The HUB Stadium is a bar in Michigan. They offer a variety of games in addition to liquor. They were recently visited by the Michigan Liquor Control Commission. The commission had some concerns.
Drinking alcohol while throwing axes, ax-throwers wearing open-toed shoes, a lack of monitoring by bar management and axes ricocheting off targets in the direction of participants were among the concerns listed by Michigan Liquor Control Commission investigators who visited the warehouse-style bar at 2550 Innovation Drive in Auburn Hills.
I mean really, what could possibly go wrong? The regulators slapped HUB Stadium with a severe penalty- they suspended their liquor license. For one day. Read about the suspension and the commission's list of additional concerns at Michigan Live. -via Metafilter
An employee of the Maryland Zoo found an injured box turtle that couldn't walk, and brought it to the zoo's hospital to see if anything could be zone. His fractured under-side shell was glued together with splints, but how to keep him up off the ground while he heals? The solution was a frame built of LEGO pieces! It could be a year before the frame can be completely removed, but meanwhile, he's getting around just fine. -via Mental Floss
If you dislike horror movies, you might want to shield your children from them, but sooner or later they're going to see something that might traumatize them while visiting friends. If you enjoy horror movies, you don't want to traumatize your child and turn them against the movies you love. There are films made for children that will introduce them to the thrill of being scared -but not too scared. Den of Geek has a list of movies that "offer children a safe, but interesting, introduction to the world of horror, with archetypal tropes, characters and even the odd jump scare." The trick here is to watch with your children, so you can pause, explain, and reassure when necessary.
When your child is older and has seen the movies made for kids, then what? Elementary students and tweens may get a thrill out of gore and jump scares, but to really appreciate the horror genre, they need to see well-made movies that engage the viewer. For that, you might consult the list of 81 Best Creepy Horror Movies, although you'll want to select movies you've already seen to ensure they are appropriate for your children. Older classics like Gaslight or The Uninvited will give them the creeps without the sex and violence of newer movies. Watching horror movies that are age-appropriate will help prepare your children for the time they are old enough to go to a theater without you.
My son has parked his bike by this lamppost just about every day for the last year. This morning, this sticker had appeared. Absolutely made our day. People can be so brilliant. Thank you, whoever did it pic.twitter.com/rYC8jCTD5L
Some observant stranger noticed that Christie Dietz's son parked in the same spot every day. That someone would take the time and trouble to produce this sticker is just adorable. Next, they need to take another photo of the post with the sticker on it to produce a meta-notice. -via Metafilter
Saturday Night Live is aired live from New York, of course, so the production team are always on their toes. At the same time, the skits feature cast members impersonating real people and characters wearing over-the-top silly costumes, which must be completely changed during commercial breaks. The wardrobe department handles all this, plus finding, designing, making, and rehearsing with those costumes, with only a week to get it all right. Then they start all over again. -via Laughing Squid
A Pennsylvania dachshund named Patches developed a brain tumor the size of an orange. The cancer invaded her skull and pushed her head up in a large lump. Patches' family was referred to the Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph, where veterinary surgical oncologist Michelle Oblak recommended surgery.
Normally in a case such as this, the tumor and a portion of the skull would be removed, and a titanium mesh fitted in place, Oblak told the Canadian Press. Instead, Oblak and her colleagues used a new procedure in which a 3D-printed skull cap is specially fitted for the canine patient, which the researchers claim is more precise and less costly than conventional methods. Incredibly, the titanium cap replaced 70 percent of Patches’ skull, which had to be removed during surgery. Oblak said researchers in the UK have done something similar, but on a “significantly” smaller scale.
Naturally, this kind of surgery raises questions about the expense, but the article does not address that. The surgery came through a teaching hospital that does research, which may contribute to the development of such techniques for humans eventually. Anyway, the surgery was successful, and you can see before and after pictures of Patches at Gizmodo. -Thanks, WTM!
Solo: A Star Wars Story is the first of all the Star Wars movies I didn't see during its theatrical run. People have said that if you try to forget that it's a Star Wars movie, then it's an okay film. Faint praise, indeed. Screen Junkies breaks that down into a quick but thorough critique in this Honest Trailer.
Sumter County in South Carolina is the home of a family enclave that has baffled outsiders since the Revolutionary War. The several hundred people of the community claim Turkish Ottoman roots, as descendants of Joseph Benenhaley, who served under General Sumter and was granted land after the war. For over two centuries, they've kept to themselves, with six family names dominating the group.
For many years the Turkish people’s origin story was usually considered no more than myth, a fable concocted to sustain an out-group through unpleasant realities of hard history. In 1973, a historian put it this way: “A stranger visiting Sumter County today may come across a baffling breed called ‘Turks’…. So meager are the facts relating to them that the wildest conjectures, based on what must surely be flight of fancy and geographical ignorance, have been advanced to support their origin.” Still, members of the group persisted in claiming Turkish descent, and now we—a political scientist and a Turkish descendant—have confirmed the group’s traditional narrative and beleaguered history, through original research and oral interviews.
