The Tramp looks a bit rough, but Lady looks as prim and proper as ever. No matter what their species, they were destined to fall in love. This is one of several Disney anthropomorphizations by Alaina Bastain. She's taken animal characters from Disney animated movies and redrawn them as humans. She includes characters from Tarzan, Oliver and Company, Jungle Book, The Lion King, and more. You can view the rest at Bored Panda.
-via My Modern Met
(Photo: David Hartley)
Jessica Bruce, 32, has long been a marathoner. Her best time is 2 hours and 58 minutes. When she gave birth to baby Daniel 7 months ago, she didn't want to stop. So she began training while pushing a stroller.
Bruce recently put her new training to the test by running a marathon in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK. While pushing her baby in a stroller, she completed the marathon in 3 hours, 17 minutes, and 52 seconds. This beats the previous world record by 14 minutes.
Her husband ran alongside her. He fed the baby a bottle while they kept running. Although they brought along supplies for a diaper change, it was unnecessary. Baby Daniel slept for the first 20 miles, then relaxed for the remaining distance. You can read more about their run at the Daily Telegraph.
(Photo: Columbia Spectator)
The ninth Rule of Acquisition states: "Opportunity plus instinct equals profit." Jonah Reider, a student at Columbia University in New York City, saw opportunity where other people didn't. He had room for a table for four people in his dorm room. He had access to a shared kitchen. He had excellent cooking skills. He combined these to form a new business: a restaurant.
Pith, as Reider's restaurant is called, is already booked through November. He calls it a supper club, which it technically is. Reider dines with his guests. But in an interview with Grubstreet, he discusses his goal to making a profit:
You're just charging for ingredients, and not turning a profit. Will that change?
That is great, but it’s also unsustainable. I don’t think I could continue, for a very long time, to spend two or three hours a day doing this, and just getting paid back for ingredients. As a student, it’s great, and I’m happy to do it. It’s such a good excuse to practice cooking. But I’m trying to figure out if there’s a way to make this ever so slightly profitable. It’s so frustrating that eating in New York is so prohibitively expensive. Only a specific slice of the city gets to go out to eat. I don’t think that experience is what many people are looking for. It also doesn’t need to be a formal thing.
-via Super Punch
No, don't play the video.
That's 1. That's 2. That's 3.
Okay, time out. No arguments, readers. You earned your time out by watching this video by BreakWomb that imagines how weird it would be if parents talked to adults the way they talk to their children. Laurel Coppock, Molly Erdman, and Megan Grano treat each other like 4-year olds.
-via BuzzFeed
(Image: Sina)
Is some floozy getting too friendly with your husband? You'll need to deal with your husband. But you may also need to explain to the homewrecker that your man is taken. According to What's on Weibo, a blog that summarizes news from China, market demand has created a new profession: mistress discourager. Adultery and divorce are on the rise in China, so it's possible to earn a good living by driving off extra partners:
So-called “third person dissuaders” or “mistress discouragers” specialise in persuading mistresses to step back from their client’s marriage, and make an annual salary of approximately one million yuan (157,500 US$).
Saving a marriage does not come cheap. China’s “third person dissuaders” or “mistress discouragers” sometimes charge as high as 250,000 yuan (±40,000 US$) to persuade ‘the third person’ (小三), or ‘the other woman’, to step back from their clients’ marriage.
-via Dave Barry
"Bum"? Keep things clean, Betty. pic.twitter.com/qwLAwmQwKr
— Chicken Treat (@ChickenTreat) October 15, 2015
Chicken Treat, an Australian chicken restaurant, is insourcing its social media operation to Betty, a chicken. This highly trained hen, who is clearly setting herself up for some choice social media consulting gigs, will have complete control over Chicken Treat's Twitter feed until she spells a proper 5-letter English word. This, the company hopes, will secure Betty a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records.
(Image: D. Weiss)
What do you do if the dead won't stay dead? Greek settlers in the colony of Kamarina in Sicily may have addressed that problem in two graves uncovered by archaeologists in the 1980s. The bodies were weighed down with heavy pottery fragments--as though to prevent the bodies from rising up. Live Science reports on the findings of archaeologist Carrie Sulosky Weaver:
For her book, Sulosky Weaver "needed to understand why these individuals would be buried in a different manner," she told Live Science in an email, during a dig in Turkey.
One grave held the skeletal remains of an adult of unknown sex whose teeth had lines of arrested growth — a sign of serious malnutrition or illness, Sulosky Weaver said. The head and feet of the person were covered with "large amphora fragments… a large, two-handled ceramic vessel that was typically used for storing liquids," she wrote in the article.
The heavy amphora fragments "were presumably intended to pin the individual to the grave and prevent it from seeing or rising," she added.
Another grave contains the skeleton of a child, likely age 8 to 13. The skeleton didn't have any signs of disease, but five large stones were placed on top of it, possibly to stop a revenant from leaving the grave, Sulosky Weaver said.
