Simpson Xin shared pictures of a stray cat in China who looks so distressed you have to wonder what it's worried about. Won't someone comfort the poor thing? But that's just an illusion, caused by the cat's unique facial markings. Here's a closer look.
Still, you'd think someone would want to take the cat in just for the internet points. We wouldn't be surprised if it became an Instagram star ...or whatever the Chinese equivalent of Instagram is. See more pictures of the cat with the perpetually furrowed brow at Bored Panda.
Who knew that you burned blueberry bushes in the spring to spur yield? The process was developed by the Passamaquoddy people of Maine long before Europeans arrived, and is still in use, although most commercial growers have mechanized the process. Not Nicolas Lindholm of Blue Hill Berry Company. He is among the few growers who burn the fields by hand, using a crew of volunteers, to produce organic blueberries.
As Lindholm explains, the 12-14 inch tall blueberry bush we see above ground is only about one-third of the actual plant. Underground is a network of rhizomes—storage houses of energy and food—which work alongside certain strains of fungus to extract what few nutrients subside in the gravelly, acidic Maine soil. “There’s this whole underground world we can’t see, and burning everything aboveground helps enrich the whole thing.” In Lindholm’s case, burning also precludes the use of pesticides and herbicides he’d otherwise need to control pests and competing plant life.
Both hand- and mechanized burning preserve energy within the rhizomes of wild blueberry plants and produce higher yields the following year, but the ease of mechanized burners—often affixed to the back of a tractor—comes at a cost. “The oil that industrial growers use burns at a higher temperature that destroys a lot more of the duff layer,” says Lindholm, referring to the top layer of soil made of decomposed leaves and other organic material. A vast majority of growers today (Lindholm estimates more than 90 percent), including the Passamaquoddy themselves, burn in this fashion. Lindholm, on the other hand, spreads locally sourced straw over his fields to burn. By burning at a lower temperature, the straw protects a crucial soil layer while minimizing Lindholm’s ecological footprint.
Rich McCor, also known as Paperboyo, is a paper artist. While he normally travels the world to find inspiration, lately he's been stuck at home like the rest of us, watching a lot of movies to fill the time. Those movies inspired him to start a new project- making paper scenes using paper silhouettes combined with the things he has around the house. A little imagination and some real talent goes a long way!
“I usually work with architecture and forced perspective, so translating my ideas to a much smaller scale was a challenge but a fun challenge,” McCor tells My Modern Met. “I realized that there were plenty of opportunities to create images around the house with the same sense of humor and surprise as my exterior photos, so I used the theme of movies as a starting point and then let myself get carried away with it.” From Indiana Jones using a phone charger as his bullwhip to a herd of paper-cut Jurassic World dinosaurs charging across a cheese board, McCor’s indoor series showcases his boundless imagination.
This was the very first TV ad for Pizza Hut, produced in Wichita, Kansas. It was posted to YouTube years ago by the son of the producer. They didn't really need to give you a reason to select Pizza Hut over all the other pizza joints in town, because there weren't any others in most places. But they did make the ad funny, and introduced an earworm. -via Boing Boing
In December of 1944, a unit of Germany's First SS Panzer Division overwhelmed a group of US troops near the Belgian city of Malmedy. The GIs surrendered, and were rounded up as POWs. The Germans then killed 84 of them, which is a war crime. After the war, the American military tried 75 Germans for murder for the Malmedy massacre and related war crimes, convicted all but one, and sentenced 43 to death. But that didn't happen. In 1949, the Army convened a senate investigation to determine whether US military investigators and prosecutors had tortured, coerced, or otherwise mistreated the German defendants in the name of retribution. The senate investigatory subcommittee officially had three members, but the junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, was allowed to sit in and observe.
At the time, McCarthy was less than halfway through his first term in the Senate, and he hadn’t yet launched the reckless crusade against alleged Communists that would turn his name into an “ism.” Relegated to the status of a backbencher after Democrats took control of the Senate in 1949, McCarthy was thirsting for a cause that would let him claim the spotlight. The cause that this ex-Marine and uber-patriot picked—as an apologist for the Nazi perpetrators of the bloodiest slaughter of American soldiers during World War II—would, more than anything he had done previously, define him for his fellow senators and anybody else paying close attention. But so few were paying him heed that no alarms were sounded, and in short order his Malmedy trickery was overshadowed by his campaign against those he branded as un-American, an irony that lends special meaning to this forgotten chapter in the making of Joe McCarthy.
