This street art wrapped around two corners of the Chicken Shop in Chicago. It's the work of E. Lee, not to be confused with Wile E. Coyote. At Instagram, Lee tells us about the work.
It was a challenge creating a story-line using two corners with so much distance between them. But I was really happy to do this Wile E Coyote piece. The consummate failure is my favorite character of all time. I love him for knowing what he wants and going after it; for being creative in the pursuit; and for always getting up after he falls and trying again. He's inspired... and a hell of a painter :)
Check out this time-lapse video of the painting process:
Dr. Shannon Moore of Hocking Hills Animal Clinic in Logan, Ohio, tells how she ran into a former patient while hiking in the woods. Since she's a veterinarian, there wasn't much conversation, but she did stop to examine how her work was holding up, and take a couple pictures.
Several years ago, a client brought me a box turtle that had been hit by a car. I used fiberglass to repair his broken shell and then released him in my woods. Recently, while walking on my hillside, I spotted an odd pattern in the leaves. To my amazement, there was my old patient with the fiberglass still on... years later! Sometimes, being a vet is the best thing there is.
I can imagine that the turtle has spent his time explaining to his buddies that mesh-and-Bondo is a turtle's best friend. And the vet, too, of course. -via Boing Boing
Geniuses come in many forms, but the most important type of geniuses are those brilliant folks who affect positive change in the world and therefore make life better for us all.
And while many geniuses strive to create groundbreaking inventions and formulate scientific breakthroughs inventor Simone Giertz has set her sights on healing the world with humor.
If you've seen Simone's videos before then you know her inventions don't always go according to plan, but this time she has come up with a real winner- a wearable memory foam mattress, complete with blanket cape, so she can nap always.
The women -and they are almost always women- who clean hotel rooms before and after you stay there have a hard job. They clean up after guests no matter what kind of mess they leave behind, they are allowed little time do it, and they don't make much money. And if they don't have to use their real names, they will tell you some things you might not know about their jobs.
8. THEY SUGGEST YOU DON’T USE THE CUPS.
Although you’ve probably heard warnings about the bacteria teeming on your hotel room’s remote control, hotel maids reveal that there’s another item in your room that's rarely cleaned as well as it should be. “Not using the cups is my number one rule that I tell everyone,” Booboo_the_bear says. “I’ve definitely seen [other maids] polishing glasses with the same cloth they just used to dust the room. I’ve never seen the toilet brush used but knowing some of the people I work with, it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.”
Author and hotel worker Jacob Tomsky adds that the minibar glasses need to be spotless, but maids don’t have dish soap in their housekeeping carts. “So some housekeepers will wash the glasses in the sink with hot water and shampoo. But many of them use furniture polish because it leaves the glasses spot-free,” he tells USA Today.
Mugging is not as profitable as it used to be. Come to think of it, you don't even hear the word "mugging" much anymore. There are more people with a financial sob story than there are people with money. Even if this fellow had a positive net worth, he probably wouldn't have any cash in his pockets. Credit cards and phones are more traceable than they've ever been. The upshot is that we're all in this together, or at least the vast majority. He probably should give the guy a hug. This is the latest from Zach Weinersmith at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
When we hear someone talk about their 5-year-old painting we usually envision messy finger paintings and a parent who has to clean up one masterpiece of a mess for the sake of their child's artistic enrichment.
But Cassie of CassieSwirls isn't an ordinary 5-year-old in that way, because she creates paintings of galaxies that look so good you'd never know they were painted by a kindergartner...unless you look at the signature.
Cassie's galaxy paintings have been blowing people's minds with their incredible detail and rich use of color, and Cassie even adds glitter and metallics to make her paintings "happy".
So far young Cassie has sold over 100 of her galaxy paintings, and like a true citizen of planet Earth she has donated nearly a thousand dollars from the sales to charity, so her paintings can bring people happiness in more than one way.
