Hairy guys from all over the world traveled to Leogang, Austria, last weekend for the World Beard and Moustache Championship. There were over 350 competitors in several categories to crown the best mustache, beard, and other facial hair configurations. Some were long, some were sculpted into shapes, and some were just overall magnificent. See a collection of images from the event at Buzzfeed.
Disney released the movie Aladdin in 1992, and times have changed a bit since then. Thought loosely based on the classic 1001 Nights, there’s plenty wrong with the screenplay written for children, especially how the movie rewards questionable ethics. But it’s all right, because Robin Williams steals the show.
Screen Junkies gives it the Honest Trailer treatment. -via Uproxx
If only we could all find such joy in simple things! To be fair, I don’t know if hopping around really indicates joy, but Little Bird sure keeps coming back for more.
Little Bird (yes, that’s his name) is a 2-year old caique. That’s a kind of parrot I’d never heard of before. If you have one, maybe you should give him a paper towel. It will make his day. -via Arbroath
You and I would go straight for a brain-shaped cake mold and call it a day. But baker and cake artist Yolanda Gampp went all the way, creating an entire brain cake from scratch. The red velvet cake was baked in a bowl, and then sculpted with custom-made fondant to make the cerebellum and the folds of the cortex.
Add some raspberry syrup, and the finished product looks like something you’d see in an anatomy class. The real fun will be cutting into this thing! Want the recipe? You’ll find it at Glampp’s blog How to Cake It. -via Tastefully Offensive
October is the time for a good horror story, and they don’t get any scarier than what’s known as creepypasta. These are stories people write and post to the internet, and the scariest of them, usually with a claim of truth, get passed around until they become legendary. There’s Ted the Caver, laid out in a journal that just stops and leaves the reader to assume the worst; Stay in Bed, which the author does not; The Smiling Man, shown above; and more.
One thing they have in common is that the internet offers myriad ways to present a story to make it even creepier than simply printed words on a page. Some of the stories have been made into short films, movies, and novels. Urban Ghosts presents ten of the best, with short synopses and links -and a couple of videos. You might want to read these with the lights on. After checking the entire list out, I might not sleep at all.
This is about as silly as it gets, and that’s what the internet is made for. Mandatory wrote up what happened in season five of The Walking Dead, made it rhyme, and set it to the music of the opening theme from Cheers. Yes, they did.
Besides being a ridiculous way to present the information, it may remind fans of all that went on last year, leading up to the premiere episode of season six of The Walking Dead this Sunday night. -Thanks, Daniel!
Giovanni and Teresa Jacuzzi married in 1886 and had 13 children, seven sons and six daughters. The family emigrated to America to escape World War I, and the sons worked together to invent, build, and market machines. Rachele, the oldest Jacuzzi brother, came up with an improvement in the airplane propellor. Then an entire airplane. Then a water-pumping method that led to irrigation machines which were very popular in California. The youngest brother, Candido, perfected his English so he could sell the Jacuzzi gadgets. Then in the 1940s, Candido’s young son Ken contracted strep throat.
While this seems eminently treatable now, Ken’s illness occurred in the era before antibiotics. Strep leads to rheumatic fever, which leads to Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis (JRA), a syndrome that causes persistent joint pain, swelling, and stiffness. In Ken's case, the infection went systemic, meaning his entire body was affected. The family took him to a rheumatologist, who recommended physical therapy in addition to a constant and steady assortment of drugs. He also recommended a more advanced treatment.
“Hydrotherapy,” says Ken, “to warm up my body and joints, to get them more flexible.” Inez noticed Ken reacted well to the water-based treatments, but couldn't always make the drive. So, to cut down on he logistical hassle, she enlisted Candido to take a look at the hydrotherapy unit. “He came to the conclusion that it's just pumps. So, he developed a design.”
That’s how the Jacuzzi was born, but it is far from the whole story. The Jacuzzis were industrial suppliers, and had never marketed products to consumers. That took some innovation, which is what the family always did best. Read how the Jacuzzi went from a custom health aid to an international craze at Atlas Obscura.
(Image courtesy of Ken Jacuzzi)
Cracked continues its honest ad series with a look at fancy weddings. Why do people spend so much on weddings? Because wedding vendors want to sell you expensive goods and services!
If you recall the lucrative campaign that suddenly made diamond engagement rings a custom, then the fact that the rest of the wedding industry is like that will not surprise you. Contains NSFW language. -via Viral Viral Videos
For Postseason Home Games: The @Rangers will sell a hot dog w/cotton candy-infused mustard, topped w/cotton candy pic.twitter.com/No7V4iufdC
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) October 5, 2015
Here’s a treat for anyone attending the Texas Rangers’ home games at Globe Life Park, as long as they remain in the playoffs, according to a Tweet from ESPN’s Darren Rovell. A hot dog with cotton-candy infused mustard topped with more cotton candy. I don’t know anything about cotton candy-infused mustard, but that might be the green stuff in the picture. Would you eat this? Let me phrase that differently. How many ballpark beers would you have to ingest before you’d consider eating this? -via Uproxx
Well, “continues” might be a little misleading as far as the books go, but the pop culture madness may continue. It’s been ten years since Stephanie Meyers’ first book Twilight was released. Three other books followed, carrying the same vampire, werewolf, and human characters forward in time. Then there were five movies based on the series. And now, Meyers has a new book out called Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined. It’s the story in Twilight all over again, except this time gender-swapped. A mortal young man falls in love with a mysterious vampire who resembles a teenage woman, except there’s also a she-werewolf in the wings vying for his attention.
