Neatorama is proud to bring you a guest post from Ernie Smith, the editor of Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail. In another life, he ran ShortFormBlog.

Bootlegged movies and music are fairly common online these days, but it was a guy who worked at an opera who got things going.

Last year, a director named Joseph Kahn released the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers film that nobody was asking for—but despite that low ceiling, he more than topped it. The 14-minute short film starred people who have actually been cast in real movies and TV shows (James Van Der Beek and Katee Sackhoff), and took the franchise in a dark, gritty new direction that definitely has nothing in common with the Saved By the Bell-in-costume motif that the franchise was known for in the U.S. Kahn, who is mostly known as a music-video director (albeit perhaps the best-known one of the past decade) reached a new level of quality for an unlicensed product. And Saban, which owns the franchise, was pissed, requiring YouTube to take it down. (It’s back up now.) So, what makes bootleg media so appealing? Let’s analyze.  

Meet the first music bootlegger

DJ Spooky once called Lionel Mapleson ”one of America’s first bootleggers" of music, but that’s something of a misnomer.

First off, Mapleson was riffing tracks from his employer, the New York Metropolitan Opera, in an official role as the opera’s librarian. (It’d be like Suge Knight stealing from Dr. Dre. … which, let’s admit it, probably happened.) Second, he technically wasn’t doing anything illegal at the time—because at the time, copyright law didn’t cover recordings at all.

And while it eventually did, Mapleson quit while he was ahead—stopping his recording efforts around 1904. The Copyright Act of 1909 came around five years later.

Mapleson was putting music to wax in the most literal way possible: He was making wax cylinders of portions of operas, using a machine handmade by Italian audiophile Gianni Bettini. His recordings came at a time when audio recordings were a brand new phenomenon. The rules hadn’t been written yet.

The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research, now in all-pdf form. Get a subscription now for only $25 a year!

by Karl S. Kruszelnicki
Julius Sumner Miller Fellow
The Science Foundation for Physics, School of Physics,
The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

(Image credit: Enoch Lau)

It is extremely gratifying to see a newcomer—Georg Steinhauser of Vienna University of Technology—enrich the slowly growing field of belly button lint studies.

My introduction to the field began innocently with a “simple” question on my Triple J Science Talkback radio show (Thursdays, 11:00–12:00 Australian Eastern Standard Time), way back in 2000. The caller asked, “Why is my belly button fluff blue—and why do I get it, anyhow?” This was a real question, which deserved a real answer. I didn’t have that answer, so I went looking. I found that the British Medical Association News Review posed this very question to its readers, and then Tim Albert published their answers about belly button fluff (BBF) on p. 17 of the August 1984 issue in an article called “Blue Jokes—Readers probe the mysteries of the navel.”

Michael Biesecker also discussed belly button fluff in the 19 April 1995 issue of Technician. His theory was similar to Tim Albert’s: the process involves fibers leaving the clothes and being funneled to the belly, where they coalesce into balls of lint.

“Industrial lighting” might make you think of dreary fluorescent tubes embedded in the ceiling, like your office workplace has. But now it means artistic lighting that evokes factories of the Industrial Revolution. Think sturdy metal pipes with retro-look bulbs that are surprisingly energy-efficient. The picture above is from Union Hill Iron Works, and below is one from Urban Chandy.

These lamps and light fixtures are from top designers, but they might inspire you to make your own. After all, you can make a lamp out of anything, since it basically requires running a wire through something that looks nice. See all 20 industrial lighting designs at Housely.

The transporters on Star Trek were used because the effect on TV was so much cheaper than using the shuttlecraft to get the crew down to a planet and back again. But what if the technology was real?

(YouTube link)

The theoretical transporter works by taking your atoms apart and reconstructing them elsewhere, somewhat like a telephone wire or communications sent in binary code, except with atoms. That’s terrifying even on paper. What could possibly go wrong? CGP Grey explains all those things to us. He gets really metaphysical before it’s over. -via reddit

Many Star Wars fans will tell you that the best thing about The Phantom Menace was Darth Maul, and he got killed almost immediately after appearing onscreen. Someone finally did something about that. Shawn Bu of T7 Productions made a fan film about Darth Maul in his earlier life. It’s a very well-made fanfilm. Watch the young Sith take on multiple opponents with his duel-blade lightsaber.  

