Longcat is back! Redditor FallenCoffee took a picture of his cat with a panoramic camera. And this was a day that kitty did not want to sit still for his picture, so now he is a centipede. This may remind you of Cyriak Harris’ Kitty City. Cats can be surreal even when they aren't trying to be.
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It’s the perfect matchup- Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy and Hodor, from Game of Thrones. Who’s the winner? It’s obviously Hodor. I laughed my way through this video before I realized it had English subtitles. Then I had to watch it again, and it was completely different. -via Geeks Are Sexy
Munchkin cats have normal size bodies, but very short legs, due to a genetic mutation. It is a relatively new breed of cat that people find incredibly cute. You’ll see why in this compilation of Munchkin cat clips from MrFunnyMals. -via Tastefully Offensive
A stop-motion tourist in Rome gets to travel 2,000 years back in time to see how the ancient Romans built Trajan’s Column. The Column is a tower constructed of 29 huge slabs of marble, with spiral stairs carved out of the inside of each slab. The engineering genius required to assemble such a tower was unprecedented.
This video was created by Hans Weise and Fernando Gomez-Baptista to accompany the National Geographic feature story on the mysterious Trajan’s Column in the April issue. If you’re more interested in the animation, here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how it was made. -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!
Before Amelia Earhart, before Blanche Stuart Scott, before Pancho Barnes, there was Sophie Blanchard, who took to the air long before there were airplanes. Blanchard was the first woman to fly, and was appointed France’s Chief Air Minister of Ballooning by Napoleon Bonapart.
Over the course of her high-flying career, Blanchard gained a massive fanbase nad pioneered new flight techniques. Her test flights resulted in multiple near-death experiences before she finally perished in a fatal blaze of glory in 1819. It was a dizzyingly eventful life of 41 years, and worth celebrating on Blanchard’s 237th birthday.
Despite how flagrantly Blanchard flirted with death her whole life, she was a shy, nervous person, terrified of loud noises and riding in carriages. But when she married the ambitious early ballooner Jean-Pierre Blanchard in 1804, she finally discovered her ideal habitat—the quiet bliss of high altitudes.
Yes, she also became the first woman to die from flying, ten years after her daredevil husband did. It was a spectacular, gruesome, and very public death, which you can read about at Motherboard. -via Digg
Have you ever been caught in an email storm? Someone sends an email to a list instead of one recipient, then some on the list hit “reply all” to complain about it, and the emails escalate from there. It’s a mistake that has happened before, but this time it had a happy ending for some folks.
It all started late last Tuesday when Nigel Guest, president of a Berkeley community group called the Council of Neighborhood Associations, attempted to send an email to himself that mistakenly hit the inboxes of thousands of registered voters.
The brief email, with the subject line “test,” included a single character: “x.” Instead of ignoring the message, some of the recipients responded to ask why they gotten it. And, rather than replying only to Guest, they made the fateful, likely unintentional, decision to reply all.
What resulted was a string of thousands of emails going to thousands of people in Berkeley -and elsewhere. Some people ignored it, some were upset, and some had fun with it. You can see an imgur gallery with selected emails from the storm, including memes and t-shirts to commemorate the event.
One person in the chain asked when the potluck would be ...and the suggestion that they get together drew the immediate interest of list members who kept their sense of humor, so they started a Facebook group called CNA Survivors and an event page to plan the picnic. The picnic was held Sunday, and about 70 Berkeley voters came together in the spirit of community and shared tribulation.
A good time was had by all …who attended. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Drew Wheeler)
Since 1985, the Walt Disney Pictures logo that begins their movies always features a castle with a shooting star arching over it. It was the same logo for ten years, and then for Toy Story in 1995, they altered it a bit for that particular movie. In the 20 years since then, the logo has been customized for most of the movies (the Toy Story version became their default for Pixar films), while keeping the two basic elements. This video shows us the logos in front of 39 Disney films, and how they mesh with their subject matter. I also found out that there are a ton of Disney films I haven’t seen. -via Geeks Are Sexy
A 1917 newspaper headline called her “The Richest Negro Girl in the World.” Sarah Rector was born in 1904, a member of the Creek Nation in Oklahoma. Her family had been slaves of the Creek before all their slaves were freed and made citizens. In accordance with the Dawes Allotment Act of 1887, all of Sarah’s family members were given allotments of land in Oklahoma. Sarah’s father sold off his and some of his children’s allotments to pay taxes on the rest. Sarah’s allotment was small and rocky, no good for farming, so her father leased it to an oil company. You can guess what happened.
Sarah’s first oil well came in August 1913, producing 105,000 gallons of oil each day. In a time when a nickel bought an ice cream soda, she netted more than $300 a day ($7,000 in 2015 currency). Published drilling updates reported Sarah ended up with over 50 completed wells on her property and the area exceeded the famed Glenn Pool production.
