The environment is different when you're working from home. There are sounds that might be caught by your coworkers during work. In a Supreme Court hearing, someone flushed a toilet during an oral argument. The Supreme Court was hearing a case via teleconferencing. During the Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants case, and an attorney was making his argument when someone flushed the toilet. The identity of the mysterious toilet flusher remains unknown!
A mother bear in South Lake Tahoe, California saved three of her cubs to safety, and she continuously swam each of her cubs to safety. The mama bear deserves a great award for Mother’s Day, as The Huffington Post detailed:
“The mother bear was determined to save all three of her cubs herself and ensure that they see tomorrow by continually swimming each one to safety!” the South Lake Tahoe Fire Fighters Association captioned footage of the impressive rescue mission on Facebook.
The association said it was called to the scene to aid a cub that had been separated, but the determined mother was ultimately able to coax the little one into the water and swim it across.
Video shows the mama bear piggybacking her cub as she swims and climbs onto the opposite shore.
A proud and doting parent would celebrate any milestone of their child. This dad did just that. Head to CNN to see the full video of a dad going crazily happy over his 4-year-old son’s first home run!
Sushi master Masayuki Komatsu learned how to appraise the quality of his ingredients. Komatsu looks for four qualities : cut, color, clarity, and carat. He learned to look for these qualities from his father, a diamond appraiser. Watch as the former head sushi chef at Morimoto NYC tells Buzzfeed his plans to open his own restaurant along with how he crafts his dishes with care.
A post shared by Sunset Selfies (@sunsetselfies) on Jan 29, 2019 at 6:07am PST
"Sunset Selfies" is the brainchild of award-winning television producer John Marshall, but don't be fooled by the name. Its content is not just plain selfies behind sunsets - it's more creative than that.
He makes creative cardboard cutouts, photographs them with the sun setting over the water as a backdrop, and the results are astounding.
Maldha Mohamed, an artist who lives in The Maldives, has a moving portfolio of ethereal human subjects. Her entire Instagram feed is worth examining, but what caught my attention was her focused efforts on the human eye. Within a few life-size inches of human flesh, she can meticulously depict emotional intensity and realism. Mohamed talked to My Modern Met about her work:
Although the 22-year-old artist assigns titles to each completed piece, such as Lust and Desire, she says that many of her viewers find different interpretations of the artworks. When seeing one eye “cropped,” the imagination can muse on the rest of the human face and project different expressions.
“It excites me to paint (the eyes), as I try to make them as raw as possible, to give them depth and life,” the artist says. Maldha uses a variety of brushstrokes and textures on the wooden panels, adding dimension to the small portraits. In many of the pieces, this thick application of paint “swirls” around the picture like an emotional current.
Ever find yourself looking for something you could do? Heinz just released this new puzzle -- 570 pieces, all identical Heinz red.
‘heinz is known for its iconic slow-pouring ketchup. in a period when everyone has a little more time on their hands and puzzle popularity has skyrocketed, we wanted to help pass the time by connecting the two,’ comments brian neumann, senior brand manager at kraft heinz canada. ‘this puzzle is worth the patience—only this time, you can’t hold it at the perfect angle to solve it.’
the heinz ketchup jigsaw puzzle features 570 pieces that look the same — ketchup red. the company is giving away 57 of these puzzles around 17 countries excluding the US on its social media channels. overall, let’s say that this puzzle is an homage to our patience and minutes waiting for ketchup to slowly reach our plates.
Becore macrophotography, microscopic findings were documented by botanical illustrators. One of these illustrators is Ernst Haeckel, a German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, and physician.
Haeckel spent his life researching flora and fauna “from the highest mountaintops to the deepest ocean.” He not only discovered, described, and named thousands of new species, but captured their forms with his incredible illustrations. Rendered with graphic precision and delicate shading, Haeckel’s work embraced the Darwin theory of evolution and helped to educate the world about microscopic organisms that were previously unseen.
In 1864, Haeckel sent Charles Darwin, two folio volumes on radiolarians. His gothic, white on black drawings impressed Darwin so much that he wrote back to Haeckel to express his gratitude. He said, “[They] were the most magnificent works which I have ever seen, and I am proud to possess a copy from the author.”
