I won’t speak about Brazilian politics in general, but that nation has recently produced a political reform that we can all get behind: dispute resolution by combat. Sure, it’s not the grand old practice of dueling, but it is a start.
The Guardian reports that Simão Peixoto, the mayor of the town of Borba, fought a former city councilor named Erineu da Silva. It was da Silva who issued the challenge, angry at what he perceived of as the mayor’s refusal to preserve a local waterpark. Mayor Peixoto accepted the challenge and the two fought in a ring set up in a school gym.
Da Silva lost based on points, but the mayor took a savage beating despite his victory.
Having potty trained two children, I know that this part is especially difficult. Actually using the toilet is fairly straightforward. But the manual dexterity to wipe effectively after defecating is tricky, especially when the child can't see what he or she is trying to do.
Redditor /u/Sakgeres introduces us to this clever technique used by an unknown preschool teacher. The balloons are an adequate simulation for buttocks and might help the child visualize what the hand behind the back is trying to accomplish.
But, as some commenters point out, it would be best to teach kids to use a wad of toilet paper only once.
Death Note is a manga and anime series about a young man who encounters a notebook dropped by a shinigami--a Grim Reaper-like death spirit in Japanese folklore. If he writes a person's name in the notebook, that person dies.
The young man, who is named Light, decides to use the death note. This leads to him being hunted by a formidable detective--but one not as unstoppable as Lt. Columbo of the Los Angeles Police Department.
An internet meme started by, I think, Lia Treppé imagines an ingenious alternate version of Death Note. The seemingly bumbling detective who looks barely competent to serve as a police officer, let alone a homicide detective, would certainly corner Light.
Devon Tatton is a librarian at the Greater Victoria Public Library in British Columbia. One day, while weeding print books in the travel section of her library's stacks, she found and pulled a copy of Handpicked Tours of North America: A Motorist’s Guide to Scenic Routes and Fascinating Places in Canada and the USA. When she picked it up, a tiny zine--a handmade magazine--fell out.
Tatton discovered that the book was a hallow shell filled with a wide variety of zines. Although it had a spine label and was shelved in the correct location by the Dewey Decimal System, it was a fake. Inside was a message saying that the book was the "central branch" of an underground zine trading library.
Tatton had discovered a guerilla library operating secretly inside her own library. This began her quest to find the person responsible for creating and managing this secret library. Tatton was successful. Read the whole story at Capital Daily.
Are you a world-class gaming champion? Do you have the perfect erogonomic setup to maximize your dexterity? Do you have thousands of followers on Twitch? Then perhaps you can play against the best who were present at the Financial Modeling World Cup.
PC World reports that 128 top-ranked players met online yesterday to see who is the undisputable master of Microsoft Excel. In each round, the contestants are delivered a 1-5 page case study that must be modeled and resolved in the spreadsheet software.
The winner was Andrew "NGOAT" Ngai, who prevailed over Michael "Jarman's Army" Jarman, who was unable to discover the source of an error in his spreadsheet in the final problem. Ngai claimed the $10,000 prize money.
You can watch a complete recording of the event on YouTube.
-via Dave Barry | Image: Financial Modeling World Cup
Why are reindeer associated with Santa Claus? In History Today, Alexander Lee traces the history of the Santa Claus legend. He begins with the historical Saint Nicholas, who was a Fourth Century A.D. Christian bishop in what is now Turkey. He was famous for sneaking into a poor man's house to leave money as a present.
When the Protestant Reformation came to Germany, Martin Luther decided to keep the Catholic feast day of Saint Nicholas, which continued to thrive in German-speaking areas of Europe, as well as spread outside of it to England and other nations.
German immigration to the United States led to the proliferation of Santa Claus imagery in America, emphasizing his gift giving to children. Perhaps heavy winters in the early Ninteenth Century encouraged artists to depict him in a sleigh.
In 1821, a New York City publishing house produced the anonymously written poem titled The Children's Friend: A New-Year's Present, to the Little Ones from Five to Twelve. One of the illustrations showed a reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh. The Santa legend rapidly assimilated this image and added the number of reindeer. Read about this change at History Today.
TikToker TeeCee has two great talents: combining foods and video editing. She has the soul of a Cordon Bleu chef and the skills of a Hollywood storyboard artist.
I had orginally planned to post her video of dipping a cinnamon roll in a bowl of chili, but as I explored her Instagram channel, I found only more and more imaginative food videos. Yes, we should get around to trying this combination, but a more imperative recipe is dipping sticks of butter into Ragu sauce and eating them whole.
To adapt a phrase from Robin Williams's character in Dead Poets Society, foods like this are what we stay alive for.
Well, maybe he's pretending. Maybe he actually has the power to manipulate the intersection at the baggage carousel.
