Have you ever come up with a really good line, but you ended up using it too many times? It was only funny the first time. Luke is going to end up wishing he'd been left frozen on Hoth if he has to hear that one time and time again. But in the latest comic from The Obscure Gentlemen, he ends up putting a curse on his best friend.
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Kaplamino, a talented toy builder who has a slanted table and plenty of free time, harnessed the power of fidget spinners for his latest chain reaction marble run. Ten of them made the grade, and they do multiple clever tricks in this video.
Yes I bought 50 fidget spinners just to do it, don't judge me :(
Hey, they're pretty cheap now, I hear. See more of Kaplamino's awesome chain reactions. -via reddit
(Image credit: Stan Shebs)
The following article is from Uncle John’s Factastic Bathroom Reader.
Unless you happen to be a Russian history buff, you probably don’t know much about Czar Alexander III. But if you’re a fan of Fabergé eggs, you have him (and Carl Fabergé, of course) to thank for them.
HOW EGGS-CITING
In 1885 the emperor, or czar, of Russia, Alexander III, placed an order with his jeweler for a decorative Easter egg for his wife, the czarina Marie Feodorovna. Alexander had given his wife jeweled Easter eggs before: Easter was the most important holiday on the Russian Orthodox calendar, and eggs were traditionally given as gifts. But this year’s egg would be different, because Alexander placed his order with a new jeweler: 38-year-old Carl Fabergé.
Fabergé differed from other jewelers who served the Imperial court in that he was more interested in clever design and exquisite craftsmanship than in merely festooning his creations with gold and precious gems (though his eggs would have plenty of those) without showing much imagination. “Expensive things interest me little if the value is merely in so many diamonds and pearls,” he said.
NEST EGG
That first Imperial Easter egg was very plain indeed, but only on the surface: known today simply as the 1885 Hen Egg, it was 2½ inches long and made of gold but had a plain white enamel shell to give it the appearance of an ordinary duck egg. When the two halves of the egg were pulled apart, they revealed a golden yolk that in turn opened to reveal a golden hen “surprise” sitting on a nest of golden straw. The hen was hinged at its tail feathers and split open to reveal a small golden replica of the Imperial crown; hanging from the crown was a tiny ruby pendant that Marie Feodorovna could wear around her neck on a gold chain that came with the egg.
As far back as anyone can recall, American high schools have printed yearbooks to celebrate the accomplishments of their graduating seniors and other students, and to serve as a souvenir book with pictures of their carefree student days. This high school yearbook called '43 Ramblings chronicled the proud students of Topaz High School in Utah, which was the school for residents of Topaz Internment Camp. The students had been shipped in from their original schools up and down the West Coast, and continued their education at the school created for them. Topaz was several times the size of the better-known Manzanar Camp, with over 8,000 people at its peak.
Utah State University has archived the 1943 and 1944 editions of the Topaz High School Ramblings yearbook. With a cursory browse, the Topaz High Rams look just like any other 1940s high school students. They played sports, printed alma mater lyrics that probably nobody knew by heart, and produced a slick-looking literary magazine. Topaz High was a prison camp school for unjustly incarcerated Americans, but the yearbooks provide the perception of normalcy.
In the 1943 Ramblings, the beginning dedication reads, “This year finds us vastly different from our naive selves of previous years.” Alongside photos of students, the old high schools they attended, mostly in California and Washington, are listed directly above their Topaz High School activities.
Imagine showing your grandchildren that you were once "The Brainiest of the brainier girls," and then explaining why you graduated from a school in Utah. Read about Topaz High School at Atlas Obscura, and browse through the yearbooks at Utah State University's Digital Collections.
Just because Pi Day has come and gone, that doesn't mean you can't make a pie this weekend. Right now, I have inspiration and some blueberries in the house ready to go. Lauren Ko makes beautiful pies that have to taste as good as they look. Her pies get intricately-designed upper crusts and her tarts feature mosaics of cut fruit in geometric shapes.