If you want to do a glamour shot, make sure you have a decent budget, lest you settle for a low-budget one and then get a glamour shot as terrible as these ones. For sure, many of these people instantly regretted their decision once they saw their photos.
Check out these terrible low-budget glamour shots over at Sad and Useless.
French post-impressionist painter Henri Rousseau was often mocked by his critics for ''childlike'' composition and for making art that showed his lack of formal education.
Also known as primitivism, pseudo-naïve art, or faux naïve art, naïve art is defined as visual art created by a person who lacks formal education in art. Naïve paintings typically feature childlike simplicity, awkward perspective, and flat colors.
Rousseau was a key figure in the movement and developed his own style that many thought reflected his lack of academic training. Featuring incorrect proportions, one-sided perspective, and unnatural colors, Rousseau’s body of work was criticized by many. For other people, however, it evoked a sense of mystery and eccentricity. In fact, some art historians say that the term naïve art originated in 1885 when artist Paul Signac set about organizing exhibitions of Rousseau’s work in a number of esteemed galleries.
Despite the criticisms,
In 1886, Rousseau showed four of his paintings at the Salon des Indépendants, the primary exhibition venue for the Post-Impressionists. His work was ridiculed though, with one critic remarking, “Monsieur Rousseau paints with his feet, with a blindfold over his eyes.” However, that didn’t discourage Rousseau from pursuing painting, and he continued to show his work at Salon des Indépendants almost every year until his death in 1910.
It is both inspiring and heart-wrenching how despite the feedback he received, he had the courage to take art seriously, that is, by age 49 he retired from his job as a tax collector to work on his paintings full-time.
The artist claimed he needed “no other teacher than nature,” and pasted all his negative reviews into his personal scrapbook.
Painted in 1891, Surprised! Tiger in a Tropical Storm is Rousseau’s first jungle painting. It was exhibited at Salon des Indépendants the same year and features a wide-eyed, tooth-bearing tiger emerging from the grass. The backdrop features lightning flashes, rain, wind-swept tree branches, and a dark sky to indicate the storm. This energetic scene was ridiculed by critics, but today it is celebrated as one of his best works.
Displayed alongside works by Henri Matisse and André Derainat at the Salon d’Automne in 1905, some critics compared The Hungry Lion to cave paintings. However, it was positioned among the leading artists of the avant-garde (whose expressive use of vibrant colors became known as Fauvism) and was backed by his admirers, Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire.
Despite his popularity among his fellow artists, Rousseau couldn’t seem to win the respect of the art world and lived in poverty until he died from an infected leg wound in 1910.
(Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons via My Modern Met)
The only webcomic I am sure to read every day is Jeph Jacques's Questionable Content. In today's episode, the ladies discuss how to spice up sports in extreme ways. I like Claire's idea for golf: everyone has to play at the same time and as quickly as possible. I suggest adding body checking to the rules.
Movie critics are not like regular moviegoers. Professional critics can spot laziness and artistry in filmmaking, while ticket buyers mainly want a good overall experience. If a movie is exquisitely produced, but has a boring subject, you'll get a divergence of opinions between critics and audience. Conversely, a critic may find a film to be a cheap ripoff with little imagination, but if it's fun to watch, people will flock to it.
With the rise of online review aggregators that feature ratings from both professionals and the general public, it’s become only too easy to see just how giant those discrepancies can be. To discover which films are the most divisive, RAVE Reviews compiled Rotten Tomatoes's "Top 100" lists from 17 different genres into one massive collection of 967 films, and then ranked them in order of how large the difference was between the critic score and the audience score.
A hundred years ago, the Hume family gave the newspapers in the Scottish town of Dumfries quite a bit to report on. They were a dysfunctional family that went from respect to scandal when the internal workings of various relationships came to light. This story involves drama that begat more drama for years.
1. A selfish father and a wicked stepmother. 2. A musician who went down with the Titanic. 3. A fight over Titanic dependents' benefits. 4. A daughter's revenge plot that got out of hand. 5. A sensational trial.
This cat struggles to push its hooman away as it tries to keep him away from sitting down on its beloved chair. This cat clearly does not want other beings, including its hooman, to invade its personal territory.
The caption, by the way, translates to, “What do you think you’re sitting on? Please move away!”
