The winners have been announced in the 2019 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards. The overall winner is the picture above by Sarah Skinner entitled “Grab life by the…” We hear that the moment ended peacefully, as the cub missed his target. The Spectrum Photo Creatures In The Air Award went to Vlado-Pirsa for this photo entitled "Family disagreement."



See all of this years winners in the competition's gallery, and the 40 finalists here. They are all funny!



-via Earther

The Disney renaissance began with The Little Mermaid in 1989, and the next big princess movie was Beauty and the Beast in 1991. The studio's animation department had a lot riding on the project, mainly to prove that they could continue making magic after Ariel's success. To create buzz for Beauty and the Beast, they proposed screening it at the New York Film Festival, two months before its premiere date -even though the movie wasn't finished.  

The programming team had been putting the finishing touches on that year’s festival slate, which included pictures like Krzysztof Kieslowski’s The Double Life of Veronique and Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse — not exactly the kind of movies among which one would expect to find a musical romance from the Mouse House. Disney was seen as corporate, antiseptic, G-rated, while the New York Film Festival had introduced American audiences to the early work of Jean-Luc Godard, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Martin Scorsese.

What’s more, Beauty and the Beast was only about 60 to 70 percent finished. The “work-in-progress” version incorporated four different stages from the movie’s long, arduous creation: storyboards, rough pencil-sketch animation, cleaned-up black-and-white animation, and final color footage. You could see coffee stains and paper folds and marginalia. Sometimes a character would be accompanied by arrows and hand-scribbled numbers. (The film had been in production for four years but in development for decades. There had been numerous abortive starts, and the project had come close to having the plug pulled on it several times.)

Directors Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale were very nervous about the film festival screening. Read what happened at Vulture. -via Digg

(Image source: YouTube)

Everyone has a hobby, usually something that is very different from their career, but who knew that musician Rod Stewart was a model railroad enthusiast? Well, most likely other model train enthusiasts knew, but now the extent of his hobby is there for all to see, in the magazine Railer Modeller. For 23 years, he's been working to build an intricate model of a city in his attic in Los Angeles.

The scenery and structures are his forte, rather than the locomotives and tracks. "I find beauty in what everyone else sees as ugly - rugged skyscrapers, beaten-up warehouses, things that are very run down."

Photos of the layout show dozens of highly detailed buildings plus bridges, ships, vegetation and streets teeming with vintage cars and taxis.

"When I take on something creative like this, I have to give it 110%," he said. "For me it's addictive. I started, so I just had to finish. I'm lucky I had the room. If I'd have realised at the start it would have taken so long, I'd have probably said, 'No! No! Nah!'"

Read about Stewart's project and see impressive pictures of the model city at BBC News. -via Kottke

A mason came and made a deal with the Norse gods to build them a great (but expensive) wall to protect Asgard from the enemies outside. Loki drove an even harder bargain. Would the mason be able to complete the wall under the extreme restrictions from the gods? The mythological tale gets a little crazy at the end, and you do not want to miss the punch line. The original saga probably didn't refer to it as a punch line, but that's the way it comes across.  

«Бро должен быть рядом, бро - не багаж». "bro gotta be around bro, is not luggage".

Mikhail Galin traveled from Riga, Latvia, to Vladivostok, Russia, with his 22-pound cat Viktor. That's a long trip. Galin booked the flight on Aeroflot, which has a rule that any pet over eight kilograms (18 pounds) must travel in the cargo hold. The rule was not invoked in Riga, but when Galin transferred in Moscow, he was told Viktor would have to fly in cargo.    

Galin refused to store Viktor in the plane’s cargo hold on the eight-hour flight to Vladivostok. So he forfeited his ticket, and then took to Facebook to find a good Samaritan in Moscow with a cat that resembled Viktor, but weighed less than 18 pounds.

That is how he found Phoebe, the cat that would act a Viktor’s body double. Galin then used his Aeroflot miles to book a business class seat to Vladivostok the next day. That cat’s owners met Galin at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, where it was weighed in Viktor’s place.

Once Aeroflot’s animal handlers were satisfied they were looking at a suitably-sized cat, the gang made their way back to the terminal and swapped out Viktor’s body double. The two boarded the plane in business class on a ticket Galin bought with his Aeroflot miles.

He would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for social media. Galin posted the story on Facebook, which went viral in Russia. Aeroflot got word of the subterfuge and suspended Galin from their loyalty program. He lost the 370,000 miles he had already accumulated. Read the details of the story at NBC.  -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Mikhail Galin)

Albert Christensen dug out a space in the sandstone cliff near Moab, Utah, for his sons to camp out in. Then he dug out some more, and he and his brother Leo opened a cafe in the space. Albert kept digging, for another 12 years or so, until he had removed 50,000 cubic feet of rock and built a 14-room home inside! He and his wife Gladys moved into the cave home and lovingly furnished it with the latest in formica furniture, Albert's art and taxidermy, and Gladys' doll collection. They named the home Hole N" The Rock (yes, that's how they spelled it), and invited tourists in. Albert died in 1957, Gladys in 1974, but the tourists keep coming. The current owners say that Gladys is still there in spirit, making sure no one moves her dolls. See a collection of photos of Hole N" The Rock at Messy Nessy Chic. 