-via Jonah Goldberg
(Photo: Lwp Kommunikáció)
As one of the world's greatest astrophysicists, Stephen Hawking understands so many wonders of the universe. But he's just like us, amirite fellas?
Hawking, who has been married and divorced twice, recently did a reddit AMA interview. In it, one redditor asked him "What is the one mystery that you find most intriguing, and why?" The illustrious intellectual responded:
Women. My PA reminds me that although I have a PhD in physics women should remain a mystery.
-via Jonah Goldberg
Many years ago, novelist Brian J. Noggle bought his wife an iMac. It broke, but he kept the desiccated carcass around in case he thought of something useful to do with it. After buying a corkboard, he realized what he could do: turn the old computer into a modern-looking corkboard. The entire project, he notes, was quite cheap:
Imgur member Arduosity crafted this incredibly detailed and intricate chess set. S/he describes it as "near impossible to set up." But it's the ultimate option in portable chess sets. Just flip open the top, lay out the pieces, then hold very, very still.
-via Rusty Blazenhoff
(Photo: olyagrebelnaya)
The 1937 Azerbaijani novel Ali and Nino tells the story of a Muslim man and a Christian woman in the city of Baku who fall in love. Their cultures will not tolerate such a relationship and they are torn asunder. This enormous sculpture in Batumi, Georgia by Tamara Kvesitadze tells their story. Every evening at 7 o'clock, the two lovers approach, kiss, then pass right through each other.
This video shows the sequence. The metal plates forming the bodies don't collide because they are set at alternating heights. You can see more photos at My Modern Met.
It's no wonder that people think of Mary Cotter as a Wonder Woman. Her 103rd birthday party was held at the Montclair Senior Center in Montclair, California. Ms. Cotter was busy the entire time. She's been volunteering there for 25 years and didn't see her own birthday as an excuse to slack off. She lives alone and drives her own car, so she has a mind to do what she wants at her own party. ABC News 7 reports:
Cotter says the secret to her longevity has to do with her daily routine. And it's pretty obvious if you stop and watch her for a moment.
"Just keep busy I guess," she said with a shrug.
She's been busy for years. In 1930, she helped her high school win the state swim championship. She taught swimming to children into her 60s and helped rescue sea turtles well into her 90s.
-via The Mary Sue
In casual conversation, friends Chris Pettazzoni, Keith Barnofski, and Andrew Brach talked about how wonderful peanut butter, banana, and bacon sandwiches are. This is their traditional hangover cure. It was missing only one thing: a jolt of caffeine.
This led to the invention of STEEM. Each tablespoon has as much caffeine as a cup of coffee. CNN reports:
They put Barnofski's sous chef skills to work and devised a way to caffeinate peanut butter. Brach said they mixed green-coffee extract and natural agave sweetener into peanut butter. He said the caffeine gets extracted from the green coffee bean and mixes with the fat of the peanut butter.
"It's a slower release of energy," he said. "That way you don't get the sugar crash."
He said that two tablespoons of Steem is equal to two cups of coffee.
It look about two years to turn the concept into a jar of Steem ready for sale. He said they rented out a food processing facility at a community center in Greenfield, Mass., and since their launch in March 2014 they've sold nearly 6,000 jars.
-via David Thompson
(Photo: My Little Pony Japan)
So, obviously, we'll be closing down the blog for a few days so that the entire Neatorama crew can go there. Alex hasn't announced it yet, but that's the obvious choice.
So, to repeat, just in case you're still in shock from the joy of the moment: there's a My Little Pony-themed cafe in the Harajuku district of Tokyo. It's open until November 29, when I gather it will be closed to make way for some other, less interesting theme. The decorations, food, and furnishings show images of Generation 2, Generation 3, and Generation 4 ponies--but not Generation 1 or Generation 3.5, which is just as well, honestly. You can see more photos at Kotaku.
(Photo: Pekin Daily Times/Robert Downen)
On Thursday, 16 children and several mothers had gathered in a meeting room at the Morton Public Library in Morton, Illinois. A 19-year old man wielding two knives walked in and, blocking the door, announced his intention to kill them.
Standing between him and the children was 75-year old James Vernon. Vernon talked to the criminal, maneuvered him away from the door, then signaled the kids to slip out. After they did so, Vernon made good use of the knife-fighting training that the US Army gave him 50 years ago. The Pekin Daily Times reports:
Brown slashed from the right towards Vernon, who blocked the blade with his left hand. “I should have hit his wrist. That’s how you’re trained, but it’s been half a century,” he said.
“First rule of combat: Be fast and vigorous,” said Vernon, who was trained but never served in combat. Vernon’s medium build was enough to overcome his smaller attacker.
“I grabbed him and threw ... Somehow he wound up on a table” with the knife in his left hand pinned under his body, Vernon said. “I hit him on the (right) collarbone with my closed hand” until Brown, his arm numbed by the blows, dropped that knife.
Vernon held the attacker down until the police arrived. He was badly cut in the fight, but is recovering.
-via Joe Carter