This quiz from mental_floss is driving me nuts. It’s a simple concept: just recognize all the U.S. states by their names. Easy, huh? But the names are scattered among words that are not U.S. states. Some are cities, some are places in other countries, and some are just a bit mangled. And if you pick the wrong one, the quiz is over and you have to reload to try again. But the hardest thing about it is that you only have one minute to go through them all! If you read too fast, you’re liable to click on a wrong name. If you go too slow, time will run out. And you will have to stop and scroll a couple of times. The best I’ve gotten so far is 41 of them when time ran out. I hope you can beat that!
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A security camera caught an absolutely bizarre traffic accident in China. You don’t see any of the cars hitting each other (at first, although the two vans eventually collide). They just stand up and start a weird dance! What’s going on?
Turns out that there’s a cable lying across the road, waiting for a phone pole installation. A street sweeper, which you can see on the right side, sweeps it up and winds the cable into its rotating brushes, which pulls it taut just as the three vehicles are passing over it. -via Boing Boing
Shane Victorino of the Boston Red Sox fell into the stands. The crowd helped him up. But there’s a lot more going on in this clip if you watch it a few times. Look at it again, and keep your eyes on the guy with the blue shirt with red sleeves. He moves in to help Victorino, but is no help at all. Victorino is up, so the guy knocks a woman’s phone onto the field, breaking it. Victorino hands the phone back, so the guy knocks a woman’s beer into her face. Really, if you’re going to be a walking train wreck, learn about personal space.
This happened during a game between the Red Sox and the Detroit Tigers in 2013. You can see the original video here. You kinda get the idea that if you watched the sequence a few more times, some other weird things will start happening. -via reddit
Rapper and comedian Dan Bull (previously at Neatorama) and his cats Jimmy and Sammy had a visit from a fox.
This incredible encounter happened to me this week. The fox was curled up asleep at my back door. Foxes are normally nocturnal and will run away if they spot you anywhere near. But I just sat there for ages chilling with this fox and two of my cats Jimmy and Sammy. I sensed no hostility from either side, just a relaxed inquisitiveness.
The fox and the cats got along just fine, but eventually the fox realized that not only was he being stared at by a human, but he was also being recorded. Bye, Mr. Fox! -via Arbroath
This past week marked the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. Einstein was only 26 years old when he came up with it. The theory married space and time together, with one affecting the other. Mass and energy aren’t all that different from each other, either. They all mesh together to produce the universe as we know it.
The UK’s Science & Technology Facilities Council presents a video from Jamie Lochhead and Eoin Duffy that explains the general outline of Einstein’s work in relativity, narrated by David Tennant of Doctor Who. -via the A.V. Club
It’s become a holiday tradition for Jimmy Fallon to perform a medley of holiday songs set to the tunes of pop hits from the previous year. Or, you can put it another way: pop music hits of the past year with new holiday lyrics.
The Tonight Show did just that last night, with Fallon joined by Rashida Jones, Queen Latifah, and Eric Nally. The songs from 2015 cover Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas. -via Viral Viral Videos
Poor kitty! This big red nose isn’t to guide Santa’s sleigh (although that might work). Redditor marklyon’s cat was stung by a bee. He was taken to a vet, and he’s fine now. But he sported a resemblance to W.C. Fields for a while. The cat was also compared to a clown, Karl Malden, Gerard Depardieu, Squidward, and Jimmy Durante.
For the third year in a row, Buzzfeed asked the UK for a Thanksgiving gift: British people trying to label the states on U.S. maps. Honestly, Brits know a lot about the U.S., but when they are confronted with a map asking for fifty labels, it’s suddenly difficult and confusing. I’m surprised they did as well as they did. Most of the folks who tried it labeled all the states whether they knew them or not, which is priceless. In the map above, I live in the state of “not here.” See all 21 maps.
Hi friends! Soon I´m back om my feet, and we shall se each other again! #sharegavle #gavlegoat
— Gävlebocken (@Gavlebocken) November 26, 2015
Sweden is celebrating the beginning of the Christmas season in the traditional way -with the Gävle Goat! Every year since 1966 the people of Gävle, Sweden, erect a huge straw goat for Christmas. We’ve covered the ups and downs of the goat over the years, when it sometimes comes to a bad end.
The goat for 2015 is up, and the goat’s Twitter account (in both Swedish and English) has been activated. How long will it last? You can keep tabs on the goat with a live camera feed. -via Metafilter
Steve, Jake, and Chris went on a fishing trip near Phillip Island off the coast of Australia. They didn’t catch many fish, but they had a great time. First they saw dolphins, then a seal, and then a whale- All within 90 seconds! Well, I guess we know why didn’t catch many fish. Either the fish were already eaten or they know when to make themselves scarce.
Of course, while the guys on the boat are gushing about the wildlife, the dolphins, seal, and whale are all excited about the boat they got to see close up. Another explanation that one might consider is that they are all running away from something very large and scary. -via reddit
You may have some older relatives that get all nostalgic about salt-rising bread. You don’t see it much anymore, because it’s hard to make and not all that popular among anyone who wasn’t raised with it. The smell is described like either cheese or dirty socks. But those who love it really love it. Salt-rising bread doesn’t even have salt in it, and no one is sure how the name came about. It was made by pioneering American women who didn’t have access to yeast, and who didn’t always have sourdough starter ready. They made salt-rising bread rise with environmental bacteria. Yes, they did.
