Try sitting in this chair without falling over. It's not that hard. Rasmus B. Rex designed it to look tilted, but it's quite stable. Appropriately, it's called 9.5°.
He explains that it makes the chair more stable, as the angle removes the need for a stabilizing rod. I'm not sure of the physics of that argument.
-via Toxel
We’ve seen our fair share of enemy bases in different tv shows and films. Here’s a question: out of all the structures in the world, what do you think would be an evil villain’s secret lair? Tumblr user evilbuildingsblog thinks it’s Taipei 101. While the structure does look dark and avant-garde, there’s a reason behind its odd architectural feature. Well, I’m not gonna deny that it does look like someone’s evil lair.
image via evilbuildingsblog
If you've ever watched Bruce Lee swing his nunchaku, or nunchucks, in a movie, you you have to admit it looks awesome ...in the hands of Bruce Lee. You and I are more likely to hurt ourselves trying to imitate those moves. Once you've tried swinging those things, you have to wonder how effective the weapon would be in real life compared to say, a stick. Would it be worth all that training? Were they ever used in combat? To answer that question, we have to look at the history of nunchucks.
To begin with, going back to the earliest known references to this particular staple of certain martial arts, it turns out nobody is quite sure who invented it, not because its origins are thousands of years back or anything like that- but simply because up until the likes of Bruce Lee, it wasn’t really a terribly popular weapon of choice, and its history isn’t well documented as a result of its relative obscurity.
So who do people think invented it? It turns out even if you consult educational tombs of knowledge concerning use of nunchucks, as we did, you’ll find about as many stories as there are books covering the sticks with a little extra in the middle.
A recurrent theme in the most commonly touted origin stories, however, is that its invention was spurred owing to a lack of other weapons, and thus it was an improvised weapon created from and altogether more innocuous item meant for other purposes before someone realized if you swung it- hey- you could really hurt someone (or yourself).
Read some of the various origin stories and what we really know about the history of nunchucks, which all seems to come down to something like "a weapon you can use if there's nothing else available" at Today I Found Out.
When you saw the logo at the right, did you still recognize it as a McDonald's logo? Was the hollow part a hindrance to see the brand?
If not, then the design company Ecobranding is on the right path in its mission to save ink (and therefore save the environment)!
“Naturally, one logo isn’t too expensive to print because it doesn’t need much ink,” they write, “but printing a single logo on a billion bottles? That’s huge!” By making small changes to the branding—such as “hollowing out” a once-solid shape—Ecobranding says they can save 10% to 40% in printing costs, with the essence of an identity remaining the same. “Printer ink costs two times as much as Chanel N°5. Limiting the use of ink can save millions on a global production.”
Which logo is your favorite? I like the H&M one!
Images by Ecobranding
We've heard of people who risk their lives just to take selfies, and now, there's this guy named Mark Laita who risked his life to take portraits --- not of himself but of colorful serpents. The twist is, while doing so, he got bitten by one!
While photographing a black mamba at a facility in Central America, the deadly snake struck. “It was a very docile snake,” he recalls. “It just happened to move close to my feet at some point. The handler brought his hook in to move the snake, and he inadvertently snagged the cord from my camera. That scared the snake, and then it struck where it was warm. That happened to be the artery in my calf.” Miraculously, though the blood soaked through his socks and shoes, he survived the bite.
Considering the black mamba’s venom is deadly and can potentially make a person collapse within 45 minutes, Laita is extremely lucky. In fact, he was so preoccupied with the shoot, he didn’t realize he’d been bitten until the handler told him. After 20 minutes of feeling ok, he decided not to seek medical attention—something herpetologists later told him was a big mistake because something could have happened even hours later. It was only the next day he realized he’d actually snapped a photograph of the bite as it occurred.
For Laita, it's a once in a lifetime thing, and he seems happy about his experience! Though he isn't sure how he survived, he was truly thankful.
“It was either a ‘dry bite,’ which is rare, or I bled so heavily that the blood pushed the venom out,” he explained in a publicity interview. “All I know is I was unlucky to be bitten, lucky to have survived, and lucky again to have unknowingly snapped a photo of the actual bite!”
(Photos by Mark Laita via My Modern Met)
We have released 21-second newsreel clip featuring the last known images of the extinct Thylacine, filmed in 1935, has been digitised in 4K and released.
— NFSA -National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (@NFSAonline) May 19, 2020
Be sure to check out the footage of this beautiful marsupial. #NFSAOpenOnline #TasmanianTigerhttps://t.co/s3JSAnmFck pic.twitter.com/FSRYXCTTMy
In 2007, we posted some video of the last known Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, taken in 1933. The species went extinct when Benjamin died in 1935. Now we have a newly-released clip of Benjamin taken in 1935, just months before his death.
Fewer than a dozen source films, amounting to little more than three minutes of silent, black-and-white footage, of the elusive thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger) are known to survive.
All derive from thylacines held in captivity and photographed in only two locations – Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart and London Zoo. Now, unseen publicly for 85 years, a further precious 21 seconds is being released by the NFSA.