This Canada Day will mark the country's 150th anniversary. To celebrate, Tim Hortons' will be introducing a poutine doughnut -though, oddly, the savory and sweet treat will only be available in America. "Our new Canadian-inspired treats are a great way for Americans to get in on the 150th celebration of their friendly neighbour next door," said a representative in a statement. Canadians do get some treats to celebrate though, including maple Timbits, a white and red velvet muffin, a Dutchie doughnut and a Nanaimo bar doughnut.
I used to think religious zealots and talk show hosts trying to make a name for themselves were the only people who thought Dungeons & Dragons was a threat to America, but back in 1983 the FBI believed D&D was bad news too.
But their reason didn't involve Satan or the corruption of souls- it involved cocaine trafficking, and they even had the game's creator Gary Gygax on their list as a possible suspect:
The first, dated 1983, has to do with “significant cocaine traffickers in the Lake Geneva, Wisconsin area.” The birthplace of D&D was, and still is, a sleepy lakeside town just over the Illinois border. An FBI agent rooting around there for drug traffickers seems pretty far fetched, but the report appears to be genuine.
D&D co-creator Gary Gygax is named in the document, but whatever the FBI’s interest in him was has been redacted. It ended with a note that the FBI would proceed to “review corporate records for TSR, Inc. in effort to identify corporate officers and attorney of record.” A second document, dated March 1984, seems to show the FBI doing its due diligence to make sure that TSR was a publishing company and not a front for cocaine trafficking.
Twelve years later TSR, the makers of D&D, were the focus of another FBI investigation, but this time Dungeons & Dragons players were investigated in connection with The Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski:
The document also mentions an FBI visit with a gaming group in Fresno, California. Members of the group were shown pictures of one of the Unabomber’s explosive devices and asked if they recognized an individual from a “composite drawing.” This is likely the iconic image of the man in a hood circulated for more than a decade prior to Kaczynski’s arrest.
The final document, the most heavily redacted of the bunch, is dated April 1995. It seems to focus on an interview with a single individual at TSR, and centers around that person’s relationship with another individual in their gaming group.
“Many of the members of the group became paranoid,” the agent writes, “and began pointing fingers at one another. [The interview subject] indicated that he believes this is based on the suspicious nature of the individuals that were in the gaming group [and] indicated that he is quite sure that some of the members of the group fantasized about the possibility that maybe one of their members was responsible for the bombings.”
Chief meteorologist Ted Pretty of Fox5 in Las Vegas was sent out to do a human interest story on fireworks for the Fourth of July. They did it live from a fireworks stand. It did not go as planned... or did it? Select text ahead to see spoiler: the kid is his son. (via reddit)
Bill Schindler is an anthropology professor at Washington College in Maryland. In his class Experimental Archaeology and Primitive Technology, students learn the way things were done when you didn't have someone else specializing in doing it for others. Things like butchering animals, making their own clothing and dishes, and cooking -using tools they make themselves.
The skills prehistoric peoples depended on seem exotic to today’s college students, who Schindler says arrive on campus each year with less and less of the sort of practical experience that he emphasizes in his class. He tells of the time he asked some students to crack eggs and separate the yolks from the whites. He returned to the kitchen 10 minutes later to find that not a single egg had been cracked. “I asked them if the problem was that nobody had ever told them how to separate the yolk from the whites, and received blank stares in return,” he recalled. “After a minute of silence, one of them said, ‘I’ve never cracked an egg.’ I was floored—how do you even make it to 19 without cracking an egg?”
Schindler wants us to know that "primitive" people were not less intelligent than we are, they were just focused on different things. In fact, they may have even been smarter. After all, they did not have weapons that could destroy millions, nor did they have factories that polluted the planet. And Schindler lives his life using the ancient skills he teaches in class. Read about Schindler and his views on ancient societies at the Atlantic. -via TYWKIWDBI
It's rare to find a teen or tween who even wants to be at the hospital while their mom gives birth to a new family member, much less hang out in the delivery room.
