Living in a "temperate zone" often means cold winters and hot summers, with short interludes of perfect temperatures in between. While that breaks up the monotony, the power bills at the extremes can be terrifying. Nolan Gray is studying for a graduate degree in city and regional planning from Rutgers. Inspired by an interlude living in Guatemala City, he looked around the world for places where you can live comfortably without using a heating system or an air conditioning system. He found 13 cities that fill the bill, and quite a few other places where you don't need much temperature control. That resulted in an interactive map where you can select a place to live where the temperature doesn't fluctuate much from comfortable. Find those 13 cities and look around the map at Medium.
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
choking on my own tongue. pic.twitter.com/9VtRysTXEL
— bobby (@bobby) August 13, 2018
The $100,000 Pyramid is still on the air -who knew? The game that aired Sunday contained the most embarrassing moment in contestant Evan Kaufman's life, as he played with SNL alum Tim Meadows. It's a classic brain cramp, in front of the cameras.
Here’s what my brain decided. Who is associated with Obama? Who did he kill? What sounds like Obama! (8/13)
— Evan Kaufman (@EvanKaufman) August 14, 2018
Kaufman tells entire the story in his own words in this Twitter thread. -via Digg
The old adage in real estate is that location is the only thing that matters. I would add the size of the property, too, as that is very difficult to change. But while you can change a house, some repairs may beyond your budget. Before buying your first home, it's best to listen and heed the horror stories of people who've been there, done that. A reddit thread is full of them. Some highlights:
12. If you're hunting in a college town, get a map, draw a line from the popular bars to the dorms, and then DO NOT BUY A HOUSE ON THAT LINE.
"You would be shocked by the amount of vandalism and noise in that area." —sewnlurk
13. Beware of staged properties.
"Staging can hide flaws like a rug put over a damaged floor. Picture the place empty and check everything twice." —scangemode
If you're on a budget, every house will have some flaws, but you should be able to identify them and figure out which ones you can live with. Buzzfeed compiled a list of the best tips, and you are welcome to add others here to help a first-time home buyer.
(Image credit: A McCarron)
The bigger they are, the harder they fall! Maybe that's why Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson always manages to get a scene in every movie where he falls -and always survives, mostly unscathed. Nerdist put together a supercut so we can appreciate just how often it happens. You have to admit it looks cool, and that's what's important. -via Tastefully Offensive
Most of us, especially those in the food or shipping industries, know that you can save a lot of weight by dehydrating food. What if you had 100 pounds of potatoes, and each potato was 99% water. If you dehydrated those potatoes just a little, to the point that they were 98% water, how much would they weigh?
They would weigh 50 pounds. Believe it or not.
Wikipedia gives us a couple of explanations for the Potato Paradox.
Method 1
One explanation begins by saying that initially the non-water weight is 1 pound, which is 1% of 100 pounds. Then one asks: 1 pound is 2% of how many pounds? In order for that percentage to be twice as big, the total weight must be half as big.Method 2
100 lb of potatoes, 99% water (by weight), means that there's 99 lb of water, and 1 lb of solids. It's a 1:99 ratio.
If the water decreases to 98%, then the solids account for 2% of the weight. The 2:98 ratio reduces to 1:49. Since the solids still weigh 1 lb, the water must weigh 49 lb for a total of 50 lbs for the answer.
You can also find the algebraic explanations on the same page, if you want to check further. By the way, potatoes are only around 79% water, but the paradox is in the math as a normal person would visualize it, not the food. Don't confuse pounds and percentage. -via TYWKIWDBI
You might think of the Normans (if you ever think of them at all) as French, but they were actually Vikings who converted to Christianity after they settled in the northern part of France (which became known as Normandy). They conquered England in the Battle of Hastings in 1066, but that was only the first leg of the path of conquests. This TED-Ed video gives us the short version of the long story of the vast influence of Norman conquerors in Europe, including our language. -via Digg
Phoebe Ann Moses was born on this date in 1860. You know her better as Annie Oakley, sharpshooting star of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. There was a lot more to her life than what people saw in the show, beginning with her peculiar childhood experiences.
1. SHE MADE HER FIRST SHOT AT 8 YEARS OLD.
Born on August 13, 1860 in a rural part of western Ohio, Phoebe Ann Moses grew up poor. Her father’s death in 1866 meant that she had to contribute to help her family survive, so she trapped small animals such as quail for food. At eight years old, she made her first shot when she killed a squirrel outside her house. “It was a wonderful shot, going right through the head from side to side. My mother was so frightened when she learned that I had taken down the loaded gun and shot it that I was forbidden to touch it again for eight months,” she later said.
2. SHE USED HER SHOOTING SKILLS TO PAY OFF HER MOM’S MORTGAGE.
Despite Oakley’s top-notch shooting skills, her widowed mother struggled to make ends meet. She sent Oakley to work for another family in exchange for her daughter getting an education. As a teenager, Oakley returned home (after working as a servant for an abusive family) and continued to hunt animals. She sold the meat to an Ohio grocery store, earning enough money to pay her mom’s $200 mortgage. She later wrote: "Oh, how my heart leaped with joy as I handed the money to mother and told her that I had saved enough to pay it off!"
That's just the beginning. Read about Annie Oakley's life, from her marriage at 16 to her work in World War I at Mental Floss.
