Etsy vendor 1Man1Garage designs and makes all kinds of flat-pack kits for a bit of household whimsy, including this lovely birdhouse that resembles a vintage camper trailer. Punch out the pieces and assemble them, and you can decorate it any way you like. You have the option of plain or pre-painted wood, with an optional eight-color paint set. The only thing that could make this cuter is a family of birds inside! -via Boing Boing
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If you've ever been a bridesmaid in a large wedding, you know for sure that you don't ever wear the same dress again. What the question refers to is multiple bridesmaids wearing matching dresses to that wedding. Or at least dresses that match in color. And at it stands now, those dresses are traditionally unsuitable for any other occasion and don't look anything like the bride's dress.
It’s easy to imagine that the uniforms the bride-to-be chooses for her bridesmaids are created in order to make herself more dazzling by comparison. That may be true for some brides, but it’s not where the tradition started.
There's a superstitious reason for the tradition of having multiple bridesmaid that look alike, which you can read about at Mental Floss.
When a raccoon invades your swimming pool, you may as well put him to work -as a swimming instructor! La Piscine (The Swimming Lesson) is the latest from Faireset and his magnificent YouTube channel Parole de chat. You may have to watch twice, because unless you're fluent in French Canadian, you'll have to follow the subtitles. See more of Faireset's nonsense in our previous posts. -via Metafilter
Four years after Boko Haram kidnapped more than 200 girls from their school in Chibok, Nigeria, half of them have been freed. A few escaped, but most were released in groups over time as the Nigerian government negotiated with their captors. One woman, who had been married before the kidnapping, returned to her husband and farm. The rest were taken in by the American University of Nigeria, an elite private university where they live, eat, and study together, away from the other students.
But security restrictions on the Chibok students are especially tight. They are not allowed to leave campus without an escort. They can’t have visitors without special permission. And though some of the women gave birth during their captivity, their children are not allowed to stay with them at the university. Administrators say that would distract from their studies.
In fact, the young women have rarely seen their families since they were freed from Boko Haram. The longest period they have spent with their parents, siblings and other relatives since their abduction in 2014 was over Christmas break last year, when they went home for a couple of weeks. Other than that, they have been under close supervision by officials and educators.
As soon as they were released from Boko Haram, the women were whisked to Abuja, the capital, where they spent weeks in the government’s custody, questioned for information that could help find their still-missing classmates — and to satisfy officials that they had not grown loyal to Boko Haram.
Security agents warned the young women not to talk about their time with militants, arguing that it might jeopardize the safety of the students still held captive. Forget about the past and move forward, they were told.
The Nigerian government considers the women, now all in their 20s, to be vulnerable not only to targeting by Boko Haram, but by others who would exploit them for financial or political reasons. Read about the former captives and their lives after Boko Haram at The New York Times. The article is accompanied by 84 portraits of the women as they are now. -via Nag on the Lake
(Image credit: Flickr user Michael Fleshman)
The steamship Iron Monarch had a ship's cat whose name was not recorded, but her feats of reproduction were. While the crew might have just called her "Pussy," they held the cat in high regard. In October of 1925, the ship was carrying a load of coal and facing gale force winds and crashing waves during a storm. The crew was busy holding things together.
And then through the spume that made its way from length to breadth of the ship, biting and lashing the faces of those who were “only doing their duty,” there was heard a thin, small voice, which asked in beseeching tones, “Oh, where is our poor old cat?”
And over the face of each seaman – men inured to hardship and rough life; mariners who have voyaged the seven seas of the world – came a pallor only associated with death or with some great mental upheaval. As one man, they rushed through the seething waters to all parts of the ship, jeopardizing their own lives (even, the cook left his galley) in the search for pussy.
They eventually found her, with nine new kittens born during the storm. That brought her lifetime record up to 62 kittens. If you got a smile out of that story, you'll want to read more tales of ship's cats at Seafurrers. -via Strange Company
Come close and watch robots in Emporia, Kansas, make Hostess cupcakes, donettes, and Twinkies! No, we're not going to get any recipes, but we will see battalions of cakes marching in formation through the factory as layer after layer of sweet sugary stuff is added to them. Cream filling? Check. Frosting? Check. Swirls? Check. Powdered sugar? Check. You might get a sugar high just by watching, but my guess is that you'll go find a sweet snack right after the video is finished. -via Geekologie
Dawson City in Yukon, Canada, became a hub of the gold rush in a hurry. Founded in 1896 just 350 miles below the Arctic Circle, the town's population grew to 40,000 people in just two years. That boom only lasted as a long as the gold rush, and then the Yukon capital leveled off to 8,000 inhabitants. But during its peak, Dawson City was the base where prospectors and miners (and the vendors who supported the industry) gathered for supplies, mail, and entertainment.
In its heyday, Dawson had been the final stop for a distribution chain that sent films and newsreels to the Yukon, receiving the best the movie industry had to offer. In fact, it was a bit of a hot-spot for certain Hollywood elite. Sid Grauman (of Grauman’s Chinese Theater) lived there for a while, as did director William Desmond Taylor who made over 59 silent films, including Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. When it came to sending back the film reels to Hollywood, it wasn’t exactly a priority for the town and by the 1920s, over 500,000 feet of film had accumulated in the basement of the local library.
This repository was forgotten for the next 50 years, and was only discovered in 1978. Read about Dawson City and its place in cinema history at Messy Nessy Chic.
