(Photo: WeNeals Photography)
Cosplayer AlyCat looks almost exactly like Lena Headey's depiction of Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones. She's left aside the queen's normal garb for Princess Leia's famous slave outfit. She doesn't have a chain with which to strangle Jabba, but only because she has a more painful end in mind for him.
-via Kotaku
Instructables member KH4 isn't sure whether he should call his invention the cross bladed axe or the crossed blade axe. He cut an axe blade in half, then welded those pieces to opposing sides of another axe blade. Now when he splits a log, it breaks into four pieces instead of just two:
(Photo: Alastair Scarlett/The Guardian)
You may have seen a mermaid show at an aquarium. What sets this sport apart from those performances is that this kind of mermaid swimming is combined with freediving: swimming into very deep ocean waters for extended periods of time--without dying.
Freediving looks beautiful, but it's also dangerous. Highly skilled, trained swimmers without breathing equipment reach depths of up to 253 meters. Ian Donald, a freediving instructor in Cornwall, UK, teaches people how to do this while wearing mermaid fins over their legs. Susan Greenwood of The Guardian describes the training:
The key to being happy under water for long periods is, I discovered – after panicking – not to panic, to keep the heart rate low by “breathing up” or belly breathing for two minutes before submersion, and to know that humans take a breath long before we need to. It’s the rule of thirds: for the first third of the time underwater, people are happy; the second brings the urge to breathe and it’s at this point most of us surface. But, resisting this urge means entering the third phase – the spleen will release more red blood cells, the diaphragm will stop juddering and this is followed by the discovery that the body has more oxygen than imagined. […]
Just as things were getting serious, Lissie lined up the mermaids’ tails, handed me a seashell necklace and informed me my name was now Sue-Sea. And this is when things got gnarly. Professional mermaids wear tails that can weigh up to 40kg and cost over £2,000. Have you tried swimming with a small child holding onto your legs and making it look effortless?
-via Nag on the Lake
Laurie Simmons, a photographer, calls this project How We See. She turned women into living dolls by applying realistic makeup over their eyelids. Their eyes are shut. But in an unearthly fashion, they stare with empty gazes past the viewer. The Jewish Museum, which exibited the series, comments:
How We See draws an arc between portraits traded among classmates to the persona play that Doll Girls rapidly execute on smartphones, where the continuous feeds of Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter allow alternate versions of the self to appear, morph, and disappear.
-via Fubiz
Dave Mienert, a filmmaker, discovered a 4-week old Great Dane puppy. She was the handiwork of a backyard dog breeder. She had a genetic disorder that would leave her blind and deaf eventually. All of her littermates had died or been born deformed.
This was not a healthy pup, but Miernet adopted her and named her Pegasus. He wasn't sure how long he would have with his new friend and so decided to record it all.
Pegasus often walks on a treadmill. Miernet compiled these scenes into a time-lapse video showing the weak puppy growing into a strong adult dog. He says, "I still don’t know how long she is going to live, but right now is pretty great."
-via Ace of Spades HQ
Samantha Cristoforetti is an Italian astronaut currently on board the International Space Station. She recently made headlines for cosplaying as Star Trek's Captain Kathryn Janeway while there. Later, she donned the same uniform and drank espresso while quoting the coffee-loving Janeway.
But you never actually drink coffee-you just hold it for a while. Cristoferetti made her way to the ISS toilet and explained to viewers how it works. You'd never guess that it's a toilet from just looking at it. Both excretory functions are handled by suction tubes. There's not actual seat. Astronauts just float in the very low gravity and rely on the suction tubes to do their jobs.
(Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)
I love the work of Zach Weinersmith, a webcomic artist who combines absurdity, intellectual sophistication, and occasional puns. One of his common approaches is to take a simple idea and extend it to extreme conclusions.
Recently, he retold the story of Pinocchio, giving it a very dark ending. The wooden puppet's nose would grow whenever he told a lie. He found a loophole: he didn't necessarily have to tell the precise truth to avoid growing his nose. Read the rest of the story here.
Brizzy is an actress and master impressionist. For Mother's Day, she invited her Twitter followers to suggest moms from cartoons that she should impersonate. Brizzy responded with the most famous drawn mothers from The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, Rugrats, Bob's Burgers, and more. Not only are her voices perfect, but so are her facial expressions.
-via Tastefully Offensive
(Image: BBC)
Joy Lofthouse, 92, was a pilot with Britain's Air Transport Auxiliary during World War II. She flew the UK's legendary Spitfire fighter plane. A 2009 article in the Daily Mail describes her experiences. Women who flew for the ATA were known as the Attagirls. They transported aircraft and supplies throughout the UK during the war.
Lofthouse and her colleagues, which included her sister, flew many different types of aircraft, including the Spitfire. Recently, she got the chance to fly in one again (auto-start video) during ceremonies to mark the 70th anniversary of VE Day.
-via The Mary Sue
South African artist and teacher Megan Maconochie wanted a novel 365 art project--a medium or theme that she would work in every day for a full year. She found the perfect approach: pencil shavings. Moconochie grinds colored pencils, then arranges the shavings into collages showing animals, cartoon characters, and people.
You can get a nice meal at a bistro for an easy $40, but taking a quality photo of it can be trickier. And since it is important to share pictures of your meals with the world, you need Foodography. These are two plates designed to be sets for the camera on your smartphone. The one pictured above has a rest for your phone and a high back that blocks out distractions in the background.
(Photo: Moyan Brenn)
To create a collegial atmosphere, some companies provide free coffee for the office coffee pot. Others don't dock your time for restroom breaks. Similarly, the Tiens Group gives its employees vacations in France.
The Chinese firm employees about 12,000 people. It recently gave 6,400 of them a vacation in France, including a mass tour of the Louvre in Paris before a visit to the lovely Riviera city of Nice. The Guardian reports:
A huge Chinese company, Tiens Group, is treating more than half of its 12,000 employees to a four-day holiday in France and has booked up 140 hotels in the capital Paris as part of the package, a French foreign ministry spokeswoman said on Thursday.
According to Le Parisien newspaper, the trip by the 6,400-strong group includes a mass visit to the Louvre museum, and they are expected to spend €13m euros (US$15m) in total.
This is a forward-thinking move by billionaire company chairman Li Jinyuan that will no doubt enhance the performance of his employees and therefore massively increase profits. Surely other enterprising and visionary corporate leaders could do likewise to benefit their companies--for example, Alex Santoso, the owner of Neatorama.
-via Marilyn Terrell
(Photos: Ameshin)
Spoon & Tamago tells us that amezaiku--the Japanese art of lollipop making--has thrived since the Eighth Century. Shrinri Tezuka is a master of the craft. He owns Ameshin, a studio and workshop in Tokyo. There, he produces wondrously realistic and completely edible lollipops that look like animals. He combines sugar, starch, and food coloring into the forms of fish, frogs, and snakes.
Above are Elsa and Anna from Frozen. Below are Merida from Brave and Rapunzel from Tangled. They're costumed a bit differently from the movies. Korean artist Byajae imagined them in the traditional clothing of his homeland. They're beautiful! Rocket News 24 reports that Byajae is marketing these images as postcards.
A man and his dog went out on the water in Townsville, Queensland, Australia on Monday. The human fell out of the boat while it was moving quickly. He had very foolishly never taught his dog how to pilot the boat, so the poor dog was left spinning around.
Three men in another boat and a jet ski intercepted the boat and brought it to a halt.
