Blanksy is the most prolific street artist in the world. You’ve probably seen his work in your neighborhood! He’s worked out his own method of self-expression, yet must stay anonymous, because he’s a street artist.
Follow Blanksy as he goes about his work and explains his minimalist (and nihilist) philosophy of art, in this video from Phil Jones and Alex Horner. See more of Blanksy’s work at Twitter. Video contains NSFW language. -Thanks, Phil!
In the Marvel comics universe, no one can lift the hammer called Mjolnir but Thor, because no one else is worthy of the power of Thor. That is, unless you are another worthy Norse god, like Odin. YouTube member Sufficiently Advanced built a real-life version hammer that only he can lift. The caveat is that it must be laying on metal for the trick to work.
The hammer is held down by an electromagnet. The creator can lift it by putting his thumb over a sensor that reads his thumbprint and breaks the electric circuit. It’s a hoot to see bystanders try to lift it! One guy notices the sensor and thinks he can beat it, but then it dawns on him that he doesn’t have the correct thumbprint. -via Digg
Twenty-three years after its release (has it been that long?), Disney’s animate film Aladdin is getting the Blu-ray treatment. And that gives us an excuse to look at some of the workings that went on behind the scenes to bring us the story of Aladdin, Jasmine, and especially the Genie. On most movie projects, actors audition for a role, but with Aladdin, Disney had to impress Robin Williams to convince him to do the movie.
1. TO LAND ROBIN WILLIAMS, THE ANIMATORS CREATED TEST SEQUENCES OF THE GENIE PERFORMING THE COMEDIAN'S STAND-UP ROUTINES.
Eric Goldberg led the team of animators who were in charge of creating Genie. When he was first handed the script by co-directors Ron Clements and John Musker, Goldberg was also told to dig up some old Robin Williams comedy albums. “John and Ron said, 'Pick a couple of sections from his comedy albums and animate a genie to them,'" Goldberg told Entertainment Weekly. "That’s essentially what I did." Williams came in to see the test, and, Goldberg says, "I think what probably sold him was the one where he says, 'Tonight, let’s talk about the serious subject of schizophrenia—No, it doesn’t!—Shut up, let him talk!' What I did is animate the Genie growing another head to argue with himself, and Robin just laughed. He could see the potential of what the character could be. I’m sure it wasn’t the only factor, but then he signed the dotted line."
3. ALADDIN MARKED THE END OF VOICE ACTORS IN DISNEY MUSICALS NEEDING TO BE MAGNIFICENT SINGERS.
Linda Larkin was the voice of Princess Jasmine. However, she never sang a single note attributed to the princess; that was done by singer Lea Salonga. Aladdin marked one of the first times a voice actor in a Disney musical didn’t also have to be a magnificent singer. Larkin says that this was the result of the film being built around Robin Williams, who was such a powerful force that Disney's priority was finding strong actors who could keep pace with him. "They came to me and asked, 'Do you sing?'" Larkin recalled. "And I said, 'I do … but not like a princess!' And they said, 'No problem, we’ll find a singer to match your voice.' And they did. And to me it’s such an amazing match to my voice that it’s almost seamless when they go from dialogue to the song and back to dialogue. And you see what happened … from that point forward that opened up the world of Disney animation to everybody. They no longer needed actors who sang.”
There’s lots more interesting things you can learn about Aladdin, at mental_floss.
Dr. Serge Voronoff studied medicine in France and became obsessed with the idea of rejuvenating the human body with hormones. The best way to do that, he figured, would be to transplant animal organs that produced hormones into a human. Voronoff experimented on livestock, with promising results, and decided that when he progressed to human experiments, he would implant monkey glands, because of their similarities to humans. He claimed a 1915 transplant of monkey thyroid tissue produced improvement in a young Frenchman with developmental disabilities.
In particular Voronoff again focused on the power and impact of the sexual organs, specifically the testicles. In his 1920 book, Life; a Study of the Means of Restoring Vital Energy and Prolonging Life, Voronoff says, “The sex gland stimulates cerebral activity as well as muscular energy and amorous passion. It pours into the stream of the blood a species of vital fluid which restores the energy of all the cells, and spreads happiness.” To Voronoff, the process of taking healthy sexual gland tissue, such as bits of monkey testicle, and sewing onto the testicles of aging humans, was to inject the body with youth itself.
