IKEA names all their products, using a system that only made sense to the guy who instituted it. If you don’t know any Scandinavian languages, they seem completely random, and you’ll never know how they are supposed to be pronounced. That didn’t stop Simon from reading all of them.
As he and his girlfriend were shopping, he kept up a nonstop barrage of puns using IKEA product names. It was annoying to her, but you’ll get a kick out of them! -via Geeks Are Sexy
Just what we needed- Mad Max: Fury Road rendered in ancient Egyptian-style! This work, called Complete Mad Max Mythology, is from Japanese artist Takumi. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll recognize elements all over this “wall,” accompanied by runes that may or may not be hieroglyphs. See his drafts in black and white for a clearer study. -via Uproxx
Snorri Sturluson is a cat burglar. Snorri is a two-year-old cat in Portland, Oregon. If he could, Snorri would probably insist its not thievery, just his hobby of collecting things from around the neighborhood. His owner, Gabrielle Hendel, said Snorri started out in the spring bringing home trash and sticks, but soon moved up to bigger objects.
"It escalated to include kids toys, matchbooks, a leopard print towel, dog toys, rags, hats, socks, gloves and then finally shoes," Hendel, a medical student who splits her time between her surgical rotation and editing Snorri's footage, told HuffPost.
If her neighbors notice anything missing, they will check Snorri’s Instagram account, where Hendel posts pictures of the night’s take. The popularity of the gallery has made Snorri a star. As you can see from the many pictures there, Snorri likes to take shoes more than anything. He also has his own YouTube channel. Who says crime doesn't pay?
The following is an article from the book Uncle John's Canoramic Bathroom Reader.
To help win World War II, the Allies used every skill they could come up with— including illusion, trickery… and magic.
WIZARD SCHOOL
In 1940 Britain’s Ministry of Home Security created a military unit dedicated to “civil camouflage.” Their job would be to provide safety through “seriously ridiculous deception.” The unit of camoufleurs— soldiers tasked with finding ways to hide equipment and troop movements from the enemy— would be trained at the Camouflage Development and Training Centre at Farnham Castle, Surrey. The camouflage office’s odd cast of characters included artists, movie set designers, cartoonists, and a third-generation stage magician named Jasper Maskelyne. (Unrelated fact: Maskelyne’s grandfather invented the pay toilet.)
In 1941 the city of Alexandria, Egypt, was home to a million people. Controlling its harbor allowed Allied forces to replenish supplies and troops for the desert war raging in North Africa. That made it a prime target for German Luftwaffe bombing raids. Major Geoffrey Barkas— a former filmmaker appointed head of Middle Eastern Camouflage— called on Jasper Maskelyne and the team of camoufleurs known as the “Magic Gang.” Their mission: conceal the entire port, including the battleships and merchant vessels docked in it. “We can’t cover it up. We can’t disguise it. And we can’t hide it,” Maskelyne reportedly said. “There’s only one solution left to us, isn’t there? Move it.”
MAIGICIAN'S DUMMY
Maskelyne and his team proceeded to construct a “dummy” port complete with mock battleships and submarines on an inland lake about three miles away from the real harbor. They installed real antiaircraft guns and searchlights, and rigged up remote-control explosives. The team consulted nighttime aerial photos of the actual city, and then planted lights in the sand and mud to make the fake site look as much like Alexandria as possible. Meanwhile, the real city of Alexandria went black.
The cinematic term “breaking the fourth wall” is when an actor turns and addresses the audience directly. That “fourth wall” is the one between the character and the viewer. It violates the suspension of disbelief momentarily and shows the character as one who is aware of their place in a theatrical work. It’s been used in theater before film, and throughout the history of movies and television.
In this video by Now You See It, we get the history of the technique, its various uses, and a great many examples from movies you know and love. -via Digg
Furry Friend bills itself as a “frequency-shaped cat purr noise generator.” You can change the parameters on the generator to hear different purrs. You can also animate it to watch the sliders vibrate and change in time with the cat’s breathing. Neat!
