Junior is a French Bulldog. Walter Ledermüeller is his human. They like to sing together and have a YouTube channel filled with their car-based performances. They're often joined by Walter's partner Emanuel.
In the past, they've made covers of hits such as "Let It Go" and "Love Is an Open Door" from the movie Frozen. In their latest music video, the duo sings a version of the song "Diamonds in the Sky."
-via Tastefully Offensive
(Photo: Kasey-Samuel Adams)
If a man goes out with his guy friends to an all-you-can-eat buffet, he'll eat to satiate his hunger. But if he's with a woman that he's trying to impress, then he's likely to overeat as a way to demonstrate his virility.
This is the conclusion of a study conducted by Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab and published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology Science. A press release from the university explains:
Men who dined with at least one woman ate 92% more pizza and 86% more salad than men who dined with only other men. The amount that women ate didn’t differ when eating with other women or with men. When they ate with men, many women indicated feeling that they overate and were rushed through their meal.
“These findings suggest that men tend to overeat to show off – you can also see this tendency in eating competitions which almost always have mostly male participants,” explains lead author Kevin Kniffin, PhD, of Cornell University. The study was conducted by Kniffin, Ozge Sigirci, a former visiting scholar at the Cornell University Food, and Brand Lab and Brian Wansink, professor and director of the Food and Brand Lab.
Well, guys, now you know what it takes to get the ladies interested. Get to it.
-via Jonah Goldberg
(The Stupid t-shirt on sale at the NeatoShop)
What does it mean to be stupid? That's not a dumb question. In fact, it's important to know what, precisely, is stupidity. Psychologists Balazs Aczel and Bence Palfi of Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, Hungary and Zoltan Kekecs of Baylor University in Waco, Texas decided to find out.
They compiled a list of 180 stories of people acting stupidly, then asked 154 undergraduate students to read 15 of these stories. The participants then rated the stupidity of the actor in the story from 1 to 10 and explain why the action was stupid.
From the study results, the scholars formed a comprehensive definition of stupidity and published their findings in the journal Intelligence. Real Clear Science quotes their article:
The first situation in which people call an action stupid is when the actor takes high risks while lacking the necessary skills to perform the risky action. A typical story for this is when burglars wanted to steal cell phones, but instead stole GPS navigation devices. They didn't switch them off so the police were able to track them easily. We named this category ‘Confident ignorance’. The second cluster consisted cases of ‘Absentmindedness – Lack of practicality’... A typical story here is when someone inflates more air in the car tires than allowed. Here the person either forgot to pay attention to the action or he or she doesn't know something essential about tire inflation. The third category is ‘Lack of control’. Cases here are thought to be the result of obsessive, compulsive or addictive behavior. For example, one of the stories in this category described a person who canceled a meeting with a good friend to instead continue playing video games at home.
-via Jonah Goldberg
Stereotank is a design firm in New York City. We've previously seen their little free library that is cleverly designed to protect books from the elements. More recently, it's converted a skateboard into an elegant lap guitar. The designers describe it:
The instrument is built out of a blank wood skateboard deck, a 1/4" input jack, an electric guitar bridge, one guitar pick-up, one volume knob, one lock nut and six tuning pegs.
It sounds lovely, as you can hear in this video:
The guinea pig is in the cat tree, resting quietly where the cat normally parks himself. Oh, the spot doesn't have the cat's name on it. But everyone knows that that space is for Cat, not Guinea Pig. So, move little piggy!
The guinea pig is having none of that. Even sitting on him is not persuasive.
-via Huffington Post
Pictured above are the Vasquez Rocks, a remarkably scenic rock formation outside of Los Angeles. They're part of a public park that you can visit. They are most widely known as being the location of Captain Kirk's battle against a Gorn officer in the classic Star Trek episode "Arena."
But that's not all. They've also appeared in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Army of Darkness, and Blazing Saddles. Most impressively, they were a shooting location in the 2009 movie Star Trek.
In this video, Screen Rant tells us more about the Vasquez Rocks and other landmarks that you've seen over and over again in movies, perhaps without even knowing it.
-via Geek Tyrant
Eric Molinksy is not the first artist to show what the cast of Rugrats might look like when they weren't babies, but full-grown adults. But he doesn't care for how those characters are interpreted when older. He was a storyboard artist for that show and drew them to look like "lumpy babies." They were ordinary babies and so, Molinsky claims, they'd likely look like ordinary adults:
It really bugs me — not the quality of the artwork, but the interpretation. We referred to them as lumpy babies for a reason. If we ever drew the Rugrats as being too cute, our executive producer would scold us. […]
So no. The Rugrats did not all grow up to be fashion models or self-confident hipsters. Especially not Chuckie. They probably grew up to be average if not slightly lumpy looking people — just like their parents. My best guess? In 2015, the Rugrats would look look something like this…
-via Nerd Bastards
Japanese Twitter user xxx2251 takes advantage of the fall foliage to arrange leaves in the shapes of Pokémon. He started with this Charizard which strangely reverted to its prior form as a Charmander, also arranged with leaves. You can find more of his growing collection of leaf Pokémon in his Twitter feed.
