There a remake of the Tomb Raider movie coming out in 2018, starring Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft. You can see the trailer here, and in it you can tell that Alicia Vikander is a real woman -unlike the image in the movie's poster, which was released this week. What's going on with her neck? Where does it connected to her skull? The over-editing of the picture is a consequence of trying to get her into that pose, the one where a woman who is the star of a movie must show face, boobs, and butt all in the same picture. This time they've gone too far. Bodies just don't work like that. -via The Daily Dot
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— Paul Rugg (@pkrugg) September 20, 2017
Paul Rugg, who writes and does voiceovers for cartoons (he worked on Animaniacs and Pinky and The Brain, among other shows) tells us how he relaxes at home with his beloved dog. Truly a man's best friend. -via reddit
The Autumnal Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere occurs on Friday, meaning summer is over and fall will begin. Since the internet is global, the date is now often called the September Equinox. The exact equinox point will be at 4:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time, your mileage may vary. We say that the equinox is the day the sun crosses the Earth's equator, but the sun doesn't really do anything. What happens is that the tilt of the earth, relative to its orbital plane, reaches the point at which the Southern Hemisphere receives more sunlight than the Northern Hemisphere. If you live at the equator, the noonday sun sways a bit north and south over the year, but is directly overhead at both equinoxes. Within the Arctic and Antarctic Circles, the sun is up all summer and gone all winter. Most of us live somewhere between those two extremes, and enjoy long summer days and long winter nights. If you want to get deeper in the details of the equinox, astronomer Guy Ottewell explains what is happening in the graphic above.
Our sky scene above, for an hour after sunset on equinox day in mid-U.S.A., happens to be about three hours after the instant of the equinox. You can see that the anti-sun, as we can call the point 180 degrees from the sun, appears to be just on the opposite crossroads of ecliptic and equator. Actually it’s a little way past, the fraction of a degree that the sun moves in three hours. The anti-sun point is already a little way into the northern celestial hemisphere, as the sun is a little way into the southern.
Earth is hurtling away from the point we mark as antapex of Earth’s way, 90° to the right of the anti-sun point. As Earth curves on along its orbit, both of these points will shift to the left: the anti-sun point higher into the northern sky, the sun itself deeper into the southern, our hemisphere of Earth deeper into autumn.
Read more about the equinox at Guy Ottewell's Universal Workshop. -Thanks, Walter!
(Image credit: Guy Ottewell)
Hollywood follows trends, and it shows when several movies with the same premise are released in the same year -sometime in the same weekend. Embarrassing? Maybe, but what really matters is which movie people go to see. Usually in such cases, one film rises to the top, another is regarded as an also-ran, and maybe a third goes quickly to home video. Rarely, two of them become hits, and will be confused with each other forever afterward. The three movies pictured here were all released in 1985, and all are teen comedies concerning intelligent young nerds whose science projects got out of hand. Read about eight sets of three nearly identical movies at TVOM.
What's scarier than Pennywise, the clown from It? Ronald McDonald! See, you already recognize Pennywise as a dangerous entity, terrifying from the start. Ronald, on the other hand, is like the devil in blue jeans, attractive and tempting, until you realize how you've already fallen into his clutches. Resist the fries, Georgie! This is the latest comic from Übertool.
Mudskippers are some really strange animals. They are amphibious fish, which is not a new division of taxonomy; it just means they are fish that can spend time out of the water. Mudskippers can breathe through their skin, and they have some strange mating habits, too. This video from the BBC explains. It gets really good at about a minute in, so make sure you don't have any liquid in your mouth when they start to dance.
They sometimes get into shouting matches with each other, too, as you can see here. -via reddit
Sarper Duman is a Turkish musician and a cat lover -he feeds the stray cats of Istanbul and has taken eleven of them in to his home. One of his fans sent him this cute video of a blind cat enjoying Duman's music.
"This has been the most touching message i've ever recieved. This beautiful blind cat's name is Namık. They say he acts that way whenever he is shown my videos. It's so impressive for me... Always be happy Namık !"
Aww! We don't know whether Namik is hugging the phone out of affection for the music, or if he just wants to listen to it closer. The effect is the same. Here's a bonus video of Duman with one of his own cats.
— Sarper Duman (@sarperduman) September 20, 2017
-via Boing Boing
We love libraries! Borrowing a book is one of life's great pleasures, and a great way to get kids to develop a love for reading. John Green writes books, and he once worked for a library association. So who better to bring us a lot of trivia and stories about libraries? That's what you'll get in the latest episode of the Mental Floss List Show.
New Zealand farmers hate the invasive weed known as ragwort, as it is poison to horses and cattle. The old method of using sheep and goats to clear it no longer worked during an infestation in the 1930s. Luckily, modern technology provided farmers with a new miracle herbicide that eliminated ragwort. The problem was that it was new, and that meant it came with unintended consequences, like exploding pants.
One of the earliest cases of exploding pants, and the one most closely associated with the phenomenon, involved a farmer named Richard Buckley, who made the local news after some of his pants exploded in his house. After wearing them to spray the sodium chlorate, he hung them in front of the fire to dry out. Out of nowhere, his trousers exploded with a bang. According to a news report from the day, he was able to snag his now flaming pants and throw them out onto the grass where small explosions continued to erupt in the garment. Buckley was alarmed, but unharmed.