Once you get over how strangely natural this glimpse of New York City from 100 years ago is, you start to notice how differently public space was used at the time. This was before roads were designated for cars, and were used by pedestrians, horses, and vendors as well as motorized vehicles. You might notice several elderly men with missing limbs, then you realize this is only 50 years after the start of the Civil War.
The Swedish company Svenska Biografteatern shot the original footage in 1911. Guy Jones adjusted the film speed to make it appear more natural, and added sound effects. -via Metafilter
The year 1923 was a momentous year for a young French writer named Raymond Radiguet. Radiguet began the year by publishing his first novel. He was also involved with a publicity campaign that focused on the author's age and changed the way books were marketed. In the spring of 1923, Radiguet had been catapulted into the rarified artistic circle that included Coco Chanel and Picasso. He and Jean Cocteau were invited to a series of seances hosted by married artists Jean and Valentine Hugo.
In a pink velvet-lined anteroom, the Hugos and their friends, including the artistic polymath Jean Cocteau and the avant-garde composer Georges Auric, encircled a wooden pedestal with a tripod base and tilting round top, a type of table reputed to encourage spiritual communion. Placing their hands on its surface, which was lacquered black and painted with flowers, they asked questions. The table tapped out answers on the floor (one tap meaning the letter a, and so on), which Jean Hugo wrote down. Over the course of these sittings, the clearest messages were intended for the youngest guest: the nineteen-year-old Raymond Radiguet, Cocteau’s protégé and lover, who had just published his scandalous debut novel, Le Diable au corps (The Devil in the Flesh). “Uneasiness will grow with genius,” claimed the “spirit.” Radiguet, the spirit said, “should love me for he loves nothing.” It warned: “Fame does not replace love even in death and I am death.” The following week came death’s final declaration: “I want his youth.”
While we aren't told who produced the messages of warning, it turned out to be an omen. Before the year was out, Radiguet was dead at the age of twenty. The things he said and did in the days leading up to his demise clearly indicated he knew death was imminent, even as those around him expected him to recover from illness. Read about the short but intense life of Raymond Radiguet at The Paris Review. -via Strange Company
The most striking thing about the appearance of the Mary River turtle is its habit of hosting growths of algae on its body, like the green mohawk and whiskers of this turtle photographed by Chris Van Wyk. But notice also the fingers coming from its chin. We first introduced you to the Mary river turtle ten years ago, but this strange creature is back in the news because it has been put on an endangered species list.
The 40cm long turtle, which is only found on the Mary river in Queensland, features in a new list of the most vulnerable reptile species compiled by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).
Despite the turtle’s punk appearance – derived from vertical strands of algae that also grow on its body – its docile nature made it historically popular as a pet.
Gill-like organs within its cloaca – an orifice used by reptiles for excretion and mating – enable it to stay underwater for up to three days, but it was unable to hide from the pet collectors who raided its nests during the 1960s and 1970s.
Strange how we pay attention to animal species mainly when we're about to lose them. Read more about the Mary river turtle at The Guardian. -via Dave Barry
Think fast, but be ready to follow through. In this case, following through meant dedication to defeating an opponent who won't back down, no matter what. The joke should have been a short one, but it wouldn't have been quite as funny. Funny or Die took the next step, and the next, and the next. -via reddit
The English language has a multitude of terms for insanity, although few of them are diagnostic terms for mental illness. Slang terms for "crazy" are used when a person has lost control or just doesn't make sense to those around him. These terms aren't confined to people, since a wild party or an unconventional building or a nonsensical movie can all be "bananas." But bananas, crackers, and nuts are the only food terms that came to mean crazy. Let's learn how that happened.
The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English traces the idea of bananas relating to craziness only back to the late 1910s; The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English roughly agrees, with its own etymology going back to 1924. These sources claim that the crazy banana meaning comes from the phrase “banana oil,” which, in flapper slang, meant “nonsense.”
Typically, the substance referred to as banana oil is amyl acetate, which is, insanely, used as both a paint solvent and as a flavoring. (It smells strongly, but not precisely, of bananas, which is partly why banana-flavored candies are distinct but not really banana-flavored.) Why did flappers like to use the phrase “banana oil” to mean “nonsense”? Possibly it’s related to “snake oil,” but I suspect it’s also because the word “banana,” coming from a language that has not given English very many words, sounds unusual to the ears of English speakers.
"Banana oil" fell out of use, but came back later, oil free. And what about nuts and crackers? Both terms mean things other than food, which makes their evolution into slang all the more difficult to trace. You can read the history of the food terms used for craziness at Atlas Obscura.
Two young cats made their way across a door frame in Russia in opposite directions, so they of course ran into each other. There's no room to turn around, so what can they do? Oh yeah, they could just jump to the floor, but that would be admitting defeat. The goats that got stuck on a ledge the other day could learn a thing or two from these kittens. -via Boing Boing
Nathan Pyle has given us some great comics over the years. Today, he posted a gallery of the "58 funniest drawings I have drawn as a drawer." It wasn't easy to select just a few from the 58 comics, so you'll want to go see the rest of them.
You can follow Pyle's work at Facebook and on Instagram.
-via reddit
The trick to playing an airport arrival prank is to be subtle enough for plausibility. Redditor ron1337 felt the need to explain that his family doesn't normally dress like this. Yet if any of these people were seen individually, one would assume that's their everyday appearance. Commenters who are familiar with Edmonton assured us that they wouldn't stand out all that much. One would also assume that the sign remained folded until the plane disembarked. His daughter Cindy had only been gone for three months, and found her welcome quite humorous. She's the one holding the dog.
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