Why would a theater decide not to show a particular movie- especially one that was guaranteed to be a hit? You might think that it's because a theater owner's religious sensibilities came into play, and that does happen. But there are other, more concrete reasons not to screen a film, ranging from legal obligations to fear, as you'll see in this video from Looper. -via Digg

Fainting, or syncope, happens in the movies more than in real life. In the movies, when a woman faints, it's often because she needs a minute to think about how to respond to something that just happened. A man will faint so that the audience will know he's a wimp. Fainting can be a simple shortcut in fiction.In real life, the reason people faint is simply because of not enough blood getting to your brain. The body passing out and falling to a horizontal position is also its own cure, although not without its own dangers. However, there are several reasons for a deficit of blood going to the brain, some of which are explored at Jstor. -via Damn Interesting

Heard a sound come from the kitchen and noticed four fresh cookies went missing. pic.twitter.com/uqK8WLvb12

— Aaron (@AaronMicron) July 29, 2019

Four cookies have been stolen. But evidence points to a possible suspect. The timing of the camera pan makes this a glorious 18-second video. Even in this predicament, he tries to stealthily steal away. -via Nag on the Lake

Brownies are like pizza- even those that rank relatively low are pretty good. But if you could learn to make better brownies, you would surely jump at the chance, wouldn't you? The staff at Delish went all out to find the best brownie recipe, and they went through "45 cups of cocoa powder, 43 sticks of butter, 180 eggs, 14 bags of chocolate chips...and some of our sanity." Since "best" depends on the kind of brownie you prefer, four experimental bakers divided up the goal into the best chewy brownie, the best fudgy brownie, the best cake brownie, and the best gluten-free brownie.

We suffered some seriously intense sugar crashes and chocolate withdrawals, but we actually had fun. Since we were looking to make four unique recipes (not pit our four recipes against each other, like we have in the past), we were able to troubleshoot and taste test each other’s recipes. It made our roads to brownie perfection far less lonely. We became each other's cheerleaders, and each of our personal favorites didn't even end up being our own: Makinze loves Lena's most, Lauren prefers Makinze's, June declared Lauren's the best cake brownie she's ever had, and Lena is obsessed with June's.

***

As you might guess, we learned quite a bit along the way—enough to lay out all the biggest brownie don'ts so you'll never mess up a batch again. We geeked out a little, too, to bring you a chart detailing how oven temperature, butter, and sugar affect your final brownie. And if you'd rather just eat brownies than bake them, we gotchyu: We'll tell you what kind of brownie you are based on your horoscope.

Hey, your brownies might already be great, but that doesn't mean you won't enjoy learning more about brownie craft at Delish. -Thanks, WTM!

It is illegal to take anything from a national park, even a small rock. That's because in centuries past, tourists would ruin natural wonders and monuments by taking a piece home as a souvenir. But maybe nature has something to do with the "hands off" policy, too. When people visit the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, they are tempted to take a piece of petrified wood home with them. Many later regret the theft, and send the rocks back to the park with apologies. This mail became known as "conscience letters," and they come from all over. During a visit in 2011, Ryan Thompson became fascinated with these letters and eventually wrote a book called Bad Luck, Hot Rocks, chronicling the best of them.      

Unfortunately for folks who think they’re doing the right thing by mailing in rocks, these specimens won’t ever return to the Petrified Forest’s natural landscape. Although previous park staff sometimes responded to letters and returned rocks to where a visitor described finding them, that practice ended decades ago. “Because of their unknown provenance,” Thompson writes in his book, “these specimens can not be scattered back in the park; to do so would be to spoil those sites for research purposes.”

Instead, mailed fragments of petrified wood become part of the “conscience pile” near a private service road that visitors do not have access to. Park staff believe there have been a few different locations used to dump stones sent via mail, and are unsure when the current site was first used.

“The conscience pile, to me, is really one of the more interesting parts of the whole phenomenon,” Thompson says. “It’s this weird purgatory for these rocks. Visitors are trying to make these atonements or set something right in their lives and for the world, and ultimately, ironically, they’re unable to.”

Many of the letter writers describe the bad luck that followed them after picking up the illegal rocks, as if the petrified wood is cursed. Read how that story got started, and see some of the conscience letters and returned rocks at Collectors Weekly.