Around the same time, similar reports of spontaneously combusting pants began to appear, and not all of them were as harmless as Buckley’s. One report claimed that a farmer was riding his horse when the friction caused his pants to begin to smolder right there in the saddle. Another pair of pants were hanging out to dry when they suddenly burst into flames. Then there were the unfortunate souls who happened to be wearing their pants when the chemical reaction got started. Some survived with serious burns, while at least a handful of farmers died from the ignitions. One person, referenced in Watson’s paper, died after lighting a match in his electricity-free home, just trying to check on his baby.
Eventually the phenomena was connected with the herbicide, and steps were taken to prevent it from happening. During Pants Week at Atlas Obscura, we get to read the story of New Zealand's exploding pants.
Pumpkin is an iconic American food, as much as turkey, corn, and cranberries. Since the early European settlers first saw the squash, we've been trying to grow larger and larger pumpkins. The first world record pumpkin weighed 400 pounds in 1900. In recent years, they've surpassed a ton. But the current world record pumpkin was grown in Brussels, Belgium, last year. It weighed 2,624.6 pounds! How did Americans lose the title?
Yet for two out of the last three years, the world’s largest pumpkins have sprung up in Europe. “They’re doing very well, and I tip my hat to them,” says Ron Wallace, a country club manager in Greene, Rhode Island, who was paraded on the shoulders of jubilant pumpkin growers one glorious day in 2006 after his squash became the world’s first to break 1,500 pounds. Today, pumpkin growers are gaining on 3,000 pounds, but the Belgians, Swiss and British are in the lead.
Well, see, there was this American soldier stationed in Germany, and… an article at Smithsonian magazine looks at how the fascination with record-setting pumpkins spread to Europe.
(Image credit: Yourcsd)
Once you've made it through high school and gotten yourself accepted to the college of your choice, maybe even with financial aid, then what? You've received plenty of advice about getting to that point, but there are several years to go as a student. One of the main pieces of advice I gave my kids about college is to make sure the professor knows you, and knows that you're interested in their subject and really want to learn it. They will help you, remember you, and rejoice in your success. College professors are happy to tell you what your high school guidance counselor did not about actually attending (and passing) college courses. Here's a sample:
13. They only remember the names of the good students and the bad students. Everyone in between is a blur.
I know the names of two kinds of students: those who are doing very badly in my class, and those who are interested, engaged, and making an effort to do well. Please don't sit there for 16 weeks, with your hand down and mouth closed, and expect me to know who you are on the last day of class.—Rebecca Gibson, Facebook
22. A 13-year-old could be grading the paper you pulled an all-nighter to complete.
My mom's a professor and the one thing her students NEVER know is that I've graded parts of their exams. It's been a tradition in our family to help grade exams and finals since we were around the age of 13, and none of her students know.—bonniereinsch
My father taught geology, and started me grading papers at a much younger age, at least for the multiple choice quizzes. Read more advice in the list 23 Secrets Your Professors Will Never Tell You (except they obviously will tell you) at Buzzfeed.
The 1987 movie Over the Top had Sylvester Stallone playing the sports underdog, as he did in Rocky, but this time the sport was arm wrestling. The movie was nominated for three Razzies and won two. Thirty years later, you might find that the things going on behind the scenes are more interesting than what made it onto the screen.
9. The movie had its own toy line.
For a brief period of time a line of Over the Top products were available in the toy aisles of many stores. They didn’t last all that long though, just like the movie.
8. Stallone literally pinned critic Roger Ebert against a slot machine to talk to him.
Anyone that remembers Siskel and Ebert recalls that these guys were brutal when it came to criticizing movies. They also weren’t that nice when it came to describing the actors either. So Stallone actually confronted Ebert and told him it was okay to criticize the movie, but not him.
The most surprising thing about Over the Top was that it contained more real physical action than you'd expect. Read the trivia list about Over the Top at TVOM.
How long has it been since you've been impressed by someone playing the spoons? This is Abby the Spoon Lady, accompanying Chris Rodrigues on the song "Angels in Heaven." They recorded this on Play Music on Your Porch Day in August, which sounds like a lovely thing to celebrate.
Anyone can play spoons, but it takes a lot of practice and dedication to play them this well. But Abby the Spoon Lady is more than just a spoon player. According to Wikipedia,
Abby first started street performing and busking as a means to make money traveling across the United States, primarily hopping freight trains. She taught herself to play the spoons and traveled all over the United States by hitchhiking and railroad. She states that landing in Asheville, North Carolina, was completely an accident and that she took the wrong train.[4] Today she hosts storytelling events where she discusses the lifestyle of the American hobo.[5] She spent a good amount of her time traveling recording the stories, interviews and songs of other American travelers.[6]
She is also a free speech advocate and has a radio show at WSFM-LP in Asheville. -via reddit
Even the most innocuous internet communities can get pretty dramatic. Sure, there are arguments, but every once in a while, an intriguing story just pops up where you least expect it. The New York Times posted Katharine Hepburn's brownie recipe, and in the comment section, Sydne Newberry typed this:
“This has been my go-to brownie recipe for 30 years. In the ’80s, an acquaintance in Germany to whom I brought some of the brownies, and who considered herself a great cook, asked for the recipe but was never able to get it to work. She kept asking me what she was doing wrong and I was never able to solve her problem. Eventually, she moved to the U.S. and stole my husband!”
Well, that escalated quickly. The comment went viral, and two years later, The Cut looked Newberry up and got the rest of the story. -via Digg
(Image credit: Whitney)
Ah, there's nothing like a step outside in the fresh air and sunshine to improve one's attitude. Too bad this scenario is more likely to take place after dark. This is the latest from Chris Hallbeck at Maximumble.
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