(YouTube link)

We worked incredibly hard on this film for almost 2 years! We always felt that Darth Maul should have had more screen time. So we wanted to create a film just for him with the best lightsaber fights we could do!

This is one extended battle sequence, and worth every minute. See a making-of video here. -via Metafilter

The Kingdom of Mustang lies where the Himalayas meet the Tibetan plane. The erstwhile Buddhist kingdom was folded into the nation of Nepal in the 18th century, and was off-limits to foreigners until 1992. One of the most mysterious features of the kingdom is the 10,000 or so ancient carved caves located high on the rockface above the  Kali Gandaki River. How did people even get to them?

Archeologists believe that the caves in Mustang were used in three general periods. They were first used some 3,000 years ago as burial chambers. Then around 1,000 years ago, they became primarily living quarters, perhaps to escape battles and intruders into the valley. Finally, by the 1400s, most people had moved into traditional villages and the caves became places of meditation. Some of these caves were turned into monasteries such as the Luri Gompa, the Chungsi Cave monastery and the Nyiphuk Cave Monastery, all of which were built around and inside the caves.

Luri Gompa is one of the most famous in Mustang. The monastery is set on a ledge, at least a hundred meter high from the ground, in one of the many natural pillar like sandstone structures. A winding footpath climbs all the way from the bottom of the valley to a single entrance door that leads into two interconnecting chambers. The outer chamber contains a shrine, while the inner chamber —the main treasure of Luri Gompa— is beautifully decorated with a series of paintings depicting Indian Mahasiddhas — saints who were said to have achieved siddhi, or extraordinary powers by meditation. No documentation pertaining to this mysterious gompa or monastery has been found, but the wall paintings appear to be have been made in the 14th century or even earlier.

Read more about this archaeological treasure, and see lots of pictures at Amusing Planet. -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Flickr user Bob Witlox)

Just want to RT this awesome photo by @Hornerfoto1 of dude saving kid from facial surgery during Sat #Pirates game pic.twitter.com/hD35aZTVQU

— Rob Biertempfel (@BiertempfelTrib) March 6, 2016

There was a training game between the Pirates and the Braves Saturday in Florida. A bat was slung up into the crowd. It headed straight for the face of a boy who was looking at his phone. You can see above how close it came to taking him out, except the man beside him, maybe his father, instinctively stuck his arm out to shield the child instead of taking a self-defense stance like everyone else.

@BiertempfelTrib The two frames showing just how close the bat was to the boy's head. pic.twitter.com/7VwnfWp8L1

— Christopher Horner (@Hornerfoto1) March 6, 2016

These pictures were shot by Pittsburgh Tribune-Review photographer Christopher Horner. You have to imagine the size of the bruise on that guy’s arm. Remember, kids, when you’re at a baseball game, watch the game, not your phone. -via Uproxx

Update: Here's an interview with Shaun Cunningham and his son Landon about the incident.

So what kind of time should be calculate the time remaining? Maybe fictional time? I think the “time remaining” estimate is a script written by wannabe comedians. Of course, I’m not much of a geek. I download something that seems really big and complicated, and it’s there in an instant, while some completely trivial update takes an estimated 58 minutes. Well, there’s always something that needs to be done in the kitchen. This is the latest comic from CommitStrip.

This creature was identified as a White's tree frog. Outside the continent, it’s known as an Australian green tree frog (Litoria caerulea). It’s hard to tell from the context, but they say these frogs get pretty big -up to four inches long. That probably comes from eating nutritious things like snakes. Redditor marvnation snapped this photograph in his backyard in Victoria, Australia. He now regrets not taking a video.

The Third Reich was big into the new medium of television, as we learn from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids.

RACING THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

On January 31, 1935, a minor panel within the British government made a routine announcement that had little impact in England, but sent the Germans into panicked frenzy. After half a year of inquiry and spirited debate, Britain’s Television Advisory Committee issued a report in which it determined that the BBC should start a regular TV broadcasting service. Those were still the very early days of television, but the decision would make the BBC the first national TV broadcaster in the world.

It’s not that the Germans particularly cared about television, but they did care about propaganda. The government had invested heavily in the message that its master Aryan race was more advanced in everything, particularly technological achievement. And so Germany’s Reich Broadcasting Corporation (RRG) suddenly came under pressure to set up its own broadcasting service before the British got up and running. That way, Germany would get the bragging rights that came with being the first nation to create its own TV network.

