In the fall of 2007, a simple animation about the difficulties of living with a cat hit the internet and became a sensation. It was a few months later, on March 4, 2008, that animator Simon Tofield signed up for a YouTube account, and things really took off for him and his cat. Today, Tofield posted this video to celebrate his channel's 10th anniversary. It's about a birthday cake only a cat could love.
Albert Ostman was a lumberjack who decided to get into the gold prospecting business. He went to British Columbia in 1924, where he set up camp at Toba Inlet. That was when he was kidnapped by a Bigfoot, but he didn't tell his story to the public until 1957. It started when he noticed that things in his camp were taken or moved around while he was gone prospecting. That discovery can make you lose sleep.
Albert Ostman decided he was going to find out the guilty party’s identity and, instead of going to sleep, he stayed wide awake in his sleeping bag, with his rifle right by his side. Unfortunately, a hard day toiling for gold took its toll and Ostman quickly fell asleep. But not for long: he was jolted from his sleep by a sensation of being scooped up and carried away while still in his sleeping bag. In fact, that’s exactly what happened. For roughly three hours or so, Ostman was unceremoniously carried through, up, and down, the dark woods by something large and powerful. According to Ostman, he had heard stories of “the mountain Sasquatch giants” from Native American sources. Finally, the terror-filled trek came to its end. That much was made clear when the mighty creature relaxed its grip on the sleeping bag and let it drop to the forest floor.
When daylight came the next morning, Ostman found himself surrounded by a family of Sasquatch, which he described in detail. He managed to escape after six days. Read the story of Ostman's adventure with Bigfoot at Mysterious Universe. You can read Albert Ostman's complete account here. -via Strange Company
While knowledge of natural remedies gets handed down from one generation to the next, you have to wonder about the first person to try opium, peyote, or coffee. Well, we know about coffee, which was consumed after a goat herder saw how it affected his flock. Maybe we picked up other remedies from the animal kingdom. Yes, animals have their own medicine, in a phenomenon called zoopharmacognosy.
The range of animals known to make use of medicinal materials is amazingly broad. To qualify as self-medication, the ingested material should not be part of the regular diet and should provide no known nutritional value. Dog lovers may be familiar with grass-eating, when our canine friends seek to soothe an upset stomach by eating indigestible plant material to induce vomiting. Other examples include certain types of parrots and macaws that eat clay to aid digestion. Some lizards feed on particular roots to help counteract snake venom. Pregnant lemurs have discovered the lemur version of prenatal vitamins, chewing particular leaves to aid milk production, labor, and reduce parasites. Brazilian spider monkeys take fertility-enhancing or contraceptive plants. Nor does self medicating need to be natural. Sparrows have been known to integrate cigarette butts into their nests, having somehow discovered that the nicotine residue impedes parasitic mites.
A slight shift in communication can make a completely different impression. A woman can raise the pitch and draw out the syllables, and suddenly the man talking to her feels he is smarter, stronger, and more protective. We don't know how long women have used a false voice to give the people around them a curated presentation of their personalities, but we have evidence going back as far as sound recording, and particularly movies. An example is given from a Saturday Night Live skit a few weeks ago that spoofed the TV show The Bachelor.
Most of the cast members depicting the contestants adopted a certain speaking style: monotonous, with elongated ending syllables and a lot of vocal fry, in line with the voice associated with “ditzy” girls today. But host Jessica Chastain’s interpretation was slightly different: her voice had a higher pitch and a little more musicality—more AMC than ABC. Though it sounded old-fashioned, it was clearly recognizable as part of a library of voices women have pulled from over the years to play silly, sappy, or simpering women.
A version of this voice has existed since sound met film and, in a way, since a little before that. Actresses of early film played mostly damsels in distress or wide-eyed young women, and by the time talkies took over, women were still portrayed as less headstrong, more head-in-the-clouds. “The 1920s had a serious case of the cutes,” notes Max Alvarez, a New York-based film historian. “There is a prevalence of childlike women in the popular culture [at the time] … Girlish figures, girlish fashion, girlish behavior.” Along with these girlish figures came a girlish voice—high-pitched, a bit breathy, and a little bit unsure, evident in Clara Bow’s pouty purr, and even Betty Boop’s singsong.
While the type of vocalizations that signal "sexy but dumb" have changed a bit over time, it is always recognized by the audience. Read about the 'ditz' voice and how it evolved in film at Atlas Obscura.
In the latest episode Lucas the Spider, the adorable little arachnid discovers a huge creature living in his house. He doesn't know what it is, but suspects it may be a polar bear. Is he afraid of it? Not nearly enough.