In the early 20th century, this lengthy, yeast-less process also became an interest of microbiologists. In 1914, Richard N. Hart noted in his book Leavening Agents that salt-rising bread “seems to fail in a well-sterilized room," and alludes to the experiments of Henry A. Kohman, who discovered that salt-rising dough lacked yeast completely “but literally swarmed with bacteria.”
In 1910 Kohman was funded by the aforementioned bread-obsessed Kansas Governor, Walter R. Stubbs, to learn how bakers may reliably make it, and concluded that a variety of anaerobic bacteria allowed the bread to rise. In 1923, microbiologist Stuart A. Koser began to suspect the mix might include bacteria found in human intestines and wounds.
The experiments Kohman did after that might make you a little queasy, but the fact is that not a single case of food poisoning has been attributed to salt-rising bread. Read what we know about this classic bread, including instructions for making your own starter, at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Flickr user Wonderland Kitchen)
Peru banned circuses from using wild animals, but not all of them complied. Animal Defenders International made it a priority to find confined and abused animals still kept by circuses. One they found was Mufasa, a mountain lion that had been in the circus for at least 20 years. He was kept chained in the back of a pickup truck.
Mufasa’s journey to freedom began in April, when ADI received a tip-off that Circo Koreander was illegally operating with wild animals in an isolated village in northern Peru. ADI, police and wildlife officers moved in for a surprise raid but were met by hostile resistance. An eight hour stand-off saw riot police and a Public Prosecutor called in before Mufasa – Peru’s last wild animal in a circus – was handed over, along with a condor.
The cat was taken to the Spirit of Freedom rescue centre near Lima to recover. He got veterinary care and a pen to stretch out in. When he recovered his health, Mufasa was taken on a three-day journey to the Taricaya Ecological Reserve at the edge of the Tambopata rainforest reserve. Now he has both support and the freedom to run through the forest. -via Viral Viral Videos
Otis Johnson was recently released from prison after serving 44 years. Think about how much the world has changed in 44 years. If you weren’t there to see it changing gradually, how surprising would it be? Honestly, I’m surprised by how much has changed, and I saw it happen.
The scenes of Johnson taking in the sights of city streets will remind you of Back to the Future Part 2, if only Marty McFly had aged into an elderly man on his way to 2015. Johnson is 69 years old, and unlikely to find a job. He didn’t pay into the Social Security system. He has no children, and no contact with other family members.
Upon release from prison, Johnson was handed an ID, documents outlining his criminal case history, $40 and two bus tickets. Having lost all family connections while serving his sentence, Johnson now relies on Fortune Society, a nonprofit that provides housing and services to ex-prisoners in Harlem.
Read more about Johnson at Aljazeera. -via reddit
Randall Munroe posted an interactive xkcd comic yesterday that’s a video game called Hoverboard. I played it for a short time, but I gave up because I was busy (it’s Thanksgiving week, after all). I do like how encouraging it is: Once I got the result “You got 0 coins in three seconds. You successfully avoided all the coins!” Heh. Then today, I see that the opening screen is just a tiny part of a massive game world you can explore if you take the time. If you’re skeptical, here’s a scrollable map, although you may want to wait and see what you can find on your own before peeking. There’s supposedly a story involved that only becomes clear as you progress through the game.
The game is a promotional tie-in for Munroe’s new book Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words. -via Boing Boing
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
Revolver was the seventh studio album released by the Beatles, the landmark recording came out on August 5, 1966. Without question, no Beatles album has risen in the esteem of critics, reviewers, fans and aficionados over the past 40 years as Revolver.
When the Fabs called it quits in 1969, it was pretty much agreed that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band, their breakthrough 1967 album, was the band's pinnacle. Now, interestingly, Sgt. Pepper is deemed by many Beatle people as being slightly dated, still very good, but a bit of a flower power era relic, too much caught in a set period of time, whereas the Beatles music, like all great art, has more of a timeless quality and effect. Revolver is now judged by possibly a majority of Beatle followers as being the group's pinnacle as a recording team, their masterwork.
Before the title Revolver was chosen, several other possible titles were tossed around by the boys, including Abracadabra, Beatles on Safari, Pendulum, and Magic Circles. John suggested Four Sides of the Eternal Triangle, while Ringo wittily thought of dubbing it After Geography (the Rolling Stones' had recently released the LP After Math).
Finally, Revolver was agreed upon by all four of the Beatles, apparently in Tokyo, while they were jointly working on a group painting. (The Revolver does not refer to a gun or firearm, but to that fact that a record album "revolves" on the turntable.)
Revolver also was the harbinger of the Beatles clearly defined second chapter. After being the four "mop tops" for going on four years, the group's creativity, experimentation with drugs, and natural boredom and restlessness was soon to usher in an entirely new era for the world's most popular quartet. Soon, in very short order, the cuddly, cheerful, wisecracking Liverpool musicians would be caught up in a political scandal with the first family in Manila, get death threats for daring to playing in the sacred Budokan Arena in Tokyo, and worst of all, John Lennon would cause an international scandal by sarcastically claiming that the Beatles "were more popular than Jesus.”
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