We all know that YouTube comments are the cesspool of the Interweb. Google decided to try to clean it up by requiring Google+ accounts in order to comment on the world's largest video clip site, a move that proven to be quite unpopular with the unwashed masses, but think what would happened if Google succeeded in taming its comment problems.
We would all miss out on something like this: a dramatic reconstruction by comedy group Dead Parrot of an argument between two YouTubers, "Sophie Danze" and "Jilianlovesthebeibs" on One Direction's music video What Makes You Beautiful.
Watch British actors Grahame Edwards and Eryl Lloyd Parry spar with each other in this clip produced by Adrian Bliss. Warning: NSFW language.
What's the greatest thing since sliced bread? How about butter that doesn't ruin your toasted sliced bread when you try to spread it? Behold, shredded butter!
Japan company Metex created this amazing gizmo called "Easy Butter Former": a grater for a butter. All you have to do is put a regular stick of butter in the contraption and twist to dispense a stringy, easy to spread butter.
If you've ever looked up in the skies and wondered where that airplane is flying to, then these billboards are for you!
British Airways and Ogilvy 12th Floor unveiled a series of digital billboards that "interact" with BA aircrafts flying overhead to tell you where it's headed. The ads use custom technology to track the aircraft and play a video clip of a child pointing up to the plane just as it flies overhead.
Abigail Comber, British Airways' head of marketing, told marketing and media magazine The Drum, "This is a first, not just for British Airways but for UK advertising. We all know from conversations with friends and family that we wonder where the planes are going and dream of an amazing holiday or warm destination. The clever technology allows this advert to engage people there and then and answer that question for them.
"We hope it will create a real ‘wow’ and people will be reminded how amazing flying is and how accessible the world can be."
The first interactive billboard is located at Chiswick and a second one is coming to London's Piccadilly Circus.
Marcos Carramao de Farias spotted a baby dolphin trapped in a plastic bag off the coast of Sao Paulo, Brazil, while fishing one day. He and a fellow fisherman helped free the dolphin and return it to the ocean. The baby dolphin then did a little happy "thank you" dance in the water that will warm your heart!
Poor Harry Potter! Us muggles just don't get how hard it is to be a wizard!
In their latest installment of Movies in Real Life, Charlie Todd and the comedy collective Improv Everywhere showed us just how hard it is to find Platform 9 3/4 (especially when you're in the wrong train station) or to check in an owl.
Watch as 11-year-old Sebastian Thomas played the role of Harry Potter trying to get to Hogwartz from New York's Pennsylvania Station.
Oh, and here's Harry Potter trying to catch a cab to the airport and the behind-the-scenes takes:
When students of his political science class petitioned to have their research paper due date extended, professor Rex Brynen of McGill University responded in style:
After Buzzfeed posted the photo, which went viral and garnered more than 70,000 views (at this time of posting), Brynen tweeted out:
Apparently the most popular thing I've done in 25 year teaching career is say "no" to an extension request. 5k "likes" and counting!
Queen Margrethe II of Denmark commissioned the first royal family painting in almost 125 years, and chose Danish artist Thomas Kluge to paint it. Four years later, she got it: a very modern, and some say quite creepy, portrait of the Danish Royal Family.
Kluge, a largely self-taught artist, is famous for using the same painting technique as the old Flemish Masters like Caravaggio. Though he uses modern acrylic paints, Kluge applies layers upon painstaking layers of under painting using glazes and extremely thin brushes. He is a master in chiaroscuro - the artistic technique of using contrasting effects of light and dark.
Fredensborgbillege depicts King Christian IX and Queen Louise, and their extended royal family, the so-called "the in-laws of Europe" in their time. Via Danish Royal Collections
The Queen had wanted something more like the Fredensborgbillege above, a painting of King Christian IX and his royal family in the 1880s by Laurits Tuxen, but she got what some people had described as a poster for the sequel of the horror movie The Omen instead.
We begin with Queen Margrethe II, a matriarch who has been painted by Kluge with all of the graceful femininity of Tubbs from the BBC's League of Gentlemen. Next to her sits her swollen husband, Henrik, who has been captured with such close attention to detail that you can actually see the meat sweats diffusing through his skin-tight velvet suit. Note also the tumor or possible herpes sore disfiguring Henrik's upper lip, which Kluge has made sure to render with nearly Rembrandt-like fidelity.
In the lower left-hand corner, Princess Isabelle rocks back and forth on the floor, staring with milk-white eyes into the distance as she purses her black lips and slowly twists her dolly's head off. To the right, young princes Nikolai and Felix build the metaphorical tower of blood that they must eventually climb to take the Danish throne for their own. But they will not ascend to claim their crimson thrones unchallenged. To get there, they must first defeat Prince Christian, the second heir to the throne, whom Kluge depicts as the 1,000-year-old Satanic dwarf in the center of the painting. But the prince will not easily be killed: he has splintered his soul between seven horcruxes, each of which has been hidden as a sort of Easter egg within Kluge's masterpiece. Can you find them all?
We don't know what the Queen privately thinks about the piece, but the website for the Royal Danish Collections described it circumspectly as "a kind of magic realism." The portrait, in which Kluge balanced the official and private spheres of the Danish Royal Family, is a "precise depiction of humans and objects known from reality [which] form part of a universe which challenges the interpretations of the spectator, as they encompass something other and deeper than immediate, accurate likeness."
In other words, creepy, but what do YOU think?
Is the Danish Royal Family Portrait Cute or Creepy?
Do tears of grief look different under the microscope than tears of happiness?
That's the basis of photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher's new project, The Topography of Tears. Over the past several years, she collected human tears - her own and others - that accompany a wide range of feelings, including elation, sorrow, frustration, and rejection. (She's even got tears from chopping onions and those of a newborn.)