See more of Ko's lovely pies at Instagram, and read about them at Lokokitchen. If you'd like to see how she makes her pies, there's a video at Boing Boing.
(Image credit: Lauren Ko)
An entire generation of American children know and love Fred Rogers from his TV show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Over the years, many were delighted to find out that Rogers was never playing a character, that he was exactly the same off camera. Even when Candid Camera tried to get a rise out of him. He didn't react the way they expected.
It seems like a lame prank, but this was recorded before smart phones and WiFi were everywhere, when many travelers would look forward to watching TV in their hotel rooms. But not Rogers! He let the small things go, and even when he was tired he never missed an opportunity to treat people kindly and make them feel good. -via reddit
Redditor captainford80 runs a towboat that pushes barges on the lower Mississippi River. He declined to give a more exact location where he took this picture of a storm about a mile away.
There was a storm with a lot of lightning so I stood on the deck and was using a burst shot didn’t realize I even caught the picture till I went back and looked
He says there was no editing and no filters used, those awesome colors were just there, although they appeared and disappeared so quickly that getting the shot was pure serendipity.
UNREAL.
— NCAA March Madness (@marchmadness) March 17, 2018
UMBC becomes the first 16 seed to upset to beat a No. 1 seed!#MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/iLdbVhNC0A
The NCAA March Madness basketball tournament pits 64 college teams against each other to determine the national champion. Teams are ranked 1 through 16 for each grand division. The four best-ranked teams get an easy first game because they are playing #16 seeds. This is usually considered an elimination game. In the men's NCAA basketball history, there have been 135 matchups between #1 seeds and #16 seeds, and the #1 seed always wins. Until last night, when the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) Retrievers beat the Virginia Cavaliers. And it wasn't even close. UMBC held it to a tie as halftime, and ended up with a score of 74-54. Jarius Lyles, who scored 28 points against the school both his parents graduated from, got the honor of filling in the bracket win.
"WE JUST MADE HISTORY!" #MarchMadnesspic.twitter.com/5NpKkxUFOx
— NCAA March Madness (@marchmadness) March 17, 2018
The odds going into the game were so lopsided that one gambler won $16,800 by putting $800 down on UMBC.
Here is the $800ML that was placed on UMBC at the @CGTechnology_ book at the @VenetianVegas wins 16k pic.twitter.com/TLWY8dHyBm
— Jason Simbal (@jsimbal) March 17, 2018
While UMBC goes into the record books, fans across the country are mourning their wrecked tournament brackets. And it's only the first round. UMBC plays #9 seed Kansas State in the second round on Sunday.
This world map is labeled not with country names, but with a bit of history of the country names. NeoMam Studios took the names of each country in the native language and found the original meaning of each name. Senegal becomes Our Canoe, Azerbaijan becomes Protected by Fire, Mexico is In the Navel of the Moon, and Spain is Land of Many Rabbits. Most end up being some variation of "land of the people who live here," but many are quite descriptive and some are real head scratchers.
See the full map and each continent at Credit Card Compare. Explore a database of the research that led to these names as well. -via Nag on the Lake
A few years ago, you could buy a house in Detroit for $10 or so, as long as you paid the back taxes and either repaired it or tore it down. This is not at all like that. This house lists for $550,000. While the house looks rather normal (if a little frilly) from the front view, wait until you see the inside.
The home is filled with art, collectibles, and kitsch of all kinds, and includes a two-car garage and a heated pool with cabana. The kicker is that all the contents of the house comes with it if you buy it, and that includes the grand piano, pool table, and a couple of cars.
