Jeff Goldblum has a particular talent for making the characters he portrays sound like real people. Scripts don't often contain stammers, fillers, or wordless vocal responses, but real life communication is full of them. While these strange vocalizations are perfectly normal in their place, and do a lot to lend credence to a character, they are hilarious compiled together with no context. -via Geeks Are Sexy
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Unless you live near a commercial harbor or work in the industry, you might not know the ins and outs of the shipping business. And that's most of us. But tugboat operators see giant container ships up close and personal. They not only know how to haul those big ships around, they know how to read their secret language.
Tugboat crews routinely encounter what few of us will ever see. They easily read a vessel’s size, shape, function, and features, while deciphering at a glance the mysterious numbers, letters, and symbols on a ship’s hull. To non-mariners, the markings look like hieroglyphs. For those in the know, they speak volumes about a particular ship and also about the shipping industry.
The numbers, marks, and even the color scheme of a ship can tell strangers the ship's size, depth, underwater shape, origin, and how much of its capacity is loaded. There are special marks to help tugboat operators, maintenance crews, and inspectors do their work. If you've ever wondered what all that stuff on the outside of a ship means, you'll find an explanation at Hakai magazine. -via TYWKIWDBI
(Image credit: David Webster Smith)
Don't blame the weatherman for the weather. Garry Frank is the meteorologist at WXMI in Grand Rapids, Michigan. That's a thankless job, as Michigan can be pretty cold. On Tuesday, he'd had enough of it. Hey, he only reports the weather forecast, he doesn't cause it. If you shoot the messenger over bad weather, you'll end up with no forecast at all. The real kicker is that Tuesday's forecast was for somewhat warmer temperatures and his co-workers still complained! -via Digg
The producers of The Walking Dead have been building up to this Sunday's episode for about three years now, and fans have become fatigued with the "all out war" between Rick's group, with their allies from various communities, and the Saviors under the leadership of Negan. This conflict should have been wrapped up a year ago. We've been told it will conclude this weekend. Season nine is going to be very different, which is promising. But first we have to have a final battle, and someone, maybe a lot of people, are going to die. Continue reading for the prospects of each character, which contain spoilers for those not current in the series.
Eastern Europe did not have as many hotels under Communist rule as they do today, but back then the hotels were huge, grand in their brutalist way, and dominated the market. The government owned them, so they simplified tourism by putting everyone into one building. That made it easier to serve travelers and tourists ...and easier to keep an eye on them. Each nation had an agency that oversaw all hotels.
It’s not immediately obvious why the party and state-security apparatus would take such a keen interest in running hotels, until you consider the fact that these places were tremendous moneymakers for the regimes.
They could charge for the rooms and meals in hard currencies (mainly, at the time, U.S. dollars or German marks) and had a captive clientele of relatively well-off foreigners to whom they could market their off-the-books services like prostitution and money changing.
There was simply too much cash floating around to pass up.
Many of these hotels remain decades later. Even though they've been remodeled after the fall of Communism, they still retain their Soviet-era creepiness, which is particularly obvious to those who recall those days. See a roundup of such hotels at Radio Free Europe. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Mark Baker)
It's a great deal of trouble to get your kids to pick up their LEGO blocks that end up all over the floor. It would be easier to just do it yourself, but the one who left them in the floor should do it. However, if your kid is a talented engineer like YouTuber The Brick Wall, he or she will invent a machine to do it. The Lego Rumba is a machine that picks up LEGO pieces, itself made of LEGO pieces. My guess is that "Rumba" is pronounced like the vacuum instead of the dance. Watch it in action.
To be honest, this is an automated broom and dustpan. But for kids who need to pick up their toys, it's a lot more fun. -via Geeks Are Sexy
Iceland has 340,000 people and averages only 1.6 murders a year. Most of those are young men killed by someone who knew them, as in fights. Iceland's most famous murder case took place in 1828, but a 2017 case may eclipse it. On January 13, Birna Brjánsdóttir disappeared while walking home from a night out on the town in Reykjavík. The investigation into Brjánsdóttir's disappearance involved the police and the citizens of Reykjavík, who spread the word through social media and pitched in to find the young woman, or evidence of her fate.
On the morning of Saturday 21 January, a week after she vanished, the biggest search operation in Iceland’s history began. Ice-Sar alone deployed 835 volunteers and 87 vehicles, an extraordinary response in a small country. Across the island, people waited anxiously for updates.
“Today she is our sister, our daughter – that became the mantra,” said Guðbrandur Örn Arnarson, Ice-Sar’s project manager. “We don’t live in a society where we tolerate a 20-year-old woman being abducted in the night.”
Clues led to an international fishing trawler, a rental car spattered with blood, and almost $2 million worth of hashish. Read the entire story as it unfolded at The Guardian.
(Image credit: Reykjavik Metropolitan Police)
The folks from The Cut drew a colorful hopscotch board on a sidewalk in Seattle, just to see how many people would use it. They recorded video for ten hours and counted the people who walked by. To be honest, only a small percentage of people tried it, but thankfully, this video is mostly edited to show those who did.
