Human, why did you get this cat? What the heck is it doing right now? Not only does the cat not know how to dog, it can’t even cat properly! Fix it, please.
-via Twisted Sifter
John Farrier's Blog Posts
What do these clouds look like? The wakes of torpedoes streaming through clear water? The burrows of space whales? It’s a bizarre sight. If you want to witness it in person, you’ll have to visit the Gulf of Carpentaria on the northern coast of Australia because that’s the only spot in the world where Morning Glory clouds consistently appear. NASA explains how they form:
Long, horizontal, circulating tubes of air might form when flowing, moist, cooling air encounters an inversion layer, an atmospheric layer where air temperature atypically increases with height. These tubes and surrounding air could cause dangerous turbulence for airplanes when clear. Morning Glory clouds can reportedly achieve an airspeed of 60 kilometers per hour over a surface with little discernible wind.
Morning Glory clouds are 1 of 23 bizarre but completely real meteorological phenomenon rounded up by When on Earth.
Haisu Tian is an artist in Fremont, California. One of her recent projects puts a new spin on traditional Chinese ink painting. In Landskating, Tian composed an enormous landscape on sheets of rice paper. To apply the ink, she didn’t use a paintbrush, but rollerblades.
Tian’s rollerblades were modified to stream ink over the front wheels from a reservoir mounted in front of the toes. She described it as a full-body experience of composition:
My whole body is involved and I produce all kinds of ink landscapes, such creation is full of power, speed and rhythm.
Amy of the food blog Oh, Bite It! has a knack for making the most simultaneously delicious and disturbing foods available.
Her reasoning for her most recent creation is excellent: bacon is great. Oreo cookies are great. So when combined, their greatness must only increase.
Amy’s recipe is simple: she wrapped Oreos with thinly sliced bacon, then drove a toothpick through each one to hold them together. Then she deep fried them briefly.
I have a suggestion for the future: dip these bacon-covered Oreos in chocolate sauce.
The geeky food blog Sweet & Geek used a giant chocolate Easter egg (translation) to recreate what I suspect is the space slug scene from The Empire Strikes Back. The interior of the asteroid is filled with sponge cake, creamy frosting, and butter cream shaped to look like grass or tentacles. If you do not have the original Millennium Falcon available, you can use a chocolate version, as Sweet & Geek did.
The woman drove right through a stop sign. Perhaps she thought that she could escape a ticket by flirting with the police office. He shut her down promptly. You can see the encounter at the 1:52 mark in the video below.
-via Tastefully Offensive
Chris Piers of the pop culture blog The Robot’s Pajamas runs a regular feature called “Star Trek Problems.” It highlights the painful reality that Trekkies must face: many aspects of Star Trek: The Next Generation don’t make sense. You can view them all here. Warning: be prepared to lose the next hour because you won’t be able to stop yourself from reading them all.
-via Popped Culture
(Photo: Martin Konapacki)
Pictured above is a cell from the old jail of Pottawattamie County, Iowa. It was used from 1885 through 1969. It’s one of three jails in the world with a unique design: rotating cells.
The cells rest on circular tracks and rotate along a central shaft. When the jailer wishes to open a cell, he turns the crank, which turns the cells until the desired one is accessible to the entryway. The shaft holds the plumbing needs for the prisoners.
The design came to be known as the “squirrel cage jail.” The inventors, William Brown and Benjamin Haugh, described it in their patent application as a means to reduce the number of guards without reducing security:
The object of our invention is to produce a jail or prison in which prisoners can be controlled without the necessity of personal contact between them and the jailer or guard, and incidentally to provide it with sundry conveniences and advantages not usually found in prisons [….]
The Pottawattamie County jail in Council Bluffs, Iowa and similar structures in Gallatin, Missouri and Crawfordsville, Indiana are the only three squirrel cage jails in the world. The Historical Society of Pottawattamie County owns the one in Council Bluffs. It’s open to the public.
-via Atlas Obscura
Start by pulling one of the fries out without toppling the entire structure over. Or go ahead and collapse the skyscraper of breakfast love. There’s no way to lose! Josh Elkin of Epic Meal Time made this tower of fried goodness in a game that he calls “How many ways can I reinvent breakfast.”
Is it too late in the day for breakfast? Then try his model of the Taj Mahal made of pizza:
An unknown street artist in Munich, Germany left a carefully-woven treasure for the next tired soul to sit down. Street Art Germany says that it hearkens new life: “Spring is here!”
-via Colossal
And that is why we don’t play role-playing games with Billy anymore. If he can’t emotionally handle a simple dungeon crawl, he can’t play with us.
(Photo: US Antarctic Program)
In 1961, the US Navy built a 2-lane bowling alley at McMurdo Station, the main American base in Antarctica. The blogger Sandwichgirl used to live there (she actually got married at McMurdo). One of her jobs there was that of pinsetter at the bowling alley. She describes the alley at length here.
(Photo: Sandwichgirl)
Pictured above is an old fashioned pinsetting machine. It’s mechanically simpler to an automatic system. McMurdo preferred it because it’s less likely to require major maintenance and repair. It and the rest of the bowling alley was dismantled in 2008.
-via Messy Nessy Chic
UPDATE 4/13/15: More information kindly submitted by sandwhichgirl.
(Photo: Kim Bhasin/Business Insider)
It’s 2 AM and you’re scarfing down a double order of Chicken McNuggets that have sat in your refrigerator since last week. You’re in a hurry to eat them before they spoil and become too unhealthy to eat. But you’re also curious: the heavenly McNuggets appear to fit into regular shapes.
Hayley Peterson of Business Insider investigated and discovered that McDonald’s identifies 4 standard McNugget shapes: the ball, the bell, the boot, and the bone, which is sometimes called the bow tie. Why?
"Our Chicken McNuggets are shaped uniquely for kids and kids at heart — it makes dipping more fun!" the company wrote.
So why just four shapes?
According to the chain, "three would've been too few. Five would've been, like, wacky."
This seems like an inadequate answer. McDonald’s must be hiding something sinister.
-via VA Viper
(Photo: Kenta Hasegawa)
This week, Narita Airport in Tokyo opened a new terminal. Terminal 3 is designed to provide access to low-cost carriers. The designers at PARTY wanted passengers to have a good time without spending too much money. Their solution was to build a running track around the entire terminal. The track serves in place of a moving walkway as well as reminds visitors of the upcoming 2020 Olympics, which Tokyo will host. You can see more photos at Spoon & Tamago.
(Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
The US Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp to honor the late American poet Maya Angelou. The stamp shows a photo of Angelou and a quotation. The words on the stamp are:
A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.
It’s a nice line. But there’s a problem: Angelou never said that. It’s actually a quotation from a 1967 book by Joan Walsh Anglund.
Oops!
— Popehat (@Popehat) April 8, 2015
The incident has inspired other people to write quotations on the Angelou stamp. The Popehat twitter feed went off on a good riff on that schtick today. My favorite is this line by Ash from Army of Darkness.
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