Watching a woodworker turn a nice newel or chair leg on a lathe is fascinating. You'd like to try that yourself, wouldn't you? But a lathe is a serious investment in money, time, space, and material. That's why we have WebGL Lathe Workshop, where you can try it out online, free! Select your material, spin the lathe with the space bar, and carve with your cursor. Then watch the wood chips fly! I have no idea what I was trying to create when this screenshot was taken, but it was fun to try. -via Kottke
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Now that Black Panther is out on home video, Screen Junkies got enough footage to give it an Honest Trailer. And an Honest Trailer is necessary because you probably enjoyed the movie so much that you missed the plot holes. And you can't have a superhero movie without plot holes.
Early Monday morning, police in Cumberland, Wisconsin, got an alarming call — a car had been driven into the office of the local high school principal.
But wait, something's not right. Is that duct tape on the edges of the hole? Yes, it was all an elaborate prank, pulled by a group of seniors at the high school. In the dead of night, they had hauled in a half-car, loose bricks, and plastic sheeting to create the "hole" in the school wall. Written on the back window of the car was the message "Class of 2018 Beavers We're Bustin Out!" Once the school administrators and police got a good look at the scene, they had to laugh. It was all accomplished with no damage to the school. The local police were so impressed with the illusion, they shared it at Facebook. Not only that, they took the opportunity to use the setting for an anti-teen drinking PSA photo. Read the complete story of the prank at Buzzfeed.
(Image credit: Cumberland, WI Police Department)
What do you hear?! Yanny or Laurel pic.twitter.com/jvHhCbMc8I
— Cloe Feldman (@CloeCouture) May 15, 2018
The internet has something new to argue about. Is this voice saying "Yanny" or "Laurel"? The more you listen to it, the more you might be unsure. Supposedly, younger people tend to hear Yanny while older people tend to hear Laurel. The pitch is completely different, and I hear both at the same time. Which one you hear may also depend on your device and the volume. Scientists are trying to explain why people hear different things.
Raul Veiga, CEO of production company Radial Producoes, said it's an example of the McGurk Effect — when you hear something different from the actual sound because of visual stimulus.
"So...it’s actually a very poor quality recording and the brain gets influenced by what you read first, before you actually hear it. What gets people confused is that it’s not Yanny or Laurel, it’s more of a YAREL thing," he said.
The device you're using to listen it on can also have an effect.
"Different speakers or headphones can have drastically different frequency response profiles (for instance, laptop speakers have limited low frequency response), which will lead to either name being more emphasized to a listener," Poppy Crum, chief scientist at Dolby Laboratories, said in a statement.
The different words people hear is making this the "what color is this dress" controversy of 2018. What are you hearing? -via Buzzfeed
Update: The original source for the recording is at the Vocabulary.com Dictionary. Yes, it's the pronunciation for "laurel." The New York Times has a tool for turning the distortion up and down so you can her both words.
The Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody covers the rise of Queen from 1970 to 1985. Rami Malek stars as Mercury. The movie won't be in theaters until November 2, but today the first teaser trailer is out to make us impatient for more. -via the A.V. Club
You can rewind to begin this video at the beginning, but that part contains plenty of NSFW language. The real fun starts at :57. YouTuber penguinz0 picked up 5400 balls for a song at the Toys R Us going out of business sale and turned his hallway into a ball pit. His dog is bursting with pure joy at figuring out all the ways to play in it. That's a good dog. -via Boing Boing
The jaguar is the biggest cat in the Western Hemisphere. Weighing 100 to 200 pounds and strong enough to drag a tapir up a tree, they roam the wilderness of Peru’s Candamo Valley. That's where Nadia Drake went with a research expedition to study macaws. They were told that that area was so uninhabited that the wildlife don't know enough about humans to be afraid of us. One night, a jaguar (the one in the photo) was seen observing the path between the camp and their latrine, causing the crew of nine to make other arrangements. Drake fell asleep, and was wakened by a coworker insisting they abandon camp.
Instead, I saw eight people standing almost completely still, transfixed by the large, dappled cat gracefully, silently stepping down the hill. Her muscled body stretched and contracted as if she were a coiled spring, each foot falling perfectly into place. When she reached the small, shrubby patch of forest, she paused, settled down in the foliage, and stared at us.
No one knew what to do. Though the cat was not displaying any signs of aggression, we were a leap away from an apex predator that kills with a single bite and easily outweighed the smallest of us.
Unarmed, and reasoning that perhaps she might behave similarly to pumas—who retreat from or don’t bother larger animals—several of our team decided to link arms and slowly walk toward her, with the intention of gently driving her back into the forest. But as the human chain began moving down the trail, the jungle’s fiercest beast rose onto her paws and did a most unexpected thing: She padded toward them. Calmly, quietly, one foot in front of the other, the jaguar walked even farther into camp, on a collision course with our burliest crew members.
Drake obviously survived the encounter. While telling the story, she shares a lot of information about jaguars with us at The Atlantic. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Nadia Drake)
The reason we have banking regulations is because there's always someone out there who wants your money for themselves. Among the many scammers of the 19th century was Sarah Howe, who ran a Ponzi scheme 40 years before Charles Ponzi gave it a name. The Ladies' Deposit Company was referred to as a bank, an investment plan, and a charity at different times depending on who was asking.