(Image credit: Flickr user Stef)

In articles on the history of chocolate, we learn that cocoa was used in the Americas for thousands of years, and brought to Europe by the Spanish conquistadors. But England usually isn't part of the story, and when it is, we just learn that the English didn't know what to do with chocolate. Even on the continent, it took quite some time before consumers developed a taste for the strange import.

“Strange” is an understatement. At first, many Europeans simply couldn’t stand chocolate. Benzoni, an Italian traveler in 1500s Nicaragua, said that chocolate was more fit for pigs than humans. A Jesuit traveller in the 1500s compared the foam—one of the most important aspects of the beverage for indigenous Americans—to feces.

By the early 1600s, however, tastes were changing. Maybe it was because Spaniards had spent a century sipping chocolate in diplomatic meetings with indigenous leaders, part of the strategic military alliance that enabled European conquest. Maybe it was the addictive shock of caffeine in the era before coffee and tea captured Europe. Or maybe, as Norton argues, it was a result of the ever-permeable nature of colonial relationships, in which—without intending to, often without wanting to—the colonizer can’t help but take on the tastes and habits of the colonized.

England owes it first chocolate recipe to a botanist named William Hughes who caught a ride to the New World in the 1630s as a sailor on a pirate ship. What he learned was later published in a book that extolled the wonders of cocoa and gave England a recipe for hot cocoa that turned the nation on to the wonder of chocolate. Read the story of William Hughes, complete with his cocoa recipe, at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Mahendra Singh)

YouTuber bored1980 is from New Zealand, lived in Europe for years, and has now moved to Florida. A lot of things in America struck him as really strange. The biggest number of them have to do with cars and traffic, which is not surprising. What color are taillights in other countries? He is confused about tipping early in the list, then later marvels at what great customer service America has. Hmm, maybe its because they need you to tip. And yes, ignoring climate change is a Florida thing. The rest of us are concerned. -via Digg

Contrary to legend, animals do not have advance warning of an impending earthquake, but they are more sensitive to the very beginning of an earthquake than people are. Cryoseismologist Celeste Labedz explains the difference to us in excruciating detail, but then takes a left turn into a genius idea to harness this sensitivity and turn it into an alarm system for earthquakes. It involves equipping about two million cats in the Los Angeles area with Fitbits.

PURRS works like this: An earthquake occurs. Signals of cats going bananas start pouring in from near the epicenter, propagating outward with the seismic waves. When enough activity in the right distribution is detected, the system cat-egorizes it as a quake and sounds alarms.

— Celeste Labedz (@celestelabedz) November 10, 2019

Labedz describes the system and its benefits, but also admits it has drawbacks.

PURRS is a hard sell, not gonna lie. Upkeep would also be expensive and difficult; even just trying to cat-alog that much continuously-streaming data would be a monumental task. We would also have to turn it off during thunderstorms and on the 4th of July.

— Celeste Labedz (@celestelabedz) November 10, 2019

So that ain't gonna happen, but the cat puns in her thread are worth taking a look into the idea. You can read the full Twitter thread, or just peruse the highlights at Bored Panda.

(Image credit: Dwight Sipler)

When you're the absolute monarch of a vast realm, it is nothing to order a shipload of expensive spirits to be imported from France. But bad weather and a world war can complicate things, and a revolution may just mean you never get your booze. That was the story with Tsar Nicholas II in 1916.

According to a press release, spirit salvagers from Ocean X—a company that specializes in tracking down historic spirits lost in shipwrecks—recovered 600 bottles of De Haartman & Co. cognac and 300 bottles of Benedictine liqueur from the wreck of the Swedish steamer Kyros.

The long-lost alcohol shipment, sent from France via Sweden, was initially scheduled for delivery to Russia’s emperor in December 1916. But heavy ice in the Sea of Bothnia kept the Kyros in port until May 1917, and when the ship finally began its journey, it was intercepted in the Sea of Aland by the German submarine UC-58.

The shipwreck was actually spotted twenty years ago, and after losing it and finding it again, the complicated recovery took quite a few years itself. Tests are being run to see if the cognac and liqueur are still okay to drink. That is quite important, because someone, somewhere, might pay an obscene amount of money not only to own the historic spirits, but to drink it away as well. Read the complete story at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Ocean X)

Remember when pictures of missing children were put on milk cartons so you'd read them while eating your cereal? Here's a similar idea that's not quite so scary, and may lead to wonderful outcomes. Fargo Brewing Company is putting pictures of adoptable dogs on beer cans! The dogs are from 4 Luv of Dog Rescue in Fargo, North Dakota. Shelter volunteer Jared Ryan thought it would be a good way to publicize their "one-der dogs."

“One-der-dogs” (pronounced “wonder dogs”) are dogs that are said to do best in homes without children or other pets. These dogs can tend to be harder to get adopted. This gave Ryan the idea of featuring these harder to adopt dogs on beer can labels from a local brewery.

On Monday, Nov 4th, Fargo Brewing Company held an event where the community could come to taste beer and meet the six featured pups. Even if folks didn’t want to adopt one of the dogs, they could support the shelter by buying one of the special edition six-packs.

