I grew up watching television—really more than I should have. Back then, to watch a new episode, you had to wait until it aired the next week. If you missed it because you had other plans . . . well, too bad. You missed it.
Now, it’s normal to watch an entire season of a show and only that show for a while. The television watching experience is very different. Tony Wilson of Dorkly summarized it in 5 cartoons. You can view the rest here.
At a fancy hotel like the Hotel Indigo along San Antonio’s Riverwalk, the concierge staff is there to ensure that your special (but legal) needs are tended to. Imgur member FreePsychicReadings decided to put them to the test. She asked a concierge to place on her bed a framed photo of actor Nicholas Cage as he appeared in the movie Con Air.
Ramon the concierge was prompt, efficient, and accurate.
But the test wasn’t over. The guest wanted more Nicholas Cage pictures—and specific ones—placed in particular areas of her room. You can view more photos and screenshots from their exchange here.
-via 22 Words
What does it mean to be a beautiful woman? This is a subjective question. The answer varies from culture to culture. BuzzFeed offers this video highlighting feminine beauty standards in different countries and periods of history, including ancient Egypt, China during the Han Dynasty, Victorian Britain, and 1960s America.
(Photo: Tampa Humane Society)
Someone in Tampa, Florida hit Bart the cat with a car. He was lying, apparently lifeless, in a pool of his own blood in the road when his owner, Ellis Hutson, found him. Hutson dug a hole and buried Bart. He and his family mourned the loss of Bart.
But Bart wasn't done yet. He had unfinished business.
5 days after he had been buried, Bart returned home, hungry, bloody, and dehydrated. Bart lost an eye, has deep lacerations, and a broken jaw. But he's alive.
How is Bart still alive? Hutson's neighbor, Dusty Albritton, has no idea:
“I saw him with my own eyes. I know he was dead. He was cold and stiff,” Albritton told ABC News. […]
“Now my kids believe their cat will also rise from the dead," she said with a chuckle. "But I told them I don't think so."
When she discovered the resurrected Bart, she said he acted “like he’s in no pain whatsoever.”
-via Ace of Spades HQ
Admit it: you would do this, too.
Monday was Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day, one of the more under-appreciated holidays on the American cultural calendar. Rarely will employers give workers a day off on this most hallowed of occasions (I’m looking at you, Alex).
But the five men behind the YouTube channel Dude Perfect celebrated the correct way. They took a pilgrimage to the headquarters of the Sealed Air Corporation in Charlotte, North Carolina. This is that wondrous place where bubble wrap is born. There, like in the Olympics of old, the five dudes undertook athletic competitions in honor of bubble wrap.
-via Huffington Post
(Photo via Mitteldeutsche Zeitung)
Being a romantic sort, Christian Breier found the perfect way to propose to his girlfriend. He drove over the speed limit past a traffic speed monitoring camera near his home in Leipzig, Germany. While doing so, he held up a sign saying (in German), “Will you marry me?”
A police computer issued him a ticket and mailed it to him, along with a photo of his car speeding past the camera. When Breier’s girlfriend opened up the ticket, she found his marriage proposal. Justin Huggler describes the challenges of this proposal in the Daily Telegraph:
That meant it was a delicate operation, and Mr Breier said it took him five attempts at driving past the cameras holding the sign up before he went fast enough to trigger the camera.
Far from being offended at Mr Breier’s flouting of the law and abuse of their speed camera, local officials in the small town of Merseburg seem to have decided to play along when they discovered Mr Breier’s ruse, because they took the unusual step of sending a print of the speed camera photo blown up to A4 size.
Mr Breier’s 29-year-old girlfriend, who gave her name only as Anja, told reporters: “We had spoken about marriage before. And I told him he’d have to think of a cool way of proposing.”
Mr Breier’s response to the challenge cost him a €15 fine, but as far as he was concerned, it was worth it: she said yes.
(Photo: Scott Davidson)
There are degrees of stolenness. Something can be just a smidgen stolen. Something else can be fairly well stolen. Or, in more extreme cases, an item can be very stolen or even profoundly stolen. The gradations can be subtle, but they are not invisible.
Alas, for this woman in Sandestin, Florida, police did not accept her argument that the truck she was in was not as stolen as they believed. The Daily News reports:
When officers pointed out that she knew the vehicle had been stolen, she replied, “I didn’t think it was that stolen,” according to the report.
