This recap takes you through four-and-a-half seasons of The Walking Dead to get you ready for the show’s return this Sunday. Does it contain spoilers? It should, since its a recap, but I’ll have to say no, because any details you actually pick up from this video will be -how do I say this- wrong. Fans of the show will definitely find more laughs than someone who might try to follow the logic here. Just like The Walking Dead series itself, there is no logic in this video. You can thank College Humor for that. -via Geeks Are Sexy
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It’s not all fondant and games. Jen Doll, author of Save the Date: The Occasional Mortifications of a Serial Wedding Guest, reveals what today’s traditions owe to evil spirits, dental hygiene, and Queen Victoria.
1. The Egyptians were probably the first to exchange wedding rings. By Medieval times, it was believed that a vein ran from the fourth finger of the left hand to the heart, so this became the trendy place to show off your rock.
2. But engagement rings didn’t take off until the Middle Ages. In 1215, Pope Innocent III declared that there should be a longer waiting period between betrothal and marriage, spiking th wring’s popularity.
3. And diamonds came even later. Though the first recorded exchange of a diamond engagement ring was in 1477, when Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha proposed to Mary of Burgundy, they weren’t the standard until 1947, when Frances Gerety, who never herself married, coined “A Diamond Is Forever” for De Beers.
4. White Wedding dresses weren’t de rigueur until Queen Victoria wore one to marry Albert of Saxe-Coburg in 1840.
ClaraDarko put together a montage of female action heroes from movies you know and love. Take out all the dialogue, all the exposition, and all the sex, and what’s left is pure badassery. Oh, and it’s extremely violent. She deliberately excluded any characters with super powers, but that left 61 films of women fighting their way in and out of trouble, with swords, guns, and martial arts. If you don’t recognize them all, there’s a list of film used at the vimeo page. -via Uproxx
Fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli made a big splash in the 1920s and ’30s by marrying art and fashion. But she also developed practical, modern wearables like culottes and swimsuits with bras inside. Her avant-garde side grabbed attention from celebrities and the press, while her innovations were mass-produced for everyday consumers. And even the strangest of her designs seem tame today compared with the runway collections that make the press but and then never worn by anyone you know.
Some of Schiaparelli’s best ideas came out of collaborations with established artists like Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau. Elements that appeared in Dali’s paintings were translated to her garments, like a dress with drawer-like pockets along its front or the dress featuring a bright-red lobster print. In 1937, they created the Shoe Hat, whose crown pointed upward like the heel of an overturned pump. The following year, Dali and Schiaparelli designed the Skeleton Dress, a black crepe gown with cotton wadding used to imitate protruding bones.
Designs like these were intentionally subversive, using elements normally deemed unattractive and elevating them to the pinnacle of style. One of the duo’s most startling illusions was executed for the Tear Dress, a bluish-purple sheath printed with a pattern of torn fabric pieces falling open to reveal a rich, pink lining underneath. The trompe-l’oeil design was punctuated by a matching veil with pieces of cut fabric hanging loosely to resemble the tears printed onto the dress. Inspired by the ripped clothing and decomposing flesh in paintings like Dali’s “Nechrophiliac Springtime” from 1936, Schiaparelli’s finished garment playfully balanced the extremes of perfected couture and its inevitable disintegration.
Read about Schiaparelli’s work, and see those innovations, including the shoe hat and the skeleton dress, at Collectors Weekly.
(Image credit: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London)
This colossal snow sculpture is the centerpiece of the Sapporo Snow Festival, which opens today in Japan. The Star Wars-themed sculpture was sponsored by Disney, approved by Lucasfilm, and built by the 11th Brigade of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force based in Hokkaido. You can get a look at the process of building it in a series of pictures at Quartz. -via Digg
(Image credit: Lucasfilm Ltd.)
Grant Snider has a knack for taking something that was once considered a liability or weakness and finding new and creative ways of harnessing or focusing that very liabillity. At the same time, he reminds us that we are all in the same boat, and there's always a new way of looking at the world and our place in it. This is his latest illustration at Incidental Comics. Like all of his web comics, this one is available as a print.
OppoSuits, the company that brought us the hilarious Ugly Christmas Sweater Suits, is ready to dress you up for Mardi Gras! This suit is called Harleking. In it, you’ll be king of the harlequins.
If we could make a suit from ‘party', it would probably look like this. Back in the days a harlequin was the life of the party and that is exactly what the Harleking will do for you.
Perfect for a parade, a party, or a drunken revelry. Who knows- if you are the right type of guy, you may even want to wear this to work! Beads not included. -Thanks, Michel!
This video contains frank medical and anatomy terms that may not be appropriate for your workplace. ZDoggMD (previously at Neatorama) has a new public health song about preventing cancer caused by human papilloma virus (HPV) by having your children vaccinated.
Some parents are worried about vaccinating their sons and daughters against a sexually-transmitted disease at the recommended ages of 11-12 because they think it may send the wrong message. The recommended age for vaccination is important because you have to wait months between the three shots in the series (at least for Gardasil), and it’s best to get the series finished before your child grows up and leaves home. And that happens in the blink of an eye. Besides, HPV is so endemic that it’s very possible to contract it from one’s eventual spouse. I mean, you do want grandchildren someday, don’t you? And, God forbid, even an abstinent person can be sexually assaulted.
