Finnish adventurers Lauri and Anni Vuohensilta (previously at Neatorama) are obviously doing well with their YouTube videos, as their toys get more and more elaborate and expensive. So if they can afford this expensive camera setup, why is Anni wielding an acetylene torch duct-taped to a broom? It's the fame, not the fortune, that got them a Chronos ring of 72 cameras in order to make high-speed videos in a new series they call Bullet Time Show. They begin with blasting oxygen soap bubbles with an acetylene torch.

It was fifty years ago this month that the TV series The Brady Bunch premiered. It ran for five years, and has been in syndication ever since. HGTV is celebrating that milestone with a huge project: renovating the Brady Bunch house to look exactly as it did on your TV screen all those years ago. The six actors who played the Brady kids participated in the project with HGTV stars in A Very Brady Renovation, a four-part miniseries premiering tonight. Now, remember, the show was not filmed at the house, which was only used for establishing exterior shots. The house became way more familiar to the audience than to the actors, who worked in a studio miles away. Therefore, the "renovation" involves a complete gutting and redesign of the interior.

Shepherded by HGTV's favorite camera hogs, "The Property Brothers" (Jonathan and Drew Scott), and with help from the stars of "Restored by the Fords," "Hidden Potential," "Flea Market Flip" and "Good Bones," the project involves turning the one-story house into a two-story house, to add some 2,000 square feet of new living space without changing the essential street view.

"Just know that if any of this is wrong, we'll be put out to dry," Drew Scott warns his HGTV colleagues. "All of America will know exactly what this house is supposed to look like."

In fact, all of America pitched in: The hunt for vintage furnishings became an online group effort, with collectors proudly volunteering their wares - down to the decorative plastic grapes on a coffee table and a curio cabinet that stands between the dining room and kitchen. Other treasures were unearthed in deep storage at Paramount.

And what becomes of the house, once finished? Turning it into a museum won't work for the neighborhood, which has suffered enough Brady mania. HGTV is giving away a week's stay at the house as part of a promotional contest, but beyond that, the network's plans for the property are unknown.

Read more about how the reunion show came together. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: HGTV)

The European Space Agency's Rosetta probe took ten years to reach its target, comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Then it spent two years studying the comet up close, including deploying the Philae lander to the comet's surface. The ESA released 400,000 images of the comet, which motion designer Christian Stangl weaved together to make this video. Composer Wolfgang Stangl created the sound. The Comet gives the mission an epic science fiction feel, one that the mission deserves. You should watch this in full-screen mode. -via Kottke

The next time you travel through New England, or even if you live there, keep your eye out for stone enclosures with nothing inside, except possibly overgrown weeds. These relics of the past are not promoted much, but they are historic. They are town pounds. Not for stray dogs, but for stray livestock.   

If an animal strayed and was found wreaking havoc on private property, it was brought to the pound, where it was corralled with other wayward creatures and watched over by a town-appointed “pound-keeper” (sometimes called a “pound-master,” or “pounder”) until its owner could retrieve it—for a fee.

(Prices varied by time and place. One community, according to Elizabeth Banks MacRury’s book Town Pounds of New England, set the bail of a horse, mule, ass, cow, or pig at 12 cents and 5 mills (a mill was a thousandth of a dollar). For a sheep, it was 1 cent and 4 mills; for a goose, 8 cents. Unclaimed animals could be sold at auction after three days (one day for geese). Stealing an animal from the pound incurred a fine of $7.)

Villages in colonial Massachusetts were required to have pounds, and since a lot of work went into lifting the heavy stones, the structures are with us hundreds of years later. Read about town pounds and see plenty of pictures at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Johnna Kaplan)

The summer interns at Microsoft got together (with some employees, 150 people in all) to make a Broadway-style musical about the company. These computer geeks are talented! Sure, a lot of it is high praise for Microsoft, but there's some humor involved, too, because no one should be above poking fun at themselves... or their workplace. Read more about the project at Gizmodo.

People who produce internet content would kill for a viral recipe, like Swineapple. That's more difficult than it seems, because Swineapple is actually tasty. That's not the case with most "food hacks." Doing something new and different with food might get attention, but it will only last until someone tries it out and finds it useless, unpalatable, or downright gross. Or even dangerous, like opening a wine bottle with a blowtorch. There's a recipe for pancakes with only three ingredients, and they aren't pancake mix, butter, and syrup. No, these pancakes are supposed to be made with bananas, eggs, and cinnamon, and nothing else.