This could start a trend. After all, why drink a beer with the same old logo when you could drink one with a picture of a dog on it? -via Metafilter

The B-17 Flying Fortress was the workhorse of World War II. Boeing designed and produced it in just 12 months for the Air Force to bomb the Axis powers and survive their missions. But there were crashes. Those crashes were blamed on pilot error, particularly since so many of the pilots were new, recruited and trained for the war. Psychologist Paul Fitts looked at the data and saw that something was very wrong.

The examples slid back and forth on a scale of tragedy to tragicomic: pilots who slammed their planes into the ground after misreading a dial; pilots who fell from the sky never knowing which direction was up; the pilots of B-17s who came in for smooth landings and yet somehow never deployed their landing gear. And others still, who got trapped in a maze of absurdity, like the one who, having jumped into a brand-new plane during a bombing raid by the Japanese, found the instruments completely rearranged. Sweaty with stress, unable to think of anything else to do, he simply ran the plane up and down the runway until the attack ended.

Fitts' data showed that during one 22-month period of the war, the Air Force reported an astounding 457 crashes just like the one in which our imaginary pilot hit the runway thinking everything was fine. But the culprit was maddeningly obvious for anyone with the patience to look. Fitts' colleague Alfonse Chapanis did the looking. When he started investigating the airplanes themselves, talking to people about them, sitting in the cockpits, he also didn’t see evidence of poor training. He saw, instead, the impossibility of flying these planes at all. Instead of “pilot error,” he saw what he called, for the first time, “designer error.”

Fitts' came up with a way to make the B-17s, and all planes built afterward, much safer by taking human behavior into account. His research led, in time, to the concept of "user friendliness." Read how that concept grew to make all of our lives easier, and how it can take us to unpleasant extremes, at Wired. -via Damn Interesting

Don't get him wet, or feed him after midnight... #Mogwai

— ChuckyT (@ChuckyT12) November 14, 2019

Disney launched their Disney+ streaming service on Tuesday, and of course ran into problems as millions of subscribers tried to log on. The corporation, which knew exactly how many people had signed up and has been hyping the channel mercilessly for months, scrambled to handle the traffic as millions more attempted to sign up on Tuesday. The most in-demand show was The Mandalorian, the first live-action TV series set in the Star Wars universe. If you aren't avoiding spoilers, you can read a review at io9. What everyone is talking about is the appearance of a baby Yoda. No, this is not the Yoda we know, but an infant of the same unnamed species. Who he/she will grow up to be is unknown, but the baby is fairly cute, for a big-eared green child. See more reactions to "baby Yoda" at Buzzfeed.

The rising rate of obesity in America has scientists looking in every direction to find ways to combat it, from social expectations to pollution to hormones to advertising to agricultural processes. But just a few decades ago, obesity was a simple problem. It was due to overeating and a lack of exercise, meaning a simple moral failure on the part of the individual.  

What started to alter that opinion was a seminal study published in 1971. This was not an experiment that assigned overweight individuals to a weight loss diet, but one that instead challenged normal weight individuals to put on lots of pounds. The subjects were inmates of the Vermont State Prison, granted reduced sentences for volunteering (a practice considered unethical today). For half a year, their diets were meticulously managed, first to ascertain their baseline weights, then to cause them to gain a lot of weight, then to return them to their baseline weights. All the while, the researchers scrutinized what was going on inside the inmates' bodies.

During the weight gain phase, the inmates did indeed bulk up considerably, mostly via an increase in fat. Eating as many as 10,000 calories per day, they ballooned in weight by an average of 20.9%, roughly 35 pounds each!

Remarkably, however, just ten weeks after returning to normal diets, every single subject returned to their previous size.

Read what scientists learned from the study and how it affected our view of obesity at Real Clear Science.

Between 1961 and 1989, escaping from East Germany was serious business. Almost 300 people died making the attempt, but several thousand actually made it. Many escapes involved sneaking through isolated parts of the Berlin Wall or depending on luck or the unwillingness of the sentries to kill. Others leaned on technology to smuggle people through the checkpoints. Plus baldfaced guts.   

In May 1963, Austrian Heinz Meixner drove up to Checkpoint Charlie in a fancy British sports car, a bright red Austin Healey Sprite convertible. The top was down, and Meixner had made one important modification to the car: he removed the windshield. When the border guards ordered him to pull over for inspection, Meixner lay flat and hit the accelerator. Without the windshield, the entire car was low enough to slip under the lowered barrier. Meixner made it across—along with his East German fiancée hiding behind the seat and his prospective mother-in-law in the trunk.

Norbert Konrad pulled off the same trick a few months later in the exact same car, but the East Germans then added steel bars under the barrier arm to prevent a third attempt.

I recall reading that story as a child, particularly the detail of how Meixner stacked bricks around his girlfriend's mother in the trunk, knowing that the car would be shot at from the rear as he drove away. But that's just one story; others involved a homemade helicopter, a homemade balloon, and a homemade submarine, among other ingenious schemes. Read about them at Popular Mechanics. -via Digg