Dr. Voronoff’s first monkey-testicle-to-man-testicle xenograft occurred in July of 1920. He is said to have taken a small scrap of young monkey testicle just a few centimeters wide and a few millimeters thin, and sewn it right into the patient’s scrotum. Voronoff contested that the procedure could do everything from return youthful energy to curing senility and schizophrenia to radically prolonging life. An increase in sexual ability was also of course implied, and tended to become the focus of interest in his work, despite Voronoff’s repeated assertions that any romantic improvements were just a side-effect of a transformation that was healing the patient’s entire being, a process he called “rejuvenation.”
You’d think men would be a bit nervous about such surgery, but no -they clamored to have the transplants done! Voronoff did at least 300 monkey testicle grafts, and raked in the money. And he had even stranger ideas for further experiments. Read about Dr. Voronoff and his weird theories at Atlas Obscura.
What? This cat lets himself in by turning the door handle, like a human. Then he walks through the cat flap, like a cat. He could be confused, or he could be a creature of habit. Personally, I think he’s just showing off. -via Tastefully Offensive
Neatorama welcomes a guest post by Julie Winterbottom, author of Pranklopedia. She is now working on a new book called Frightlopedia, a compendium of scary stuff from Arachnids to Zombies.
Researching her new book brought an opportunity for Winterbottom to interview R.L. Stine, the mastermind behind the Goosebumps series of books. Stine is sometimes referred to as the "Stephen King of children’s literature." The movie Goosebumps, based on the book series, is opening in theaters this Friday. Jack Black plays the part of R.L. Stine.
You’ve written more than 100 Goosebumps books and you’re still going strong. Clearly, you have yet to get bored with writing scary stories.
Well, I wouldn’t know what else to do. My wife always tells me I need a hobby but I don’t have one. So this is what I do. I haven’t gotten tired of it because I don’t feel like I’m stuck in the genre—they’re not only scary books, they’re funny. That’s all I ever cared about. I never actually wanted them to be scary. I just wanted them to be funny.
But the books are scary.
Well yeah, there is creepiness to them and grossness and surprise. But I think kids like them because there are so many twists and turns. Something happens in the middle that turns the whole story around. They’ll say, “Oh, I was totally fooled.” I think that’s what they like about the books, all the teasing and all the twists.
Do you think that what scares kids has changed since you were a kid?
I think it’s exactly the same. Technology has changed, but kids haven’t changed very much and our fears never change. We all have the same fears, like looking under your bed in case someone grabs your leg as you sit up, or thinking something’s in the closet—that sort of thing.
Do you get letters from kids who say your books absolutely terrified them?
Yeah, I do. I’ve never had that feeling, so it’s kind of hard for me to understand. I hear all the time that the stories gave them nightmares. I believe them, but I don’t understand them. I don’t really know what that feeling is like. I’ve never really been scared by a movie or a book.
Even as a kid?
No, I always thought horror was funny. I was always the one who was laughing [at a movie] when a monster would come out and rip somebody to pieces.
So what did scare you when you were young?
Oh, I was a very fearful kid. I think that’s why I stayed in my room typing. I’ve been writing since I was nine. I would close myself in my bedroom and type for hours. My mother would tell me: “Go outside and play! What’s wrong with you?” But I was just shy and had a million fears. I was afraid of the dark. Riding my bike around at night and pulling into the driveway, I was always sure there was something lurking in the garage waiting for me. I would put the bike in the garage and run into the house as fast as I could. There were woods behind my house and there were mounds of big, round, white stones. I was always sure someone was buried under there. I had those kinds of fears. And I had a mother who was like, “Don’t do that, you’ll poke your eye out. Don’t do that, you’ll break your arm.” It’s a terrible way to grow up, but later when I started writing these books, I could remember that feeling of panic. And it helped me a lot in writing Goosebumps.
Did you simply outgrow all those fears?
Yeah, I moved to New York and had to be more confident. It was very liberating.
(Image credit: Larry D. Moore CC BY-SA 3.0)
What did you write when you were a kid?
