To be honest, this scenario could apply to anyone with a diet designed to make them appear superior to the rest of us common folk. You might know someone who is vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free by choice, grain-free, sugar-free, paleo, or all-natural, and won’t hesitate to make you feel awful about your inferior food choices.
The attitude makes all the difference. A relative offered me a soda pop once, and I replied that I don’t drink soda. She asked why not, and I said my teeth are too sensitive for cold drinks. That put her right at ease, because it let her know I wasn’t going to lecture her about her soda habit. To each his own. This is the latest from Sarah Andersen.
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Get ready for mischief when Deadpool is around! D-Piddy attended Comic Con again this year as Deadpool, in order to stir up trouble!
All skits on the convention floor were set up with the other cosplayers, and there was no contact without consent. However, just like the Deadpool movie, some scenes are not for children. -via Tastefully Offensive
Every year, Adam Savage wears a costume to San Diego Comic Con in order to get around without being recognized. This year, he was a bear. No, he wasn’t trying to be a furry, although that’s what quite a few people assumed. He was supposed to be the bear from the movie The Revenant.
[ (YouTube link)
The particulars of the suit construction are in another video to come; this one follows him as he wanders the halls of Comic Con. -via Digg
Who knew? The first person to wear a costume to a science fiction convention dates back to the very first science fiction convention in 1939. The idea grew from there when people realized that it was fun, frivolous, and the better the costume, the more the fun. You got attention, made friends, and spread the news that fictional world fandom can bring the real world together.
While I have an extensive history in costumes, I only attended a science fiction convention in costume once. Conventions are a major hassle when you live in the middle of nowhere, while there are many opportunities to use a costume of one sort or another, at various jobs, parties, and when you have children. This video is from Timeline. -via Digg
Instead of water, some lakes are filled with the gooey petroleum substance known as asphalt, tar, or bitumen. It forms when crude oil thickens due to long contact with air. How thick is it? That varies, which is why animals can be trapped in it. At Pitch Lake in Trinidad, you can walk on the surface, but if you stand still, you’ll eventually begin to sink. That fate befell the ancient animals trapped in the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles.
In addition to geologists and oil barons, asphalt lakes are objects of interest for naturalists and paleontologists too as well, because hidden beneath the sticky, gooey layers are remains of unimaginable amount of prehistoric life. Over thousands of years these lakes have swallowed saber-toothed cat, dire wolves, bison, horses, turtles, snails, clams, millipedes, gophers, mammoths and hundreds of other species of vertebrates and invertebrates. These animals had wandered too far looking for food perhaps, and became trapped in the asphalt. The trapped animals attracted predators who became stuck as well as. Death came either by suffocation or hunger. It’s a terrible way to die, but a fantastic way to preserve fossils.
We use the tar itself for paving roads and sealing roofs. Read about the weird phenomenon of asphalt lakes at Amusing Planet. -via the Presurfer
(Image credit: Flickr user Betsy Weber)
Comedian, actress, writer, producer, and all-around character Amy Poehler is best known for her work on Saturday Night Live and Parks and Recreation. But she’s got a lot more going on, both on and off screen. Get to know Poehler better with some facts about her life and work.
8. It may sound surprising that she was anything but a hilariously funny comedian, but Amy Poehler was once a teenager. Like many teenagers, Amy Poehler had a summer job. She worked at Chadwicks, an ice cream parlor in the neighborhood she grew up in. In addition to serving up yummy ice cream, part of her job was to dress up in old-fashioned outfits. On customer’s birthdays, they would sing happy birthday, play a kazoo, and bang a drum in celebration.
9. We all know Amy Poehler starred in the movie Mean Girls. If not, then you need to go out and rent or buy the movie today. Amy Poehler played the part of Rachel McAdams’ self-obsessed mother. Seems normal enough. What you may not know is she was only seven years older than Rachel McAdams at the time. Seems pretty crazy but it happens all the time in Hollywood.
There’s lots more about Amy Poehler at SheBudgets.
The following article is from Uncle John’s Factastic Bathroom Reader.
Here’s something to think about next time you open a box of crayons. We take it for granted that the pigments used to color our clothes, dishes, and art supplies are clean and safe— but as these colors of the past reveal, that’s not necessarily so.
(Image credit: Zubro)
Color: Mummy Brown
Made From: Actual mummies
How Did That Become a Thing? Long before there were art stores, the most reliable source of powdered chemicals of all kinds was the apothecary. Europeans had gotten it into their heads that Egyptian mummies were powerful medicine, and from the 1300s to the early 20th century, ground mummies were prescribed for everything from headaches to gout to epilepsy. Adventurous artists discovered that when mixed with oil paint, powdered flesh from mummies made an excellent light brown color. It was used extensively from the 1700s into the mid-1920s.
True Colors: Despite the belief that mummies were indestructible, it turned out that flesh in paint tended to shrink and crack with time. But the thing that really doomed Mummy Brown was the dwindling supply of mummies. By 1964, it was officially as dead as a pharaoh; an article in Time magazine quoted a representative of a major art supply house as saying, “We may still have a few limbs lying around somewhere, but not enough to make any more paint.”
Color: Chrome Yellow
Made From: Lead chromate
How Did That Become a Thing?