Sarah Howe never disclosed the methods by which she did business. After establishing the Ladies' Deposit Company in an unassuming brick building in Boston's South End around 1879, the former fortuneteller refused to solicit clients for her brand-new bank. There was no advertising, and no public announcement. Instead, members could only be referred by other members in good standing. They had to be single women, not rich, who didn't own their own homes. Deposits could only be made in amounts of more than $200 but less than $1000, and returns were set at 8 percent interest per month—an incredible amount then as well as today.
Despite the lack of advertising, word of the Ladies' Deposit Company traveled quickly among Boston's working-class women. Howe's selectiveness endeared her to potential clients, as did the fact that she presented herself as a maternal figure at a time when gender stereotypes and predatory practices often left women and their money at the mercy of men. She even invited her select few depositors to sit with her, offering small talk and compliments. The experience seemed, as one woman put it, "sympathetic."
Howe had 1200 depositors within the first year, and bought herself a fine house. But publicity led some her her clients to attempt to withdraw their deposits, and the house of cards came crashing down. But Howe Howe was just getting started. Read about the swindler Sarah Howe and her banking business at Mental Floss.
Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot has learned to run and jump! The company unveiled a demonstration of the robot's new skills last week, and Auralnauts wasted no time giving the footage a plot. Here is their remix making Atlas an escapee from the factory. -via Laughing Squid
Kieran is trying to learn how to drive. A stick shift. Anyone who has ever tried to teach driving to a novice can relate to the terror in his parents' eyes. Then imagine the difficulty of having to drive on the wrong side of the road, as they do in Australia. It's very stressful. I taught my kids to drive on an automatic, then they came back years later and wanted me to teach them to drive my clutch Camry. I gave them the keys and told them to go do it on their own, since they have licenses now. -via Digg
As someone who does not eat seafood, I never thought much about seafood recipes. I've read in several places that you shouldn't combine cheese with seafood. Okay, but why? I assumed it was some ancient prohibition against combining a food that spoils easily (seafood) with a food that uses things like bacteria or fungus to exist at all (cheese). Dan Nosowitz did some research on the "rule," and found that it is far from universal.
The prohibition on combining seafood and cheese is ancient and strong, but localized. The Top Chef judges state this prohibition as if it is a universal rule, but of course there are dozens of centuries-old dishes combining seafood and cheese that are beloved outside the United States—in Greece, Mexico, France, and even in specific pockets of the U.S. itself. To assume that the combination of seafood and cheese is inherently wrong is bizarre, and yet common. So where did it come from?
“It definitely originated in Italy, there’s no doubt about that,” says Julia della Croce, a cookbook author, teacher, writer, and one of America’s foremost experts on Italian cuisine. “Italians are very religious about mixing cheese and fish or seafood, it just isn’t done.” I spoke with several food historians and nobody seems to disagree on this point: The prohibition, and its aggressiveness, come from Italy.
The next question is why. While there is no consensus on the reason, there are quite a few possibilities, which you can read about at Gastro Obscura.
(Image credit: Aïda Amer)
A mushroom hunter came across a dead fawn, or rather, two dead fawns in one body. The conjoined twins are considered to be the first known instance of a wild deer bringing a two-headed fawn to term. A necropsy determined that the white-tailed deer had two heads and necks, but shared a single liver and digestive tract.
“Their anatomy indicates the fawns would never have been viable,” D’Angelo told UGA Today. “Yet, they were found groomed and in a natural position, suggesting that the doe tried to care for them after delivery. The maternal instinct is very strong.”
The conjoined fawns discovered in a Minnesota forest in 2016 is the first recorded case of a conjoined white-tailed deer brought to full-term and born, according to a recently published study. (Minnesota DNR)
The conjoined fawns have since been mounted on a bed of greenery by Wild Images In Motion Taxidermy, and will now be positioned as it is just waking from a nap. The mount will eventually be moved to the Minnesota DNR headquarters in St. Paul and placed on public display, according to FOX9.
Read more at Fox News. -via reddit
(Image credit: Minnesota Department of Natural Resources)
South Korea has a TV show called King of Masked Singer that's like The Voice in that people compete in a talent show without showing their faces, but instead of facing away from the judges, the contestants perform in ridiculous masks. In the above video, a competitor in a unicorn mask sings the song "Tomorrow" from the musical Annie. The audience and the judges are impressed. If you don't care for the song, you can skip to the second video, in which the identity of the singer is revealed.
It's Ryan Reynolds, who was in South Korea promoting the movie Deadpool 2. The reaction from the reveal is so over-the-top, you can be sure the movie will do well there. -via Tastefully Offensive
Selfies with pets may be fairly new, but people have considered pets as part of the family for a long, long time. Before photography, those who could afford portraits to be painted often included their beloved pet, so we have documented evidence of their existence hundreds of years later. And often, the stories behind them, too, like the caption for the picture above.
I adore this cat’s disgruntled expression. It even looks a bit like its owner, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. Keith Thomas says that this 1603 portrait, which commemorates the Earl’s stay in the Tower of London after Essex’s failed rebellion, depicts ‘an extremely sleek and alert cat [which was] his companion in imprisonment’ (p. 109).
See a collection of portraits painted from the 16th to the 20th centuries that includes the subject's pet at Dance's Historical Miscellany. -via Nag on the Lake
This is the final lap of an 800 meter race at the IUAA Indoor Championships last year. The front runner falls victim to a flexible pole vault crossbar as he approaches the finish line. Why is the pole vault practice set up so close to the track? Of course, you have to wonder how the judges will deal with the circumstances. It turns out that this is a qualifying heat, and the runner was passed to the finals along with the actual first-place finisher. -via reddit
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