I just saved myself ten hours of time by watching the TL;DW version of The Hobbit trilogy. They may have left out a few details, but nothing I’d really want to sit still that long for, even if I had the time.
Thirteen dwarves! That’s got even Snow White beat. Honestly, I tried to read The Hobbit in college and was so bored that I gave up and never went back to it. That was 40 years ago, and I still see no reason to watch three movies that I hear are dragged out even more than the book. -via Tastefully Offensive
James Breakwell (Exploding Unicorn) has been called the funniest Dad on Twitter. But it’s actually his four daughters who are the funny ones. Years ago, I tried my best to remember the funny things my kids said long enough to tell my Mom, but today with Twitter and smartphones, they can be instantly recorded. Some of these are priceless.
A photo posted by hkfoodiexblogger (@hkfoodiexblogger) on Oct 27, 2015 at 5:38am PDT
Rainbow grilled cheese? That just seems like something you wouldn’t want to try. Rainbow foods are usually sweet, or at least that’s what the brain tells you. But this is from Hong Kong, so who knows? The description doesn’t sound too bad:
Sold by Hong Kong’s Kala Toast, the sandwiches cost 42 HKD (around $5 USD). And that cheese you see isn’t just colored — it’s also flavored. The blue is lavender, green is basil and red is tomato; the yellow is actually a combination of gruyere, emmental, mozzarella, and cheddar cheese.
The world has finally gotten around to admitting that clowns are pretty much horrible. For centuries, we just pretended otherwise, not knowing that other people felt the same way. But now clowns are a fairly common horror trope, and there have been plenty of movies with clowns as the scary part. I posted a picture of the first one you’d probably think of.
Pennywise is the scariest clown ever, and he’s the first that came to mind when I decided to create this list. In the TV miniseries It (which I think we can count as a movie), Pennywise the Dancing Clown was played by the very creepy Tim Curry. The clown is just one of “Its” forms, complete with long claws and fangs. Truly terrifying for children.
But there are plenty of other clowns in movies you might have forgotten, but you’ll be reminded by this extensive list at TVOM.
If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS. This kid will make an adequate politician someday, or a comedian. Yeah, it could well be fake, but it’s still funny. This bonus test question appeared on imgur under the title “This is why I teach.” Incidentally, this is the correct answer. -via Peter Lindelauf
This increasingly famous portrait from the US Civil War is of two men. On the left is Andrew Chandler, Confederate soldier from Mississippi. On the right is his slave, Silas Chandler, who accompanied Andrew into war. Was Silas a Confederate soldier? The question has divided two families with the same last name for a hundred years, and more recently, groups of Americans who see the Civil War differently. In 1994, the the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy held a ceremony at Silas’ grave to honor his “service” to the Confederacy.
This story might have remained, like many others, just another Civil War tale passed down from one generation to the next, if it weren’t for an astonishing tintype of the two men, armed to the teeth in Confederate uniforms, taken in 1861. The image has helped bolster the claims of the community of amateur historians, hucksters, and Confederate sympathizers committed to defending the Confederacy from the charge of racism, who insist that thousands of black men fought and died for the rebel cause. “Ever since the SCV posthumously honored Silas,” [Kevin] Levin wrote in 2012, “accounts of black Confederate troops have surged in popularity.”
That account is far from universal. Silas’ great-granddaughter, Myra Chandler Sampson, said that Silas never had a choice.
But where Andrew Chandler’s descendants recall an intimate friendship that lasted for generations, and neo-Confederates see evidence of a post-racial Confederacy, Silas Chandler’s family sees a slave forced to serve a cause he did not believe in, not only in life but also in death.
“They dressed him up like a monkey,” Sampson said, “and took him off to war.”