"I started the project about five years ago, during a period of copious tear, amid lots of change and loss - so I had a surplus of raw material," Fisher said to Joseph Stromberg of The Smithsonian's Collage of Arts and Sciences blog. After realizing that "everything we see in our lives is just the tip of the iceberg," visually speaking, she wondered what a tear looked like up close.
So Fisher caught one of her tears, dried it on a slide and peered through the microscope's eyepiece. "It was really interesting. It looked like an aerial view, almost as if I was looking down at a landscape from a plane. Eventually, I started wondering - would a tear of grief look any different than a tear of joy? And how would they compare to, say, an onion tear?"
Onion tears
Stromberg explained that scientifically speaking, there are three types of tears: basal tears that are released continuously in small quantities to keep the eye lubricated, reflex tears that are secreted when the eye is irritated by foreign particles like sand or onion vapors, and psychic tears from crying or weeping due to strong emotions, both positive and negative.
All tears are mainly composed of water and salts, with accompanying biological substances like antibodies and antibacterial enzymes. And according to studies, the composition of emotional or psychic tears are different than those caused by eye irritants. For example, emotional tears have more protein-based hormones.
Some of that may explain the differences in Fisher's photos of the various tears, but as any chemist would tell you, the crystallization of salt is highly dependent on a variety of factors. So keep in mind that the same emotional tears may crystallize into vastly different shapes and formations under slightly different circumstances. Regardless, that does not diminish our joy in viewing Fisher's remarkable micrographs.
First, watch the video clip above, then we'll tell you why - in the age of animated GIFs and the 6-second Vine videos - the animated clips featured in the clip are quite remarkable. You see, they're made from still photographs.
Thanks to the Kentucky Fried Chicken Candle, now your house can smell like a secret blend of 11 herbs and spices.
The KFC candle is the brainchild of Kathy Werking, and yes, it does contain fried chicken goodness. (Werking actually fried chicken in an all-natural soy wax to make the candle and added an infusion of family secrets). How else do you think it could smell that good?
Kentucky for Kentucky, which will be selling a limited edition of these mouthwatering candles soon, teases us with this description: "Let the fresh, fried sizzle of savory golden goodness drift into your hearts and homes with one of our most delectable creations to date."
Twenty four words and I'm sold!
If a candle smelling like fried chicken ain't your thing, Werking also has two more scented candles that will remind you of Kentucky: one that smells like Ale-81, a regional ginger and citrus flavored soft drink that is Kentucky's official soft drink, and one that smells like mint julep.
We've featured the funny in-flight safety video from Air New Zealand previously on Neatorama, including the Hobbit version.
Well, they're back!
Air New Zealand has released the "sequel" to their popular Hobbit In-Flight Safety Video (available below if you haven't seen it before). This one, titled "Just Another Day in Middle-earth" features actual flight attendants, pilots, aircraft engineers and more. It also features Dean O'Gorman, the New Zealand actor who plays the dwarf Fili, as well as the voice of Sylvester McCoy, who stars in The Hobbit as Radagast the Brown.
Sure, the world would be a better place if we just help one another. But would you help out a stranger over the Internet? That's what Mike Carson aimed to find out with his website ask.io
"My goal with this website is simply to do small things for those who are in need of a personal favor," Carson wrote on the site. He said that he was inspired by something Mother Teresa said:
"Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love"
Carson wanted to build a great website - something that can change the world - but when he ran into the Mother Teresa quote, he started thinking: maybe it's better to do something small - like doing small favors to those in need - but do it with love. And so, ask.io was born.
Users can ask for small favors - that favor is updated on the front page every week on Monday. Ask.io's first favor is actually from Carson himself:
How about you? Would you participate in a "do a stranger a small favor" over the Internet?Continue reading
Meet Vishavjit Singh, software analyst and cartoonist (over at Sikhtoons) by day and Captain America by night. Okay, not by night: Captain America just for one day - the turbaned and bearded version.
The idea came from photographer Fiona Aboud, who traveled the country capturing photos for her project, Sikhs: An American Portrait. The idea was to dress Singh up as Captain America, the most patriotic of all American superheros, and see how people would react.
People shook my hands, and a few literally congratulated me. The celebrity-of-the-moment experience was a little overwhelming. But I was jarred out of that trance by a few negative outliers. One man tried to grab my turban. Another yelled, “Captain Arab.” And yet another: “Terrorista!”
As we posed for a picture with one kid, he stuck his middle finger right in my face.
“So you are flipping off Captain America?” I admonished him.
He got red-faced, apologized and struck a smile instead. We carried on undeterred, and the overall crowd reaction was positive and friendly.
An NYPD officer tracked me down to take a shot together on his smartphone. He said it would be his claim to fame.
In a follow up article, Singh told us the 10 things he learned from his adventure being the Sikh Captain America. For example:
3) If you stereotype people, then you have fallen victim of the malady itself. To all the people who have given me advice to stay away from white Republican places like Jersey, Florida, Texas and the South, let me say this. If I had stereotyped the world the way it may see me in my turban and beard, I would never have walked out as Captain America. Stop projecting your insecurities. There are many good people all over America despite the political labels we wear. Intolerant asses reside all over the place. New York has its fair share. This Captain America is not a limited time offer in select locations. I was not transacting a deal. I was trying to make a connection with people. Thanks to the Army officer, Haitian American mother, woman who remembered her brief childhood encounter at a dance event with a turbaned boy in Detroit, woman from San Francisco who was inspired to dress herself and her boyfriend as Captain America, countless others who shared with me their memories, insecurities and moving encounters. Together we create super-heroic worlds.
Hari Kondabolu of Man About Town (from Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell) talked to the man:
