In order to promote the Star Wars Force for Change charity sweepstakes, John Boyega did surprise photobombs at Star Wars Celebration earlier this month. Avid fans posing for pictures with a couple of stormtroopers and BB-8 were first shocked and then delighted to find Finn in their finished photo.
Star Wars Force for Change benefits the UNICEF and the Starlight Foundation. You can enter the drawing at Omaze.
The 1979 movie Alien broke new ground in science fiction and horror. The slow reveal of the xenomorph and the slow reveal of who the real hero of the story was combined to make a darn good story -if you saw it in a theater. But if you saw it much later, after both became well-known, it was still a thrill. The production was not simple at all. There was a lot of technical stuff that didn't go as smoothly as planned, and weird things going on off-camera.
Read lots more trivia about the production of Alien at TVOM.
Between December 1884 and December 1885, Austin, Texas, had eight axe murders. Six women, an 11-year-old girl, and a man who was with another victim were all killed in horrific ways, and several were also raped. Only the first three were domestic workers, but the unknown perpetrator was dubbed the "Servant Girl Annihilator." The murders did not stop because the killer was caught; they just stopped.
Though around 400 men were arrested in 1885 under suspicion of being the Annihilator, none were ever successfully tried. The list included Walter Spencer (the boyfriend of the first victim—acquitted after a two-day trial), “two suspicious-looking white brothers found with blood on their clothes,” Eula’s husband Jimmy Phillips, and Susan’s husband Moses Hancock. Phillips, the prosecutors claimed, was a copycat killer before the term existed, using the murders of Austin’s black working class as an excuse to kill his unfaithful and beautiful wife. Initially sentenced to seven years, Phillips’s conviction was overturned within six months; Hancock’s trial resulted in a hung jury. The Annihilator was still out there, but what was he—or they—doing?
As time passed, suspicion fell on men who left Austin at the time the murders stopped. More than one of those went to England, and coincidentally or not, that's when the Jack the Ripper murders began. Read what we know -and don't know- about the Servant Girl Annihilator and his victims at mental_floss.
A cat decides to run away from home and live on his own in the city. His adventure is lots of fun at first, but turns out to be less than hunky-dory after a while, as young people often find on their first foray into the real world.
Still, the fact that he's a cat doing all this is just goofy, in a good way, in this animation from Victoria Vincent. -via Laughing Squid
Before you decide what you want, maybe you should consider that desire from all angles. Why does your employer pay you to be there? Because he/she can't get anyone to do it for free. If the work were that pleasant, it would be a hobby. This is the latest from Jeff Lovfers at Don't Hit Save.
Who doesn't love the book Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak? It was still a new book when I learned to read, and now it's a classic. So of course everyone will want to know what Sparky Sweets, PhD. thinks of it. This video, like all Thug Notes, contains NSFW language.
This is like having the story read to you all over again, except adult-style. The discussion at YouTube reveals that quite a few high school teachers are using Thug Notes (among other sources) to teach literary criticism. -via Tastefully Offensive
Hitler's older half-brother, Alois, lived in England in 1911, where he produced a son named William Hitler. By the time William was grown, the Hitler name was well-known, and Alois had abandoned his British family to return to Germany.
Left without his father, William and his mother struggled back in England. Any job opportunities he could find seemed to vanish into thin air the moment people found out his last name. But there was one place where being a Hitler was your ticket to success: Nazi Germany. So William said goodbye to his mother, left his conscience in his old bedroom, and went over to Uncle Adolf's lair to mooch. Not wanting him to crash on the Eagle's Nest couch, his bestest best uncle eventually got him a gig at the German national bank. That was only his day job, though. By the 1930s, Willy Hitler had found his true calling: professional name-dropper.
William Hitler's dealings with his Nazi uncle is the reason the article's headline refers to him as "Hitler's Idiot Nephew," but after a weird interlude of trying to cash in on his name, he apparently grew up and learned better in his later years. Read the story of William Hitler at Cracked, in the colorful language they are known for.
I never saw The Social Network, since I already knew the outline of the Facebook story, and thought it had to be boring. Now I don't need to, since Screen Junkies has an Honest Trailer for the 2010 film.