If you know anything about Adolphe Sax, you know that he invented the saxophone. But while he was a talented and innovative instrument developer, the rest of the Sax's life was quite extraordinary as well. Taken as a whole, you get the idea that the very universe was against him. As a child, he survived dangerous falls, burns, poison, explosion, drowning, and even managed to swallow a needle and recover. He outshone all the competition in an annual musical instrument competition for years, but the judges refused to pronounce him the winner. So he went to Paris and outfitted the French military band with new instruments of his own design.  

This was the last straw- when Sax, a Belgian no less, secured the contract to supply the French military, his rivals decided to literally form an organization who might as well have called themselves the “Anti-Sax Club”, but in the end went with- L’Association générale des ouvriers en instruments demusique (the United Association of Instrument Makers). This was an organization to which the most prominent and talented instrument maker in France at the time was most definitely not welcome to join.

Their principal order of business throughout Sax’s lifetime seemed to be to try to ruin Sax in any way they could. To begin with, adopting the age old practice of “If you can’t beat ’em, sue ’em”, a long running tactic by the organization was simply to tie up Sax’s resources, time, and energy in any way possible in court.

After that, Sax was beset with lawsuits, infringement, arson, an assassination attempt, bankruptcy, and cancer. Yet he persevered. Read how Sax took on the world at Today I Found Out.

The year 1969 was pretty momentous, giving us Apollo 11, Woodstock, Chappaquiddick, Stonewall, and the Manson Family murders, the last of which features prominently in the new Quentin Tarantino movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Those of us of a certain age followed the murder investigation in the news and/or read the brutal, salacious, and just plain weird details in the book Helter Skelter. Younger people might wonder what cult leader Charles Manson had to do with the fame factory of Hollywood.

Manson had connections to a number of wealthy and influential people in Los Angeles. Through Dennis Wilson, he became acquainted with record producer Terry Melcher, son of actress Doris Day and boyfriend of model and actress Candice Bergen. At one point, the daughter of actress Angela Lansbury was a Family hanger-on, and though she wasn’t an official member, she used her mother’s credit cards to buy the Family’s food and clothing.

Melcher and Bergen lived at the house (10050 Cielo Drive) that Tate would eventually rent with her husband, director Roman Polanski, and Guinn posits that the house represented Manson’s rejection by the musical establishment—he’d courted Melcher as a patron, and even hosted the producer at Spahn Ranch, where Melcher politely listened to Manson and the Family perform. Manson pinned a great deal of hope on his connections with Wilson and Melcher, and it’s widely believed that once it became clear the two men weren’t going to significantly advance his music career (though Wilson did convince the Beach Boys to re-work and record a version of Manson’s song “Cease to Exist,” which they renamed “Never Learn Not to Love,” it was considered a flop), Manson became increasingly focused on violence.

One can only wonder if it would have made any difference if Manson were more musically talented. Read an overview of the Manson Family murders at Smithsonian.

"Tiny bombs in your blood" may sound like a description of a deadly disease, but it's perfectly normal. This is about your immune system, or more specifically, the "complement system," a complex network of proteins that interact in amazing ways to protect us from infection. The teamwork displayed by these proteins is nothing short of astounding, and it all happens on a scale that even microscopes struggle to see.

Americans have turned a television promotion into an institution, a tradition, and almost a holiday. Yes, it's Shark Week once again on the Discovery Channel, back for its 31st edition. If you haven't been keeping up all this time, you might want to learn a few new things about Shark Week.

2. The very first Shark Week nearly doubled Discovery's ratings.

Shark Week made its debut on July 17, 1988 with the special Caged in Fear. A total of 10 shark-themed shows aired that year over the course of the inaugural Shark Week, which was an immediate hit. The channel’s ratings nearly doubled their normal primetime average.

3. Shark Week has a lot of celebrity fans.

Shark Week has become a highly anticipated television obsession for viewers around the world, including more than a few A-list names. Tracy Morgan’s 30 Rock character, Tracy Jordan, famously advised Kenneth the Page to “live every week like it’s Shark Week.” In 2010, Stephen Colbert called Shark Week “one of the two holiest of holidays.” Over the years, several other celebrities

Learn more tidbits about Shark Week at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Sharkcrew)

John Burroughs, Harvey Firestone, Henry Ford, and Thomas Edison went on several road trips together in the early 20th century. While they were friends, the trips were not "just" friends going on an outing. Vox takes a look at the "Vagabonds" on the road. The story goes to 6:45, the rest is comments from previous videos and other chatter.  
 