A cat's purr is generally within the range of 40 - 200 Hz. In sound therapy, these frequencies are believed to heal injuries and relieve pain. It is also told that injured cats often purr to help soothe and heal themselves...
Whether you're not at home, can't have a pet, or just need your purr fix right this moment, this soundscape can help you relax and emulate the soothing experience of snuggling up with your furry friend - without the fleas and cat hair!
Don’t blame me if you are tempted to leave this on all the time and somehow you find yourself more relaxed until you fall asleep at the computer. Your cats may or may not like it.
Don’t like cats? These folks have a noise generator for every taste. -via Metafilter
Move over, Limberbutt McCubbins, you’re not polling nearly as well as presidential candidate Deez Nuts. That’s the presidential pseudonym of 15-year-old Brady Olson from Louisville, Iowa, who filed papers to run for the office. He’s not eligible, because you have to be 35 years old. But since he’s filed, he managed to get on some polls, and of course that drew plenty of publicity, which led to higher poll ratings. Just like Donald Trump. The best part of all of this is watching serious television journalists try to announce those poll results with a straight face.
That cannot be easy. Nor easy to explain to your mom. -via Bits and Pieces
The USDA Economic Research Service crunched a lot of numbers to come up with a rather arguable measure of how pleasant the “natural amenities” are in 3,111 counties in the U.S. The results are available in an interactive map.
…in the late 1990s the federal government devised a measure of the best and worst places to live in America, from the standpoint of scenery and climate. The "natural amenities index" is intended as "a measure of the physical characteristics of a county area that enhance the location as a place to live."
The index combines "six measures of climate, topography, and water area that reflect environmental qualities most people prefer." Those qualities, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, include mild, sunny winters, temperate summers, low humidity, topographic variation, and access to a body of water.
As you can imagine, these rankings have caused some indignity and hurt feelings. Red Lake County, Minnesota, came in last place of the 3,111 counties ranked (Alaska and Hawaii are not included). This has Minnesota crying foul. After all, the importance of temperature, humidity, and topographic variation to an area’s overall “pleasantness” is a matter of opinion. And you can’t put a number on “scenery.” Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what they were thinking. I live within spitting distance of a county line. One of the counties ranks in the top third, while the other is in the bottom third. As far as I can tell, the two counties have exactly the same climate and number of sunny days in winter. Click on your own county to see how it ranks at The Washington Post. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Christopher Ingraham/The Washington Post)
The title may seem like a random string of memes, but this really happened. The professional protesters known as the WBC showed up outside the Sprint Center in Kansas City Friday where the Foo Fighters were preparing to play, and the band decided to go outside and visit them. They didn’t have time to put anything elaborate together like they did once before, so they just rode out in a pickup truck with a sound system blaring Rick Astleys’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
The real star of the show was the psychedelic Speedo. A good time was had by all. -via reddit
If you’d like to read a true crime story in less than an hour, you’ll be interested in the case of Frank Freshwaters, who escaped from prison and lived for 56 years under a different identity. He lived in different states, fathered children, and eventually became the subject of “the longest capture in the history of the U.S. Marshals.”
Frank Freshwaters was a baby-faced 21-year-old newlywed — with no criminal record and a job in the booming rubber industry — when his speeding car slammed into a father of three who was walking home in the pre-midnight darkness on July 3, 1957.
That crash on South Arlington Street in southeast Akron ended one man's life and — for Freshwaters — set into motion a sequence of events seemingly lifted straight from a Hollywood screenplay.
A story whose twists and turns — incarceration at the infamous prison featured in "The Shawshank Redemption," an escape from a prison farm, life on the run using a fake identity, a new shot at freedom personally granted by West Virginia's governor — culminated in a simple knock on a trailer home door in Melbourne, 56 years later.