Some cats love bottle caps, while other concentrate on milk rings or q-tips or ink pens or rubber bands. This is redditor jasonripp’s cat Cersei, after he found out where she hid her collection of bottle caps. She looks like she’s terrified he might take them away. My cat Marshmallow collects chopsticks, but when she can’t find any more, she’ll gather hair ties. She puts the hair ties in the cat food bowls, or even the water container, which all the cats share, and it aggravates the rest of them to no end. Continue reading to see more cats who collect things.
Mica is a brush-tailed rock wallaby at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney. She’s been doing her job for the endangered species by giving birth. However, the only male wallaby in the zoo was moved away in March of 2015. Mica’s joey emerged from the pouch about six months later. But zookeepers were surprised to find that there’s another baby in there! The new joey recently peeked out from Mica’s pouch, and appears to be about six months old. How did that happen? Wallaby keeper Tony-Britt Lewis explained.
The birth is the result of a phenomenon known as embryonic diapause, which enables certain mammals to extend their gestation period and time the birth of their young.
The reproductive strategy, which is used by a number of marsupial species including kangaroos, wallabies and wombats, usually occurs when adverse environmental conditions threaten the survival of the mother and her newborn.
“It’s an interesting survival mechanism that allows the mother to delay the development of the embryo in drought conditions or if she already has a joey in the pouch,” said Tony.
Over 27 seasons on TV, there’s been a lot of food featured on the TV show The Simpsons. Eats Like a Duck chronicles those foods one at a time, with references to the episode it appeared in and recipes. For example, in the episode “Homerpalooza” (season 7), Homer tries to sneak homemade Kahlua into a concert. Yes, that’s a bad idea, but this is Homer we’re talking about. Still, homemade Kailua can be a great thing used in the proper context.
Other recipes include Bart’s Grilled Twizzlers, A Cool Glass of Turnip Juice, Blandoori, Clove Tom Collins Pie, and of course, The Flaming Homer. -via Metafilter
Jürgen Horn and Mike Powell coordinate their travels to avoid cold weather, but they miscalculated the April temperatures in Montreal. Lucky for them, the city is well-prepared, with a vast network of tunnels that connect public buildings from underground. They make use of the Underground City to avoid traveling outside.
“Underground City” is certainly an evocative name, bringing to mind a sort of subterranean, alternative Montreal, populated perhaps by near-sighted mole-people. But the reality isn’t that exotic. Montrealers are often amused to learn that their elaborate maze of tunnels has become a bonafide tourist attraction… because that’s really all the Underground City is: tunnels which lead from one set of buildings to the next.
To long-time residents, these passageways are purely utilitarian; part of their boring, daily commute. But to newcomers like us, the Underground City is much more interesting. Many of the tunnels are decorated with art. There’s odd architecture, and an endless array of shops. The interior courtyards to which they lead are often beautiful. It’s fun to emerge from a random passageway into surroundings which are entirely new and unexpected. And the people-watching is magnificent, especially when cold weather drives the city’s numerous crazies underground.
Altogether, twenty miles of tunnels make it easy to traverse downtown Montreal for shopping, entertainment, dining, and more without ever coming in contact with the elements. See the Underground City at For 91 Days.
Alfred Pennyworth is the hero we need. A very proper British butler, Alfred handles all the details behind the scenes for Batman, I mean, Bruce Wayne. He has wise advice, the answer he’s looking for, an opinion worth listening to, and takes care of all his Batman’s needs, all the while making his emplyer look good… and indeed, even letting him believe he’s the brains of the outfit.
In this video, we get to see the various incarnations of Alfred Pennyworth through the various versions of Batman. Practically perfect in every way! Oh, yeah, that’s Mary Poppins. But she never had to sweep out the bat cave. Alfred deserves much more credit than he gets. -via Geeks Are Sexy
There are Old West replica towns across the U.S., but they are mainly museums and entertainment centers that are open to tourists. In England, the town of Laredo has grown from one wooden cabin to an entire town of 24 buildings, but it’s not open to the public (although it has been in the past). It’s for the exclusive use of the Laredo Western Club, whose members step back in time -and across the pond- when they set foot in town. Founded by John “JT” Truder in 1970, the town is now owned by his daughter Jolene Truder, who grew up in Laredo.
