Sarah Verney was traveling near Kokadjo, in northern Maine, when the car had to slow down because there were two lynx in the road. Lynx usually do whatever they can to avoid humans, so it seemed odd that they didn't get out of the road. It turns out these cats had very important business with each other. They stopped traffic while they had a bit of an argument.
Verney wanted to record what they sounded like, so she rolled down the window. The terrifying wildcat screams we expect turned out to resemble two old women arguing. Redditor stanfan114 nailed it.
They sounds like the old ladies from Monty Python with the penguin on top of the television set.
When I saw the title of this post, I thought, "If Dirty Rotten Scoundrels isn't on the list, I'll plotz." Then I figured I was being too dramatic, because I don't watch nearly as many movies as the internet generation does. The movie is there, but since every character in it was a con artist, who made the cut? See the list, and check out clips of great movie con men at TVOM. Is your favorite movie con artist represented?
More than 25,000 people attended the Tokyo Int'l Funeral & Cemetery Show 2018 last weekend. It's an industry convention and exposition for funeral professionals across Japan. The expo included a competition between the top funeral dressers. In the Shinto religion, dressing the deceased is a ritual that cleanses them before they enter the afterlife. It's usually done by family members, but some 2,000 or so undertakers have become experts. The top four competed in front of judges and convention attendees.
“I practiced every day to prepare for this competition,” said a smiling RinoTerai after her win over three other finalists. “I took videos and made improvements by asking myself, does this look beautiful? Am I treating the deceased kindly?”
When your job is to provide commentary on the action, that's what you do, no matter what the action is. During a lull in a game between the Cleveland Indians and the New York Yankees, announcers had a little fun with a spectator who was carrying way too much food.
Pablo Iglesias Maurer found a matchbook with an old picture of the swimming pool at the Penn Hills Resort in the Poconos. The image was taken in the resort's heyday, and Maurer went to see what it looked like now. It is abandoned, in complete disrepair. He lined up his camera in the same way the original picture was taken and got an updated version. Then he bought a bunch of postcards from bygone resorts of the Poconos and the Catskills, and found the original locations to photograph. Seeing the "then and now" photographs together is rather sad, as so many of those resorts are no longer in business. You can read about Maurer's project and see 19 pairs of "then and now" pictures at DCist. -via Digg
(Image credit: Pablo Iglesias Maurer, postcard published by H. Rubenstein)
Swiss geologist Dr. Melanie Barboni is doing a fellowship at at the UCLA Earth, Planetary and Space Science program. She is also known as "the hummingbird whisperer."
Every weekday, Barboni welcomes clouds of these “fairy” birds to her office window with nectar she mixes from large bags of sugar and water. In a frenzy and flash of iridescent greens, blues, reds and purples, the birds flit around four 80-ounce feeders that hang outside the windows of her ground-level office. If she puts her hand on the rim of a feeder, they will perch there in fond recognition of the human who feeds them.
If she doesn’t feed them in a timely manner, the miffed hummingbirds will fly into her office to “yell at me. … They are so demanding, but they know I will give them everything,” she said with a smile.
You have to have special observational skills to know these tiny birds by their individual names. But Barboni has watched many of them since they hatched, and some will even come and sit on her fingers. Read more about Barboni and her hummingbird friends at UCLA. -via Nag on the Lake
Amazing coincidence, karma, or just plain luck? Any way you look at it, these people were in just the right place at just the right time.
1. Despite being very dead, the tyrant Nero still managed to crash Napoleon’s 1804 coronation. Napoleon had celebrated by releasing a balloon towing a giant crown, which floated 700 miles and landed on Nero’s tomb.
2. Pilot David Zehntner and his wife were flying their Cessna 182 over their home in 2012 when they noticed a stranger in the driveway making off with their trailer. They followed the truck for miles and called the police from the air. The hapless robber was quickly nabbed.
3. Viking Sigurd the Mighty famously conquered northern Scotland in the ninth century. But after decapitating Mael Brigte the Bucktoothed, Sigurd attached the head to his saddle as a trophy. On the ride, Mael’s bucktooth pierced Sigurd’s leg and caused a fatal infection. Sweet revenge!
Studio Ghibil's animated classic Spirited Away was released in the United States 15 years ago. Iain Heath, also known as Ochre Jelly, took that as an excuse to make LEGO scenes from the movie to honor filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. He explains each scene, starting with the picture above.
While Sen is tending to Haku (in dragon form), who is injured from an attack by a swarm of paper shikigami, the mysterious witch Zeniba appears to claim her golden seal.
"Do you know why he became my sister's apprentice? To steal her magic secrets, and now he's stolen my magic too. He's a greedy little thief. There's nothing good about him. Step aside little girl. I'm going to take my seal back from him. There's a spell on the seal, and anyone who steals it will die."
To repay the kindness that Haku showed her, Sen and her new friends make the journey to Swamp Bottom to return the gold seal and ask for Zeniba's forgiveness.
"I've been saving these tickets for 40 years. Now, listen carefully. The train stop you want is called Swamp Bottom. Make sure you get it right. The train used to run in both directions but these days it's a one-way ride. Still want to go?"