Fiction is full of spooky weird stories that will give you chills, but truth is stranger than fiction. There are plenty of cold cases from the past in which the murder was never determined, but some stand out for their complete weirdness. Some leave evidence that doesn’t make sense, some have several possible explanations, and some are the stuff horror films are made of, like the series of five murders and three near-murders in 1946 in Texarkana.
The first attack came on February 22, when the killer ambushed Jimmy Hollis, 25, and Mary Jeanne Larey, 19, in their car. Pointing a flashlight at the couple's faces, he ordered Hollis out of the car, told him to remove his pants, and proceeded to beat and stomp him so badly that he would spend days in a coma. In a way, Larey was even less fortunate: The attacker ordered her to run, and soon chased her down, beat her, and assaulted her with the barrel of a gun. She managed to escape this deadly game of cat and mouse, and in true horror movie style, ended up pleading for help at the door of a house half a mile away, sure to the last second that she was being followed.
A few weeks after the first attack, another young couple was attacked in their car. This time, after an unknown sequence of events, the Phantom shot both victims execution-style. Another couple of weeks later, yet another two kids were found dead. They had made it out of the car (or had been forced to leave it), attempted to struggle and perhaps escape the murderer, but were shot several times nevertheless. The final victims were farmer couple Virgil and Katie Starks, and for them, the killer significantly changed his modus operandi, straight-up gunning them down through their window. Despite taking two shots in the head, Mrs. Starks didn't die in the attack. After a terrifying chase with the killer inside the farmhouse, she managed to escape to the neighbors' house before collapsing. A trail of blood and pieces of teeth marked her trail.
While the case spawned a movie and an entire genre of slasher films, the case has never been quite solved, although there were a couple of suspects. Read about that case and four others at Cracked.
When you bake a birthday cake for someone celebrating a substantial number of years, say more than 12, the easiest way to do it is to put one candle on top, or use those candles that come in the shape of numbers. Or you can put all the candles on and have someone stand by with a fire extinguisher for a good laugh. But these folks went all out. Redditor OyVeyzMeir posted the cake from a friend’s 40th birthday in which firetrucks were standing by for the expected conflagration.
What’s the cure when you're overcome by work? A little play! Better follow Dr. Feelgood’s orders, and shake, rattle, and roll, those blues away. This is the latest from Lunarbaboon.
In mountainous areas of Europe, you might enjoy the breathtaking view of a snow-covered Alp in winter. But in summer, the snow melts and the infrastructure underneath is exposed. These are avalanche protection fences, designed to mitigate the effect of sudden slides.
Strangely, the purpose of this kind of fencing in mountainous regions is not to stop a snow drift but to cause one. The fences (usually referred to as snow fences) are positioned so that drifting snow is blown in to a place where it presents the least amount of danger. By forcing a drift on the side of the mountain, it is then less likely to cover the transport routes below.
Over many centuries, communities have learned, often to their great cost, where the initiation zones of avalanches are located. This led to the very human desire to stabilise the snow and it was the idea of a fence which was found to work. No doubt there was much trial and error but the idea was to help absorb the force of the snow-pack through a system of fences – and to transmit that force to the ground, keeping the snow in its place.
See a gallery of avalanche fences in summertime images at Kuriositas. -via the Presurfer
(Image credit: Stephan Möller)
This Disney mashup will bring back memories of the magic you felt when you first watched these films as a youngster, although you have to be pretty young to have seen all these as a youngster! While the video highlights how Disney uses the same set pieces and angles over and over, it also shows how well they work.
Lindsay McCutcheon set clips from the last twenty years of Disney movies (and some older) to the song “Pop Culture” by Madeon. If you doubt this was made by Millennials for Millennials, Lindsay was named after Lindsay Buckingham. He says he worked on this video on and off for about five months. -via reddit
Hallmark has offered a different Star Trek keepsake Christmas ornament every year since 1991. And since this year is Star Trek’s 50th anniversary, you’d expect something really special. Well… they did go back to the premiere episode of the original Star Trek TV series. But if you thought last year’s ornament that depicted the death of Spock was weird, get a load of Captain Kirk being attacked by the M-113 creature, also known as the salt vampire, from “The Man Trap.” And it talks!
First airing back in 1966, the first Star Trek™ episode to be broadcast featured the crew’s visit to an outpost to conduct medical exams, only to be attacked by a murderous shape-shifting alien, the Salt Monster. Press a button on this Keepsake Ornament to hear dialogue from this famous episode.
Won’t this add cheer to the Christmas tree! The ornament is available now from Hallmark. Better order yours soon, because collectors will snap them up. -via Metafilter
How does a tyrant rise to the type of power that Adolf Hitler held over Germany? You take a defeated and fractured nation and unite the people by giving them a scapegoat to blame their troubles on. Fear, anger, and bigotry can lead crowds to do things they would never do as individuals.
Hitler was in the right place at the right time, and if he hadn’t taken advantage of the situation, it’s possible that someone else would have. Would someone else have used that power in a different way? It's hard to say, because we know how power corrupts, and how power inspires the desire for more power. -via Metafilter
The trailer for the upcoming Wonder Woman movie debuted at San Diego Comic Con. We first saw Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and now it’s time for her to kick ass and take names in her own film.
Chris Pine is Steve Trevor. The movie will be out in June of 2017. -via Uproxx
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