The Golden Raspberry Awards, for the worst in film during the previous year, have traditionally been awarded the day before the Oscars. This year, the Razzies honored The Emoji Movie with four of their ten awards: Worst Picture, Worst Screen Combo (Any Two Obnoxious Emojis), Worst Screenplay, and Worst Director (Tony Leondis). The other awards went to:
Worst Actress: Tyler Perry for BOO! 2: A Medea Halloween Worst Actor: Tom Cruise for The Mummy Worst Supporting Actor: Mel Gibson for Daddy’s Home 2 Worst Supporting Actress: Kim Basinger for Fifty Shades Darker Worst Remake, Ripoff, or Sequel: Fifty Shades Darker The Special Rotten Tomatoes Award (for a guilty pleasure): Baywatch
If you got a perverse kick out of the video Unsatisfying, you will like Life is Pain. Otherwise, you might feel some pain, but it's a relatable pain. YouTuber 4096 RED illustrates common experiences of modern life, painful as they may be.
In the grand scheme of things, none of these things are important. They could even be classified as "first world problems," but as everyday annoyances, they are shared by people far and wide. By the way, those chopsticks are still perfectly usable. -via reddit
You know how small towns love to hold an annual festival centered around a unique theme? Near where I live, there's the Daniel Boone Festival, because he came through the mountains there, and the Chicken Festival, centered around the home of Kentucky Fried Chicken. There are a lot of places where their biggest claim to fame is that a movie was filmed there. If it was a popular movie, the festival can draw a substantial crowd of fans from far away.
We've seen and read a lot about how intelligent octopuses are. That reputation has made them into the second most popular animal on the internet. Octopuses are quite clever, but should we stop eating them? That question is really two different questions. First, should intelligence be the standard by which we judge an animal to be edible or not, and second, is an octopus all that smart? One's desire to eat octopus may color one's judgement on this. Daniel Engber talked to octopus expert Binyamin Hochner the octopus and the studies that have been done so far.
The more I thought about the octopus, the more it disappointed me. I felt like maybe we’d been grading these creatures on a curve, such that even signs of their simplicity would be taken as amazing facts. Indeed, when Hochner and his colleagues first described the uncoordinated, wormlike movements of an octopus’s crawling, their finding was repackaged as a marvel. “There is a beautiful simplicity in the rhythmless dance of the octopus,” said the Journal of Experimental Biology, adding that the very automaticity of the process is “what makes the octopus truly unique.”
There are other studies, too, that seem like they ought to count against the octopus’s brainy reputation. In one recent experiment, Hochner’s group put octopuses inside a plastic box and made them reach their arms into a hole to get a piece of shrimp. In spite of their purported brilliance, the study found that octopuses did not learn to do the task any better over time. (They’re slow learners in other contexts, too.) And what about the classic research from the early 1990s, which suggested an octopus could learn to choose a colored ball just by watching other octopuses? That behavior, which helped make the octopus an “honorary vertebrate” for the purposes of British law, isn’t so extraordinary, even for invertebrates. Bumblebees, for example, can learn to choose between green and orange flowers after watching other bumblebees. Yet no one ever calls the bee “the genius of the garden.”
A treat for the eyes! Watch this time-lapse video of flowers growing and blooming (and reacting to strange outside forces like spilling ink) from Thomas Blanchard.
From an artistic point of view, the flowers are represented in the 4 seasons. The fire for the fall, ice for the winter, fast hatching (timelapses) for the spring and color inks for the summer.
Speed limits are something you might just take for granted. I know I did, until I taught my kids how to drive. We gradually went from low-speed city roads to the countryside, the bypass, and then the interstate, while I pointed out why conditions are different for each. The posted speed limit is affected by how curvy, crowded, and wide the road is, how many turnoffs and intersections there are, visibility, and a few other factors. The procedure for setting speed limits also includes engineers studying the "prevailing speed."
Our hypothetical engineer figures out how many drivers are on the road and how fast they drive. Once that data’s collected, it’s plotted out to help determine how fast the majority of drivers are traveling. In particular, the engineer wants to determine the “85th percentile speed”—meaning how fast 85 percent of the cars travel.
The 85th percentile speed, a blogger at engineer company SEH put it, is called the “prevailing speed,” because it’s considered the safest speed to travel. Interesting, right?
There are other factors that go into setting speed limits. And some places throw all the data out the window anyway, like speed traps where the limit is ridiculously low and long highways out west where the limit is pretty high. Read about how speed limit decisions are made at Jalopnik.