Chihiro meets Kamajii, the many-armed boiler room operator, and his army of obedient susuwatari, and is determined to prove herself capable of hard work.
"You can't just take someone else's job. If they don't work, the spell wears off. They turn back into soot. There's no work for you here, got it? Try somewhere else. You soot balls got a problem? Get back to work!"
This marks the end of my exploration of Hayao Miyazaki's classic anime feature Spirited Away. This project that kinda came out of nowhere and then ballooned out of control, yet it was very rewarding to put together, and I even got to try a few things I had not attempted before as a builder.
If you're a fan of the movie, I hope you've enjoyed reminiscing with me. And if you've never see this or any of Miyazaki's other works, I hope maybe this has you sufficiently intrigued to explore them now! You'll be able to see these models up close and personal at forthcoming conventions along the West coast in 2017 and 2018, starting with my home convention, BrickCon, in Seattle this October.
You can see an entire set of these scenes from the movie Spirited Away, with different angles and process shots, at Heath's Flickr album Chihiro's Journey. -Thanks, Iain!
Puppies are new at the business of being dogs, and they aren't very good at it. But every learning experience has to start somewhere. Watch these puppies of all breeds take their first attempt at howling. My favorite starts at 2:34.
Compiling a list of the smallest towns can be problematic, in that you should have a definition of "town." However, that matters less than a good story in this case. Some of the towns listed are incorporated, others are unincorporated, but they were selected for having something interesting about them to write about. That certainly goes for Centralia, Pennsylvania, population 5.
In 1962, a trash fire in Centralia’s dump spread into an underground coal seam and wouldn’t stop burning for the next two decades. In 1981, a 12-year-old boy was nearly sucked into the subterranean inferno when the ground gave out beneath him. Two years later, Congress set aside $42 million to buy out the town’s 1100 residents, but nine holdouts refused. After another two decades, they won the right to stay in their homes. Those that remain alive are Centralia’s last residents.
And on the lighter side, there's Warm River, Idaho, population 3.
Warm River became a city thanks to a quirk in Idaho’s 1947 liquor laws that restricted liquor licenses to establishments within municipal borders. That year, Fred Lewies, an Estonian immigrant who owned and operated the Warm River Inn and Rendezvous Dance Hall, incorporated the city so that he could legally serve drinks at his bar. The town has had three mayors: Fred’s wife Berta, their daughter Lillian, and their granddaughter Lonnie. Today, Warm River still has its dance hall, but it’s also a fishing destination and a stop for tourists on their way into Yellowstone National Park.
Learning is hard enough when you can't stay focused because you were out partying the night before. But it's even worse when the professor can't stay focused on the topic he's supposed to teach! A hangover will be better in a couple of days, but unless some student has a great insight to this prof's marital problems, and soon, the whole semester could be a bust. This comic is from Zach Weinersmith at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
Fictional hurricanes can be horribly destructive in movies, but it sure beats dealing with one in the real world. Hurricane Harvey is still raging along the Gulf Coast, leaving flooding and destruction in its wake. We can seek a little refuge from the depressing news by 1. contributing to relief efforts and 2. retreating into movies. In case you're in that kind of mood, check out some of the best hurricane depictions in film that you may or may not have already seen, at TVOM. A couple of the videos there are full movies, which you can bookmark to enjoy in full when you have the time.
You aren't allowed to take mercury on an airplane. It's dangerous stuff, to be sure, but who knew that the way it interacts with aluminum was the reason? Nile Red shows us what happens when mercury amalgamates with aluminum, although it isn't easy. Aluminum is usually protected by a layer of oxide, which he removes. In the real world, we don't want to count on that safety feature.
The mercury did not end up damaging the aluminum all that much, but that doesn't mean airlines should allow it. Who knows what that "Oh, cool!" effect would do in a uncontrolled situation. Oh yeah, the generator site Nile Red talks about is here. Open the menu at the upper left to change it to your favorite molecule. -via TYWKIWDBI
Roodharigendag is a festival for the redheads of the world. Thousands of redheads from more than 80 countries will gather during the first week of September in Breda, Netherlands, to meet each other, have fun, and pose for pictures. The festival seems like a well-established tradition, but its origin is actually rather recent. And it was unintentional.
The accidental mastermind behind this gathering, painter Bart Rouwenhorst, happens to be a blonde without a speck of ginger in his hair. Inspired by artists who famously painted red-haired women such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Gustav Klimt, Rouwenhorst put an ad in the newspaper asking for 15 natural redheaded women to model for him in 2005. More than 150 women called. Not wanting to turn any of them away, he decided to hold a gathering where the women would enter a lottery, and the inaugural festival was born.
You don't have to be a redhead to attend, but if you don't have red hair, you won't be included in the official group photo. Read more about Roodharigendag at National Geographic Travel.
The lists of supplies that parents are asked to buy for back-to-school keeps getting longer. It's not the teacher's fault, it's the cutbacks in government funding. Teachers will end up spending hundreds of dollars of their own money on classroom supplies they need. Dena Blizzard understands that. She is also desperate for school to start after spending all summer with her children.
