Instagram member pinksith snapped this photo of a cosplayer at Star Wars Celebration in Chicago this past April. George Lucas has modified his iconic jeans and blue plaid flannel shirt to suit his new role as Jabba's slave.
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Any reasonably intelligent person can provide basic care for your dog while you are away from the home. But for dog walkers with a flair for creative writing, there are additional opportunities. Karin Bruilliard explains in the Washington Post (paywalled, sorry) that many dog owners appreciate and will pay extra for a dog walker who can leave detailed and amusing reports about their dogs' adventures:
In a nation where people lead ever more busy lives and increasingly view their dogs as family members, professional dog walking is flourishing. And along with it is what might be viewed as the unusual art of dog walker communication. Many of today’s walkers do not simply stroll — not if they want to be rehired, anyway. Over text and email, they craft fine-grained, delightful narratives tracing the journey from arrival at the residence to drop-off. They report the number of bathroom stops. They take artistic photos, and lots of them.
“For an hour-long walk, I send six or eight, depending,” said Griffin, 44, who holds a treat in her hand when shooting to ensure her charge is looking at the camera. “Then I give a full report that includes not only peeing and pooping but also kind of general well-being, and if the dog socialized with other dogs.”
[...]
When sending his monthly bill, Moraga said he always includes a handwritten note on custom stationery, telling a dog’s owner “what they’ve done through the month, what they’ve learned, what we’re planning on doing next month.”
Rover requires its walkers to complete a standardized “report card” that includes arrival and drop-off times, route and pit stops. But sections for adding photos and a written account are where “walkers can really shine,” said Jenna White, the company’s director of dog-walking operations. New walkers are shown examples of particularly strong narratives during training, as well as advice on photos, the best of which White said have good lighting and not too much motion. Shots taken at iconic local spots, like doggy senior portraits, are even better, she said.
-via Marginal Revolution
Chris Advansun is the master of a unique craft: telling stories that will put you to sleep.
Advansun calls himself a "sleep writer." Famous actors, including Matthew McConaughey, have recorded his stories into the app Calm.com. These stories are designed to hold your mild interest, but not get your heart racing in excitement. CBC News explains:
Advansun says the key is to get the attention of the listener and then "hold it gently" without ever jostling them awake. He maintains this is a tough balance to achieve … especially since Advansun is trained as a screenwriter (think plot twists, car chases and explosions).
"I certainly didn't set out to write stories that put people to sleep," he jokes. "I have sort of fallen into it, and I adore it. It's not only quite rewarding, it is a great challenge as a writer."
In the interview, Advansun describes what goes into a good bedtime story for adults:
My stories are mainly fictional stories that do have a character who goes on a journey.
The way I think about it is that it's not a riveting, gripping journey with wrenching twists and turns. It is not that kind of story.
I am taking traditional storytelling — where you are building things up, you are building up tension and stakes and conflict and inverting that.
So we start with a bit of a character problem, but it is not terribly dramatic. And I unwind the whole story, so by the end we have soothed the listener off to sleep.
-via Marginal Revolution
Photographer David Ngo snapped this funny and punny cosplayer at DragonCon last year. Now Wonder Woman gains her powers not from Queen Hippolyta's magic but eating as much Wonder Bread as she can.
Go ahead and sup from the bowl--if you can bear the flames.
DeviantART member aviceramics, who previously wowed us with her shark sushi plate and shark chip bowl, made this eye-popping soup bowl showing a raging dragon erupting from your food. She was inspired by the scorpion bowl, a group cocktail that is traditionally lit with a flame in the center.
"Heart of Ice" is often regarded as the greatest episode of Batman: The Animated Series. In this beautifully-directed story, Mr. Freeze is the most sympathetic of Batman villains.
It was a wrenching episode ranked among Watch Mojo's grand list of the 10 saddest cartoon episodes ever. Among them are tragedies from The Simpsons, Family Guy, Rugrats, and, most importantly, the Ice King origin story from Adventure Time.
(Photo: Huy Cordley)
It can be hard enough to get human actors to perform properly on camera. For producers of nature documentaries, there are even greater challenges.
How do they do it? To find out, TechCrunch talked to Huw Cordley, a producer for many of the BBC's nature programs. The task requires a lot of creative problem solving:
“People are always developing new equipment,” Cordey says, half grinning, half sighing, as I imagine him waving at an enormous pile of Peli cases stacked in the corner of his no doubt stacked-to-the-rafters office, “which is perfect for us. If you think about it, wildlife hasn’t really changed what they have been doing since we started filming nature documentaries. Instead, we have to come up with new ways of telling their stories.”