She is charged with grand theft of a motor vehicle.
-via VA Viper
Tez Gilmir’s son loves LEGO. He’s obsessed with it and his father wants to promote this creative hobby. So he built this large, portable kit that folds and unfolds as needed. There’s even a built-in stool! The cabinet is made out of plywood with 3D printed lettering. The bins are labeled for easy sorting. They all lock in place when it’s folded up. You can read and download copies of the plans here.
(Photo: Patrick Peterson)
I have never taken a selfie, so I am very, very far behind Patrick Peterson, a cornerback on the Arizona Cardinals football team. He’s a fast actor with both a football and a cellphone. On Tuesday, Peterson secured a Guinness World Record by taking 1,449 selfies with a cellphone in just one hour. That’s one every 2.48 seconds.
Peterson performed the feat at Deer Valley High School in Glendale, Arizona. His attempt blew away the old record of 657 established by Lee Goodfellow in Glasgow, Scotland last year.
(Photo: Portland State University)
Italy plans to send an espresso machine to the International Space Station later this year, which has prompted this innovative cup design. Astronauts usually suck liquids out of containers with tubes. But that’s a terrible way to drink fine Italian coffee. Espresso should be sipped from an espresso cup. This cup developed by researchers at Portland State University can permit precisely that, even in very low gravity. Liz Stinson writes for Wired:
The cup’s shape is odd—a little like a plastic baby boot—and was determined by mathematical models. Every curve and geometric shape is designed to encourage the controlled movement of liquid. You’ll notice a pointed corner in the center of the cup; this strange bit of design is what makes it possible to drink liquids in low gravity. The corner essentially acts like a wick, using surface tension to guide liquid toward your mouth. As soon as an astronaut touches her mouth to the lip of the cup, a capillary connection is formed and the liquid travels up the vessel and forms sippable balls of coffee.
It sounds simple enough, but designing a cup for space requires a deep understanding of how fluids move in low gravity. “We’re geeks, and we make spacecraft fluid systems,” says Mark Weislogel, a professor of mechanical and mechanical engineering who is leading the research. “It’s like space plumbing.
“Why are you black?” If you’re a black person visiting China, you may get asked this question. This fascinating video by TMD Shanghai shares the experience of being a black visitor to China, which historically has had few black residents.
For African American visitors, it gets even stranger. The narrator explains that many Chinese believe that all black people are from Africa, so African Americans are not native English speakers.
Content warning: some foul language.
-via Rocket News 24
Need to cut a path through the snow? Maybe you should get an auto sleigh. Even in the early years of automobiles, people were converting their cars into self-powered sleighs. One common arrangement was to place the car on skids and tie the engine drive into one or two helical screws. Pictured above is a converted Hupmobile Model 20 Torpedo Roaster. Below is a patent drawing for a similar car design filed by Charles E.S. Burch of Seattle in 1907. You can read more about these cars at The Old Motor.
(Image: US Patent Office)
-via Nag on the Lake
Taiwanese artist Kare Huang composed this magnificent piece of science fiction (it is fictional, right?) art. The enormous mechanical duck is inscribed with the words “UN Navy” and “Big Rubber Duck.” How does it inspire you? What story or caption can you write for it?
-via The Geek Twins
(Photo: Mini Time Machine Museum of Miniature)
During her lifetime, Tucson, Arizona philanthropist Pat Arnell has collected a wide array of ornate, high-quality miniatures. Five years ago, Arnell opened a museum to exhibit her collection to the public: the Mini Time Machine Museum of Miniature. There, visitors can find this beautiful work by the American miniaturist W. Foster Tracy. It is a 1:8 scale representation of an Eighteenth Century violin maker’s workshop set inside a full-size violin. This is 1 of 6 copies that Tracy made in 1979.
-via Messy Nessy Chic
(Image: Leo Panthera)
This is the Clarendon Dry Pile, a device so old that documentation about its origins is a bit spotty. It was set up at the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University in 1840. It’s a dry pile, which means that it’s made of alternating layers of sulfur, silver, and zinc that generate electrical current.
Mechanically, it’s a bell, which is why it’s sometimes called the Oxford Electric Bell. The clapper between the two sections oscillates back and forth. The movements are too small to see easily and the sounds are too quiet to hear unaided. It has rung approximately 10 billion times while in operation. You can read more about this remarkable antique at Vice.
-via Marginal Revolution