The original Star Wars trilogy established Darth Vader as a mysterious and truly badass villain. The prequels came along to take the mystery out of the villain, but by then the internet was here to encourage fans to coalesce their opinions into memes: the prequels were lame, Anakin was a whiner (as if Luke and Ben Solo aren't -it must be genetic), nothing will ever be as good as the original trilogy before the Special Editions. The stoic, terrifying Darth Vader couldn't have possibly been born from the emotional and needy young man we called Anakin.
And, yes: like that iconic Mean Girls character, Anakin Skywalker just has a lot of feelings. To be sure, his emotional outbursts in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith are incredibly difficult to watch. Most would say that the reason they’re difficult to watch is because George Lucas is terrible at writing dialogue and Hayden Christensen is terrible at acting and the result is a cringetastic cheesefest that has been meme-ified a million times over.
But I don’t think that’s entirely fair to Lucas’ story or Christensen’s acting. When it comes to what Anakin is actually saying, there is always a deeper meaning: his “I hate sand” speech is a veiled cry for help regarding his inability to overcome the trauma of his youth, while his fumbled confession of love for Padmé as they gaze into each other’s eyes next to a crackling fireplace in a cozy, dimly lit room (I mean, seriously, girl? You’re sending a pretty clear message there) is exactly what you’d expect from an emotionally stunted teenager.
Viewed as part of the larger story of Anakin’s life, his savagely violent outbursts carry weight as well. After unleashing his fury over his mother’s death on the Tusken villagers, Anakin confesses to Padmé in an anguished whirlwind of misplaced rage, desperately attempting to justify his actions while knowing in his heart that they were wrong. Later, Anakin’s terrified “what have I done?!” exclamation after aiding in the murder (or not) of Mace Windu reflects his belief that he has arrived at the point of no return – that whatever spark of good he may have fostered has suddenly been snuffed out. And his tortured scream of “I HATE YOU” after his battle with Obi-Wan… Well, I don’t need to dig too deep for that one. Between those three words and Obi-Wan’s tearful response (“You were my brother, Anakin! I loved you!”), there appears a boundless chasm of roiling, unspoken emotions. It breaks my heart every damn time.
Allyson Gronowitzlays out the argument that Anakin actually does have a rich psychological arc hiding beneath the stilted dialogue of the films, once you explore the forces that molded him, which are vastly augmented by non-film literature. The upshot is that Kylo Ren is turning out to be a better villain because of the lessons learned over six movies in 28 years that dealt with Anakin Skywalker. Take a dive into Anakin Skywalker's psyche at Slashfilm.
This strikes close to home for me. My youngest is trying to negotiate a graduation date. She could graduate in May of 2019 if she gets credit for this summer's internship and takes an online class at the same time, which could be difficult in the rainforest. Or she could graduate in August of 2019. But the internship credit depends on the cooperation of her advisor, who thinks she needs to take his mammalogy class to get into a good zoology graduate program, yet it won't be offered again until the fall of 2019. Neither will ornithology, which she really wants. That weird scheduling is why she is now taking organic chemistry 2 and biochemistry at the same time. It's good to know she's not the only one dealing with this stuff. The is the latest comic from Zach Weinersmith at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
Slang terms come and go, and if you keep using them, they will reveal your age. Things that are good can be the bee's knees, groovy, rad, or awesome, depending on the decade you're in. But good things can be cool, too, no matter what the decade. How did the word "cool" become immortal?
Linguist Arika Okrent and illustrator Sean O’Neill look into the history and usage of the slang word "cool." The exact meaning of the term has changed, but it has managed to hold onto a positive connotation over a long period of time. You have to admit that this video is pretty cool. -via Laughing Squid
One surefire way to make one's waist look smaller is to make one's butt look bigger. You know about bustles in the 19th century and surgical implants used today. In the 1770s and early 1780s, women achieved the big butt look by inserting mounds of cork into pockets just below their corsets, creating a "false rump." Once the fashion took hold, they got bigger, or maybe that was just the exaggerated caricatures from the period that mocked the false rumps. These rumps left some remarkable stories in their wake, such as the time one worked as a life preserver.
On Sunday evening a very ludicrous accident happened at Henley upon Thames. A large party from town went after tea to enjoy the coolness of the evening on the banks of the river. Youth and spirits hurried them into such sallies of vivacity, that in running with too much precipitation, a lady’s foot tripped and she fell into the Thames. The consternation was general; but somehow everyone was surprised to see her swim like a fishing float, half immersed, and half above the water. It seems that the lady had been furnished with an immoderate sized cork rump, which buoyed her up so completely that she looked like Venus rising from the water. She was towed to shore by a gentleman’s cane without the least injury but wet petticoats.