This is a fried egg that tastes vaguely like cinnamon. Egg is a strong flavor, and when desserts taste eggy, that's not good. With no sugar to speak of and just cinnamon to contribute any real flavor, this ends up tasting like Christmasy eggs that once thought of a banana. Are all of these rapid-fire cooking hack videos just an elaborate prank?

Check out ten recent food hacks and their horrifying real-world results (many of them involving cheese) at Cracked.  

American college dormitory living is fairly unique. Students at European colleges live mostly off-campus, and find the idea of sharing a bedroom with a stranger to be odd. The system we have has evolved over the course of more than 300 years, beginning from an initial philosophy of togetherness.

In the colonial period, college buildings were often single, multipurpose structures that housed all the functions of a school, including the president’s home, faculty apartments, student bedrooms, chapel, library, dining hall, and classrooms. Harvard’s first governing board reported in 1671, “It is well known … what advantage to Learning accrues by the multitude of persons cohabiting for scholasticall communion, whereby to acuate the minds of one another, and other waies to promote the ends of a Colledge-Society.” Since the actual curriculum was limited, Christian morality was a large part of what boys absorbed at the colonial college. This character formation was gained by observing role models; professors and students sharing living space was good for moral development. This attitude was an essential intellectual and emotional precondition for the American dormitory.

One can only imagine how that arrangement stifled faculty lives and inhibited recruiting. As more students went for higher education, colleges sprouted fraternity houses, then dormitories to compete with them, then special facilities for women. All that time, the philosophy of bringing students together strained against the philosophy of keeping them apart. Read the history of American college dormitories at Smithsonian.

While Vanessa and Alex, the founders of Messy Messy Chic, are off getting married, the rest of the team decided to post pictures of traditional bridal costumes from all over the world. Above, you see a Muslim bride from the Bulgarian village of Ribnovo, where the tradition is to cover the bride's face in thick gelena makeup and adorn her with sequins. Other regions of Bulgaria have their own particular wedding day makeup, elaborate but different.

In Ribnovo, however, the female in-laws are tasked with laying the bride down for the face painting sesh as she closes her eyes, and top off her look with a veil of tinsel, a necklace of money (which the groom will also often wear) and other trinkets. Perhaps most impressively, it’s only when the priest blesses the couple that the bride can open her eyes. It’s a two-day ceremony, but one that relishes in the gradual reveal of the bride, and her transition from single to married life.

Read of the different traditional ways the bride is made to look like queen for a day, from Mongolia to Morocco, at Messy Nessy Chic.

(Image credit: Flickr user Ali Eminov)

As we head into autumn, the hype surrounding episode nine of the Star Wars saga will intensify greatly -after all, there are toys to be sold! Meanwhile, there are eleven existing Star Wars films to review. Eleven? Yeah, and that doesn't even count the Ewok movies or the holiday special. The Daily Dot ranked them not by opinion, or at least not by their opinions, but by scores from Metacritic, IMDb, and Rotten Tomatoes, sites which crunch the numbers on a lot of opinions. Those of us who have been around long enough to see all the movies in theaters know that those opinions rise and fall over time, but go see how all eleven films rank against each other as of today. The list will grow to twelve in December when Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker opens. Let's just hope it doesn't end up at the bottom.

During World War II, the US government was concerned about lice. Groups of people living in close quarters under primitive conditions (as in war) were an invitation to lice, which could spread typhus. In 1942, the government partnered with the Rockefeller Foundation to conduct an experiment to test various anti-lice preparations, headed by public health physician Dr. William A. Davis and entomologist Charles M. Wheeler. They needed lice and volunteers to be infested with them. Finding the lice was no problem, but finding volunteers was tricky. They first paid homeless people for their time, but found they were unreliable and would not follow instructions.

Eventually Davis and Wheeler hit upon conscientious objectors (COs) as potential guinea pigs. The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 allowed young men with religious objections to fighting to serve their country in alternative, nonviolent ways. At first they were put to work domestically at jobs such as building roads, harvesting timber, and fighting forest fires. But in 1942, inspired by the example of the British government, it occurred to U.S. officials that these young men were also a potential pool of experimental subjects for research, and they began to be made available to scientists for this purpose.

In theory, the COs were always given a choice about whether or not to serve as guinea pigs. In practice, it wasn't that simple. Controversy lingers about how voluntary their choice really was since their options were rather limited: be a guinea pig for science, or do back-breaking manual labor. But for their part, the COs have reported that they were often eager to volunteer for experiments. Sensitive to accusations that they were cowardly and unpatriotic, serving as a test subject offered the young men a chance to do something that seemed more heroic than manual labor.

