 21-foot-tall giants will be hidden in lesser-known greenspaces around Denmark, including tiny islands near Copenhagen and out-of-the-way parks. He’ll release clues about their locations on social media. “It’s a kind of treasure hunt, a gift for families in Denmark, who may feel sad that they can’t go on vacation this summer,” says Dambo. “The trolls help remind us that there are these beautiful places practically in our backyards.”
image via National Geographic
Look, I'm not saying (out loud) that there's something necessarily wrong with being a cat person. But maybe keep that stuff off your dating profile. Wait until a lady friend starts to trust you before exposing a foible like that.
This handy tip is backed up by social science research. In the journal Animals, Lori Kogan and Shelly Volsche let us know that posing with a cat in your online dating profile may hurt your chances of finding female companionship:
Women responded to an online survey and rated photos of men alone and men holding cats on measures of masculinity and personality. Men holding cats were viewed as less masculine; more neurotic, agreeable, and open; and less dateable. These results varied slightly depending whether the women self-identified as a “dog person” or a “cat person.” This study suggests that a closer look at the effects of different companion species on perceived masculinity and dateability is warranted.
Emphasis added. Be yourself in your dating profile, but be your best self. So put the cat aside and change out of that brony t-shirt.
-via Dave Barry | Photo: Vladimir Agafonkin
The question of how may continents there are in the world may seem silly -of course there are seven, as you learned in school. But that's only true for you if you were educated in the United States. Students in other parts of the world are taught that the number is anywhere from four to seven.
For example, in Europe, students usually learn that there are actually only six continents: Africa, America, Antarctica, Asia, Australia/Oceania, and Europe. There's even a five-continent model, which lists Africa, Europe, Asia, America and Oceania/Australia. (That's why there are five rings on the Olympic flag.) And some experts think four is the way to go, using as their criteria landmasses naturally separated by water, rather than manmade canals (AfroEurasia, America, Antarctica and Australia).
Heck, as recently as the 1800s, some people says there were just two continents, the Old — including Europe, Africa and Asia — and the New, which encompassed North and South America.
You may be astonished to think that anyone combines North and South America, when Europe and Asia are much more geographically combined. And you can't just ignore Antarctica because no one lives there permanently. Read some of the thinking that goes into the definitions and distinctions of continents at How Stuff Works. -via Digg
(Image credit: Max Naylor)
Sphynx cats are here to remind us how much we appreciate cat fur. Glorious fur hides a multitude of unpleasant cat features, including wrinkles, frowns, fat rolls, webbed feet, awkward positions, creepy fingers, and genitals. Yet some people love sphynx cats for their bare naked brand of honesty. See a ranked list of goofy sphynx cat photos, 52 of them at this moment, at Bored Panda.
Thanks to the powerful imaging capabilities of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, NASA has been able to create this magnificent image of NGC 6303, which is also known as the Butterfly Nebula because of its wing-like appearance. They also were able to process this enigmatic image of the NGC 7027, which looks like a bug inside a translucent shell.
Truly breathtaking.
(Image Credit: NASA/ Instagram)
It would seem that beliefs are not a unique feature to us humans. Philosophers Dr. Tobias Starzak and Professor Albert Newen, through their article that was recently published in the journal “Mind and Language”, suggest that animals have that feature, too, because they have flexible behavior. In the article, the philosophers propose four criteria to identify which animals have beliefs. Here is one of the criteria.
The first criterion for the existence of beliefs worked out by the philosophers is that an animal must have information about the world. However, this must not simply lead to an automatic reaction, like a frog instinctively snapping at a passing insect.
Instead, the animal must be able to use the information to behave in a flexible manner. “This is the case when one and the same piece of information can be combined with different motivations to produce different behaviours,” explains Albert Newen. “For example, if the animal can use the information that there is food available at that moment for the purpose of eating or hiding the food.”
Surprisingly, there are some animals who do meet all criteria, which suggests that they really do have beliefs. It should be noted, however, that the beliefs of these creatures are not on the same level as humans.
More details about this over at Neuroscience News.
What are your thoughts about this one?