-via Kotaku
Hyo Joo Ko doesn't just ride her skateboard. And she doesn't perform tricks on it in the conventional sense. She dances on and with it, flowing from one movement to another smoothly, as though she's performing a ballet. Her entire Vimeo channel is filled with videos of her casually performing this way on streets around the world.
-via Geekologie
Here's a radical new definition of "experimental film project."
Actor John Malkovich and director Robert Rodriguez are famous today. But in 100 years, they'll almost certainly be forgotten. How will audiences receive them then?
We'll have to wait a century to find out. That's because their futuristic science fiction film, which is set 100 years into the future, will be hidden for 100 years. The luxury cognac brand Louis XIII is backing the project, which is a promotion for its products. io9 quotes Malkovich:
“There were several options when the project was first presented of what [the future] would be,” said Malkovich. “An incredibly high tech, beyond computerized version of the world, a post-Chernoybl, back to nature, semi-collapsed civilization and then there was a retro future which was how the future was imagined in science fiction of the 1940s or 50s.”
The video embedded above includes scenes from this otherwise secret movie.
-via Geek Tyrant
Danbi Shin (left) lives in New York City. Seok Li (right) lives in Seoul. They’re both artists in love with creation and each other. To express the endurance of their love, despite the vast distance between them, they created photo collages that imagine them as geographically very close. They call their project Half & Half.
For the above photo, Shin and Li wrote:
I miss the feeling of holding on to your hand. I reach forward to touch the light. Will you feel what I am feeling?
I suspect that the answer is a wholehearted yes.
-via Lost at E Minor
Oh, this? This is just a pigeon correctly diagnosing malignant breast tissue: https://t.co/T0ZIsN1L3Y pic.twitter.com/opHfarKFHv
— Discover Magazine (@DiscoverMag) November 19, 2015
Breast cancer diagnosis includes examining slides of breast tissue and noticing particular colors that indicate cancerous masses. Scientists have trained pigeons who may be able to take over this responsibility from human medical technicians.
Dr. Richard Levenson of the University of California at Davis led a study that showed breast tissue slides to pigeons. These birds were rewarded with food if they correctly noticed spots of color indicative of cancer. The Daily Telegraph reports:
In 15 daily sessions, each an hour long, the pigeons got the right answer 85 per cent of the time - with accuracy levels increased to 99 per cent when responses from a panel of four pigeons were pooled.
These results are likely due to pigeons’ remarkable visual acuity:
Pigeons' ability to interpret complex visual stimuli has been well-researched over the years. Previous studies have established that the birds are able to discriminate between letters of the alphabet, the identities and emotional expressions of human faces - and they can even tell the difference between paintings by Monet and Picasso.
ElaN Languages suspects that you've never used its computer-based translation software. You probably just use Google Translate.
To prove that you should use its product instead, ElaN Languages subjected its program and Google Translate to the test--a taste test.
It took a Japanese-language recipe for a sushi cake and ran it through both programs. Then it prepared the dish precisely according to the translated instructions, no matter how ridiculous those instructions were.
According to the advertisement that resulted from the experiment, Google Translate's recipe wants you to add sliced paper flyers, ground-up coins, and plastic horses. The taste testers at the end prefered ElaN's sushi cake.
-via Nag on the Lake
Chewbacca didn't get the medal that he deserved. But he was okay with that because he knew the Rebel Alliance would award him with something even better: an elegant ball gown fit for a princess. Now Princess Hulk Cake has a new friend!
Redditor jamieinthenorthwest says that his daughter wanted a Star Wars-themed birthday party. He bought a Chewbacca doll and his friend Megan formed a cake dress around it. Little Sophie was thrilled. You can see more photos here.
-via Geek Art Gallery
Miyuli, an artist and art student at the Filmuniversity Babelsberg in Potsdam, Germany, has an appreciation for a vast array of artists. Also, her cat. So she drew her cat as he would appear in many cartoon forms that you'll recognize, including Tim Burton and Jim Davis. My favorite is the perfect Dr. Seuss Cat in the Hat.
The fact that she can replicate the styles of so many artists so precisely is a testament to her talent and skill.
-via 123 Inspiration