The Turkish people didn’t fit cleanly into the broader black-versus-white paradigm in that part of South Carolina. They adhered to an ancestral understanding that they were “white people,” but outside the Dalzell area, where most lived, they were shunned. Like their black neighbors, they were subject to insults, intimidation and systemic oppression. The Turkish people had to go to federal court to be able to send their children to “white schools” during the 1950s, and only in the past few decades have they begun to enjoy things like getting good jobs in mainstream society, accessing health care at local hospitals, shopping at community businesses, or participating in Little League baseball, without being turned away or treated as second-class citizens.
The United States dropped from 50th to a tie for 54th in the annual Bloomberg Health-Efficiency Index. The index tracks health costs and life expectancies, using the latest data available, which in this case is from 2015. The drop in ranking may be due to four countries being added to the index this year, all of which placed in the top 25. Read more about how the index was calculated, and see the stats for the top 56 countries at Bloomberg. -via Digg
During the first of Ernest Shackleton's three Antarctic expeditions, he brought along some "fun stuff" for when they were isolated indoors, which included a printing press, ink, and paper. Over the winter of 1908, the men published a book called Aurora Australis, which they wrote, illustrated, printed, and bound themselves. The content was an eclectic mix (as were the binding materials).
Shackleton served as editor, and solicited submissions from the crew. He chose to include everything from an interview with an Emperor Penguin to a tongue-in-cheek, faux-Biblical account of the expedition. In one chapter, an anonymous messman details the trials and tribulations of his job. In another, the geologist Douglas Mawson describes an journey to an imaginary place called Bathybia, hidden inside an Antarctic volcano, where fungi grow and temperatures reach a balmy 70 degrees.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat. The shampoo prank goes on for quite some time before the victim realizes someone is messing with him, and even then he suspects the guy showering beside him. Stay for the visual punch line at the end. After all, that's a lot of soap! -via reddit
San Francisco is a lovely place to visit, offering tons of charm and history, but if you want to live there it's going to cost you dearly. The laws and regulations that made the city a struggle for lowly working people and their families go back to its early days as a seaport enriched by the Gold Rush. It began with zoning restrictions on boarding houses and laundries, supposedly to set decent living standards, but the desired effect was to drive out Chinese workers. That kind of "local control" continued into the 20th century to favor landowners over various immigrants, minority groups, and the poor. City officials introduced urban renewal projects to fight "blight," the federal government contributed redlining through the FHA, and neighborhoods had their own discriminatory covenants. San Francisco refined its land use and building codes over time, with both intended and unintended consequences that marginalized longtime residents without money or clout. It continued with a rezoning effort in 1978.
It’s clear that many San Franciscans were well aware this rezoning would lead the city toward a housing crisis. The planning commissioners, however, were not moved. Their testimony throughout the hearings made it clear they valued maintaining the city’s predominately suburban layout over affordability. In response to a homeowner who was unhappy that his property would be downzoned to allow fewer units, commissioner Sue Bierman gave a quintessential anti-growth response—countering that San Franciscans were concerned about parking, traffic, and sunlight reaching their backyards, embracing a shift toward zoning that would preserve “more comfortable neighborhoods.” Instead of listening to those folks worried about becoming homeless, the commissioners focused on the single-family homeowners worried about shadows on their yards and parking for their cars.
In the final minutes of the June 27, 1978, meeting, San Francisco’s planning commissioners prepared to approve the EIR, along with its damning final clause, which explained that the project would reduce the amount of housing that could legally be built in San Francisco. “As a result the cost of housing may increase, and that with increasing housing costs, some population groups may find it difficult to live in San Francisco. The proposed zoning will affect the low- and moderate-income households more than any other group and mitigation measures are proposed to help alleviate this impact.”
But commissioner Bierman said she was “troubled” by this statement, and commissioner Nakashima agreed, complaining that it wasn’t the solely the planning department’s fault if housing prices continued to rise. Commissioner Rosenblatt suggested removing the clause entirely—and that’s exactly what they did, erasing their acknowledgement of the plan’s disastrous effects from the document moments before approving it.
Can you read what this wall painting is supposed to say? The words are placed fairly randomly, and one is even split in two. The original saying is "May all who came as guests leave as friends," but those words were put into a jar and shaken before they were thrown at the wall. At least no one was expected to eat them.
And you have to wonder what the original purpose for this bowl was, since it does not hold food. These are just two examples of inexplicable attempts to make a restaurant memorable. Or maybe there was no real attempt at all. You'll find all 19 compiled at Buzzfeed.