Oyster Paddy's Tavern was a Pittsburgh landmark for a short time, notorious for its sketchy clientele. Opened sometime around 1875, the bar thrived until liquor licenses were required, which owner Hugh O'Donnell (also known as Oyster Paddy) would never get. So he retired, the building was eventually torn down, and O'Donnell fell ill with cancer.  

On the morning of Friday, June 22, 1906, workmen employed by Howard Bros. Contractors were excavating a foundation for a new skyscraper when they uncovered a pair of human skeletons two feet beneath the kitchen of a derelict building which had once been Oyster Paddy's Tavern. The initial supposition was that the workers had uncovered the remains of two Indians, but anyone who was old enough to remember the saloon-- and its infamous patrons-- during its heyday prior to the passage of the Brooks License Law of 1887 were highly skeptical of this explanation.

Back then, when taverns were largely unregulated, Paddy's regulars included some of the hardest, meanest men to ever haunt the Steel City waterfront.

Oyster Paddy's Tavern was only open a little more than ten years, but during that time, a number of plausible perpetrators and victims hung out there. While the bodies were never identified, you can read about the investigation and some of the many crimes linked to the tavern at Pennsylvania Oddities. -via Strange Company

In a new stop-motion animation by omozoc (previously at Neatorama), a young woman make too much noise late at night, and her mother gets revenge by targeting the daughter's prize possessions. Don't let the fact that the daughter is wearing mom jeans distract you- I think omozoc is playing both parts. -via Laughing Squid

To celebrate National Tattoo Day, which was on July 17, the New York Public Library posted a gallery of literary tattoos found among their staff members. Some have books inked on their skin, and one has a card catalog drawer! Others are inspirational quotes from books, and Emily Pullen has Matilda.

When I got this tattoo, it was pretty clear that I'd be a book dork forever. Several years later, I wrote an essay about Matilda that helped me get into grad school for library science. Needless to say, she's been a source of inspiration for as long as I've known her.

See the other literary tats from the New York Public Library crew at the NYPL blog. -via Metafilter

Doug Lindsay was about to begin his senior year in college when he became so weak that he had to drop out. It was a rare and mysterious condition that his mother and aunt also suffered, but no one knew what caused it, or how to treat it. As doctor after doctor said they couldn't help him, he realized he would have to do it himself. Lindsay studied endocrinology and found some tantalizing clues, but he knew he would need scientific help. So he went to the American Autonomic Society's annual conference, where there were plenty of scientists.

Lindsay arrived at the conference in a wheelchair, wearing a suit and tie, and presented himself as a Jesuit-trained scientist. He tried to comport himself like a grad student or a junior colleague to the scholars in the audience, not like a patient.

He was just a scientist living an experiment in his own body. During his talk, Lindsay argued that a certain drug might help him.

Several of the scientists disagreed with Lindsay's hypotheses about his ailment. But that wasn't unexpected. He didn't even have a bachelor's degree and he was telling doctors from Harvard University, the National Institutes of Health and the Cleveland Clinic something their medical training told them was impossible.

"They didn't patronize me. They treated me like a scientist," Lindsay said. "I was entering into a world of science I couldn't participate in because I was at home and couldn't be a grad student."

Dr. H. Cecil Coghlan, a medical professor at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, approached Lindsay after his presentation. Coghlan said he thought Lindsay was on to something.

At last, Lindsay had a medical ally.

In partnership with Dr. Coghlan, Lindsay underwent drug therapy that helped somewhat. Then he led physicians to a diagnosis, and worked out a surgical cure. Now Lindsay is a medical consultant, helping to identify and treat rare diseases. Read Doug Lindsay's extraordinary story at CNN. -via reddit

Spiders are a common fear, and it's not at all uncommon to imagine one lurking in your toilet, where your tender spots are exposed to things you can't see. That fear would be more prevalent in the days before indoor plumbing, when toilets were an easy shelter for wildlife. Thomas Morris uncovered an 1839 medical case from Pensacola, Florida, that might give you nightmares.

On the 7th of August last, Mr. Q. of this place, while in the privy, perceived himself to be stung by a spider on the glans penis. The pain, which was not great at the moment, continued to increase till 1 P. M., an hour after the accident, when it had become extreme, and I was called to see the patient. I found him lying upon a cot, and writhing under the most acute suffering.

Oh, it gets worse. Calling a doctor for such a malady was a mistake, because common treatments of the time were no help at all, and only added to the poor patient's misery. Fortunately, the patient survived, but probably never sought medical help again. Read the story at Thomas Morris. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Trougnouf (Benoit Brummer))