(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
It is so expressive that it changes in shape, size, number, and color as it displays various emotions, feelings, and personalities.
Watch this 2-minute animation made by Paris-based designer Benoit Leva over at Colossal. You can also check out Leva’s Vimeo and Instagram account to see more of her emotive animations.
(Image Credit: Benoit Leva/ Colossal)
Genes alone are not enough for one to live long on this planet; one's living environment is a factor, too. While this statement is no longer surprising as it is already established that social and environmental factors hugely contribute to longevity, there is still an unanswered question: what is the ideal living environment? This is what the scientists from Washington State University answered in their study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
They found that neighborhood walkability, higher socioeconomic status, and a high percentage of working age population (a measure of age diversity) were positively correlated with reaching centenarian status.
"These findings indicate that mixed-age communities are very beneficial for everyone involved," said Bhardwaj. "They also support the big push in growing urban centers toward making streets more walkable, which makes exercise more accessible to older adults and makes it easier for them to access medical care and grocery stores." Amram added that neighborhoods that offer more age diversity tend to be in urban areas, where older adults are likely to experience less isolation and more community support.
More details about this study over at ScienceDaily.
(Image Credit: B_Me/ Pixabay)
I love this simple stained glass piece by Colorado Glass Works. It's perfectly positioned to take advantage of the sun, water, and beach. Best of all for the artist, it was made with a friend, as the caption sentimentally explains.
A Goofy Movie was a shared event for Millennials, full of classic lessons in family dynamics and growing up hidden underneath a lot of ...uh, goofiness. It wasn't a big hit on release, but rose in prominence as the children who saw it in 1995 grew up. Relive the experience with this Honest Trailer for A Goofy Movie.
As we've seen recently, scientists are always coming up with new ways to date historical events and artifacts, sometimes with amazing accuracy. Finding the exact dates for natural occurrences can help us understand other events that we have records for. For example, could a volcano on the other side of the world have influenced the rise of the Roman Empire? By analyzing atmospheric chemicals left in an ice core, an international team of scientists have pinpointed a climactic change left by a volcanic eruption.
The team found that volcanic eruptions occurred in 45 B.C. and 43 B.C., sandwiching the year of Julius Caesar’s assassination. The team also found tephra—rocky detritus spewed by volcanoes—that carries a geochemical fingerprint, which allowed them to home in on a culprit.
As it turned out, the volcano that caused all the ruckus was a massive one, a world away: Okmok, far into the North Pacific Ocean in the Aleutian Islands, nearly 6,000 miles from Rome. The impact of the eruption would have been huge to be felt in the Mediterranean, McConnell says—not exactly a “supervolcano,” but something along the lines of the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, which caused the “year without a summer” in Western Europe. Knowing the source of the spewage, the researchers were then able to estimate what impact the eruption would have had in Europe by tracking variation in its fallout.
Read about the research and the findings at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: United States Geological Survey)
The year 2020 is weird for many reasons, but if you are a movie buff, you might think you're stuck in a time warp. The most-seen movie in theaters over the weekend was Jurassic Park, released in 1993. The second-biggest movie was Jaws, 45 years after it debuted. Not that they made millions; remember, only drive-in theaters are open. But with a dearth of new releases, classic blockbusters are playing at drive-ins around the country.
Over the June 19-21 weekend — as Hollywood studios offered classic catalogue titles to cinemas struggling to emerge from the coronavirus crisis — Spielberg's 1993 film Jurassic Park topped the chart with an estimated $517,642 from 230 locations in its 1,411th weekend, according to those with access to flash Comscore flash grosses.
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Jaws wasn't far behind Jurassic Park. The pic earned an estimated $516,366 from 187 locations in its 2,349th weekend (it first hit theaters in June 1975). Elsewhere, the filmmaker's 1982 blockbuster E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial pulled in $126,189 from 100 locations in its 1,985th weekend to place No. 7, while Raiders of the Lost Ark came in No. 18 with $69,047 from 109 sites in its 2,037th weekend.
It was a good weekend for Spielberg. But walk-in theaters will begin to open in July, and a few brand-new movies will be available next month. Read more at The Hollywood Reporter. -via Uproxx