ZDoggMD has more information about HPV and vaccines at his website. The song is performed by ZDoggMD and Devin Moore to the tune of “More Than Words” by Extreme.
A culvert in Brazil became clogged, leading to water flooding over the road. Neighborhood men gathered to unclog the drain. When the key piece of debris was removed, the power of gravity sucked a boy and his father right under! They emerged on the other side of the road, alive and apparently unhurt, but their reactions are quite different. The young boy feels he’s been through a thrill ride, and would probably do that again. The older man takes a moment to ponder his mortality. An earlier video left us wondering if they were okay. Another video speculates on the kid’s experience of the drain. -via reddit
These holes look like big trilobites in the sky, or maybe they could be called “skylobites.” This picture of failstreak holes over Florida was posted by redditor deadhalo. They are sometimes attributed to UFOs, but there’s a perfectly logical explanation from meteorology.
Failstreak holes are the beginning of ice formations in clouds. The temperature can be very cold before water vapor turns to ice. When ice crystals begin to form, the crystallization spreads outward in a domino effect. Meanwhile, water surrounding the ice crystals evaporates, leaving a big hole.
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
Richard Milhous Nixon. Just the name still sends vibrations of hate and malice in countless Americans. Our 37th U.S. president, as well as being our only president to voluntarily resign in disgrace, Richard Nixon was a bundle of oddities and eccentricities.
Nixon made an appearance on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and he once played host to Elvis Presley in the Oval Office. These are two of the more well-known facts of Nixon's life and career. Let's take a look at a few other facts you may not have known about Richard M. Nixon.
* The Watergate break-in is not the only break-in to which Richard Nixon is connected. When he was a student at Duke law school, he and two accomplices broke into the dean's office to check their grades before they were posted.
* His favorite TV show was Gilligan's Island and his favorite movie was Patton.
* One of teenaged Nixon's jobs was as a barker at the wheel of fortune booth at the Slippery Gulch Carnival in Prescott, Arizona.
In the third installment of a series, John Green tries out those tips you read about on the internet called “life hacks.” Some work, and some don’t. There are so many of them in this episode of the mental_floss List Show that he runs through them rapidly without any, or not much, wasted time. Some seem to work very well; others are a wash. And a few just seem like more trouble than they are worth.
Also see: Life Hacks Debunked Part One and Part Two.
Somebody got into the Kleenex and left a mess behind. This guy has two dogs, Gnarly and Kacy. Which one is to blame for the tissues in the floor? If you watch carefully, you will find that one dog looks more guilty than the other. -via Bits and Pieces
In some disasters, a lot of people die for reasons that are later determined to be beyond their control. Yet in many disasters (sinking ships, burning buildings, weather events, etc) rescuers are surprised at how many people died because they failed to do anything to save themselves. An example is the 1994 sinking of the ferry MS Estonia, in which 852 of the 989 people aboard died, most of them because they did not leave the ship.
What happened? One person who knows the answer is John Leach, a military survival instructor who researches behaviour in extreme environments at the University of Portsmouth. He has studied the actions of survivors and victims from dozens of disasters around the world over several decades (and as it happens he was present at one of them, the fire at King’s Cross underground station on 18 November 1987 which killed 31 people). He has found that in life-threatening situations, around 75% of people are so bewildered by the situation that they are unable to think clearly or plot their escape. They become mentally paralysed. Just 15% of people on average manage to remain calm and rational enough to make decisions that could save their lives. (The remaining 10% are plain dangerous: they freak out and hinder the survival chances of everyone else.)
Of course, there is more involved, like the human tendency to downplay the actual danger in a novel situation. An article at the BBC shows us the latest research in disaster survival, based on both real events and models, and some tips on how you can survive if the occasion ever arises. -via Fark
a truck is on the top of a hill . pic.twitter.com/1KRyxA0cR3
— INTERESTING.JPG (@INTERESTING_JPG) January 29, 2015a large group of sheep on a leash . pic.twitter.com/Q4LmKNjc2g
— INTERESTING.JPG (@INTERESTING_JPG) February 3, 2015a group of men in military uniforms are standing together . pic.twitter.com/ID5ZOfgIDz
— INTERESTING.JPG (@INTERESTING_JPG) January 31, 2015a bouquet of flowers that are on a wall . pic.twitter.com/P99uIeWovN
— INTERESTING.JPG (@INTERESTING_JPG) February 3, 2015We hear ominous warnings about the rise of artificial intelligence, but then we see real experiments that show we have a way to go before Skynet takes over. INTERESTING.JPG is an experimental Twitter feed generated by artificial intelligence. An AI software program was trained in photo captioning by having it analyze photographs with human-written captions. On Twitter, it tries to caption news photographs itself, as best it can. Sometimes the generated captions are almost accurate, although not particularly enlightening. Other times, they are hilariously wrong. -via Metafilter
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