Located within a forgotten travelogue, Tasmania the Wonderland (1935), these recently digitised 4K images represent the preservation of the last-known surviving moving images of Australia’s most famous extinct predator:
Read more about the film and see the footage in a larger format at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. -via reddit
Justin McElroy says, "in the history of disney animated movies there have been exactly 18 types of songs, and i'm going to tell you about each of them". And then he does, with examples from the 252 songs (excluding those under 30 seconds long) from Disney's animated films. There would be more if you included live-action films like Mary Poppins, and they could also be categorized in the same way. Categories include "I'm the Villain," "I want," "Montage," and "Cheer up, Kid!" McElroy summarized his research with the table of elements you see above. The table is organized by type and color-coded by era. See it full-size here. -via Metafilter
Fanta, now a subsidiary of Coca-Cola, sells more softs drinks in Thailand than it does in either the US or China. Sure, people love to drink it, but some of that sweet red soda pop is for the gods. Strawberry-flavored Fanta is left as an offering at shrines, or spirit houses, throughout the country. Kalyanee Rudrakanchana, a Thai spiritual consultant, explains more.
The spirits she has communed with have yet to ask for red Fanta. Yet “offering sweet, red water at a shrine is something that is uniquely Thai,” Rudrakanchana explains. “Nobody knows why it has to be strawberry Fanta, but it probably has to do with its bright red color.” After all, she notes, “Thais are a very visual people. They probably think it looks pretty in front of the shrine or spirit house.”
Or more likely, it just seems natural to make an offering of something that the giver believes is tasty and satisfying. Read how Fanta became a common offering at shrines throughout Thailand at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Per Meistrup)
Students who are scheduled to graduate or have graduated this year can have an opportunity to be part of history as SpaceX invites all students who are scheduled to earn or have earned a diploma this year to send a copy of their photo on to the company. The photos will then “fly on America's first human spaceflight in nearly a decade.”
Anyone who earned (or is scheduled to earn) their diploma this year—from kindergarten to graduate school—can upload a selfie to SpaceX's Earth mosaic, which will be printed and flown aboard the upcoming Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station.
The deadline of the photo submission for SpaceX’s Class of 2020 will be on May 20. Submit your photo via this link.
(Image Credit: NASA/ Wikimedia Commons)
The title of "the Real McCoy" has been attributed to several people, implying a genuineness that Kid McCoy never seemed to find. Norman Selby took the name Kid McCoy when he became a champion boxer, winning 99 of his 105 official bouts in the late 19th century, although he boxed quite a bit under assumed names, and was accused of at least a couple of fixed fights. But that was just the beginning of his many careers, both before and after one of his ten marriages ended in death, for which he stood trial for murder.
“It had been a daffy world for McCoy,” said Variety in its obit. “He had been a convict, social lion, saloon porter, hero of a short story classic, dishwasher, owner of a New York jewelry store and night club, a bankrupt, film actor, auto racer, confidante of Maurice Maeterlinck and, in recent years, a Ford employee.” It was paradigmatic of his life, and of the fate of Real McCoys this century, that during his second trial, being shuttled from court to county jail, Selby should meet a fan, throw one arm around him, and shake hands warmly, although Charlie Chaplin was in the halls of justice not to wish the Kid luck but to sue an impersonator who had stolen his costume and character.
The Kid was many different characters, but which one was the real McCoy? Read about the astonishing life of Norman Selby at The MIT Press Reader. -via Damn Interesting
(Image credit: Famous Players-Lasky Corporation)
Music videos that were remastered into 4K definition might look great, or right look really crappy. The difference is in the original material. Tom Scott explains what happens when you take a song meant for MTV and try to make it into a cinema-quality feature. Something about a silk purse and a sow's ear comes to mind. Tom Scott explains in more detail.
Go ahead and take the stairs. The lights will guide you to your destination. Skurk, a street artist, used a pair of streetlights and a staircase to depict a huge anglerfish on the hunt in Bergen, Norway. She waits patiently for you to come to her.
By the way: I use the pronoun "her" for a reason. Only female anglerfish have the natural lure. Males of the species have a, um, flexible relationship. National Geographic explains:
When a young, free-swimming male angler encounters a female, he latches onto her with his sharp teeth. Over time, the male physically fuses with the female, connecting to her skin and bloodstream and losing his eyes and all his internal organs except the testes. A female will carry six or more males on her body.
We've all known guys like that.
-via TYWKWIDBI
Get it? It's a potato carved into the shape of a couch!
Eh, I guess my humor is more sophisticated that yours. I found it funny. So did Michael Barros when his fiance made the couch. It's cool as a cucumber:
Puns are the highest form of comedy.
Search Google Shopping for office chair. The first search result is for Wayfair's Seat of Death Grim Reaper Throne Armchair. It's perfect for modern office design, especially for cubicle drones who aspire to rise into management.
It's plastic, so not an actual throne of skulls. That's what you get once you're actually in management, not before. And you have to build it yourself.
If this style doesn't match your own, then continue browsing Google Shopping until you get to this object. I can well imagine the snickering designer trying to sell the design to a furniture company as a practical joke.
-via Super Punch
We are aware that much information on the Internet is false. We often forget this fact, however, when we consult the Internet for our health concerns. After all, who will you turn to when nobody in your house is a medical expert, and you’re feeling something strange or painful in your body? As for me, my primary response when I feel something weird in my body is to go Google it. Unsurprisingly, researchers warn us of Googling about health symptoms and medical advice, as the information we usually find on the search results are often inaccurate. The study is published in the Medical Journal of Australia.
The study analysed 36 international mobile and web-based symptom checkers and found they produced the correct diagnosis as the first result just 36 percent of the time, and within the top three results 52 percent of the time.
The research also found that the advice provided on when and where to seek health care was accurate 49 percent of the time.
It has been estimated that Google’s health related searches amount to approximately 70,000 every minute. Close to 40 percent of Australians look for online health information to self-treat.
Lead author and ECU Masters student Michella Hill said the findings should give people pause for thought.
More details about this study over at Neuroscience News.
(Image Credit: qimono/ Pixabay)