McCarthy did not sit in and observe. He questioned, accused, and bullied those involved, as if he were trying out an early version of the tactics he later used to smear opponents and galvanize the public against perceived communists. In short, McCarthy dominated the proceedings. Read the story of Joseph McCarthy and the investigation into the Malmedy trials at Smithsonian.
Wild birds often sing one song their entire lives. It's most likely the same song that other nearby birds of their species sing, although there are geographical variations, as if they had developed a local dialect. But a new song has gone viral over the past couple of decades, and has spread to Canadian white-throated sparrows across the country.
Birds sing to mark their territories and attract prospective mates. Traditionally, white-throated sparrows in western and central Canada sing a song distinguished by its three-note ending. The new song, which likely started off as a regional dialect at some point between 1960 and 2000, features a distinctive two-note ending, and it’s taking the sparrow community by storm. What makes the new ending so viral is a mystery to the study authors, led by Ken Otter from the University of Northern British Columbia.
“These songs are learned—otherwise new variants would not arise or spread,” Otter told Gizmodo. “Where it started could have been a single bird, but it then gets learned by others, and they would form tutors for other birds. It wouldn’t spread from a single bird.”
Scientists have been tracking the prevalence of the new song with help from birdwatchers who share birdsong on an online database. Read about the research, and hear the song, at Gizmodo.
You may have seen a strange Korean ad that went viral about a week ago promoting Green Onion Chex cereal. The limited edition cereal is the culmination of a story that began 16 years ago. It started when Kellogg's had a great idea for a marketing stunt to promote Chocolate Chex in Korea.
In 2004, Nongshim Kellogg launched an online “election” for the president of Chex featuring two candidates, chocolate-colored character Chekkie and green-colored character Chaka. Chekkie promised to make the cereal more chocolatey while Chaka promised to put green onion in the cereal. When internet communities heard about this election, they started voting for Chaka, to Kellogg Korea’s horror.
With Chaka bound for victory, Kellogg deleted over 42,000 votes, citing “security reasons.” With Chaka still winning by a few thousand votes, Kellogg added offline votes and ARS call votes, in a blatant manipulation of the result, to make Chekkie the winner.
See, they couldn't accept Chaka as the winner, because there was no such product, but the vote manipulation left a bad taste in the public's mouth. Inexplicably, Kellogg's repeated the disaster in Japan in 2012, pitting Chocolate Chex against a wasabi flavored rival. But 16 years later, Green Onion Chex is a reality. They should remove the sugar and release it in the US, where savory Chex Mix is as popular as the cold cereal version. Read more about the promotion that went wrong at the Korea Herald. -via Metafilter
Leonarda Cianciulli was a shopkeeper and a part-time fortuneteller in Corregio, Italy. She had lived a tragic life, including giving birth to seventeen children, thirteen of whom died in infancy or childhood. Cianciulli cooked, she made soap, she dabbled in matchmaking, and she was fiercely superstitious. And eventually she became a serial killer.
For Leonarda, everything changed in 1939 when Benito Mussolini began drafting young men to prepare for Italy's entry into World War II. Il Duce's popularity had slipped during the 1930s and the prospect of Italy entering the war on the side of Nazi Germany alarmed most Italians. Leonarda became mentally unbalanced at the thought of her favourite son, Giuseppe, being drafted and possibly dying in combat. The prospect of losing Giuseppe apparently led to her decision to carry out human sacrifices to preserve her son from death. As she would later state during her testimony, killing others would keep her own children safe by providing God with other deaths in place of her own children. Since she had four remaining children, she would need to sacrifice four others to keep them safe.
Two years ago, Weird Al Yankovic released his "Hamilton Polka." Now the song has a video, made from the relevant clips in the Hamilton movie now streaming on Disney+! Of course, the speed had to be altered to keep up the accordion's polka beat. And before you ask, Yankovic always gets permission. He even asks permission when it isn't required. -via reddit
For almost 70 years, it has been accepted that Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Now there is speculation about whether another expedition in 1924 was the first. If so, it would not negate Hillary and Norgay's achievement; it would just lengthen their title to the first expedition to reach the summit and return alive.
Around 1pm on 8 June 1924, George Mallory, one of the era’s leading climbers, and his young companion Andrew Irvine, were spotted as tiny black specks clinging to Everest’s towering Northeast Ridge, just a few hundred metres from the summit. And then the clouds closed in. Irvine has never been seen since, while Mallory’s frozen corpse was finally found in 1999.
Their unfinished story is mountaineering’s greatest mystery. That they died on the mountain over 90 years ago isn’t in doubt, but what exactly happened up there, on the roof of the world, has been argued about endlessly by alpinists and armchair observers for decades.