It was the character of Bella who inspired Meyer to completely switch things up for the 10th anniversary of “Twilight,” a book that inspired a series of four books in all that have sold more than 150 million copies worldwide.
Meyer, an Arizona-based mom of three, said on "GMA" she was inspired by questions she has received from "Twilight" readers, wondering whether the series paints Bella’s character as a “typical damsel in distress.”
"It's always bothered me a little bit because anyone surrounded by superheroes is going to be ... in distress. We don’t have the powers," Meyer said. "I thought, 'What if we switched it around a bit and see how a boy does,' and, you know, it’s about the same."
That’s why, plus the prospect of millions more dollars from Twihards had to play a part. Read more about the new book at Yahoo News. As of now, the story is bundled with the tenth anniversary edition of Twilight at Amazon. -via Buzzfeed
Because medical care requires an inordinate amount of trust in doctors, who have an inordinate amount of power over their patients, the Hippocratic Oath sets up standards for medical ethics. Although it is blessedly rare, some doctors pay no heed to the oath, and indeed use their training for nefarious, even horrifying, purposes. One nightmare scenario is the doctor who sexually violates his patients. Jill Harness wrote an article about three doctors who did just that in three very different and outrageous ways, which you can read about at Rue the Day.
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.
Dramatic discoveries about celebrated colas
compiled by Honoré Schoolcraft, Improbable Research staff
Coke Is It
“Effect of ‘Coke’ on Sperm Motility,” Sharee A. Umpierre, Joseph A. Hill and Deborah J. Anderson,
New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 313, no. 21, 1985, p. 1351.
No, It’s Not
“The Spermicidal Potency of Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola,” C.Y. Hong, C.C. Shieh, P. Wu and B.N. Chiang, Human Toxicology, vol. 6, no. 5, September 1987, pp. 395–6. The authors, who are at Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Republic of China, explain their findings thusly:
The inhibitory effect of Old Coke, caffeine-free New Coke, New Coke, Diet Coke and Pepsi-Cola on human sperm motility was studied with a trans-membrane migration method. None of them could decrease sperm motility to less than 70% of control within one hour. A previous study which claimed a marked variation of spermicidal potencies among different formulations of Coca-Cola could not be confirmed. Even if cola has a spermicidal effect, its potency is relatively weak as compared with other well-known spermicidal agents.
Four Liters of Coke and Some Kangaroos
Happy first day of Fall! #pumpkin #jackolantern #bb8 #starwars #autumn #episode7 #artsy #creative #photooftheday #t… pic.twitter.com/Kz8fMYyK0p
— Daniel Hoogkamp (@Dantooine2) September 24, 2015
Star Wars fan Daniel Hoogkamp put together the Jack-o-Lantern we all want, a representative of the BB-8 droid from Stars Wars VII: The Force Awakens. These are orange pumpkins painted white. He used a bowl and a dry-erase marker for the circles. Hoogkamp knew it would rot before the actual holiday (it was made a couple of weeks ago), but as he knew it would be the dominant design this year, he wanted to be the first to post a picture. -via Time
I hear College Humor’s video series Adam Ruins Everything (previously at Neatorama) is now a TV show. Here Adam Conover explains how ineffective the TSA airport screenings are. In case you’ve forgotten, all the stripping and scanning and searching we do these days is because of 9/11. Before that, you zipped through a metal detector and ran your carry-on bag through an x-ray machine. They didn't care that you were taking a bottle of tequila to your hosts in some faraway city. Oh, and most of our bags went in the cargo hold because they didn’t charge extra for them back then.
But back to the TSA. The extra security routines we go through in an airport are pretty much security theater, not to make us feel safer, but to remind us that we are in constant danger of terrorist attacks, and therefore justifying all that spending. -via Digg
In the 1989 movie Back to the Future Part II, Marty McFly travels forward in time to October 21, 2015. That date is drawing near, and we still don’t have hoverboards or flying cars or self-lacing shoes. But we will have Pepsi Perfect!
For a limited time, Pepsi will sell the Back to the Future soda made popular—but not available—in the classic movie starring Marty McFly (no relation to this writer).
Residents of the modern era will soon have a chance to purchase one of 6,500 limited-edition bottles for the hefty price of $20.15 each (hoverboard not included). Bottles will be sold online on Oct. 21 in celebration of the 30th anniversary of Marty and Doc heading from the '80s to now.
One bottle, $20.15. I understand the joke in the price, but that’s a bit pricey for one Pepsi. I think I’ll celebrate the date by watching the movie, and just keep waiting for the hoverboard. -via Buzzfeed