Photographed above is one of those solutions. It's an 85-pound gyroscopically stabilized camera rig known as a helicopter rig because that's what it's commonly attached to. This time, though, Cordley and his team attached it to an elephant.
"Certainly, sir. Which 20-year old celebrity would you like to emulate?"
Pro tip: get the hairstyle that your grandfather wore at your age and you'll never look ridiculous.
Knockie Cosplay offers this beautifully executed mashup of Princess Leia in her slave outfit from Return of the Jedi and Chibiusa from Sailor Moon. She is accompanied by the cat Luna-P, now transformed into a fully operational Death Star.
You can see more cosplay photos of Knockie at her Instagram page, including pictures of her with a Jedi Sailor Moon cosplayer.
To fill young minds with a passion for learning and a fire to empower your conquest of the world is the bliss of the teacher. Embrace the challenge of teaching by building fail-safes into your doomsday devices so that they can never be used against you.
Khaleesi, a 4-year old English Bulldog, loves to watch TV. Recently, she watched Guillermo del Toro's 2015 horror film Crimson Peak. She became alarmed when a supernatural menace approached and attacked a young girl.
"Run, run!" she barks. But the girl foolishly ignored Khaleesi.
The pup is really too young to be watching such scary movies.
-via Laughing Squid
(Image: Stride Gum)
UPDATE: He did it! And Aikins survived! You can watch the amazing video here.
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Master skydiver Luke Aikins has had some close calls during his 18,000 jumps. But now he's taking new risks because for this jump, he won't have a parachute. Or a wingsuit. He's just going to jump out of a plane and, hopefully, land in a net on the ground.
Hollywood producers first pitched this insane idea to Aikins a couple years ago. He dismissed it immediately, but has contemplating it ever since. Aikins talked to France 24 news:
He said as much to his wife after a couple Hollywood guys looking to create the all-time-greatest reality TV stunt floated the idea by him a couple years ago.
"I said, 'You won't believe these guys,'" the affable skydiver recalls with a robust laugh. "'They want me to jump out without a parachute.' She said, 'Oh, with a wingsuit.' I said, 'No, they want me to do it with nothing.' We both had a good laugh about that."
But in the weeks that followed he couldn't shake one persistent thought: Could anybody actually do this and live to tell the tale?
Because if anyone could, Aikins wanted to be that guy.
The net, which is still under construction, will be a third of the size of a football field and held aloft 20 stories high by cranes. The design needs a bit of refinement:
The landing target, which has been described as similar to a fishing trawler net, has been tested repeatedly using dummies.
One of those 200-pound (91-kilogram) dummies didn't bounce out. It crashed right through.
-via Dave Barry
It was 9:15 in the morning in front of the Irish Nobleman Pub in Chicago. The temperature was already 80ºF and rising rapidly. The owner of the truck had locked his German Shepherd inside for over an hour.
A gang of 4 men walked along the street, smashing the windows of parked cars and snatching goods inside. When they got to the truck, they broke in to steal a laptop computer. The dog took the opportunity to leave the truck.
Video footage from a security camera in front of the pub captured the incident. Pub owner Declan Morgan tells CBS News that he doesn't have a lot of sympathy for the truck owner:
“He didn’t think it was a big deal that his dog was in there for an hour. I told him I would’ve smashed the window if I knew the dog was in there.”
YouTube user RenoGeek and his son visited a children's museum. While there, the toddler tried to fill a wire mesh bucket with water. Unfortunately, the bucket was defective. It couldn't hold any water at all. I hope that he was able to get a refund for his admission ticket.
-via Tastefully Offensive
(Unrelated photo by Hey Paul Studios)
Some men eschew wearing condoms during intercourse because the plastic barrier reduces the sensitivity of the penile skin. Dr. Shengxi Chen, a biochemist at Arizona State University, thinks that he's found a solution to that problem. His condom mimics the reaction of water to human skin. USA Today explains:
Most condoms repel water. That's the opposite of human skin, which loves and contains a lot of water, making condoms feel unnatural, Chen said.
Chen added materials to latex to create condoms that are eight times more water-loving than natural latex condoms, as well as stronger and more flexible, according to his tests.
It feels smoother and softer, and it's proven under a microscope: Water flows into the material as opposed to sitting in a ball on top, and the texture appears smoother than most condoms, he said.
Chen is currently seeking FDA approval to test his condom on humans.
-via Glenn Reynolds
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