The Lair family of Apex, North Carolina, has six boys: Jackson, 13; Campbell, 10; Sawyer, 7; Houston, 5; Shepherd, 4; and Knox, 2. In August, they finally got their first girl when Ruby Jane was born. The six boys are having to adjust to having a little girl on their team, but they are eager for the job. You can see more pictures and videos of the family at the News & Observer. -via Buzzfeed
They say that truth is stranger than fiction, so is it any wonder that our scariest ghost stories were inspired by real events? Well, the ghosts may be fictional, but the circumstances of their deaths are more terrifying than the supernatural aftermath. One concerns a historic house in Albany, New York, called Cherry Hill.
The trouble began when a worker at Cherry Hill named Joseph Orton (his real name, it later came out, was Jesse Strang; he’d changed it after faking his own death in 1825 as part of a scheme to desert his wife and four children) fell for one of the “upstairs” ladies who lived in the well-populated house. Elsie Whipple was related by marriage to the man who’d originally built Cherry Hill; she herself had gotten married at the tender age of 14, and her husband John had turned her inheritance into a growing fortune.
But that didn’t stop Elsie from reciprocating Jesse’s forbidden feelings, and the two began exchanging steamy love letters. The only way they could be together, they decided, was to do away with John Whipple. That would free Elsie from her marriage—and free her money, too. They concocted a scheme that included false sightings of strange men lurking around the property, culminating in John’s death on May 7 (Jesse shot him through one of Cherry Hill’s windows; the bullet hole is still there).
Jesse Strang was executed for the murder, and the ghost of John Whipple still haunts Cherry Hill. That’s just part of one of five real murders that became legendary ghost stories at io9. -via mental_floss
(Image credit: CC-BY-SA-3.0/Matt H. Wade at Wikipedia)
It was a joke for decades when someone said they “only read Playboy for the articles.” Nobody believed it, even though the articles were often amazing: in-depth, relevant stories from top journalists and authors. But face it, Playboy was built on nude pictures of women. From Hugh Hefner’s first issue in 1953, featuring Marilyn Monroe, the magazine set the standard for sexy entertainment and often served as sex education for adolescent boys. Things are different now. If Hef wasn’t still kicking around at age 89, he’d be spinning in his grave. As it is, Hefner himself saw the writing on the wall, and Playboy will stop publishing pictures of nude women. The stated reason is because pornography is readily available for free on the web. That’s true, but are there any positive reasons for Playboy to change so radically?
The magazine had already made some content safe for work, Mr. Flanders said, in order to be allowed on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, vital sources of web traffic.
In August of last year, its website dispensed with nudity. As a result, Playboy executives said, the average age of its reader dropped from 47 to just over 30, and its web traffic jumped to about 16 million from about four million unique users per month.
The magazine will adopt a cleaner, more modern style, said Mr. Jones, who as chief content officer also oversees its website. There will still be a Playmate of the Month, but the pictures will be “PG-13” and less produced — more like the racier sections of Instagram. “A little more accessible, a little more intimate,” he said. It is not yet decided whether there will still be a centerfold.
That’s it. Safer web browsing leads to more views. Changing the magazine to something that would be okay to leave out in a dentist’s office might lead to more magazine sales. Read more about Playboy’s big change at the New York Times. -via Digg
Related: The funniest twitter reactions to the news.
Several companies based in Green Bay produce toilet paper, including Northern Paper Mills, the company that started producing Northern Tissue in 1901. But the reason it was such a revolutionary product that carried the city through the Great Depression encompasses the entire history of toilet paper. It’s not a particularly pleasant history before the 20th century.
The first mention of toilet paper in Western literature is not favorable. It comes in Francois Rabelais’ supremely scatological Gargantua(1534) in which the titular giant discusses how through “long and curious experience” he has “found out a means to wipe my bum.” Having tried sheets, curtains, table-cloths, hay, straw, wool and cats to do the deed, Gargantua announces that by far his worst choice was paper:
“Who his foul tail with paper wipes
Shall at his ballocks leave some chips.”
The rest of the story is just about as horrifying. Read it at Atlas Obscura and thank your lucky stars you live in modern times.
(Image source: Flickr user SenseiAlan)
The time travel hijinks of Back to the Future were set in 1985, the year the first movie came out. Marty McFly traveled back to 1955 before leaping forward to October 21, 2015. And then back to the Old West, just for fun. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the original film, Eclectic Method remixed bits of hte trilogy into one insane music video.
