This is a pretty good group of cosplayers! Professional, in fact. They are actually at work, on the set of Game of Thrones, as body doubles for the principle actors. This picture is from the Instagram account of Rosie Mac, who is the body double for Emilia Clarke, who plays Daenerys Targaryen. You can see more pictures of body doubles from the series at Buzzfeed.
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Some of your favorite foods have names that belie their actual origins. Baguette? Croissant? Not French. French toast? Still not French. French fries? From Belgium. The French are renowned for their cuisine, so maybe the name was added to other dishes to make them sound more cosmopolitan. But those are just a few of the food origins that aren’t what they seem that John Green explains in this week’s mental_floss List Show. By the way, the only place I ever encountered a Pu Pu Platter was in a Polynesian restaurant where I worked during college. I’ve never seen them offered in a Chinese restaurant.
A speed camera near Mooloolaba, Queensland, Australia, caught 24-year-old Zac Murray driving at 100 km/h and he was sent a $151 ticket for speeding. However, the speed limit on the roadway is 100 km/h (62 mph). Murray was a bit puzzled, but saw the humor in the situation. He issued an apology.
"I am deeply saddened by my actions and believe I am just as bad as those ingrates who are downloading Dallas Buyers Club and/or Game of Thrones," he wrote.
"Clearly I did not think of the children or consider the consequences of my actions as I drove at an alleged speed of 100km in a 100km zone.
"I hope you can all forgive me. But most importantly I hope I can forgive myself for the monster I have become."
Police in Queensland were surprised, too, and canceled the ticket. Further investigation showed that when the speed camera was being calibrated and tested, it automatically issued two tickets to drivers before it was officially deployed. -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Zac Murray)
How It Should Have Ended takes on the latest Marvel movie: The Avengers: Age Of Ultron. But wait! This says "part one." Are they going to show the end of the story? How would I know, since I haven’t seen the film? Is this going to make any sense at all?
Oh, okay, now that I’ve watched the video, I can honestly say that you’ll get a kick out of this even if you haven’t seen The Avengers: Age Of Ultron. Spoilers? I don't think so. And it certainly makes me look forward to seeing part two! -via Viral Viral Videos
If you are a fan of the TV series Penny Dreadful, you know how the character Lily is an incarnation of the bride of Frankenstein. If you’ve never seen the show, you’ll still enjoy an article from Den of Geek that deconstructs the latest episode, and then gets into the history of the bride of Frankenstein character, from Mary Shelley’s first imagining to the various cinematic versions. Dr. Frankenstein’s second creation is not only a monster made of dead body parts, but she also presents us with ethical issues in her very existence as a manufactured mate for the first monster. What could possibly go wrong? Witness the climatic scene from the 1935 movie The Bride of Frankenstein:
As soon as she is forced to sit next to Karloff’s beautifully sad sack Monster, her immediate reaction is to hiss and scream, and to run to Henry for protection. Implicitly, this all-too-brief climax of the film sets up a love triangle between the doctor, the Monster, and the Bride, which has become part of the lore ever since. Some have even speculated that without censors around, Whale would have made the Bride be partially borne from the spare parts of Henry Frankenstein’s own wife, Elizabeth, thus doubling down on the triangle.
Exactly the worst case scenario that Shelley’s Victor imagined about the Mate, she rejects in total the Creature that cannot find even love or pity from one of his own species, which is heart-wrenchingly underscored by composer Franz Waxman’s three-notes of whimsical wistfulness.
Then there was the very odd Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), the creepy 1985 film The Bride, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994). They each gave the resurrected bride a different flavor, as you’ll read at Den of Geek.
When diver Julian Finn saw this octopus walking along the sea floor carrying two halves of a coconut shell, he couldn’t stop laughing at the ridiculous sight!
"I almost drowned laughing when I saw this the first time," Finn told the BBC. "I could tell it was going to do something, but I didn't expect this — I didn't expect it would pick up the shell and run away with it."
