Trying to keep up with the rest of the flock, this sheep went headfirst into a tire swing -but didn't make it out the other side. Any attempt to flee, in any direction, just lifts her off the ground. We assume the shepherd helped her escape, after having a few laughs and recording it so that the entertainment value spreads beyond the pasture. -via Laughing Squid
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We've posted collections of bad album covers, but here's one full of LP cover art you probably haven't seen before. Maybe it's because they included albums from around the world, or maybe it's just the result of diligent searching, but these are hilariously awful.
Some are misguided, while others are sincere but low quality. And a couple are obviously parodies, yet still rank for their bizarreness.
See 30 such albums in a gallery at Vintage Everyday. -via Bored Panda
Teddy the Dobby Cat (previously at Neatorama) loves doing the laundry. Specifically, he and his sibling oriental shorthair cats enjoy sitting in the dryer with the warm laundry. In this video, he beeps while waiting for the dryer door to open. Here he is with Stache, Bindi, and Dexter.
Dexter is the black cat, and you can guess which ones are Stache and Bindi. See more of these cats at Instagram and Facebook. -via Laughing Squid
It's been said that hiring decisions are made within the first 90 seconds of meeting a prospective employee. It's more likely that people who don't make a good first impression are just eliminated from the pool at the outset. That's where Sharp Dressed Man comes in. The Baltimore organization provides suits and styling for men going to job interviews. It was founded by Christopher Schafer.
The goal of the group is to support men re-entering the workforce from prison or rehab. Schafer is a custom tailor in downtown Baltimore, who designs suits with a starting price tag of $3,000. The idea for 'Sharp Dressed Man' came to Schafer when he was looking for a way to dispose of his high-end suits his clients were no longer in need of. During the week he collects donations from clients and locals and then on Wednesday's men can come in for a free suit fitting, haircut, and hot meal.
The organization uses a network of partner agencies for donations and referrals. While you don't know anything about the men in these pictures, nor the job they are interviewing for, you can imagine the guy at the top going from busker to college professor, and the guy above going from lawn maintenance to banker. Read about Sharp Dressed Man at their website, and see 72 ranked pictures of clothing transformations at Bored Panda.
The Cat Museum of San Francisco exists online and in temporary exhibitions, and hopes to occupy a permanent location in the future. The website explores the history of cats, in records and in pop culture. They also have a Facebook feed that pays tribute to a different celebrity, historical figure, or artist each day on their birthday or anniversary, as long as that person has ever been photographed with a cat or produce cat art. Shown above is a publicity photo of actress Dolores Del Rio, whose birthday was earlier this month, with her cat.
The next day was the anniversary of the birth of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who decorated his poem "Verses on a Cat" with a sketch of a cat. -via Nag on the Lake
Pandas often give birth to twins, but only nurse one of them, which is a tragic waste of pandas. Scientists have found a workaround that relies on their innate obliviousness, as you can see in this clip from BBC Earth. One may argue that this only perpetuates the survival of less-intelligent pandas, but that's akin to closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. But is it possible that they're smarter than we know?
Oh she knows. She's just milking it for more of that sweet sweet honey water.
-via reddit
Ze Frank has a new video in his True Facts series that is both informative and juvenile. Sea worms are quite photogenic for worms, even beautiful, although their lifestyles can make you cringe. Be warned that Ze Frank's phallic innuendos may be NSFW. -via Tastefully Offensive
In 1918, polar explorer Roald Amundsen set off on a research voyage to reach the North Pole via the Northeast Passage, on a ship he'd commissioned and named Maud. The expedition was one disaster after another, but the unfortunate life of the Maud was only getting started.
From Alaska, the idea was to drift the ship over the North Pole, but poor ice conditions ultimately forced Maud south to Seattle to undergo extensive repairs. Once Maud was repaired, rather than try to ice drift again, Amundsen got distracted by the idea of flying an airplane over the North Pole and instead used Maud to haul aircraft to Alaska for the attempt. It never worked out, and by 1925 Amundsen was broke and forced to sell the ship to the Hudson’s Bay Company. The firm rechristened it the Baymaud and used it as a floating warehouse and later a radio station, one of the first in the Arctic, before the ship sank in the pack ice in 1930 in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.
The ship lay at the bottom for 86 years, but has been recovered and has been made into a museum at a port in Norway. Read the story of Amundsen's jinxed ship at Smithsonian.
The Queen of Soul has passed. Aretha Franklin died of pancreatic cancer this morning at her home in Detroit. Born into a musical family, she began singing professionally as a teenager in the 1960s, and eventually recorded music in a variety of genres: pop, soul, jazz, gospel, blues, and even opera. According to the New York Times,
Ms. Franklin had a grandly celebrated career. She placed more than 100 singles in the Billboard charts, including 17 Top 10 pop singles and 20 No. 1 R&B hits. She received 18 competitive Grammy Awards, along with a lifetime achievement award in 1994. She was the first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in 1987, its second year. She sang at the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009, at pre-inauguration concerts for Jimmy Carter in 1977 and Bill Clinton in 1993, and at both the Democratic National Convention and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral in 1968.
Franklin was an inspiration to generations of singers, and continued recording into her 70s. Aretha Franklin was 76.
