When we posted part one, I thought the Bad Lip reading folks were going to wait until after the Super Bowl to give us part two of the NFL Bad Lip Reading video, but no. It makes sense to do it now, because everyone will forget about football soon after Sunday’s game. Here it is!
You don’t have to be a football fan to enjoy this, because what they’re saying is straight up nonsense that perfectly matches what their lips do. Like I always said, these waffles are gourmet. You gotta stir the bowl. Stir the bowl. -via Uproxx
Swiss professional freestyle skier Nicolas Vuignier has been experimenting with point-of-view photography. In this video, he swings his iPhone 6 on a string, around in circles over his head. While skiing. This excellent video came after almost two years of experimenting, so if you try it, the first result will not be as good.
What’s your advice to others on something they shold try out? Soul Pancake asked people of all ages, youngsters to 100 years old, what they would tell others to attempt.
They have some really good ideas, even the very young. However, you shouldn’t try to tell other people to try something you’ve never attempted yourself. Otherwise, go for it! You gotta dance like no one is watching. -via Tastefully Offensive
The TV series Firefly, described as a western science fiction drama, originally aired in 2002. It only last one season and was cancelled after 11 episodes. Three more episodes that had been produced were aired on a different network. As time went by, the show became a fan favorite and spawned a movie, games, and comic books. For avid fans, 14 episodes were not enough. But several others were in various stages of development, whether just an idea or a script. Read about the best of those Firefly plots that never made it to TV, at TVOM.
Noela Rukundo of Melbourne, Australia, was visiting her native Burundi last year when two men kidnapped her. They had accepted money from Rukundo’s husband Balenga Kalala to murder her, and they called Kalala back in Melbourne to prove they had Rukundo in custody. In doing so, they informed Rukendo her husband had contracted the murder. Two days later, the kidnappers gave Rukundo recorded evidence against her husband and set her free. She flew back to Australia without contacting Kalala. That is, until he was leaving her memorial service a few days later. When Kalala saw his wife, he thought it was a ghost -or hoped so.
It was as they drove away that Noela sprang her surprise.
"I was stood just looking at him. He was scared, he didn't believe it. Then he starts walking towards me, slowly, like he was walking on broken glass.
"He kept talking to himself and when he reached me, he touched me on the shoulder. He jumped.
"He did it again. He jumped. Then he said, 'Noela, is it you?'… Then he start screaming, 'I'm sorry for everything.'"
Kalala was then arrested, and pled guilty after being confronted with the evidence of his murder for hire scheme. In December, Kalala was sentenced to nine years in prison. Read the whole sordid saga at BBC magazine. -via Uproxx
Back in the day, I got into all kinds of concerts, fairs, and special events free -legitimately- because I was working, with the simple explanation, "I’m working here." That got to be a habit, whether I was working or not. It had to stop when I had children in tow. But it happens, and Phil Haney has collected quite a few different examples of how anonymous folks got away with bypassing an admission charge, whether it’s the Super Bowl or something a little less expensive.
According to his Wikipedia entry, Jack Robichaux was a 19th-century New Orleans jazz musician, highly regarded until he was exposed as a serial rapist. The source cited was a printed book. Except there was never a case of serial rape in New Orleans involving Jack Robichaux. In fact, there never was such a person. The entry was added to Wikipedia in 2005 and uncovered in 2015, making it the site’s longest hoax yet.
The entry was an “orphan,” meaning it didn’t have any links coming into it, and very few links in the article itself, so it drew little attention. Since the person didn’t exist, no one came looking for information on him. But Wikipedia now has 3,000 “very active editors” and ten times as many “active editors” who are on the lookout for ways to improve the site. That included editor Calamondin12, who knew the entry was suspicious as soon as he saw it.
Calamondin12 had no doubt after seeing "Jack Robichaux" that it was a hoax. On August 27, 2015, at 4:11 p.m. the user flagged the post: “long-lived hoax; no references found for this case; not found in book cited; not to be confused with actual jazz musician John Robichaux.”
That same afternoon, user Swister Twister sat down at his computer and set about his usual routine: Scan categories of articles for any suspicious activity. When checking the "suspected hoaxes" section, he was excited to see the newly flagged post from Calamondin12.
SwisterTwister did some searching of his own and also turned up no evidence of a real-life Jack Robichaux. At 5 pm he posted his verdict: "All signs suggest this is fabricated with my searches finding nothing but mirrors and no connection at all with the book. What's more is this sparsely edited article has existed since July 2005 when it was started by an IP from Los Angeles who also made a few edits to Theta Xi and not only are the majority of editors IPs, there hasn't even been much change since 2005 which is another serious sign. Yet another interesting tidbit is that the article has never gotten Louisiana attention and is orphaned from any other articles."
