The Invisible Man starring Elizabeth Moss is set to hit theaters on February 28th. It is the latest in a long line of films premised on H.G. Wells' 1897 novel The Invisible Man. That only makes sense, as the idea is intriguing, especially to filmmakers who love to show off ever-more impressive special effects. Cheryl Eddy at io9 selected the eight best of these movies to recommend, so you'll have something to compare the newest film to. They range from horror to crime drama to science fiction to comedy, from 1933 to 2000, all with video evidence in trailers or clips.

Synesthesia is a condition in which people experience one sense as a different sense, as in perceiving music as colors or scents, or being able to taste art. Bernadette Sheridan has grapheme-color synesthesia, meaning she translates text as colors, especially the letters that make up names.

When I meet new people, I forget their name immediately. Don’t get me wrong, I hear the name, but my mind is distracted. In my head, I am counting the number of letters in the name, and visualizing the colors of each letter.

Your name may be Emily, but to me, you’re a bright, sunny swath of five letters with an “E” and an “I.” When I meet you again later, I may think your name is Emily or Jille or Ellie. Those three names “look” remarkably similar to someone who operates as I do — they all have five letters, they all include the letters “i,” “l,” and “e.”

Sheridan created a generator to show people what their name looks like to her. Enter your (or any) name into the generator here to see it rendered in colors. Sheridan cautions that the colors she sees are her individual translation, and would not be the same for another synesthete. Read more about her colors and the visualization project at Medium. -via Mental Floss

The father of our country excelled in leading an army and in presidenting, but he felt most at home at his farm, Mount Vernon. There he distilled whiskey, managed slaves, and built odd privies. He also experimented with ways to help his new country get started on the right foot, such as breeding mules.   

General George Washington, hero of the American Revolution, was world famous in the 1780s, which was exactly the clout he needed to get what he was really after: Spanish ass.

The best donkeys in the world came from Spain, but because of their equine superiority, the Spanish monarchy made them illegal to export without royal exemption, a source of great frustration to Washington. Mules—a cross between a male donkey and a female horse—could do an equivalent amount of work as horses with less food and water, and Washington was convinced they were the future of American farming.

Washington name-dropped, pulled strings, and used other diplomatic methods to procure sires for his American mules. And then there was the problem with getting them to America, and then getting them to mate. Read about Washington and his "Jacks" at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: PYellott)

Howie the dog is just sitting, oblivious to the cat beside him. You can plainly see Ruta the cat thinking about what she'd like to do to that dog, but making the final decision takes her just long enough to make a great video. -via Laughing Squid

While we've seen some extreme winter storms over the past few years, you may have noticed that winter is shorter than it was, say, 20 years ago. Where I live, daffodils bloom and irises sprout normally in March, but this year both plants sprouted in January, which is concerning. According to the USA National Phenology Network, leaves and flowers across the South have appeared earlier than in the last 39 years, with some areas reporting the earliest blooms ever recorded.

The Weather Company forecasted February would see above-average temperatures in the Southeast this year, and the plants are already reacting. Reports from citizen scientists are already confirming the model’s predictions. [research scientist Theresa] Crimmins said. And the Southeast isn’t alone: Spring also arrived early in parts of the West, including Portland and Seattle. What’s troubling about all this is that—hello!—we’re still in winter, man. That means temperatures could still drop, which could devastate any plants that have already flowered.

“For the most part, if flower buds and open flowers are hit with a heavy frost, that’s it for them,” Crimmins said. “They could be injured to the point where they won’t fruit and they won’t put on subsequent flowers.”

A killing frost after bloom could spell disaster for fruit crops, like when 80% of the Georgia peach crop failed in 2017. A disrupted cycle has implications for birds and insects as well. Read about the early spring stats at Earther.

(Image credit: National Phenology Network)

The sixth (and probably last) Terminator movie was called Terminator: Dark Fate. It hit theaters last fall and quickly faded away, and now Screen Junkies is here to explain why. The series that had an intriguing idea about time travel in the first film and awesome action in the second film sputtered out in movies 3, 4, and 5. You'd think that in a universe where any mistake can be erased with yet more time travel, the stories would be a bit more varied. But Terminator: Dark Fate is mainly a compilation of recreations of the bits we liked in the earlier movies amid a ton of violence.

Photographer Ari Seth Cohen has presented his photos of fashionistas aging gracefully at his blog Advanced Style for more than ten years. More recently, he collected photographs and stories from older couples into the book Advanced Love. 

And just where did he find so many amazing partners? “[By] scouting the streets like I always do,” he says, “but this time around I had submissions from Facebook and Instagram as well. I was also able to finally include many of the partners of women I had already photographed.” When it came time to ask about something as personal as love, he says he was pleasantly surprised to hear so “many of the couples speak about their sex lives and the struggles they face. They were all very open and honest about the fact that long lasting relationships take a lot of work. “

Get a taste of the book with a few wonderful stories and even more pictures at Messy Nessy Chic.

Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for the telephone in 1876, and the first automated call-switching system was introduced only 16 years later in 1892. While the phone itself was adopted rapidly, automatic switching was so slow to catch on that human telephone operators handled most calls for decades afterward. Bell Telephone wanted to keep their technology easy for the user- just pick up the phone and tell the lady what you wanted. And operators were almost always women, who were found to be more polite, more proficient, and cheaper to hire than men.

