Jessica Montoya is playing the Beatles’ song “Blackbird” on her guitar. To get a unique perspective for the video, she records it on her phone tucked inside the guitar. Cool idea, huh?
But then her little brother Jacob wanders into the room, and becomes the inadvertent star of the video. He just wanted to help! -via Digg
Undercover Boss is a reality show in which some CEO disguises himself as an entry-level worker to see how things are going at the lowest level of the company. In the real show, they get away with it because none of the low-level workers know the CEO, and often have never even seen them. It’s a bit different when you set it in the Star Wars universe.
On last night’s SNL, Adam Driver reprised his role as Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens to go undercover and check out not how the Starkiller Base workers did their jobs, but what they thought of him. That’s in keeping with the egocentric character who’s not yet a competent commander, despite his rank. -via reddit
Jill Viles was always skinny. Her arms and legs had no fat, and as she grew, they also began to have less and less muscle tissue. Doctors checked her out, but had no diagnosis. So she did the research on her own. Because others in her family had curious body morphologies that weren’t as severe, she suspected a genetic condition. She even found a name for it: Emery-Dreifuss, but medical experts dismissed her self-diagnosis. When Viles answered a call to join a genetic research study in Italy, she couldn’t even get a doctor to do a DNA swab or a blood test -but she sent blood anyway. Four years later, she got confirmation of her self-diagnosis from Italy, just in time to save her father’s life. Viles also found out exactly which gene was affected. But that’s only the beginning of the story. Further research led Viles to pinpoint another rare genetic syndrome caused by mutations of the same gene (partial lipodystrophy) that caused loss of fat, and even led her to suspect it in an Olympic athlete she had seen photographs of. So she reached out to Canadian hurdler Priscilla Lopes-Schliep, who didn’t suffer from muscle atrophy, but instead has such amazingly well-defined muscles that she was suspected of doping.
Priscilla thinks that because of her physique, she was targeted for more than the normal amount of drug testing. (Targeted testing is a standard part of anti-doping.) She was tested right after having her daughter, Natalia. At the World Championships in Berlin in 2009, she was tested just minutes before winning a silver medal. There’s not even supposed to be any drug testing that close to the race.
The following month, at a meet in Greece, someone stole her training journal out of her bag. It was at the very bottom, underneath expensive workout clothes and shoes, none of which were taken. Why steal a training journal? We’ll never know. But I’ve covered a lot of doping stories, and I’m convinced someone thought the journal contained her steroid regimen.
The story of how Jill Viles pressed ahead with her research in spite of rejection from one medical expert after another is gripping, even when it gets really technical at the genetic level. Read how her determination saved more than one life, and may eventually lead to treatments for some rare genetic conditions. -via Digg
As we’ve seen before, Istanbul is home to a large number of stray cats. City residents love them and feed them, but don’t seem too keen on adopting and/or spaying them. And it’s now winter. So Mustafa Efe, the Imam at the Aziz Mahmud Hüdayi Mosque, has opened the facility’s doors to cats that need shelter from the cold. You can see plenty of pictures at Buzzfeed, and at Mustafa Efe’s Facebook page. The text is in Turkish, but the language of cat pictures is universal. Also check out a video of a mother cat bringing her kittens into the mosque.
(Image credit: Mustafa Efe)
John Brauner sent in this picture of a street lamp his brother took in Metairie, Louisiana. Take a closer look.
Did someone have to get a bucket truck and rolls of tape for this repair job?
Hey, who knows? This repair job might last for years. Then again, electrical tape probability doesn’t have a hurricane rating. Only time will tell! -Thanks, John!
Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf entered the public domain at the beginning of 2016, because Hitler’s been dead for 70 years. That's a long time. Who was profiting from the book’s publication all those years? And who will profit now that anyone can use it? And why would anyone want to?
According to Simon from Today I Found Out, Hitler himself made a boatload of money from the volume. After his death, the financial arrangements regarding Mein Kempf got more complicated. Read more about it at Today I Found Out. -Thanks, Daven!
Grant Woolard (previously at Neatorama) took 57 pieces of classical music -most of which you are familiar with- by 33 composers and mashed them together in this delightful video. Some really disparate tunes turned out to sound absolutely lovely together. How many can you name? Oh, and be ready for some surprises. -via Metafilter
The picture above is of William Henry Bishop, US Consul in Genoa Italy in 1904, holding the skull of James Smithson. Smithson was the English scientist whose fortune was beaqueathed to the US to found the Smithsonian Institution. We posted about that bequest last year. But Smithson's story didn’t end with the Institution; even his body couldn’t rest in peace. Smithson was buried in Genoa, Italy, in 1829. Around the turn of the 20th century, the cemetery was slated to be demolished. Alexander Graham Bell lobbied to have Smithson’s body brought to the US, and he went to Italy to fetch him in 1904. Smithson’s remains were interred at the Institution. But strange sightings were attributed to Smithson’s ghost in the many years since, and in 1973, a museum curator decided to open up the coffin and check on the corpse. As if Smithson’s tale wasn’t strange enough, that’s when things got weird. The blog BizarreVictoria has the rest of the story.