Captured in May of 2015, Freshwaters is now 79 years old, and awaiting a decision on his fate. Florida Today has a three-part series on his initial crime, incarceration, and years on the lam. Part one is here. -via Digg
(Image credit: Brevard County Sheriff's Office)
There was a time when women’s magazines were filled with Jell-O recipes, enough that you could serve breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert, all containing Jell-O. It seems strange now, but the history of the food can shed some light on the craze. Making gelatin was once a labor-intensive project, and was served to flaunt how many servants one had. Then at the turn of the 20th century, the Industrial Revolution gave us two trends that collided successfully: processed foods and the rise of the middle class. Housewives were eager to show off their domestic skills. Lynne Belluscio of the Jell-O Gallery Museum and food historian Laura Shapiro explain how Jell-O made that a breeze.
Instant gelatin fit the bill. It was fast, unlike the traditional method of making gelatin. It was economical: a housewife could stretch her family's leftovers by encasing them in gelatin. And, since sugar was already included in the flavored mixes, the new packaged gelatins didn't require cooks to use up their household stores of sugar. It was also neat and tidy, a quality much valued by the domestic-science movement as well as its Victorian forebears, who were mad for molded foods of all kinds, says Belluscio. Jellied salads, unlike tossed ones, were mess-free, never transgressing the border of the plate: "A salad at last in control of itself," Shapiro writes. Cooks in this era molded everything from cooked spinach to chicken salad, with care to avoid the cardinal sin of messiness.
But that was just the beginning. Wartime food rationing, the Great Depression, and the culture of postwar suburbia all fed the Jell-O salad craze. Sometime in the late 20th century, chefs figured out that no one was eating their savory Jell-o salads with vegetables, fish, and mayonnaise in them. In the 21st century, those recipes are mainly a source of comedy. Read the history of the Jell-O salad at Serious Eats. -via the Presurfer
(Image credit: the Kraft Heinz Company)
Due to his role in the birth of the United States, George Washington was regarded as an almost mythical character even before his death in 1799. His possessions, even today, are revered relics of history. That even includes a bedpan. It had nothing to do with the Revolutionary War, or even his presidency, but it belonged to the Washingtons, and is therefore a cherished piece of history.
An 18th-century bedpan isn’t all that different from one today. Then, it was round and made of pewter with a handle. In an era before plumbing and bathrooms, the bedpan could be gently heated and slipped under the covers of a sickbed. The elderly, ill, and women recovering from childbirth could use the bedpan without having to risk further injury by leaving their bed. While healthy adults could use a chamberpot, which might be kept in a cabinet or attached beneath a hole in a chair seat, the bedpan was designed for the immobile.
This particular bedpan was made by a New York pewterer named Frederick Bassett in the late 18th century. It was most likely used by either or both George and Martha Washington at the end of their lives. Because of the meticulous records kept by the family, we can trace the journey of this lowly item through the19th century and up to its return to Mount Vernon in 1936. Why was it kept, and who could possibly have wanted it?
The story of the bedpan is the story of all of George and Martha’s household belongings. They come down to us through Martha’s descendants, with meticulously recorded provenance. However, somewhere along the line, the exact purpose of the bedpan was mislabeled. Read the story of one object and how it represents the legacy of the Father of our Country at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: George Washington’s Mount Vernon)
All they wanted was to be together. But alas, that was beyond their abilities. Maybe someday… maybe tomorrow, maybe in fifteen years from now. It’s all part of the parental adventures of Lunarbaboon.
BrotherhoodWorkshop condensed the movie Jurassic World down to only 90 seconds and rendered it in LEGO blocks and minifigs. Yep, the whole movie. And in the process, they made it into a comedy!
I guess I should warn you that this contains spoilers, duh. But I never saw the film, and this condensed version didn’t show me anything I didn’t already know about Jurassic World. -via 22 Words
The story starts out weird and then it turns much weirder. Two sharks have a shark-to-shark conversation about the meaning of life under the sea. They get deep, so to speak. One decides he needs to do something to give meaning to his life.
This award-winning short film was written and directed by Steve Dildarian, whose work for Budweiser you may recall. -via io9
