This is Poldi, a pet owl. He's just one and a half years old.
Poldi lives with Tanya Brandt, a photographer. Recently, when Poldi and Brandt went out together, it started to train. Poldi sought shelter under a mushroom. The resulting photo is like something out of a fantasy movie!
You can see more photos of Poldi at play at Bored Panda.
-via My Modern Met
(Photo: Gabi Shull)
When she was 9 years old, Gabi Shull was diagnosed with cancer in her right knee. So doctors amputated her leg, removed the knee, then re-attached the rest of the leg backwards.
This surgery reduced her ability to enjoy dancing. She couldn't dance en pointe--that is, on tip toes--until she got a custom prosthetic leg. This prosthetic slips over her right leg. When she flexes her ankle, it acts as her knee. Now 14, Gabi is back dancing, cheerleading, and inspiring others to overcome their challenges.
-via The Soul Is Bone
(Photo: Traci Andracke)
Brooklyn Andracke gets very excited when the garbage truck rolls through her neighborhood. It's a chance to meet the driver and her friend, Delvar Dopson. They wave at each other and Dopson honks the powerful horn on his truck.
So when Brooklyn had her third birthday party, she saved a cupcake for Dopson. Brooklyn's mother writes on Facebook:
Brooklyn and I wrapped up one of her birthday cupcakes and waited for him. When he came down our street, she ran to the corner. We were waving like usual and I motioned for him to come over by us. He pulled over, got out and gave us his BIG smile. Brooklyn was instantly speechless as she handed him the cupcake. I explained to him that he makes our day every Thursday, and we really appreciate the honking and waving, and how special of a day it is for us.
Then... (melt my heart)... he explained that he looks forward to seeing us every Thursday as well. He said that he has a meeting every Thursday morning and always tries to get out of there in a hurry so that he can make sure to see us every week. He said he doesn't have any kids of his own, but he mentors several children and just loves them. I can't believe that I never got his name, so for now he will continue to be "our favorite awesome smiley garbage man".
-via BuzzFeed
Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele of the famous comedy duo Key & Peele bring us this promotional video for their new movie Keanu. The roughest, toughest, most muscle-bound and tatted thugs face off against the cutest kittens in a staring contest. Who will prevail?
-via Tastefully Offensive
(Photo: David Tennant as Prince Hamlet by The Times)
In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Yorick the court jester was famous for his wit and performances:
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your
gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one
now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let
her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must
come; make her laugh at that.
Yet he is silent throughout Hamlet because he is dead (though this condition doesn't stop Hamlet's father). Nonetheless, because Yorick appears in one of the most famous scenes of Shakespearean drama, some actors want to play him. So they have bequeathed their skulls on the condition that they be used in performances of Hamlet. Hyperallergic reports:
For example, there’s John Reed, who worked as a stagehand at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia in the 19th century. As the theater’s website explains, he stated in his will that he “wanted his skull separated from his body, duly prepared, and used to represent the skull of Yorrick in Hamlet. His wish was granted, and the skull is signed by many famous actors of the day who performed in Shakespeare’s play.” Macy Halford in the 2009 article “Skullduggery” for the New Yorker, noted that another man named Juan Potomachi in 1955 “promised two hundred thousand pesos to the Teatro Dramático in Buenos Aires, on the condition that his skull be used as Yorick in any future productions of Hamlet,” a proposition that was apparently accepted.
-via Jonah Goldberg
P.S. Today is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.
Hannah, the Domestic Gothess, made these simply perfect eclairs with a toasted marshmallow cream filling. She dipped the tops in melted chocolate, then added gourmet marshmallows. For a special treat, she covered the tops with craquelin, which is a type of French pastry dough. This give her s'more eclairs an extra crunch and sweetness. You can find her full recipe here.
-via Tasteologie
Rocket News 24 tells us about English Vocabulary Not on Any Test. This is a new guide for native Japanese speakers who would like to learn English as it is actually used in conversation in the Anglosphere. The book describes ordinary people in daily activities, using both English and Japanese. You can view more pages here. They are, I cannot understate, extraordinarily funny.
This is Will You Be Here Tomorrow?, a 1994 workplace safety video sold by the United Safety Council. It imagines the worst case scenarios for industrial and warehousing jobs. It is extraordinarily blunt, using somewhat subpar visual effects to illustrate nails being driven into eyeballs, severed limbs, crushed skulls, and, at the 2:10 mark, a acetylene tank turned into a missile.
I worked in a warehouse to put myself through graduate school. It was filled with sleep-deprived people driving 13,000-pound forklifts as fast as they could to make impossible production quotas. It's amazing that people weren't killed there every day. Perhaps it's funny, but I could also see this safety video making an effective impression on workers.
Content warning: nearly non-stop blood and gore.
-via Atlas Obscura
Dangerous Minds appropriately calls this outfit the "holy grail" of fashion. Fashion designers might as well pack it in because the long quest for the perfect, every day, all day outfit is now finally complete. Rage On sells an adult onesie covered with faces of actor Steve Buscemi's movie characters.
Minor problem: there's no flap in the back. You could probably cut one, though.
Circu is a Portugese company that makes "magical furniture" with a creative flair. The whole catalog is worth exploring. There you can see sofas that look like hot air balloons and chairs that look like rockets. They're fantastic starting points for imaginative play.
I'm especially taken with this clamshell bed fit for a mermaid princess. It's made of fiberglass and built with internal lighting.