And they are worth watching. The simple game brought a smile to a lot of faces. -via Tastefully Offensive
Let me tell you a story about how a typo helped end World War Two... (thread) pic.twitter.com/HxismWwlzE
— Florence Schechter (@floschechter) April 9, 2018
Geoffrey Tandy was a highly-regarded marine biologist at the Natural History Museum in 1939, when he volunteered for the Royal Navy Reserves. The powers-that-be saw Tandy's information and immediately summoned him to Bletchley Park for a secret mission, cracking Axis codes.
They show him the enigma machine and are like "dude, you gotta help us crack it - you're the best cryptogrammist in all of the UK!". And poor Geoff is like "this is super awks, I'm a cryptoGAMMIST not a cryptoGRAMMIST. I'm not a specialist in codes, I'm a specialist in algae..." pic.twitter.com/tJymArsZ1k
— Florence Schechter (@floschechter) April 9, 2018
Once the mistake was revealed, they couldn't just dismiss Tandy from the secret project, but what could he do? So Tandy remained attached to Bletchley Park, and two years later, became the hero of the secret cryptography department when his exact expertise was needed. Comedian Florence Schechter tells the entire story in a thread at Twitter, with illustrations. Even if you hate reading Twitter threads, this one is well worth the effort, and she has a list of sources at the end in case you want to read more about Tandy and his adventures during the war. -via Mental Floss
A global industry exists to set standards for everything, from the kilogram to keeping time. There's even a set international standard set for making tea. People will argue their entire lives about the best way to make a cup of tea, but few have ever made an International Standard cup of tea, and Tom Scott explains why.
I make tea all afternoon and evening when the morning coffee pot runs out, so I take all the shortcuts: teabags and a microwave. That's because tea isn't a social occasion or a treat for me -it's what I drink. The standard for most Americans was posted at reddit.
Your mileage may vary. -via Geeks Are Sexy
The ability to use GPS, or SatNav if you're British, is a modern convenience that boggles the mind for those of us who managed to travel without it for years. However, there's still value in learning to navigate the old-fashioned way, with hard copy maps, a trained sense of direction, and the willingness to ask for directions. Those skills might lead you to a nagging suspicion that Google Maps isn't leading you in the right direction, and it's time to double check. If you place too much trust in your map app, you could learn better by reading some chilling stories of complete failure.
In 2017, 24-year-old [Amber] VanHecke had embarked on a solo trip to the Grand Canyon. In the middle of the Arizona desert, she noticed that she only had 70 miles' worth of gas left in the tank. Not an issue, as her Google Maps reassured her that she was only 35 miles away from a highway. Trusting Google, she obediently followed the app to bring her safely to civilization. Instead, Google told her to turn onto a completely nonexistent road, which led her to a nonexistent spot on the map. And then she ran out of gas.
VanHecke spent five days in the desert before help arrived. Unlike most travelers, she had a supply of water and food in her car. Read her story and six others at Cracked.
(Image credit: Arizona Department of Public Safety)
The Greatest Showman was loosely based on the life of PT Barnum. Proving that there's a sucker born every minute, my brother took his entire family to see the movie without realizing that it's a musical. That bothered him more than the fact that the story was totally fictional and had nothing to do with the real Barnum.
Screen Junkies corrects that by giving new lyrics to the songs in this Honest Trailer for The Greatest Showman.
Millions of people have spent time in the U.S. military over the past 250 years, and they come home with valuable life skills that go far beyond warfare. Service leaves you no time to waste, so any period that's not filled with the task at hand can be used to catch up on sleep, particularly during travel. You can't let uncomfortable seats, changing schedules, or tomorrow's plans get in the way.
If your to-do list springs to mind just as you’re nodding off, there’s a low-tech solution for that, courtesy of Ben Feibleman, a Marine Corps vet who has visited more than 50 countries. “I've found it's easier if I keep a notepad with me or on my nightstand,” he says. “I write down what I can't stop thinking about as a kind of to-do list for the morning. That works as an ‘unburdening the mind’ trick.”
For extra unwinding, try some on some oms. “Meditation has helped me to have much greater control of my mind, curb that irritating inner-dialogue, and fend off unwelcome thoughts,” Burton says. “Not only do I sleep better, but I'm much more able to focus on and comprehend more of the world around me.”
Thrillist spoke to several veterans who shared a variety of tips for falling asleep when the opportunity was there. -via Digg
(Image credit: Flickr user DVIDSHUB)
New York's Radio City Music Hall opened in 1932, and has remained one of the crown jewels of the city ever since. It was largely the work of impresario Roxy Rothafel, who had also opened the Roxy Theater not long before. Rothafel incorporated many of his grand ideas into the new showplace, including the multiple balconies, oval theater shape, and lobby murals. He pioneered the use of a live orchestra to accompany movies, and gave us the line of dancers we know as the Rockettes. For all this, he got his own apartment inside Radio City Music Hall. But Rothafel only enjoyed it a few years before he died in 1936. The apartment was locked, to become a time capsule of the period. Today it is only open for special occasions, but we can take a peek inside at Messy Nessy Chic.
(Image credit: Luke J. Spencer)
Joseph Herscher of Joseph's Machines (previously) designed a delightful and inventive chain-reaction sequence that serves him a piece of delicious pineapple upside-down cake. This one involves crashing electronics, a baby playing with a phone, and a candle that initiates motion by melting butter. The wheel that rolls over his head is a bonus. And the baby gets a piece of cake, too! The story behind the cake server is in a different video. -via Boing Boing
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