She was not the only Freedman minor whose land produced oil, but other children were taken advantage of by court-assigned guardians who siphoned off profits. Sarah’s guardian was a white family friend, chosen by her parents, who fairly allocated funds to the family under the supervision of a judge who would not put up with fraud. The story of how Sarah Rector’s life changed from that day on is a fascinating one, told in detail at This Land magazine. -via Digg
If the internet were a high school, the people inside would be websites. And they’d all have their quirks. Google is the teacher, and the students include the ADHD twins (Vine and Twitter), the big man on campus (Facebook) who’s dating the cheerleader (Buzzfeed), the troublemaker (reddit), and quite a few nerds. Cracked, which produced this video, apparently skipped class that day. No surprise there. We can assume Neatorama is in the library, sorting things out in the adult section. This video contains some mildly vulgar references. -via Viral Viral Videos
When Jill and Zeon go to the San Diego County Fair this year, they’ll have to try the new “all that and a bag of chips” sandwich -except this one has the chips right inside. The Grilled Chili Cheese Frito Crunch Sandwich makes chili, cheese, and Fritos a little easier to eat while you’re walking. You’ll find it at the the Grilled Cheese-a-Fair booth, whose proprietors unveiled it at a recent fair planning meeting. Does anyone want to place bets between now and then that they develop a method for deep-frying this sandwich?
(Image credit: San Diego County Fair)
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
We live in the age of movie sequels. Movie historians well know the the sequel is a relatively new phenomenon. Sequels used to be extremely rare, but nowadays it seems like every other film gets a sequel (or sequels) made.
Almost inevitably, a sequel is weaker and makes less money than the original, but with a blockbuster film the producers are happy to make a fraction of what the original made. Few movie fans will list any sequel on his or her list of all-time best or favorite films.
Okay, let's take a look at a list of bad, unnecessary, or curious movie sequels.
1. Son of Kong (1933)
Listed by some film historians as "the first movie sequel.” King Kong was such a huge smash, this rushed sequel is historic also, in that it is the only movie sequel to ever be released in the same year (1933) as its original.
Sadly, Son of Kong has no Fay Wray.
2. Return to Oz (1985)
Disney's sequel to the classic The Wizard of Oz came 46 years after the original, earning a sequel place in the record books. Unfortunately, that's all it is known for, as it was a commercial and critical failure.
Director Walter Murch reportedly wanted only scant references to the original film, with the intention of remaining faithful to the L. Frank Baum novels; for instance, the scarecrow, tin man, and cowardly lion are only briefly in the film.
3. McHale's Navy Joins the Air Force (1965)
A strange sequel, based on the hit TV series McHale's Navy and a sequel to the 1964 hit film of the same title. But strangely, there is no McHale in this one! Series star Ernest Borgnine (who played Quinton McHale) does not appear in the film named after his character. Ernest was off filming Flight of the Phoenix when this was being made. Much worse than it's predecessor. Ironically, Flight of the Phoenix is better than either of the McHale's Navy films.
4. Grease 2 (1982)
Shampoo has come a long way since it was first introduced in the 19th century. I remember when some shampoo company started advertising the idea that you should shampoo every day. That was a really novel idea at the time, since showers weren’t all that common in houses yet, and a lot of folks still didn’t have indoor plumbing. Craig Benzine guest-hosts this week’s mental_floss List Show, posted a little earlier than usual. He’s got facts about shampoo, including the reason there’s silicone in your shampoo.
Screen Junkies gave us Honest Trailers for The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug, and now finally, the Hobbit Trilogy finishes up with the Honest Trailer for The Battle of the Five Armies. Whew -it’s about time! -via Tastefully Offensive
A new exhibit of Japanese art in San Francisco called "Seduction: Japan’s Floating World" presents the image of beautiful women doing alluring things in an opulent world. But these women of the Edo period were prostitutes in the Yoshiwara pleasure district outside Edo (now Tokyo). The art promoted business, and invited intrigued men to sample the decadent pleasures of what was once called the "suffering world," but then was changed to the “floating world” to whitewash any negative connotations. Laura W. Allen, curator of Japanese art at the Asian Art Museum, put together the exhibit. She cautions us on what we don’t know about the women.
“Don’t take these paintings at face value,” Allen says. “It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, yes, it’s a picture of a beautiful woman, wearing beautiful clothing.’ But it’s not a photograph. It’s some artist’s rendition, made to promote this particular world, which was driven by economics. The profiteers urged the production of more paintings, which continued to feed the frenzy for the Yoshiwara.
“The artwork is very much glamorized and idealized,” she continues. “I haven’t been to 17th-century Japan so I don’t know what it was actually like, and the women didn’t write about it, so we don’t have their firsthand accounts. To imagine it from a woman’s perspective, it must have been a very harsh reality. There’s been some modern scholarship that promotes idea that the women working as prostitutes had an economic power that they might not have otherwise had. But I think the day-to-day reality of living in the Yoshiwara could not have been pleasant.”
The life of an Edo Period prostitute was strictly ranked and regimented, and Yoshiwara flourished under their labor. Read some of the history of the pleasure district and the women who lived and worked there, at Collectors Weekly. You'll also see samples from the art exhibit.
(Image source: the John C. Weber Collection, image © John Bigelow Taylor)
This is probably some kind of enrichment activity for red pandas in the Maruyama Zoo in Sapporo, Japan, but it ends up as pure entertaining cuteness. They slap slices of apple onto the glass windows of Eita’s enclosure and he has to get them himself. The apples taste so good after all that effort! -via Daily Picks and Flicks
See more red panda action from the Maruyama Zoo.
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