But 12-year-old Jacee Dellapena wanted to attend the birth of her new baby brother Zadyn, so her parents allowed her to be in the delivery room while her mom Dede gave birth.
Then Dede's obstetrician Dr. Walter Wolfe suggested Jacee should suit up and help him deliver Zadyn, a suggestion she was surprisingly excited about.
Once you got all dressed in the 1700s, you needed to have some place to go! You might even go to the library for a book club meeting, although that could cause people to talk.
These libraries weren’t just places to find books, but social institutions as well. One famous library also had a billiard room, a public exhibition room, and a music library. “They were not the hushed environments that we now associated with libraries, but, at their best, elegant spaces full of people to converse with,” Williams writes. Libraries even had a touch of controversy, as they gave people of different social classes access to books and offered women a place to congregate outside the home.
As books became more available to everyday people, they gathered to share them with each other, and even to discuss them, in bars and public houses as well as libraries. Of course, when people get together to talk, the subject cannot be limited to one subject, and a social gathering needs refreshments, right? Read about those early, rowdy book clubs at Atlas Obscura.
The Rock of Gibraltar, which guards the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea, is honeycombed with caves, tunnels, and chambers. After World War II, a rumor spread about a secret military installation in which six men spent a year sealed inside during the war. It was just a rumor until the chamber was found in 1997! Over the next ten years, the real purpose of the chamber came to light. It was Operation Tracer.
Rear Admiral John Henry Godfrey, the Director of the Naval Intelligence Division of the British Admiralty, suggested that they establish at Gibraltar a covert observation post which would remain operational even if Gibraltar fell into enemy hands. This observation post would be located in a hidden chamber within the Rock of Gibraltar with two small openings to watch for movements on the harbor. Six men were selected to be sealed inside the cave, and while there were enough supplies to last one year, there was to be no way out of the chamber, and if any men were to die they were to be embalmed and cemented into the brick floor. Only if Germany was defeated within the first year would they be released.
The cave was built, and six men were trained, but Operation Tracer was never put into service because Hitler turned his attention away from the Mediterranean. Read about the plans and see pictures of the cave at Amusing Planet. -via Metafilter
If you've been wondering what legendary rock guitarist Eric Clapton has been doing lately, you need to look toward Iceland, where he's been doing a bit of fishing.
Clapton, while on a fly-fishing trip to Iceland last week, landed a 28-pound salmon on the Vatnsdalsá River, setting the record for reeling in the biggest salmon of the summer. The massive fish measured 42.5 inches. Working with Vatnsdalsá guide Sturla Birginsson, Clapton had to run over half a mile downriver after hooking the monster, and spent two and a half hours reeling it in. The local fishing association enforces a strict catch-and-release policy on the Vatnsdalsá River, but Clapton was able to snap a picture of his record-setting catch before setting it back into the river.
Clapton has always liked fishing, but after recovering from drug addiction more than 30 years ago, Gary Brooker of Procol Harem got him hooked on fly-fishing as an alternative. Since then, Clapton has even designed his tours around the availability of fly-fishing. He's been traveling to Iceland to Iceland to fish for salmon since 2000. Read about the guitarist's fishing habit at Men's Journal. -via Metafilter
If you have a backyard pool, you've probably dealt with the horror of finding dead animals in it at one time or another. If they fall in, the sides are too steep and slippery for squirrels to climb out, and there's no solid surface for frogs to jump from. That's where the Frog Log comes in. The "critter saving escape ramp" is a floating platform attached to a ramp that anchors at the side of your pool. Small creatures, such as snakes, chipmuncks, or ducklings, can climb onto the platform from the water because it is edged with netting. The ramp also has netting for a firm grip. It's a lifesaver for the animal and you don't have to remove dead bodies before your refreshing dip. See a video at Geekologie that shows frogs, a salamander, a mouse, and a skink all escaping a pool using the Frog Log.