To celebrate the actual date, Eclectic Method (Jonny Wilson) and Pogo (Nick Bertke) are hosting a party at the Rex Club in Paris on October 21st. What will you be doing that day? -via Tastefully Offensive
This poor cat has to deal with a cone and all that hair at once. At least we got a ridiculous photograph out of his misery. This was posted by redditor ANTIVAX_JUGGALETTE. What’s the funniest thing you can say about this picture? Here are some examples.
dustin_pledge: It looks like a furry water cooler.
SatNav: Don't let it out in the rain like that...
toketasticninja: "The lamp is running away!" - Grandpa Simpson
DickDover: I think there is something clogging your coffee filter.
Cliff Pickover's new book is Death and the Afterlife: A Chronological Journey, from Cremation to Quantum Resurrection. Death is the one thing we all have in common, and it's been that way ever since humans have been around. Not only have people in every historical era wrestled with the knowledge of one's own impending death, but each era and culture has developed its own customs, mythology, and folklore surrouding our ultimate fate and what may come after. Some of these ideas are universal; others are unique to the time and place. Death has been studied in the context of religion, psychology, biology, physics, philosophy, medicine, and art.
Death and the Afterlife follows the format of Pickover's earlier projects The Math Book, The Physics Book, and The Medical Book, in that items about the history of beliefs and customs surrounding death are laid out in chronological order, with a page devoted to each. Accompanying each page is a gorgeous, but often terrifying illustration on the subject at hand. You can easily skip around to subjects that catch your fancy, or read them in order, a little at a time, or all at once. The 100 entries tackle diverse ideas such as funeral rites, heaven and hell, reincarnation, autopsies, ghosts, premature burial, cryonics, abortion, ossuaries, kamikaze pilots, vampires, hospice, capital punishment, near-death experiences... all the way to the end of the universe and beyond.
1550 BC: Egyptian Book of the Dead. The ancient Egyptian ritual of “opening of the mouth” described in the Book of the Dead is performed so that the deceased can eat and drink in the afterlife. In this c. 1300 BCE papyrus, the jackal-headed god Anubis is shown supporting the mummy of the scribe Hunefer while three priests carry out the ritual.
From the introduction to Death and the Afterlife:
I have had a longtime fascination with death, dying, consciousness, the afterlife, and topics at the borderlands of science. Some of my interest was rekindled after reading freelance writer Greta Christina’s 2005 essay “Comforting Thoughts about Death That Have Nothing to Do with God.” Greta writes, “The fact that your life span is an infinitesimally tiny fragment in the life of the universe, that there is, at the very least, a strong possibility that when you die, you disappear completely and forever, and that in five hundred years nobody will remember you . . . [this] can make you feel erased, wipe out joy, make your life seem like ashes in your hands.” And then I sigh. Greta admits that she doesn’t know what happens when we die, but she doesn’t think this essential mystery really matters. She reminds us that we should be happy because it is amazing that we even get a chance to be alive. We get to be conscious: “We get to be connected with each other and with the world, and we get to be aware of that connection and to spend a few years mucking about its possibilities.” Her essay ends on a bright note as she enumerates items that contribute to her happiness, such as Shakespeare, sex, five-spice chicken, Thai restaurants, Louis Armstrong, and drifting patterns in the clouds.
As you read through Death and the Afterlife, remember that even if we may consider some of the ideas and rituals surrounding death unscientific, these are all still worthy areas of study. And the subjects we address are not all depressing. Our rituals and myths are, at minimum, fascinating models of human understanding and creativity—and of how we reach across cultures to understand one another and learn about what we hold sacred.
When you meet the right one, you will know. But getting to the point where you know or not might be bit embarrassing when you’re weeding out the ones who aren’t the one. This life lesson is brought to you by Lunarbaboon.
Joseph H. Davis (1811-1865) made a living painting portraits of people around New England in pencil, pen, and watercolor in the early 19th century. Might there be a portrait of your ancestors that looks like these?
Davis had a distinctive style that worked for him. He had a couple face each other across a table, a table that looked the same except for color in every picture, or (rarely) standing to face each other. Although the basic form was the same from family to family, they differed in the children, pets, and belongings that were included. Notice they were all placed on boldly patterned carpets.
The names of the subjects and the year were written at the bottom of each portrait. Davis’ work was apparently affordable for a middle class family, as he leaves behind around 160 works. You can see 18 of them at It’s About Time. -via Kate Beaton