An operator did more than simply connect a customer to his or her desired number, however. In the early decades of the industry, telephone companies regarded their business less as a utility and more as a personal service. The telephone operator was central to this idea, acting as an early version of an intelligent assistant with voice recognition capabilities. She got to know her 50 to 100 assigned customers by name and knew their needs. If a party didn't answer, she would try to find him or her around town. If that didn't succeed, she took a message and called the party again later to pass the message along. She made wake-up calls and gave the time, weather, and sports scores. During crimes in progress or medical emergencies, a subscriber needed only to pick up the handset and the operator would summon the police or doctors.

Unlike other modern technologies, automatic telephone switching happened first in small towns and rural areas, then spread slowly to cities. Meanwhile, millions of women made a meager living keeping us connected. Read how that happened at Econ Focus. -via Damn Interesting  

(Image credit: National Archives)

Why would anyone want to let their hair freeze into frosty stiffness? Maybe for a cash prize, or some internet points. You could win $2000 in the Takhini Hot Springs Hair Freezing Contest. Entries will be accepted until March 8.

To enter the contest, visit the Takhini Hot Springs any day during the winter when the temperature is below -20°C. We are located twenty minutes north of Whitehorse, Yukon. Upon arrival, purchase a regular admission to the hot springs and provide a signed photo release form to one of our staff members, letting them know that you would like to participate in the hair freezing contest. Once you have entered the hot springs and perfected your frozen hairdo, ring the wireless doorbell and wait for our staff to come take your photo. After your soak make sure to come back to the lobby to upload your photo to the contest site and share your image with your friends! For every person that enters the contest, our sponsor, Nongshim Noodles will donate 5 packs of instant noodles to the Whitehorse Food Bank!

Incidentally, -20 means four degrees below zero Fahrenheit. But since this is a hot springs, the rest of your body will be warm enough (we think). If you can't make it to the Yukon in time, you can go to the website, see those who have entered already, and vote for the People's Choice Award. Winners in other categories will be selected by the hot springs judges. If you do want to enter, the website has instructions, rules, and tips for making your hair freeze nicely. -via Everlasting Blort

What does "politics" smell like? You guessed it. And now you can bring that scent right into your own home (but please, not the office). Kentucky for Kentucky (previously at Neatorama) is offering a politics scented candle made with genuine dehydrated Kentucky horse droppings.

Perfect for family gatherings, comment sections, séances, and unprompted conversations in line at the convenience store. Created by candle connoisseur Kathy Werking just in time for primary season.

Order yours now, because they are scrambling to make more due to the candle's popularity. And remember, no matter what politics smells like, you can't change it if you avoid it.

A new world record for a single firework was set Saturday in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

At 7:56 p.m., fireworks expert Tim Borden successfully captured the world record for the largest single firework when the 2,797-pound behemoth illuminated the crowd during the Night Extravaganza at the annual Steamboat Springs Winter Carnival.

The 62-inch shell was launched from a 26-foot long mortar from atop Howelsen Hill, reaching nearly a mile in the air when it detonated, putting on quite the show!

This was Borden's second attempt at the world record, but the shell he constructed a year ago exploded inside the mortar. That's a video we would also like to see. -via Gizmodo

Update: I got my wish. Here is the video of the failed attempt, but it is from quite a distance. -Thanks, smittypap!

When you see that a movie is "based on a true story," that could mean it's an attempt at a faithful retelling with some dramatic license, or it could mean the true story was a one-sentence concept that the writers took off from. Unless you do some research, you won't know how close the movie comes to the original. Dr. Stephanie Starling did that research for quite a few recent movies. The movies above are graphed scene by scene, with blue indicating true, red indicating false, and the lighter colors used for varying levels of accuracy. As you can see, Selma was a theatrical recreation of what could have been a documentary, while The Imitation Game was almost all fictionalized. At Information is Beautiful, 18 movies are presented in interactive graphs, in which you can click on a scene and see a comparison of the movie scene to the real event. You can also vary the pedantry of the graphs, from "flexible" to "nothing but the truth." I just went through the graph for Bohemian Rhapsody and now feel like I've seen the movie. -via Digg

At the Oosterscheldekering storm surge barrier in the south Netherlands, the winds are always blowing. It's a good place to stage a bicycle race that is centered around those difficult headwinds, namely the Dutch Headwind Cycling Championships (Nederlands Kampioenschap Tegenwindfietsen). When Tom Scott heard there was a storm coming in just as the cyclists were gathering for the annual race, he caught the first plane in order to witness the mayhem of bicycles against 120-kph winds. The winner this past weekend was Max de Jong, who also won last year.

Regarding our "people will make a competition out of anything" category, you are invited to enter the second annual Competitive Winter Picnicking event from Shadow Traffic. This year's picnic will be on March first at Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn. While we don't know if that date will be "wintery" with snow and ice, it is expected to at least be muddy. Which will only make it more fun for extreme competition-type people.

Our judges will be scoring the categories of Richest Picnic Meal, Tastiest Picnic Drink, Funnest Picnic Game and Tightest Thematic Team. That last one will be judged on costumes, props, puns/references and overall synergy. Cash prizes will be awarded. Judges are bribeable.

-via Boing Boing

A hard-working sheepdog finds an ingenious way to stop a drought. That's a good dog. This short film by Omeleto alternates between funny, sad, tense, and joyful. Meanwhile, we find out where clouds come from.