The website neglects to mention the dimensions of the bed, which is a serious oversight. I don't want to buy a bed that I can't fit in.
-via Home Crux
In The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the clock tower strikes 1:21 and Gwen Stacy falls to her death. This is a reference to the 1973 issue #121 of the comic book series in which Gwen dies.
That's 1 of 10 impressive Easter eggs hidden discreetly in superhero movies, including the 1978 Superman and the 2008 film The Dark Knight. Learn about all of them in this new video by Screen Rant.
(Photos: Fayetteville Observer)
Sgt. Joseph Serna of the US Army Special Forces served 3 combat tours in Afghanistan. He had a very rough time there, experiencing the full horrors of war.
When Serna got out of the Army, he took those horrors with him.
Serna was arrested and charged with driving under the influence in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He got probation and entered a treatment program. He had to regularly report to the court on his treatment. During one of those court appearances, he confessed to Judge Lou Olivera that he had lied about a recent urine test.
Judge Olivera was himself a veteran, having served during the Gulf War. He understood that though Serna had broken the law, he was not a criminal by nature.
But he had to do his duty, so Judge Olivera sentenced Serna to spent 24 hours in jail. Then he took off his robe and joined Serna in his cell for the full 24 hours. The Fayetteville Observer reports:
"Where are we going, judge?" Serna asked.
"We're going to turn ourselves in," Olivera said.
"He said he was going to stay with me," Serna said. "I couldn't process a judge being my cellmate.
"They take me to the cell, and I'm sitting on my bunk. And, then, in walks the judge.
And then the two veterans talked:
Mostly, from five in the afternoon on April 13 until 6:30 a.m. the next day, the judge and the veteran talked about their respective military service, Serna's post-traumatic stress disorder from three tours of duty in Afghanistan and how the inmate could turn around his downward spiral that had resulted in a driving-while-impaired charge and other serious traffic offenses. […]
"We talked for hours about our families and our military service," Olivera says. "Our dreams for us and our families, and the road to take us there."
The judge wanted to help Serna climb out of the hole:
"I thought about a story that I once read," Olivera says. "It talked about a soldier with PTSD in a hole," he says. "A family member, a therapist and a friend all throw down a rope to help the veteran suffering. Finally, a fellow veteran climbs into the hole with him.
"The soldier suffering with PTSD asks, 'Why are you down here?' The fellow veteran replied, 'I am here to climb out with you.'
-via Glenn Reynolds
(Image: George Shaw and F.P. Nodder)
When European explorers wandered the most remote regions of the world, they brought back stories of strange creatures. One of those stories was of a bizarre hybrid animal from Australia that appeared to be part bird, part mammal, and had venomous spurs.
The platypus was just made-up, like unicorns and dragons, right? Natalie Zarrelli writes at Atlas Obscura:
In his laboratory study in 1799, biologist George Shaw stared down at his new specimen in disbelief. The creature from the colony of New South Wales came preserved in pungent alcohol, and he carefully snipped the thick, brown pelt around the creature’s beak, sure he would soon reveal the stitches where an expert taxidermist had fused the bird and beast together. It was like nothing he had seen before: the creature had the body of a furry brown cat, four short legs and sharp claws over webbed feet; the tail of a beaver, but the beak of a duck.
Shaw had met his first platypus, and did not for a moment believe it was possibly real.
Despite the preserved specimens returning from Australia, many scientists continued to believe that the platypus was a hoax. Some suspected that it was an accident of nature brought about by breeding between species. It would be a century before they definitely confirmed that the platypus was indeed real and, in fact, a mammal:
In the late 1800s, Scottish zoologist William Hay Caldwell finally managed to dissect fresh platypus eggs and confirmed once and for all that the animal did in fact lay them, though the embryos partially developed inside the platypus’s body, which also nursed its young. The platypus was classified as a mammal—one of five that are known to lay eggs, in the order Monotremata.
(Photo: Jason Hutchens)
Routine infant circumcision used to be the norm in the United States. In the 1960s, about 83% of newborn boys were circumcised. That's fallen to about 24% as of two years ago.
One of the arguments against infant circumcision (and the practice in general) is that removing the foreskin reduces the sexual sensitivity of the penis. It thus directly impacts the pleasure of sex for men.
But now a study of men who were circumcised as babies finds that circumcision does not lead to significantly reduced penile sensitivity. Nicholas Bakalar writes for the New York Times:
The scientists tested the men for tactile and heat sensitivity of the penis at four points: the midline shaft, the area next to the midline, the glans and, for the uncircumcised, the foreskin. As a control, they also tested a site on the inside of the forearm.
Uncircumcised and circumcised men did not differ in sensitivity to touch or temperature at any of the four sites tested, and sensitivity at the forearm was lower than any penile site for both groups. [...]
“Neonatal circumcision doesn’t make the penis less sensitive,” said a co-author of the study, Caroline F. Pukall, a professor of psychology at Queen’s University in Ontario. “We can conclude that there are no significant differences in sensitivity between the circumcised and uncircumcised groups.”
-via Glenn Reynolds
What do you need to complete your look before heading out for that first date? Perhaps it's a fez that looks like the TARDIS because fezes are cool. Or maybe it's BB-8 top hat or a Wonder Woman crush cap. Whatever your fancy and your fanbase, the Etsy shop The Blonde Swan can accomodate you. It makes leather and felt caps for a vast variety of interests and fashions.
