Nick Allen, a professional opera singer from the UK, performs on cruise ships that visit Antarctica. During a recent trip there, he met a colony of penguins. He gave them a free demonstration of the classical Italian song "O Sole Mio." The penguins, who are clearly uncultured philistines, immediately started running away. The New York Daily News reports:
"You could say they didn't like the sound of his voice," said zoologist Jarod Miller, host of the syndicated TV series "Animal Exploration." "Between his singing and his body language, they likely perceived him as a predator. While they didn’t seem to be fleeing for their lives, they appear to be uncomfortable.” […]
Moving en masse is doing what comes naturally for these beasts, says Miller. “If you’re a flocking or herding animal, you pay attention to your neighbor. So when penguins move, it’s like dominoes.”
Katherine Acrement of the Washington Post calls the style "Web brutalism" after the architectural movement. According to advertising director Pascal Deville, this school of thought takes a radically different approach, if not utter disregard for, user-friendliness and aesthetic appeal:
In 2014 Deville, now Creative Director at the Freundliche Grüsse ad agency in Zurich, Switzerland, founded brutalistwebsites.com. He meant it as a place to showcase websites that he thought fit the “brutalist” aesthetic: Design marked by a “ruggedness and lack of concern to look comfortable or easy” in “reaction by a younger generation to the lightness, optimism, and frivolity of today’s Web design.” (In architecture, brutalism describes a ’70s architectural movement characterized by large buildings with exposed concrete construction.)
The term’s gotten a lot of pick-up in recent weeks, since Deville’s site appeared on Hacker News and promptly went viral. Deville saw unique visitors to his site rise to over 100,000 in 24 hours, with 160,000 page views. And the interest has not slowed since then: Deville now receives over 100 site submissions a day.
“It’s not only what you can see, it’s also how it’s built,” Deville explained, of the submissions he selects as emblematic of the style. “… In the code you can see if it’s really a streamlined application or it’s a very rough, handmade, HTML website.”
One of the roles of the public library in American society is to be the source of a Plan B for your life. Have you lost your job? There are books about writing résumés and computers on which to type and print them. Often, there are free workshops on helpful skills, such as succeeding at job interviews.
A couple years ago, one of my patrons needed professional clothes for a job interview. I managed to connect her with a non-profit that provided that service. But what would happen if a library could provide that service in-house?
The Paschalville Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is moving in that direction. It has a "tiebrary" -- a circulating collection of 48 neckties that patrons can check out for 3 weeks at a time. All of them are in tastefully conservative colors and patterns appropriate for a professional encounter. TakePart quotes branch manager Jennifer Walker:
“The unemployment rate is 18.5 percent. As for education attainment, 25 percent of the working-age population has less than a high school diploma, and another 39 percent has not progressed past a high school diploma. The poverty level is 34 percent,” she said. About 25 percent of the population are also relatively recent immigrants from African nations or from Vietnam, she said.
Getting those community members prepared to enter the workforce is one of the library system’s main priorities. So last year, when Eddy was on a visit to the Queens Public Library in New York City and heard about a small tiebrary operating there, he was intrigued. A tie-browsing session on Amazon earlier this year spurred him to expand the concept to Philadelphia. “I reached out to Queens to see if they wouldn’t mind us replicating the idea. They said, ‘Go for it,’ ” he said.
Library assistant Omelio Alexander, who is pictured above, made the tiebrary a success:
“Sometimes you have part of the interview outfit but not the whole outfit, and this is an easy way to doctor up whatever you have and make it more professional,” Alexander, who has worked at the Paschalville branch for nearly six years, told TakePart. He turned some clear VHS cases that were collecting dust in a storage area into display boxes for the neckwear. Enabling patrons to check out ties for up to three weeks lets folks use them for more than one interview without having to go back and forth to the library.
If you operate a funeral home, then you need bodies, right? Drum up some business by encouraging people to drive while distracted by text messages.
But the good news is that Wathan Funeral Home isn't real. This billboard is a PSA by John St. Advertising, an agency in Toronto. The directors reason that people hear the message "Don't text and drive" all the time. How would they respond to the reverse? Adweek quotes an executive at the agency:
"People see and hear the words 'Don't text and drive' almost every day, but the number of people doing it keeps going up and up," says Mylene Savoie, managing director of John St. Montreal. "So we wanted to think of a different way of saying it that would make people think about the real consequences. Which is where 'Text and drive' came from."
35-year old Jake Booth of Bonita Springs, Florida developed bronchitis, which turned into pneumonia. While hospitalized for that pneumonia, he had a heart attack, then fell into a coma.
Booth spent 48 days in the coma before becoming conscious again. Doctors were worried that he may have suffered brain damage. But when Booth was able to express himself, the first thing he said was "I want Taco Bell"--a clear sign that he had the full command of his mental faculties.
It would be 22 more days before Booth was allowed to eat solid food. But when doctors cleared him to do so, the first thing he ate was a bag of Taco Bell tacos. USA Today quotes Booth's brother, Jason Schwartz:
“We’d all been waiting an entire month for him to eat those tacos,” Schwartz said. “It was symbolic of the entire thing — more of a metaphor of him having woken up and being given a second chance at life.”
"Have it your way," as Burger King likes to say. If you want to enjoy your Whopper inside a hot, moist, sweaty box, that's now an option in Finland.
