An attractive ragdoll cat named Milk gets his teeth brushed for the first time. His reaction is just adorable. I think the word is “flabbergasted.”
The animated gif of this video was posted at reddit with the question “Have you ever seen a cat become broken?” Many commenters said yes, and left proof, compiled here.
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Lavenham is a town in Suffolk, UK, which has a whole slew of houses that lean this way or that, with the exposed beams showing off their tipsy attitudes. It’s not because of an architectural fad or tradition; these houses were straight at one time. It’s because of economic boom and bust. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Lavenham was a booming and prosperous community due to the local wool fabric production.
The town grew so fast that many of the houses were built in haste with green timber. As the wood dried, the timbers warped causing the houses to bend at unexpected angles. Unfortunately, Lavenham’s good times didn’t last long. When Dutch refugees settled in Colchester began producing cloth that was cheaper, lighter and more fashionable than Lavenham's, the town’s cloth industry went bust. By the time the dried timber started twisting, Lavenham’s families had lost its wealth and with no money to rebuild their homes, Lavenham’s crooked houses were left as they were.
The remaining crooked homes are charming in their own way, and you can see plenty of them at Amusing Planet. -via Everlasting Blort
(Image credit: Flickr user Andrew Hill)
Once more, we have proof that whether something blends or not matters less than whether you can make a pun out of the titles. Yet this one works on other levels as well. The TV show Downton Abbey meets the song “Uptown Funk” in this mashup from College Humor. -via Tastefully Offensive
(Image credit: Cory Doctorow)
(Image credit: Over Waves’ Bindings)
When you gotta go, you gotta go, but where? More and more public restrooms are unisex, or gender-neutral, meaning anyone can use them. Another term is “family” restrooms, even if it’s a one-holer. Signs used to designate these restrooms can take on a real flair, as shown here. See 17 creative restroom signs for a new generation at Buzzfeed.
Now that everyone is arguing over the color of a dress, AsapSCIENCE steps in to explain how people perceive and interpret colors differently. First impressions can be confusing, while knowledge that comes later can fill in some of the gaps. The upshot is that brain is an amazing organ that sifts through both information we have and information we don’t have to make sense of the world around us. -via Tastefully Offensive
Would you like help? Yeah, it’s funny, but as soon as you admit that you get the joke, you’ve dated yourself. Adding googly eyes to a paperclip evokes recollections of Clippy, the annoying virtual assistant in Microsoft Office applications sold from 1997 to 2003. Furbyfresse uploaded this picture and said her boyfriend made earrings for her. -via Fail Blog
Have you ever noticed that the seed pods of a snapdragon flower looks just like a string of human skulls? Creepy, huh? Mother Nature produces plants in an astounding variety, and many of them look like something significant to humans whether it benefits the plant or not. Boing Boing has a list of 40 of the world's weirdest flowers that include flowers that look like something else, flowers with odd lifestyles, and flowers that might not even be flowers at all. Some are rare and endangered; others you might be growing in your own kitchen, and you’ll see pictures of each of them.
(Image credit: Flickr user laajala)
(Image credit: Cecilia Bleasdale)
There’s been quite a debate among Tumblr users about the colors of this dress. The picture was posted by Swiked, and then passed around, igniting arguments wherever it showed up. I looked at it and said, “That’s white with gold lace.” Then I read three posts at Buzzfeed about the controversy surrounding the colors, with plenty of pictures of the dress with various color corrections and even a catalog entry, and they determined that the dress is actually blue with black lace.
But what really floored me was when I returned to the original picture and saw it as blue and black! I could not make myself see white and gold again at that point. THEN I went somewhere else for about twenty minutes and returned to the original picture. It appeared white and gold again- for a minute or two, then it turned blue and black again. Now, my eyesight isn’t the greatest, but this is one weird phenomena.
Update: There's a discussion of some of the factors going into this photo here.
Patricia Highsmith's most memorable supervillain was inspired by a chance encounter. But how fictional was he really?
Early one morning in the summer of 1952, Patricia Highsmith awoke in a room at the Albergo Miramare hotel in Positano, Italy. The 31-year-old author had been traveling through Europe with her girlfriend, Ellen Blumenthal Hill, and the two weren’t getting along. Leaving Hill in bed, Highsmith walked to the end of a balcony overlooking the beach. It’s not as if things weren’t going well for her—her novel Strangers on a Train had just been adapted for the screen by Alfred Hitchcock. But the tumultuous relationship was taking a toll. As she gazed out at the sand, pulling on a cigarette, she watched “a solitary young man in shorts and sandals, with a towel flung over his shoulder, making his way along the beach. There was an air of pensiveness about him, maybe unease,” she recalled in a 1989 issue of Granta magazine. She started to wonder: “Had he quarreled with someone? What was on his mind?”
The intrigue stuck with her. Two years later, while living in a cottage rented from an undertaker in Lenox, Mass., Highsmith drew from that image as she began a new novel, about a man named Tom Ripley. Even then, she sensed that she was onto something special. “She considered [The Talented Mr. Ripley] ‘healthier’ and ‘handsomer’ than her other books at its ‘birth,’” Joan Schenkar writes in her excellent biography The Talented Miss Highsmith.
Highsmith’s instincts were correct: With the charming sociopath Ripley, she’d created a new type of character entirely. In five novels over the next four decades, he’d become not only her most acclaimed and memorable creation but the prototype for a new kind of antihero: the unlikable, immoral, cold-blooded killer we can’t help but like anyway. Ripley was a character so fully realized, so simultaneously compelling and disturbing, it seemed as if he were based on someone Highsmith knew intimately. In a sense, he was.