Surprise: the volunteer guinea pigs were not paid for their scientific efforts, and therefore continued to do manual labor during the experiment. Read the details and results of the lice-infested underwear experiment at Weird Universe. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: National Museum of Health and Medicine via Flickr)

Delaware is a tiny state that stands out by making itself important to business- as an all-American tax haven. Half As Interesting explains how that works, which involves one very important address and presumably a very busy mail clerk. Be aware that at 4:55, this video slides into an ad without any notice. -via Digg 

Steffen Kraft, also known as ICONEO, produces lovely artworks that are often fantastical, but always relatable. Some are just clever images, while many illustrate what's wrong with our modern world in simple and often wordless fashion.  



You can see all of ICONEO's works at Instagram, and check out a ranked list of his social commentary images at Bored Panda.

ICONEO prints can be bought through Etsy.

In March of 1898, British surgeon Dr. William Brown attended a livestock auction. He was summoned to an emergency on the grounds, as a 14-year-old boy just had his ear bitten off by a horse! A slice of his scalp was gone, too.  

Although the case looked so hopeless (as regards disfigurement) I determined to make an attempt to save the ear, as the patient could be no worse off than he was then if the attempt failed. I asked for the ear and after about ten minutes’ search it was brought to me, having been found near the horse in the stable yard.

It was of a dirty drab colour and the posterior flap was curled up in a roll. I had no instruments or dressing with me, and it would have taken half an hour or more to procure them, which delay would have rendered the attempt to preserve the ear useless. I therefore procured some common needles and thread and after washing the ear in warm water I proceeded to sew it on by inserting a suture above and another below, followed by three behind and three before.

Although R.J. eventually lost a small portion of the ear, the surgery was successful. It may have been due the boy's natural healing powers, as he was accident-prone and had undergone skin grafts earlier in his life. More likely, his recovery was due to the careful battle against infection taken by Dr. Brown, as he related in his account at Thomas Morris's blog.  -via Strange Company

A young black bear climbed into the window of the ladies' room at Buck's T-4 Lodge in Big Sky, Montana. He couldn't get back out the window he came in, and didn't know how to open the door. Hotel staff knew what to do, though- call for help and pull out the phones to take video, which they uploaded to Facebook.

The sheriff arrived at the lodge quickly after the hotel staff called, but guests and the bear had to hang out for a few hours while waiting for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks to show up due to distance. The little guy was "pretty spooked" by the people gathered outside the bathroom door. He dealt with his fear by doing what we've all done when faced with trouble: nap.

"He made himself at home in the bathroom counter where the sinks are and went to sleep," O'Connor said.

The game warden and his team tranquilized the bear and set a phone in the restroom and monitored the bear through FaceTime. He was eventually removed and taken to a remote location for release. The bear left behind some damage, though- a shredded towel dispenser and a sink full of poop. No word on whether the bear scat was full of berry seeds and squirrel fur. Read the full story of the bear in the bathroom at Mashable.

This is only appropriate use of "scientists are baffled" I've ever seen.

Large Underwater Observatory Disappears Without a Trace, Baffling Scientists https://t.co/RGJMjiyzMY pic.twitter.com/z72MJnDVuH

— Andrew Thaler (@DrAndrewThaler) September 6, 2019

The Boknis Eck Observatory is an automated monitoring station gathering scientific data on the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Or it was. Launched in 2016, the 800-pound device transmits data to ocean researchers, or it did until August 21st, when the signals stopped. A team of divers went down to see what was wrong, and found the entire station gone. The data transmission cable was shredded.

The observatory was in a restricted area off the northern coast of Germany. Boats, including fishing vessels, are not allowed into the area, the BBC reported. That somebody, or a group of individuals, removed the observatory remains the most plausible explanation. Other factors, such as a massive storm, heavy currents, or even marine animals, were ruled out as potential causes owing to the weight of the instrument. Who or what removed the science station, and why, is a complete mystery. German police were alerted to the incident and are now investigating, according to GEOMAR.

Well, it was obviously the kraken. Or possibly a supervillain, the type with unlimited funds and an incomprehensible but nefarious plan, like you'd find in a James Bond novel. Then again, it could have been aliens from outer space. Scientists involved with the project are asking anyone with information to come forward. Read more about the Boknis Eck Observatory at Gizmodo.