But the octopus knew what it was doing. Those shells make a nice portable predator-proof bed to curl up in -the perfect hiding place. -via HuffPo
Hotel concepts can be as wild and artful as you want, but when you actually break ground, you have to have a viable plan. Still, architects have ways of designing luxury hotels that are bigger, fancier, and more awe-inspiring every year. Take a look at a few that are under construction now, including this spectacular design.
The incredible hotel that will be known as Shimao Wonderland Intercontinental is another spectacular property that is currently being built. Located within a quarry near Shanghai, this hotel will be one of IHG’s flagship properties in China, and you can easily see why. It certainly looks like it’s from the future, and it definitely seems like it will be very luxurious.
See more hotels that are just as amazing at Worthly. Who knows, you may get the chance to stay at one of them sometime!
An urban explorer named AD found and photographed a facility filled with mannequins, statues, and accessories in various states of disrepair. They are just stored away, with no visible museum or other business visible.
An extended family of life-size figures call this space home, their faces and bodies disfigured and fragmented by neglect and the passage of time. Discarded limbs from some of these unsettling inhabitants can be seen piled high, seemingly ripped from their torsos, as if victims of a gruesome – albeit bloodless – massacre. A coffin, meanwhile, lies open, perhaps awaiting an unsuspecting occupant.
The photographer won’t give the exact location, because 1. he or she wasn’t supposed to be there, and b. there’s no need to encourage others to trespass. It’s an urbex ethic. However, we are treated to a collection of eerie photographs AD took when he/she had the chance. See them at Scribol.
Ellis Island is famous for welcoming immigrants to New York City. But there are plenty of other islands that the city used for less benevolent purposes. Atlas Obscura is presenting a five-part series about the islands that America used to use to sort, quarantine, and confine immigrants and other riffraff. First up: Roosevelt Island, which had an interesting history from the beginning. Let’s skip ahead.
Finally, the city bought the whole island in 1828 as a location for charitable and corrective institutions. Their plan was to create a “city of asylums.” In part this was a desire to create more humane institutions for the criminal and the mentally ill, although these places don’t necessarily look humane to today’s eyes. Within a few years of the purchase, two fairly grim institutions opened up—a penitentiary and a lunatic asylum. While the island was eventually home to more than a dozen different institutions, these two are among the most storied. The penitentiary was erected as a state prison in 1832, and by the early 1900s there were a series of scandals involving inmate overcrowding, drug-dealing, and favoritism.
Read more about the prison scandals, and about the lunatic asylum, the almshouse, the research laboratory, and the various hospitals that operated on Roosevelt Island at one time or another.
(Image credit: Philip Capper)
Cable News Network is celebrating its 35th anniversary. From the day Ted Turner launched his innovative 24-hour news channel on June 1, 1980, CNN has been an early adopter of media technology, which often could have used a beta test before going on air. And then there’s the inevitable on-air mistakes, falls, photobombs, giggle fits, and unforeseeable circumstances that are now part of history.
Of course, these are far from the only bloopers. A comprehensive video would be very long. These are the ones CNN itself considered the funniest. It’s also a reminder of how long ago 1980 was when you get a look at the hairstyles and sets. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
High school graduation ceremonies generally consist of a few speeches and everyone’s name called to receive a diploma. For this year’s graduates of Kahuku High School in Hawaii, that wasn’t entertaining enough, so they put on a show themselves! They created and rehearsed this performance in only two days. It starts with a little song about graduating, but then blows into pop tunes we all know, with accompanying dance.
Enjoy the medley of old and new songs, and don’t miss the haka at the end. Well done, class of 2015! Now, if only every graduation ceremony were like this... well, I guess we'd watch them on the 'net. -via Buzzfeed
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.
Research involving feathers
compiled by Katherine Lee, Improbable Research staff
Eating Feathers (1966)
“Methods for Determining the Nutritive Value of Feather Meals,” W.E. McCasland and L. R. Richardson, Poultry Science, vol. 45, 1966, pp. 1231–6. The authors, at Texas A&M University, report:
The nutritive value of raw and hydrolyzed feather meals was determined by the growth of rats, by enzymatic digestion in vitro, and by quantitative microscopic analysis of feces of rats consuming diets that contained the feather protein. Rats fed raw feathers as the sole source of protein lost weight and the mortality was 100%. Those fed hydrolyzed feathers failed to gain weight but none succumbed during a six week test period.