An orphan unhappily raised by an icy aunt, 23-year-old Tom Ripley is living in New York City when we first meet him, trying his hand at casual extortion. In a bar one night, he’s approached by the wealthy Herbert Greenleaf, father of an acquaintance, Dickie. Greenleaf is looking for someone who might persuade his son to return home from the bohemian life he’s been leading in the Italian village of Mongibello, and Tom seizes the opportunity. But what he finds when he locates Dickie is something he hadn’t expected: a glimpse of the privileged existence he’s always dreamed of.
Japan has been a leader in animal cafes, including one where you can get up close and personal with owls. London has decided to up the ante with an owl tavern, although it will be temporary.
Annie the Owl and friends will be taking over a Soho bar from March 19 to 25, 8:30 p.m. until 2:00 a.m. Customers can enjoy two hours and two cocktails nestled amongst the nocturnal birds. There's just one catch—you have to be very lucky to get a spot. Right now, the tickets are being sold for £20, but you have to enter a lottery to earn some face-time with the owls. Winning the raffle only gives you one ticket, so you'll have to fly solo if your friends don't win as well.
Right now, owl cafes are all the rage in Japan, but (perhaps predictably) London kicked it up a notch by adding booze to the equation. On top of feathery friends and drinks, the bar also offers music, comedy, and an "electric atmosphere." The drinks will be mixed by some of London's top mixologists, and the birds will all be accompanied by professional falconers, so you know you'll be in good hands.
The birds will be well-chaperoned, and only people are allowed alcohol. Proceeds from the owl bar will go to The Barn Owl Centre, an organization dedicated to protecting owls. Get all the particulars for the upcoming owl cafe at mental_floss.
(Image credit: Richard Fisher)
The word “bedlam” means chaos to modern ears, and that meaning came from the British asylum known as Bedlam, short for Bethlehem Royal Hospital. It was born in 1247 as a priory which soon began to take in the mentally ill. Over the next few centuries, the asylum changed hands, changed management, and even changed locations, but for most of that time was a chamber of horrors. The inmates received either no treatment or terrible treatment, and at times were put on display as freaks. The institution is still in use today, although conditions have changed. All Day has an illustrated timeline of the history of Bedlam over the past 750 years.
(Image credit: Wellcome Images via Wikimedia Commons)
Be careful what you wish for, because with great power comes great responsibility. These familiar adages go double for this video from College Humor. You may feel nostalgic for the ‘90s if it was your childhood (otherwise, I just don’t see it), but going back is not the funfest it might seem. Now, if time travel were possible, this scenario puts an entirely different spin on events that we still don’t understand. What if the most senseless events from history were an attempt to stop something even worse? This video contains NSFW language. -via Viral Viral Videos
A kitten named Dash turns his attention to play-attacking and play-fighting a Frizzle chicken named Mora. The hen isn’t taking this sitting down, and even tries a couple of times to put that tiny predator in its place. Dash doesn’t take the hint. Once upon a time, you had to actually have pets to enjoy this kind of thing, but now we can just share the best moments. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
George Herman “Babe" Ruth is, without a doubt, the most famous, beloved and mythical baseball player of all-time. Perhaps of all athletes, ever, only Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan have been more influential and as well-known.
The guy hit his legendary 714 home runs in 22 seasons (1914-1935), drove in over 2,200 runs and had a lifetime batting average of .342. Not only that, but he was also a star pitcher in his early days, compiling a lifetime record of 94 wins and 46 losses. Okay, let's take a look at 12 facts you may not have known about “The Sultan of Swat,” the one and only Babe Ruth.
1. He started out as a left-handed catcher.
Young George Ruth started playing baseball at St. Marys Industrial School for Boys in Baltimore. He began his career as a left-handed catcher, the rarest of all position players.
Ruth, top row center, at St. Marys Industrial School for Boys.
The school only had a catcher's mitt for a right-hander, so George would catch the ball with his left hand. If a runner on base tried to steal, he'd toss the glove aside, catch the ball in the air and throw it to second base with his left hand.
2. He became a pitcher because he ridiculed another pitcher.
Even though it’s been 150 years since Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was first published, we are still finding new meaning in it. Lewis Carrol’s tale turns logic inside out, and along the way, gives neurologists insight about how the human brain operates. Characters in the book explore the way we perceive language, time, and our own corporeal bodies. For example, Alice changes her own size several times by the magic of eating or drinking.
In 1955, a psychiatrist called John Todd found that certain patients reported exactly the same feeling of “opening out like a telescope”. The disorder is known as Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, and it seems to be most common in children. “I have heard patients saying that things appear upside down, or even though mommy is on other side of the room, she appeared next to her,” says Grant Liu, a neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia who has studied the phenomenon.
Carroll’s diaries show that he suffered migraines, which often trigger the syndrome – leading some to speculate that he was using his own experiences as inspiration. Liu suspects the syndrome can be pinned to abnormal activity in the parietal lobes, which are responsible for spatial awareness, skewing the sense of perspective and distance. But despite the fact that it can be disturbing, these fleeting illusions are generally harmless. “The majority are unaffected – and we just provide reassurance that the patient is not crazy and that other people also experience these things,” says Liu. Today, neuroscientists are trying to evoke the illusion in healthy subjects – which they think might shed light on the way we create our sense of self in the here and now.
And that’s only one of the five specific findings in neuroscience that relate to the more illogical passages in Alice in Wonderland outlined in an article at BBC Future. -via Digg
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