With a sauna for every 1.6 people, Finland is the sauna capital of the world. So it's appropriate that Finland's newest Burger King outlet has a sauna that can accommodate 15 people. It has a 48" TV inside, as well as an attached shower and locker room. The tabloid Metro reports that Burger King is marketing it as a business meeting center:
According to the dedicated website, the sauna is ‘perfect for social gatherings or work’. Yes, perfect for work. Please consider it for your next team away day – what could be more conducive to team building than enjoying Whopper meals as you sit side by side, your skin slick with sweat, in a steaming hot room?
You've got a drone! It's an incredibly advanced piece of technology. But that doesn't make you invincible. It might even make you more vulnerable.
This drone flew over a medieval historical reenactment in Russia. A warrior on the ground who is clearly a master of his weapon knocked it out of the sky with a well-placed spear. He wasn't the least bit afraid of this witchcraft in his midst.
Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clark once said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." To that, this gentleman adds, "But magic can't defeat steel."
Air travel doesn't have to be boring (and, as Louis C.K. famously explained, really shouldn't). The Japanese travel agency H.I.S. offered a service to keep you entertained. For a fee, you could sit next to a pretty young college student. Rocket News 24 reports:
Applications were being accepted to be seated next to one of five young women, ranging from second to fourth-year students of Todai (as the University of Tokyo is populrly called). The profile for each included her field of study, with one literature student, two aspiring engineers, one science major, and finally one pupil from the education department available for in-cabin companionship.
Each also had a suggested conversation topic listed, such as “I’ll teach you about the city you’re traveling to,” “I’ll tell you my favorite architectural structures,” or “I’ll help you with your homework.” There was also one woman with the less scholarly invitation of “Let’s talk about comedians.”
The program was controversial as some people thought it was sexist. H.I.S. has since shut it down.
Are you an only child? People will make assumptions about you as a result. They think that they can make an instant psychological reading of your personality from that one tidbit of information.
Last Sunday, it was particularly sunny and windy in Germany, which meant that the country's solar energy farms and wind turbines were especially productive. They provided about 55 of the 63 gigawatts being consumed. As a result, energy company prices to customers went negative--that is, people were paid to use this surplus electricity. Quartz describes this unusual event and the rapid advance of renewable energy in Germany:
Critics have argued that because of the daily peaks and troughs of renewable energy—as the sun goes in and out and winds rise and fall—it will always have only a niche role in supplying power to major economies. But that’s looking less and less likely. Germany plans to hit 100% renewable energy by 2050, and Denmark’s wind turbines already at some points generate more electricity than the country consumes, exporting the surplus to Germany, Norway and Sweden.
Germany’s power surplus on Sunday wasn’t all good news. The system is still too rigid for power suppliers and consumers to respond quickly to price signals. Though gas power plants were taken offline, nuclear and coal plants can’t be quickly shut down, so they went on running and had to pay to sell power into the grid for several hours, while industrial customers such as refineries and foundries earned money by consuming electricity.
Rocket News 24 tells us about Twitter user @KAGAYA, a photographer, who snapped this incredible photo and others at just the right moment. The jet went through a vapor layer when the light was ideal to reflect a rainbow.
What Instagram member @olganoskovaa can do in her kitchen is astounding. Her cakes are iced so perfectly that you could literally use them as mirrors. Check out this one, which reflects the sky:
Two ad agencies in Brazil built this billboard in Rio de Janeiro as a way to kill mosquitoes that carry the Zika virus. It emits Lurex 3, a chemical that smells like human sweat. This attracks mosquitoes. It traps the bugs inside, killing them by dehyrdration. Hack A Day explains:
Inside the billboard are canisters of Lurex 3, a lactic acid-based mosquito attractant that is available pretty cheaply on Amazon. The lactic acid mimics the scent of human sweat and is released outward to distances up to 4km (2.5 miles) in a fine mist along with CO₂. Together, the Lurex and CO₂ act like a sweaty, mouth-breathing human beacon to lure mosquitoes into the billboard, where they become trapped and are doomed to die of dehydration.
The creators have made the plans available for free, so anyone with the resources can build one.
How do you sing underwater without your tones getting garbled? The secret is to not blow bubbles. This is an incredibly difficult task, but after 10 years of effort, Laila Skovmand has learned how. New Scientist reports:
Skovmand’s first experiments with aquatic singing involved submerging her mouth in a kitchen bowl filled with water and trying to produce a steady vibrato. During a diving trip, she then had the chance to try singing underwater. It worked but generated a lot of bubbles, adding popping sounds to the vocals.
To prevent this, Skovmand came up with a technique where she keeps an air bubble in her mouth and sings through it when submerged, rising to the top about every minute to take in a breath and a new bubble. “There is also a technique where I switch between singing on the exhale and inhale,” she says. “But it can be hard to control.” Due to the small amount of air in a bubble, she can only produce short tones. High notes also tend to sound better than lower notes, which sound nasal.
Skovmand worked with musical instrument maker Andy Cavatorta to develop instruments that could play underwater:
The rotacorda, inspired by a traditional hurdy-gurdy, has six strings that can be plucked like a guitar. Move your fingers along the string and you can modify the pitch of the note. Turn a crank so as to strike them repeatedly with a mechanical hammer, however, and they produce a continuous sound.
The second instrument, called the crystallophone, is a modified version of Benjamin Franklin’s glass harmonica. It is made up of bowls that are played with the fingers like singing bowls, creating a similar effect to a bow moving over a violin string in air.
The results of their efforts is Skovmand's band AquaSonic, which bills itself as the world's first underwater band. The members plan to hold their first concert on May 27 in Rotterdam. They will perform inside huge aquariums.