The home will only be shown on sunny days, and only if the potential buyer can show ability to pay. See 70 pictures of the house at the real estate listing. Meanwhile, there are several homes in the same neighborhood that are listed for less than $10K. -via Metafilter
It's a little strange to hear a chemist refer to a compound as "angry" or "vicious," much less "evil." But after seeing how manganese heptoxide reacts to everything, I can see that the adjective "volatile" doesn't quite do the job. Wikipedia says that manganese heptoxide is "more often discussed than intentionally prepared." YouTuber styropyro (Drake Anthony) mixes some up to show us why. This chemical hates everything. Even heat. Well, except for glass or ceramic, since otherwise you wouldn't have a container to make it in. No wonder he calls it a "demon molecule"! -via Digg
Update: It appears that Drake has been suspended from YouTube. He explains in a video in the comments below. So instead of the original video, here is a short clip from Instagram, in which he mixes up manganese heptoxide on a wood block.
Rose O’Neill was an illustrator from Nebraska who went to seek her fortune in New York City at age 19. She made herself a reputation as a hardworking and versatile artist, and in 1909 created the adorable little sprites that became known as Kewpies.
She often worked from Bonniebrook as the New York offices didn’t have bathrooms for women, says Linda Brewster, who has written two books on O’Neill with a third on the way. While in Bonniebrook in 1909, O’Neill would illustrate her most lasting creation: Kewpies. Adapted from the classic “cupids,” O’Neill’s smirking, cherub-like characters with rosy cheeks came about when a Ladies’ Home Journal editor asked her to create “a series of little creatures,” as O’Neill recounted in her autobiography. The editor had seen O’Neill’s drawings of cupids elsewhere and wanted something similar in the magazine.
In her autobiography, O’Neill wrote that the Kewpie is “a benevolent elf who did good deeds in a funny way.” The initial iterations of the Kewpies came with accompanying verses invented by O’Neill. “I thought about the Kewpies so much that I had a dream about them where they were all doing acrobatic pranks on the coverlet of my bed,” she wrote.
Kewpies were a sensation, and the dolls bearing their likeness were first produced in 1912. But what most people today don't know is how O’Neill used her Kewpie drawings to illustrate progressive ideas, such as racial and economic equality and, most of all, women's suffrage. Read the story of Rose O’Neill and her Kewpies at Smithsonian.
It was horror on the slopes at a ski resort in the nation of Georgia earlier today when a ski lift began running in reverse, pulling skiers down the hill at faster and faster speeds. Some managed to jump off before reaching the bottom, while others were flung off. When the gondolas began tangling up, the crowd screamed for everyone else to ditch the lift before they reached the bottom.
Yuri Leontyev, 32, from Belarus, was on the ski lift with two friends when the incident occurred. He filmed people being thrown off of the chairs, landing in the snow.
"The ski lift stopped and started going in reverse," he told CNN. "We had to jump from it, because at the bottom (of the hill) it was total trash and no chance to stay safe."
"We jumped, moved to a safe area, and made a short video," he added
Another eyewitness, Ukrainian Iryna Iadak, was on the lift with her boyfriend.
"The movement of the lift stopped and a minute later we drove back," she told CNN. "The speed increased, it was out of control. The lift could not be stopped. People began to jump from different altitudes, panic began. Many did not manage to jump off and were thrown out from the impact."
Ten people were injured, and were taken to safety by the ski patrol and three ambulances. There are more videos of the incident at CNN. -via Boing Boing
I suspect he didn't think his cunning plan all the way through. He had a goal in mind, and he achieved that goal. Now what? This is like winning a huge lottery payout: you've dreamed of it all your life, but there are consequences to wrestle with after achieving your goal. It's always good to think beyond winning. This is the new comic from Alex Culang and Raynato Castro at Buttersafe.
As we saw in a post yesterday, the things we see in movies and TV shows are very different from real life, usually for dramatic purposes. Sure, if life were always dramatic, we wouldn't need the escape of entertainment. Then there's the stuff we really don't know much about, and since we only see it on TV, we don't know how accurate it is or isn't. Surgeon Annie Onishi of Columbia University tells us how real life surgery and medical emergencies differ from the TV version.
Onishi covers an awful lot of medical subjects you've seen in movies and TV. A few scenes may be too graphic if you're a bit squeamish about medical procedures. It's nice to know that real-life surgery is in the hands of trained and non-dramatic people. -via Laughing Squid
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