Well, maybe it wasn't as boring as I had imagined, since apparently it was fictionalized a lot to add drama. But I can see that the movie is so poorly-lit that I probably wouldn't have been able to see it anyway.
How do you take a photograph of ten kittens? They are all from one litter, so they need a family portrait. But arranging kittens to face a camera is like …trying to herd cats. Exactly like that.
No wonder mama cats are always on their last nerve. Evgeny, the Russian cat daddy, found that it's best to just use video instead of a still camera. -via Tastefully Offensive
Videos of people playing with slime is a definite trend on Instagram. The prettier the slime is, the better. You can make slime fairly easily with Elmer's glue, borax, and water. You may have called it Oobleck when you were young. Now it comes in all colors, with textures from beads and glitter, and teenagers are selling it through Etsy to their Instagram followers. What's the allure?
“I just love it for some odd reason,” says Carlie, a 12-year-old slime fan who recently started making her own slime. She did specify that for her, the appeal was “the sound and feeling of it.” For Donna Boyd, a 17-year-old from Harrisburg, Virginia, slime is therapeutic. She’s never purchased slime, or made it herself. She just watches hundreds of videos from her five favorite accounts over and over again. “It honestly just makes me happy and de-stresses me,” Donna told me. “I suffer from anxiety, and slime videos help me a lot during panic attacks.” She says she gets lost in them after watching a few, going into a kind of meditative state. One teen I spoke to, Rachel M., told me she spends “at least 15 hours a week” just watching slime videos and playing with slime. She has only bought two slimes herself, but she loves them and says, “I need them.”
It appears to be this generation's version of birdwatching. Read about the business and hobby of slime videos (and see quite a few) at New York magazine. -via TYWKIWDBI
(Image credit: slimequeeens, slimeedaddy, craftyslimecreator, rad.slime)
If you have to go to the prom, you may as well get a souvenir from that memorable evening. These cops took advantage of the amenities, including having their portrait made. No photographer is going to tell them they can't pose for a picture!
For readers outside the U.S. or without kids, police are often assigned to attend the prom in order to keep students from driving away drunk, although they sometimes have to break up fights or deal with more serious crimes. -via reddit
You probably never thought about it, but how much overlap would you think there is between bikers and Disney fans? Well, consider that motorcycle riders are a large group, and they were all once children who watched Disney movies. Many have children and grandchildren who do. And some are enthusiastic enough to name their motorcycle club in honor of the House of Mouse. Besides, the idea gives you a destination for a cross-country run, whether it's Disneyland or Walt Disney World. These groups bear the names Sons of Anakin, Main St. Elite, the Neverlanders, Walt's Misfits, Mickey's Empire, and more. See some of these clubs pictured at TVOM.
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research, now in all-pdf form. Get a subscription now for only $25 a year!
by Stephen Drew, Improbable Research staff
Italian hand gestures fascinate scholars, who labor to classify the gestures and grasp their meanings.
Andrea de Jorio's Handy Classic
Detail from de Jorio's book. A typical scene of a boy and an adult woman communicating partially with hand gestures.
A book published in 1832 is in some sense a bible of Italian--- especially southern Italian---hand gestures:
La Mimica Degli Antichi Investigata nel Gestire Napoletano [The Body Language of the Ancients as Interpreted in Neapolitan Gesture], Andrea de Jorio, Naples, 1832.
Eventually, someone translated de Jorio's work into English:
Here's an idea that probably deserves some study. Tips are taxable income, but cash gifts are not (unless the gift is over $13,000 in one year). Does this money add to the waiter's taxable income? Does it contribute to her total for the week in making up the difference between her pay from the restaurant and minimum wage? Does it go into the pot to share with the cooks and bussers? Don't bother asking the IRS.
An Internal Revenue Service (IRS) spokesperson conceded that he'd never heard of such a situation and declined to speculate about possible legal implications. He directed ATTN: to the agency's "Tips on Tips" guide, which emphasizes that "income received in the form of tips is taxable."
Since this image has gone viral, we might expect a statement from the agency sometime soon.