Editors not only revealed the entry to be a hoax, they also found out who did it and when. The story of how Jack Robichaux came to be reveals the early weaknesses of Wikipedia, the length some people will go to exploit them, and how volunteer editors work together to enforce quality control over the free encyclopedia. -via Digg
The Turkish scholar and engineer Al-Jazari died in 1206, but he left behind a fantastic legacy of devices, including a mechanical band and a mechanical waitress that actually served drinks.
While these inventions may seem trivial today, their contribution to engineering is indubitable due to their complex mechanisms and design concepts. Al-Jazari was the first to use crank shafts, cog wheels, delivery pipes, and one-way valves in pumps, among other innovations. Donald R. Hill, an English historian who specializes in Islamic mechanics, wrote in Studies in Medieval Islamic Technology that "the impact of al-Jazari's inventions is still felt in modern contemporary mechanical engineering."
Al-Jazari's most famous devices were clocks. They were beautiful sculptures that measured time by falling water, operated with gears and pulleys. They have not survived, but we have his original plans for them, illustrations, and reproductions, many of which you can see at Atlas Obscura.
In preparation for their annual competition in April, the folks of Beaver collect, flatten, and dry cow poop into Frisbee-sized throwing chips. No points for style or choreography; only distance.
2. Artichoke Capital of the World: Castroville, California
The town comes by its giant fiberglass artichokes honestly: California grows more artichokes than any other state in the union, and Castroville’s one of the most prolific.
3. Barbed Wire Capital of the World: La Crosse, Kansas
La Crosse is home to the Barbed Wire Museum— it’s either the world’s largest, or one of the top three, depending on how you count. Regardless, its collection contains 2,000 different samples of barbed wire, as well as fence posts, books, and educational films.
A photo posted by Mini Hijab Fashion! (@hijarbie) on Jan 12, 2016 at 1:58am PST
We’ve got Barbie dolls in new shapes and sizes, and seven different skin tones, but it falls to others to expand her fashion line. A hot new Instagram account called Hijarbie is showcasing Barbie in Muslim fashions! Nigerian artist Haneefah Adam designs and sews outfits for Hajibarbie and posts the pictures. She told Buzzfeed,
“Initially, I started it to provide an outlet for my own creativity. My hope with this account is to create a positive awareness and impact.”
“I want Hijarbie to inspire the Muslim girl child. It’s about having a doll that looks like her, that represents her own cultural and religious background.”
For their afternoon map today, mental_floss did a Google query for each state, asking “Why does [state] …” and labeled each state with, I presume, the top autocomplete. With a caveat.
To stay on topic, we disregarded questions that referred to the state's sports team instead of the state itself (except for Alabama, because apparently that's all they search for). It's also worth noting for Georgia that the Googlers probably meant "counties" instead of "countries." Maybe?
You can see the large version here. Maybe you can answer the question for your state. Kentucky and Tennessee have two time zones because they are horizontal states, and the time line as continued from the states above and below cuts them in half. It would be just weird to move the time line border so far in either direction.
Katie Freeman knitted this adora-ball BB-8 droid! When word gets around, she’ll have to make more and more of them, or else go through it again to write down the pattern. Everyone is going to want one! -Thanks, Katie!
What? South Park is going into its 20th season? Where did the time go? That means there are probably of lot of Neatoramanauts who weren’t allowed to watch it as children, but catch every episode now.
For better or worse, Matt Stone and Trey Parker have broken new ground in TV animation. And whether you are a casual observer or an avid fan, there’s probably something in this trivia list, presented completely in images, that you’ll learn for the first time. See all 20 facts about South Park at TVOM.
The latest live television broadcast of a Broadway musical-turned-movie was Grease Live last weekend. You can marvel at how well the performers pulled it off in real time onstage, but backstage was just as impressive. In this video, we get to see a split-screen recording of what went on in the control room under director Carrie Havel. The choreography of camera shots is like housework, in that you never notice it until it’s done badly. If the shots changed somewhere besides the beginning of a musical measure, the viewer would be thrown off. You’d enjoy the sequence less, even if you couldn’t put your finger on why.
Quite a long time ago, I spent a year as a TV switcher, which entailed following the director’s orders during live broadcasts. I have all the respect in the world for directors who do the job well. -via Uproxx
Industrial Light & Magic shows us some of what they did to bring the special effects in Jurassic World to life. You expect the landscapes to be cleaned up and brightened, and of course the dinosaurs aren’t real, but there’s even more going on. For example, the Gyrosphere was cool, but the actual vehicle they used to film the movie was pretty darn cool, too!
It’s always a treat to see what’s real and what’s not in blockbuster movies, but what surprised me was how many of those dinosaurs started out as people running around before they added the computer-generated imagery. I wonder how well the job of “dinosaur stand-in” pays. -via Digg