Did they reach the top of Everest – 29 years earlier than Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay’s accepted first ascent of the planet’s highest peak – before tragedy struck?
When Mallory’s perfectly preserved body was discovered, the photo of his wife that he had sworn to leave on the summit was the only thing missing. That and a Kodak camera carried by the climbers, which remains lost – presumably buried in the ice with the as yet undiscovered remains of Irvine. That camera is the Holy Grail of the adventure world.
Liam introduced his girlfriend Jessie to Star Wars and shared her recap with us. Then they went on to the next movie, The Empire Strikes Back. Months later, she retells what she recalls of the story. While the details are funny, her memory of the plot and storytelling sequence is amazing. I couldn't retell scenes with that much detail of a movie I'd seen yesterday, much less months later. There must have been quite a bit of discussion during the screening; otherwise, how would she ever retain the name Bossk? They've also now seen Return of the Jedi together, so expect an animated recap of that one in a few months. -via Digg
In the year 1475, the city of Trent in what is now northern Italy was ruled by prince-bishop Johannes Hinderbach. He was approached by the father of a two-year-old boy named Simon who had gone missing on the evening of Good Friday.
Searches ensued and by Easter Saturday suspicion had lighted on the small Jewish community in the city. The chief magistrate, Giovanni de Salis, had the households of the three main Jewish families searched, but Simon was not to be found. Then on Easter Sunday Seligman, a cook in the household of Samuel (a moneylender), discovered Simon’s body in a water cellar on Samuel’s extensive property. As all historians agree, the body had clearly been planted there. Samuel could have fled but had, up until this point, enjoyed an amicable relationship with the city’s authorities. So, instead, he “trusted the system” and reported the discovery. He also insisted that all members of the community stay put, including visitors who just happened to be in town for the Jewish Passover. That Samuel came forward and complied with the authorities was never mentioned in the ensuing trials.
That didn't matter, and eventually all of Trent's Jewish men were burned at the stake, all the women were imprisoned for years, and locals went on a campaign to make Simon a saint. Even the pope got involved, too late for the Jewish community of Trent, and too late to stop a deceased toddler from becoming a symbol of antisemitism for centuries. Read the story of Simon of Trent at The Daily Beast.
The 1920s were a decadent time, as the world recovered from World War I and the flu pandemic. There was great wealth to flaunt (which disappeared in 1929), newly-empowered women, a thriving movie industry, and beautiful weddings that reflected all of that. Those of high society, royalty, and Hollywood stars were the most elaborate and sell-documented, but weddings among everyday people were also fancy and fashionable. The picture above is of bride Diana Mitford (previously at Neatorama) and her bridesmaids, five of whom were her sisters. See a collection of wedding pictures of the famous and not-so-famous from the Roaring Twenties at Messy Nessy Chic.
While many Independence Day festivities were cancelled this year, the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest went on, albeit without a live audience. To discourage onlookers, the location of the competition was kept under wraps. But the outcome was no surprise: Joey Chestnut won, and set a world record ...again.
Joey Chestnut gobbled down 75 weiners and buns in 10 minutes to win his 13th title. Somewhere around the 8-minute mark, Chestnut made history by eating his 1,000th career dog.
The Coney Island tradition allowed betting this year. The coronavirus crisis forced some changes, too. Spectators weren't allowed to watch in person. Competitors were separated by clear barriers. And the people bringing them fresh supplies wore masks.
Miki Sudo won her seventh title in the women's division, downing 48.5 hot dogs, also a world record. Will anyone ever out-eat these two champions? Chestnut's most serious rival, Matt Stonie, who won the title in 2015, couldn't attend due to coronavirus travel restrictions in California. The lopsided competition affected the betting odds, with Chestnut going in as a -1000 favorite, and Sudo's odds were at -500.
There's a big rock in the Mojave desert in San Bernardino County, California, that has a peculiar story. Not because of its origins or geography, or even its official designation, because it doesn't have one, but because of Frank Critzer.
It's called Giant Rock, because desert living requires many things, but wild flights of poetic fancy aren't one of them. It's not a very special rock. There's nothing particularly interesting about it. There's certainly nothing remarkable nearby, except for the time machine. It's not even that giant in the grand scheme of things. It's just a fairly big rock. Over the years, it's also been a family home, a center of pilgrimage, the scene of a bloody standoff, a potential rival to Las Vegas, and the galactic antenna for the wisdom of interdimensional aliens. A few years ago part of it cracked and fell off. Nobody seems sure why it did that. The giant rock doesn't have to explain itself.
Altogether, Giant Rock, or actually Frank Critzer, is pretty intriguing, and you can read that story at Cracked.