Dutch engineer/artist Theo Jansen is known for his Strandbeests, giant kinetic sculptures that move along the beach on their own, powered only by the wind. We posted quite a few of them over the years. Over time, the Strandbeests have evolved to be bigger, lighter, and faster. They seem to be living beings, although they are made of PVC pipe, string, and zip ties. Check out this video showing off his latest, most kinetic Strandbeests. At the very end, you see Jansen with his Animaris Rhinoceros Transport from 2006, just to show how far his art has come. -via Geekologie
This is a lovely way to visualize the relationships in a family! Redditor OrbDeluxxxe posted this photo of his family reunion, mentioning that the couple at the top have been married 60 years. Their children and spouses are below, and the third and fourth generation are at the bottom -five of them babes-in-arms. You know who came from who by the color-coordinated shirts. If you look closely (enlarge the image here), you'd guess that they are arranged in order of age from the left. A lot of planning went into this picture, and the results are stunning, even though four people are missing from the bottom row. OrbDeluxxxe added:
Nearly everyone on the bottom row at least has a BA or BS, there’s a PhD, an MD, an MBA, and a masters in social work on that row, and two who are hoping to get MDs in the near future. There is also a handful of engineers and 2 teachers.
Also: What a neat cabin to have a reunion in! -via reddit
If you went to school after 1980, you probably learned that the dinosaurs went extinct because of a huge asteroid smashing into the earth 66 millions years ago. If you went to school before 1980, you probably heard that it could be any one of a dozen different reasons and we possibly might never know the exact cause of the dinosaurs extinction. One of the competing ideas is that the mass extinction was caused by the Deccan Traps, a group of volcanoes that erupted for thousands of years, so long that they poisoned the entire earth. This hypothesis has been promoted by paleontologist Gerta Keller for decades, but it was overshadowed by physicist Luis Alvarez' discovery of the iridium layer that pinpointed the date of the asteroid. Scientists are still arguing over the reason for the death of the dinos, which you can read about at The Atlantic. -via Digg
King Chinhung of Korea's Silla Dynasty conceived of a training program to shape the country's most promising young people into a skilled class to serve the monarchy. The students were drawn from the aristocracy, and originally included girls, until one of the founding members pushed another into a stream and drowned her out of jealousy. After that, the program was called the Hwarang Boys Academy, which produced the the Hwarang Knights, an elite group of warriors who were known for their beauty, from their makeup to their jeweled shoes.
Roughly translated as “flower boys” or “flowering youth,” the Hwarang were male aristocrats who comprised an elite corps founded in the sixth century B.C. “Unfortunately, there’s a lot we don’t know about the Hwarang,” says Courtney Lazore, historian and author of The Hwarang Warriors — Silla’s Flower Boys. “We often liken them to knights, but they were much more than just fighters.” With their focus on religion, education and the military, it was “possible for [them] to become well-rounded leaders.”
They were warriors, but also nobility and cultural ambassadors. Read an overview of what we know about the Hwarang at Ozzy.
(Image credit: Jlsilo)
When Jennifer Anne Kaufman fled the stolen vehicle she was driving Monday, she cut across some pastureland, trying to evade police. After all, it was dark and maybe the Seminole County Sheriff’s helicopter couldn't see her well. But she didn't count on a herd of cows following her! Cows know that a person in their field might mean getting fed, or at least something novel to see. In this case, they saw an arrest. A search of the stolen SUV yielded a gram of cocaine. Read the story at the Tampa Bay Times. -via Boing Boing
We take video calls for granted these days, but it wasn't so long ago that such a thing was science fiction, fantasy, or pure moonshine. AT&T promoted the idea in 1964 when they demonstrated a picture phone call at the World’s Fair in Queens.
The trouble was it was insanely expensive. A 15 minute video call would cost about $600 (adjusted for inflation). So, it wasn’t exactly an instant success.
Yeah, those were the days when long-distance phone connections were charged by the minute, and video cameras were huge and pricy. For decades, video calls were always just around the corner as developments were made. Meanwhile, we dreaded it, because we couldn't see that there would be several other ways of communicating to someone that you weren't fit to be seen at the moment. The microchip was a leap forward in miniaturization, and the internet gave us the connectivity to really do it, finally. See an illustrated overview of the journey we took to FaceTime, Skype, and all the other methods of video chat we have today at Flashbak. -via Nag on the Lake
Poolbowl must be some kind of combination of billiards and bowling. All I know for sure is that Jason Belmonte and Florian "Venom" Kohler have a lot of time on their hands, and have used it to perfect some glorious tricks. So what if they have terabytes of outtakes, this compilation video is cool! -via Metafilter
San Diego Comic Con has come and gone for 2018, and once again, you didn't get to go. But here's a way to experience all the best cosplay anyway! Or maybe you did go, and you want to see it all again. Jill Harness and Zeon Santos attended (their tenth year!) and took tons of pictures, and posted them, sorted into different galleries you'll enjoy.
San Diego Comic Con Cosplay From 2018
Fun fact, this kid wasn’t even with the rest of the group, but just popped in for a picture.
The ones that dressed to impress are here.
Sexy Costumes Spotted at the 2018 San Diego Comic Con
More here.
Brilliant costume mashups from the 2018 San Diego Comic Con
Would you like fries with that beatdown? Is it just me, or would Loki have to be the Burger King in this world?
Take a character from column A and a character from column B and see what you can do. Bonus points if the combination makes a pun. Deadpool and Batman got mixed up with everything under the sun at Comic Con. See them here.
Rule 63 Cosplays from the 2018 San Diego Comic Con
There are always plenty of great cosplayers at Comic Con, but some of the most fun are those highlighting Rule 63 (that for every pop culture character, there is another version of the opposite gender).
See more of these gender-swapped costumes.
What I learned by taking my 8 month old son to Comic Con
I did a little research before we left and found that even though anyone under 13 can go to Comic Con for free, they still need a badge. Since my husband had to pick his badge up in person, we were able to get little Rigby’s badge printed at the same time. That being said, it turns out that if you have a kiddo under walking age, they don’t actually need a badge.
That said, if you plan to take a child next year, read all the tips and confirm any questions you may have before arriving in 2019, to see if any rules have changed.