Some people will claim that this man, who is the comedian Andres Ini, recorded at an airport in Barcelona in 2018, is standing in front of one of those smart baggage mergers that prevent clogs from forming. But I still believe in magic and I hope that the people standing next to him do, too. May Ini use his powers for good.
Assuming that this photo is real, Dr. Kenyon Wilson, professor of music at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, would like for his students to carefully read his course syllabus. He left a fifty dollar bill inside a locker and included the combination in the document. No student took the money.
I will withhold judgment on Wilson's students' attentiveness until I see the syllabus itself. In the past few years, I've sat in on discussions by rhetoric professors about the literary genre of the syllabus and the ways in which they can be written to discourage students from actually reading them. Maybe his is as short at W.H. Auden's famous one-page syllabus from 1941. Maybe it's a twenty-page document written by lawyers that reads like (and essentially is) a terms of service agreement. Maybe Wilson would be out of money if he had left a Franklin instead of a Grant in the locker.
There's no swimsuit component at this beauty pageant, but contestants are expected to be perfect specimens of physical beauty (sorry, but inner beauty doesn't count). Every year, Saudi Arabia holds the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival in Riyadh. This is the world's most prestigious beauty pageant for camels. Now, tragically, this contest has been wracked with scandal.
The Associated Press reports that pageant authorities have expelled more than 40 participants due to artificial enhancements, including hormones to increase muscle mass, botox to increase lip volume, and fillers to shape the camels' faces into relaxed expressions. These camels will be unable to compete and secure the $66 million in prize money.
If the facility looks more like a train station than an art gallery, it's because the temporary and improvised art gallery is in a train station. This photo by Sara Scanlan is one of many displaying the artistic scene on BART, the public train system in San Francisco. These happy, creative people joined together for two hours on Saturday for BART Basil 2021, an unauthorized art celebration. Here's how participant and all-around Renaissance woman Danielle Baskin describes it:
Italian artist Giulia Bernardelli is becoming famous around the internet for her striking images made with spilled tea and coffee. After tipping over a cup of what is presumably the best drink available (she is Italian), she uses her fingers, brushes, and styluses to shape the liquids into famous or even original works of art.
Those are not the most common ingredients to use in beer brewing, but brewmaster Valgeir Valgeirsson is no stranger to strange beers. From his facility in Iceland, Valgeirsson has also brewed beer with seaweed, algae, Christmas tree stumps, and fish. For this Christmas season, AFP reports that he decided to make a beer with a traditional Icelandic Christmas dish--green peas and stewed cabbage.
The brewery made this beer, named Ora Jolabjor, in cooperation with Ora, Iceland's largest food production company. The can design resembles the cans of peas and cabbage that Ora sells in grocery stores.
Valgeirsson made just over 7,200 gallons, which sold out only very quickly. Consumers report that the smell and flavor definitely reflects the main ingredients.
Military pilots may have to stay airborne and ready for action for long periods of time--long enough that they desperately need to urinate. One unfortunately common response for this need has been for pilots to intentionally dehydrate themselves to reduce their need to pee. But this also impairs their physical endurance and mental concentration.
The US Air Force recently announced a new type of urinal that may alleviate this problem. The Skydrate by Omni Defense Tech is major innovation in airborne toileting. The male version cups around the pilot's penis and sucks excreted urine into a bag.
The female version resembles a huge plastic maxi pad that, when wedged into the user's groin, likewise pulls away urine and collects it into a bag attached to the flightsuit.
This brilliant invention could also be implemented at other workplaces. Just imagine how much more blogging could get done at Neatorama if authors no longer had to go to the restroom during their shifts.
A few years ago, I accidentally turned on the subtitles on Netflix and, well, never turned them off. Now I watch everything, including shows in English, with subtitles on.
Pen Pearson, a critic at Slashfilm (/Film), does likewise. That's because he's noticed that it's increasingly hard for him to understand what actors are saying. It's not because he's suffered hearing loss. Movies are intentionally made this way now.
In his deep dive into the issue, Pearson discovered that some filmmakers choose a sound design that makes the dialogue difficult to follow beecause they often want to show hard, difficult situations for characters--the sorts of situations that might make it difficult to hear what's going on. If the audience can't understand the actors, they can empathize with the challenges of the character in that given situation.
Futhermore, actors vocalize differently these days. If I understand Pearson correctly, he means that actors aren't trained to speak clearly on an open stage, but to talk, or even mumble, into a microphone. This is a popular acting style that makes a sound engineer's work difficult. And because the modern visual style of movies calls for wide shots, it's not always possible to simply lower a boom mic over an actor.
Other trends contribute to this problem, such as the transition from sound design for theaters to online streaming video. Read about them at /Film.