One of the things that makes Laredo convincing is that it feels lived in. That’s because at least some of the time, it is. The town is open to club members every other weekend; when they arrive, usually on a Saturday, they have about an hour to get themselves into their period correct clothing, holster their weapons (no live ammunition allowed), and to stash their modern gadgets and gear. Those who have specific roles in the town—Marshal, shopkeeper, bartender—stay in the town Saturday nights, in their part-time homes at the backs of or above their storefronts (these areas are off-limits to visitors without express invitation by their residents). Guests without residences can pay to stay in the hotel, in rooms decorated with antique bedsteads, washbasins, and floral wallpaper, or in the mining camp’s cabins. The hotel, which also houses the bar, is the physical and emotional center of the town, functioning in the same way a real saloon might in a real western town. Some nights, they can pack more than 50 people in there: “We clear the tables and we can have dancing. It’s really nice, you have all the men stood at the bar, it’s lovely,” said Truder.
But the strangest suggestion by far came from two European linguists. They argued that governments around the world should breed cats that turn colors when exposed to radiation. These so-called “ray cats” could then be immortalized in song and legend, so that even after the scientific knowledge of radiation had been lost to the sands of time, folklore would tell of their supernatural power to change their fur in the presence of extreme danger.
Matthew Kielty investigated the “ray cat” solution, including tracking down Paolo Fabbri, the man who first conceived of the idea. Kielty posted about it, and people started trying to make it happen.
If you put yourself in the place of ancient people, it’s a wonder that anyone ever came up with a number that means nothing. It doesn’t make much sense when you are counting objects, but it turned out to be pretty handy for mathematics.
Once the concept was there, it still wasn’t universally accepted. But time and science proved it was too useful to ignore. Dr. Hannah Fry of the Royal Institution lays out a short version of the history of zero. -via mental_floss
Remember when you ordered the Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys from an ad in the back of a comic book? When the enclosed brine shrimp were reanimated, you were quite disappointed that they did not resemble the picture in the ad, and they were awfully tiny. But still, there was something compelling about the idea of reanimating dried animals sent through the mail, and you cared for the little shrimp for as long as you could. Harold von Braunhut was the master of marketing who developed Sea-Monkeys, among many other ventures that weren’t quite as successful. When he died, he left the business to his wife, Yolanda Signorelli von Braunhut. For the last few years, Signorelli von Braunhut has been embroiled in a lawsuit against Big Time Toys, the distributor of Sea-Monkeys.
A few years after her husband’s death in 2003, Signorelli von Braunhut licensed out part of the labor of his multimillion dollar Sea-Monkey enterprise, mostly packaging and distribution, to Big Time. If you’ve ever been 8 years old, then you know that Sea-Monkeys arrive in a small plastic aquarium with several small packets that include the tiny brine-shrimp critters, which reanimate once you add water — by way of a secret formula that Signorelli von Braunhut keeps locked in a vault in Manhattan.
The original deal held that Big Time would supply everything except the specially engineered critters — and the accompanying packets, which von Braunhut would manufacture and sell separately to Big Time, which would then bundle the full kits and handle the sales. Also in the contract was a second deal — to buy the company, including the secret formula. It allowed Big Time to pay a straight-up $5 million fee and then $5 million more in installments. Three winters ago, Big Time called up the widow and announced that it considered its previous payments for the packets to be a kind of layaway deal for the company and that, as far as Big Time was concerned, it now owned the Sea-Monkey franchise.
On top of all that, court documents revealed that Big Time is now purchasing brine shrimp from China instead of using Braunhut’s proprietary breed of shrimp. An article at the New York Times looks deeper into the lawsuit, the lives of Harold and Yolanda von Braunhut, the history of Sea-Monkeys, and how the new knockoffs compare to the original Sea-Monkeys. -via Digg