Car repairs can be expensive, as anyone who owns a car knows. But with such high bills at stake, we are scared of the prospect of paying for repairs we don't need, or in other words, getting ripped off by mechanics because we don't know as much about our vehicles as they do. The good news is that most mechanics are not out to cheat you. They are out to build a reputation and a loyal customer base. But the few that take the opportunity to wring extra money out of a car owner are enough to scare all of us. If you aren't inclined to learn car repair yourself, you should at least know what red flags to look for at a car repair shop.
Scare tactics can be a big, billowing red flag — especially if they’re accompanied by a long list of repairs or an expensive price tag. If the mechanic says you shouldn’t even drive the car home, or you’re fortunate it’s still running, or you’re lucky to be alive, or whatever, you might be reasonably suspicious, especially if you’re the type who services your ride fairly regularly.
The caveat in these instances, though, is for people who don’t regularly service their car. When that car finally develops a problem, or they need to take it in for something, there’s — duh — a greater chance that something major might actually be seriously wrong. “If you haven’t done anything to your car in two years, it probably is dangerous to drive!” Ibbotson points out. “I know people who don’t do anything to their car, and then 18 things are broken, and they go, ‘Why does it cost so much money to fix?’”
Mel magazine has more tips on how to deal with car repairs so you don't end up paying for repairs you don't really need. -via Digg
In The Incredibles, Edna Mode yelled "No capes!" But she was being practical, because capes are just not safe for animated superheroes. That doesn't mean they aren't cool. Capes are in no way limited to superheroes, either. Vampires wear them. So does royalty. And historical figures, futuristic aliens, and drag queens. Oh yeah, and some superheroes. But most of all, capes in film grace the shoulders of fashionable and exciting women.
If you read this list and ask “why is [ICONIC CAPE] missing?!?!?!,” it’s probably because it was worn by a dude. Sorry.
Still, how iconic a cape is does factor into its ranking on this list. So does how good it looks, how it contributes to the characterization of its wearer, and how it is wielded by its wearer, and a certain… well, let’s just call it je ne cape quoi.
The capes are not numbered, and may or may not be in rank order. A couple of the pictures may be NSFW. See and read about them at Film School Rejects. -via Metafilter
You might think of the Normans (if you ever think of them at all) as French, but they were actually Vikings who converted to Christianity after they settled in the northern part of France (which became known as Normandy). They conquered England in the Battle of Hastings in 1066, but that was only the first leg of the path of conquests. This TED-Ed video gives us the short version of the long story of the vast influence of Norman conquerors in Europe, including our language. -via Digg
Phoebe Ann Moses was born on this date in 1860. You know her better as Annie Oakley, sharpshooting star of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. There was a lot more to her life than what people saw in the show, beginning with her peculiar childhood experiences.
1. SHE MADE HER FIRST SHOT AT 8 YEARS OLD.
Born on August 13, 1860 in a rural part of western Ohio, Phoebe Ann Moses grew up poor. Her father’s death in 1866 meant that she had to contribute to help her family survive, so she trapped small animals such as quail for food. At eight years old, she made her first shot when she killed a squirrel outside her house. “It was a wonderful shot, going right through the head from side to side. My mother was so frightened when she learned that I had taken down the loaded gun and shot it that I was forbidden to touch it again for eight months,” she later said.
2. SHE USED HER SHOOTING SKILLS TO PAY OFF HER MOM’S MORTGAGE.
Despite Oakley’s top-notch shooting skills, her widowed mother struggled to make ends meet. She sent Oakley to work for another family in exchange for her daughter getting an education. As a teenager, Oakley returned home (after working as a servant for an abusive family) and continued to hunt animals. She sold the meat to an Ohio grocery store, earning enough money to pay her mom’s $200 mortgage. She later wrote: "Oh, how my heart leaped with joy as I handed the money to mother and told her that I had saved enough to pay it off!"
That's just the beginning. Read about Annie Oakley's life, from her marriage at 16 to her work in World War I at Mental Floss.
Dutch engineer/artist Theo Jansen is known for his Strandbeests, giant kinetic sculptures that move along the beach on their own, powered only by the wind. We posted quite a few of them over the years. Over time, the Strandbeests have evolved to be bigger, lighter, and faster. They seem to be living beings, although they are made of PVC pipe, string, and zip ties. Check out this video showing off his latest, most kinetic Strandbeests. At the very end, you see Jansen with his Animaris Rhinoceros Transport from 2006, just to show how far his art has come. -via Geekologie
We take video calls for granted these days, but it wasn't so long ago that such a thing was science fiction, fantasy, or pure moonshine. AT&T promoted the idea in 1964 when they demonstrated a picture phone call at the World’s Fair in Queens.
The trouble was it was insanely expensive. A 15 minute video call would cost about $600 (adjusted for inflation). So, it wasn’t exactly an instant success.
Yeah, those were the days when long-distance phone connections were charged by the minute, and video cameras were huge and pricy. For decades, video calls were always just around the corner as developments were made. Meanwhile, we dreaded it, because we couldn't see that there would be several other ways of communicating to someone that you weren't fit to be seen at the moment. The microchip was a leap forward in miniaturization, and the internet gave us the connectivity to really do it, finally. See an illustrated overview of the journey we took to FaceTime, Skype, and all the other methods of video chat we have today at Flashbak. -via Nag on the Lake
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