The following article is from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids.

(Image credit: Photo Phiend)

NO COUNTRY FOR ANY MEN

The 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War, but it left in question the exact border between the eastern United States and Canada, which remained under British control. Until 1842, when the Webster-Ashburton Treaty settled most of the questions, there were swatches of land along the New York/Vermont/New Hampshire/Maine borders that didn’t technically belong to either country. And in the 60 years between the two treaties, at least three independent “republics” sprang up in the region.

REPUBLIC OF UPPER CANADA

Location: Navy Island in the Niagara River

What happened: In December 1837, after unsuccessfully fighting to win independence from England, a Canadian rebel group led by journalist and former mayor of Toronto William Lyon Mackenzie fled to Navy Island above Niagara Falls, one of the areas that didn’t officially belong to either the United States or Canada (today it’s Canadian land). They declared the island to be a brand-new country, the Republic of Upper Canada. American sympathizers, still holding a grudge against the British after the War of 1812, supplied the rebels with food, weapons, and money via a steamship called the Caroline. The Republic of Upper Canada didn’t last long. In less than a month, British and Canadian loyalists had crossed into New York and captured the ship, setting it ablaze and loose to plummet over Niagara Falls. Mackenzie and his group withdrew from Navy Island in January 1838.

How many people are still alive in the zombie apocalypse world of The Walking Dead? Matt Lieberman crunched the numbers and came up with a depressing answer. Lieberman obviously has a lot of time on his hands.  

(YouTube link)

It involves pinpointing the date of the outbreak, stats from the comic book, and the survival rate of the survivors we’ve seen on the show. He uses The Walking Dead comic book series, TV show, web series, the spinoff Fear the Walking Dead, TWD Wiki, and interviews with creator Robert Kirkman to come up with his figures. -via Buzzfeed

Fox is producing a new TV series, or at least a pilot, inspired by the 1971 book The Exorcist. It will focus on the priests who perform such rites. We will have to imagine what kind of drama could sustain a show like that for a continuing series. Meanwhile, let’s look back at some of the creepiest priests, ministers, preachers, and evangelists in cinema history. The picture above shows what kind of movie character we’re talking about, Robert Mitchum in the 1955 film Night of the Hunter.  

Reverend Harry Powell, a serial murderer on the lam, becomes a phony preacher with a penchant for hard-knocks knuckle tattoos, woman-hating, stolen money, and switchblades. A cool and cruel Robert Mitchum plays Powell in Charles Laughton’s expressionist chiller, set in the Deep South during the 1930s.

That one left me with nightmares when I was young. I kept wanting to yell at Shelly Winters that he’s up to no good! To no avail. There are seven other creepy clergymen from the movies in a list at Flavorwire.

Oh dear, it appears that price of whiskey is climbing through the roof, mainly because the demand is high. The word “shortage” is enough to make some people panic. First it was bourbon, then other kinds of whiskey, and now the high demand has affected the supply of Scotch whisky!

Booze-loving Cassandras have been warning of Scotch and other whisky shortages for the past two years. In 2014, the main concern was bourbon; as the liquor experienced an uptick in popularity, distilleries began to struggle to keep up with demand. The problem was so severe that Buffalo Trace Distillery released a public statement outlining their efforts to address the shortage. Wood shortages for making aging barrels compounded the matter, leading some to call for legal changes to allow Tennessee whisky barrels to be re-used; this in turn alarmed Scotch distilleries, who often purchase used bourbon and whisky barrels for their aging processes. Prices for older bottles skyrocketed—according to a 2014 Esquire article, a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle 15 that went for $47 in 2007 cost a whopping $982 in 2014.

So what can be done about it? Distilleries are looking at a variety of ways to alleviate the shortages, to “ensure no glass remains empty.” Read about them, and the various reasons for the whisky shortage, at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Trollhead)

Every year, the blogger from Game On! Minnesota analyzes the best hockey players in the state and picks his all-star team based on hair. High school hockey players in Minnesota spend all season growing their hair and making sure it looks good, because if they can’t be champions, at least they can be on the hair team! But even if you don't care a thing about hockey or hair, this annual video is a gem.

(YouTube link)

Besides all that, this year’s video has some serious lessons for all of us on Minnesota culture. I need to learn this, because my youngest is going to college in Minnesota. See the All Hockey Hair Teams from 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. -via reddit