Eating Feathers (2008)
“Responses to Sweet and Bitter Tasting Feathers in Laying Hens,” A. Harlander-Matauschek, F. Wassermann and W. Bessei, Proceedings of the 42th International Congress of the ISAE, 2008, p. 22.
Eating Feathers (2009)
“Physical Characteristics of Feathers Play a Role in Feather Eating Behavior,” A. Harlander-Matauschek and U. Feise, Poultry Science, vol. 88, no. 9, 2009, pp. 1800–4. The authors, at the University of Hohenheim, Germany, report:
If you are of a certain age, you’ll remember the story of how John DeLorean built his odd futuristic sports car in Northern Ireland and financed it with cocaine trafficking. For anyone younger, the car is synonymous with just one thing- the time machine in the Back to the Future movies. The process of turning a automotive failure into the coolest thing in cinema wasn’t an easy task.
Originally, three DeLorean cars were converted into time machines over the course of 10 weeks at a cost of around $150,000. Carried out by the same team responsible for another of our favorite fictional vehicles, Knight Rider’s K.I.T.T., the company created one hero car, one stunt car with added props for creating the distinctive fire trails, and a third DeLorean was cut into pieces for filming interior shots. Its first time on camera? December 14, 1984.
Urban Ghosts has details on each stage of preparing the DeLoreans for their star turn, including the roles they played in the sequels, and what ultimately happened to those vehicles. Oh yeah, and there’s lots of great pictures, too.
(Image credit: Terabass)
The movie Total Recall was released nationwide 25 years ago today. It was based on the Philip K. Dick story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale,” which went through quite a few changes on its way to the silver screen. For example, can you imagine Richard Dreyfuss as the lead instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger?
5. THE QUAID/HAUSER CHARACTER WENT THROUGH AN IMAGE OVERHAUL.
Producer De Laurentiis’ initial vision of the film’s hero Douglas Quaid (originally named “Quail”)/Carl Hauser was decidedly more in line with Dick’s short story: A schlubby office drone who dreams of a more exciting life. With this characterization in mind, his first choice for the part was Richard Dreyfuss. Over time, the desired machismo of the film’s leading man increased, prompting suggestions like William Hurt (courtesy of Cronenberg) and Patrick Swayze.
6. AT FIRST, ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER WAS TURNED DOWN FOR BEING TOO MANLY.
Despite the gradual growth of Quaid’s imagined virility, there was a limit to how far De Laurentiis was willing to stray from the original character. He insisted that someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger was out of the question for the part and even turned down the Terminator star when Schwarzenegger expressed interest in the role.
But Schwarzenegger still wanted the role, and he took advantage of his growing clout in Hollywood to get it. Find out how that happened, and other trivia about Total Recall on its 25th anniversary, at mental_floss.
Sometimes it’s the small towns that end up having the most crime, all out of proportion to the population. Where does this happen? TV, of course! If you live in a small community but happen to be a superhero, detective, vampire, or a criminal, you can bet that your local, police blotter does not resemble any real small town. And that applies even if your world is a largish town or a small city. Case in point: Charming, California, a contemporary dystopia if there ever was one.
Has there ever been a more violent town on TV than Sons of Anarchy‘s Charming? If there has been, I don’t think I’ve seen it. Drug smuggling, gun deals, and lots and lots of killing were seen on a consistent basis throughout Sons‘ seven-season run on FX, and a good bit of it all was perpetuated by members of SAMCRO themselves. Thankfully, even though it had been his hometown for all his life, Jax understood that Charming was too dangerous of a place for his kids to grow up and finally sent them off to live a better, safer life in the show’s series finale.
But is this the most disproportionately crime-ridden fictional town? Maybe not. There are quite a few other fictional towns listed at Housely that might give them run for the money. Try to guess which towns are on the list before you check it out.
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