Okay, right, are you guys ready for this to get worse?
So, we have Smithson’s monument all mangled to shit, his casket broken open, his 150-year old skeleton exposed to all and sundry, and now everything is ON FIRE.
Then, “He didn’t want them to ruin the silk by using an extinguisher so he told them to fill their mouths with water and come back to spray it down. So they did it.”
The silk is already ruined. It’s on fire. And if you, A CURATOR, were so concerned with preservation, why did you have random workmen bust open a sealed relic with improper tools, without any authorization to do so?
And now, to cap things off, a whole group of people are just spitting on James Smithson. Congratulations. This might be the worst thing I’ve ever written about on this blog.
You can read the whole account at BizarreVictoria. Oh, it’s all true. I checked around.
(Image credit: Smithsonian Institution)
Say what? You’re trying to tell me that snow falls from the sky? I’m not buying that for a minute! You’re trying to pull one over on me, aren't you? Or just telling a joke. It’s a funny joke, though! Good one, Daddy!
Redditor mrcurmudgeon1900 talked to his daughter about snow. She’s only a toddler, but she’s already working on her BS detector, and is skeptical about what he’s telling her. Always question authority, kid, but sooner or later, you’ll see that “snow” for yourself and you can make up your own mind based on the evidence.
British cartoonist Rowland Emett made fantastical machines out of everyday items. He even designed the machines in the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. His machines were put in storage upon his death in 1990, and only resurrected years later by the Rowland Emett Society. Many were put on display last year at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, where this video was recorded.
See more videos of his work at The Kid Should See This.
The Lunar New Year arrives on February 8, ushering in the year of the Fire Monkey, according to the traditional Chinese zodiac. Spoon & Tamago has a collection of Japanese art created by contemporary designers to welcome the new year, with plenty of monkey imagery. Shown here is one of my favorites, from Studio Takeuma. There are many different styles, some cute, some funny, and all just plain cool. See the entire collection here. -via Everlasting Blort
Cats each have their own quirks, habits, and hobbies. Manny is obsessed with the GoPro camera. He’s reached out and batted the camera so many times that he’s learned to trip the shutter and take selfies! The best are posted by his human, who goes by yoremahm on Instagram. Manny even manages to take pictures of himself with the numerous family dogs.
And he’s apparently working on his facial expressions. Here he is trying to look seductive.
And even art shots! I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up with an art exhibit in a gallery somewhere.
See more of Manny’s selfies at Instagram, along with pictures of his large animal family. -via Uproxx
Hills Street Blues was a breakthrough series that turned the concept of a cop show on its head. There were multiple cases in each episode, some that were resolved, some that continued to the next episode, and some that were never resolved. There were also story arcs for the regular characters both on the job and in their personal lives. In other words, there was a lot going on. While we are used to such shows now, those concepts were all new for a cop show when the Hill Street Blues premiered on January 15, 1981, 35 years ago today. If you were a fan, you might want to know how that all came about.
2. IT WAS INFLUENCED BY A 1977 DOCUMENTARY.
The show's creators looked to The Police Tapes, a 1977 documentary that chronicled a South Bronx police precinct during a particularly hostile time in New York City's history, for inspiration. NBC's then-president Fred Silverman was inspired to create a cop show in the first place after seeing Fort Apache, the Bronx (1981), which stars Paul Newman as a veteran cop in a South Bronx police district.
7. THE PILOT TESTED POORLY.
According to a network memo, among the many problems test audiences noted were that "the main characters were perceived as being not capable and having flawed personalities ... Audiences found the ending unsatisfying. There are too many loose ends ... 'Hill Street' did not come off as a real police station ... There was too much chaos in the station house, again reflecting that the police were incapable of maintaining control even on their home ground." NBC picked it up anyway.
Despite low ratings, the show went on to earn eight Emmys for its first season, and influenced many hit shows that came after. Read more about Hill Street Blues at mental_floss.
The Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria, British Columbia, has a new specimen in its Finding Fishes exhibit, although it was caught ten years ago. Meet Acanthonus armatus, better known by its common name, the bony-eared assfish. Gavin Hanke, the museum's curator of vertebrate zoology, was with the group that caught the fish, the only one of its species caught off the North American coast.
"It is an ugly fish. That's why I like it," Hanke said. "It's got a big bulbous head and a tapering body and flabby skin. It almost looks like a glorified tadpole. It felt very gelatinous and soft when we picked it up.
"It has a very large mouth, and off the back of the gills there are some very large spines that point backwards," he said."When we first found the fish there were six or seven of us on the deck of the boat looking at it, and nobody could even guess which family it belonged to, because we had just never seen one before."
The Finding Fishes exhibit is in the museum’s Pocket Gallery, and admission is free. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Royal B.C. Museum)
Mom says, “I love you,” in a singing voice, and daughter does her best to imitate Mom. A YouTube commenter described it well:
My wife told me about this and how cute it was. Sure, honey. Yes, I'm sure it was very OH MY GOD THAT'S ADORABLE!!!!
Dennis Neely’s daughter Gemma Kate was 15 months old in this video. She’ll grow up to be a singer, too. (via Viral Viral Videos)
