Trash pandas just wanna have fun! This adorable trio of raccoon cubs discovered that the wheel of a hanging bicycle makes a great swing.
They can't wait for their turn, so they fight a little, and then end up piling on all at once. Whee! -via Laughing Squid
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research, now in all-pdf form. Get a subscription now for only $25 a year!
Detail from the study: Photographs, collected by Ottó Herman, of “Magyar faces”.
Research about historic hairs
compiled by Alice Shirrell Kaswell and Otto Didact, Improbable Research staff
Of all the European experiments that center on mustaches, the Magyar Mustache Experiment is perhaps the one most tightly tied to the interpretation of Hungarian history.
The Magyar Moustache Experiment and Controversy
“The Magyar Moustache: The Faces of Hungarian State Formation, 1867–1918,” Emese Lafferton,
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part C, vol. 38, no. 4, December 2007, pp. 706–732. The author, at the University of Edinburgh, UK, explains:
[I]n defining the Magyar face, ‘we are often compelled to dispense with a significant basic element, the ... shape of the mouth, because the Magyars are not only a moustached people, but also one that is proud of the moustache, that recognises in it a basic element of its honour and respectability’. Thus, if not the mouth, than the hair that covers it gains significance....
If you thought movie trailers are looking more and more like every other movie trailer lately, you're not alone. They all follow the same formula, as explained by Auralnauts. The real test would be to put a movie trailer into YouTube Doubler with this video and see how close they are, if you find one that's about the same length. -via Tastefully Offensive
If we couldn't manipulate moving pictures, we wouldn't have all the wonderful movies that transport us to fictional worlds through special effects. But there are more and more manipulated videos that pass themselves off as real life, and it's hard to know the difference. Technology always jumps ahead of common knowledge, so it's little wonder that faked videos fool people just the way manipulated photographs have since the 19th century, and fake news on social media passes itself off as real news. The lines between raw videos of real life, advertising, fiction, and the quest for virality have become blurry. Alan Melikdjanian, known on the internet as Captain Disillusion, has some lessons on developing a sense of what's real and what's fake in a viral video at The Verge. -via Digg
In 1881, a dentist named John Ballou Newbrough wrote a new bible called Oahspe. According to Newbrough, the text was dictated to him by angels who visited him every morning for fifty weeks. This text was the foundation of a new religion. While plenty of new groups were being formed under the mantle of Spiritualism at the time, Newbrough's Faithists were under scrutiny because their bible plainly contradicted Christianity.
What most fascinated the newspapers, though, was Newbrough’s intention to found a colony. Oahspe enjoins its followers—called Faithists—to gather orphans and raise them to be independent, vegetarian, and spiritually pure, as preparation for leadership of a New World Order. The New York Times reported that “all that was asked of the members was that they should buy tracts of land in order that head-quarters might be established and people removed to them from the profanity of the world,” and at the time of the article’s publication, the search was already underway for a site in the southwestern desert.4 Shalam, as Newbrough ultimately named the colony, would be a religious community and a refuge for thousands of indigent babies, far from the corruption of cities. As they prepared to leave a year later, the New York Times reassessed the colonists’ aims: “[the Faithists] have given no intelligible idea of what they want or seek to accomplish.”5
Newbrough and his Faithists founded a commune called Shalam in New Mexico to raise their orphans. They eventually took in 28 children, but the commune did not last long enough to become as well known as some other communal religions of the period. Read about the Faithists and the strange bible they followed at Cabinet magazine. -via Metafilter
Gregory Cohen of Public Displays of Confection (previously at Neatorama) knows that we love watching the process of making hard candy with images inside.
Cohen also knows that the process can be tedious, even on video, so as the candy is being cooled, pulled, shaped, and pulled again, he tells us everything he knows about bananas. Like, how they are cultivated, the internal structure of a banana, and why banana candy usually doesn't taste like a banana. The candy factory is also a soda fountain called Lofty Pursuits in Tallahassee, Florida, so Cohen is fairly enamored of the bananas he uses for banana splits.
There are mountains and molehills, and we can pretty much tell the difference. But what's the difference between a hill and a mountain? And what's the difference between a mountain and a mountain range? If you recall the 1995 movie The Englishman Who Went up a Hill but Came down a Mountain, the difference was whether the hill was 1,000 feet high or not. But is that from sea level or the surrounding plain? And what if there is no surrounding plain? Tom Scott has a more precise look at the question.
You have to draw the line somewhere, but there's the question of who gets to draw that line. And then there are the various cultures around the world that have designated their hills and mountains before any such regulation in the terms was proposed. Scott has information about the question, but whatever answer you come up with will have exceptions. It depends, in other words.
We saw people mooning in the movies Brave and Braveheart, which make it seem like an ancient Scottish ritual, although adults might assume that Brave (2012) took the idea from Braveheart (1995). Still, you have to wonder whether Scots really did that, and were they the ones who came up with the idea. The answer is, um, no. Baring one's butt as an insult to one's enemies has a long and sordid history, that may have extended back before written language. However, the existing literature does have quite a few examples.
There is ample evidence that people mooned each other during the Middle Ages. One of the earliest known instances of mooning happened during the Fourth Crusade around 1203, when Western Europeans attempted to take Constantinople. As the crusaders’ ships pulled away after the failed attack, the Byzantines hooted and hollered and “showed their bare buttocks in derision to the fleeing foe.” Another account tells of the Italian nobleman and troubadour Alberico da Romano, who in the first half of the 13th century was so indignant at losing his favorite falcon during a hunt that he “dropped his trousers and exposed his rear to the Lord as a sign of abuse and reviling.”
They didn't call it "mooning" in the Middle Ages, so you have to wonder if the common people had their own term for the gesture, if it was that common. Read what we know about the history of mooning, in a link-heavy article at Slate. -via Metafilter
If you read the list of ripped women movie characters we posted last week, you'll love this one. It's a video roundup of movie scene featuring women soldiers of all kinds, and they are all different characters from the other list. I'm just glad there are enough recent movies that acknowledge the bravery of women soldiers to compile a list like this, and that women soldiers are becoming less of a novelty and more of a regular character type. See them all at TVOM.
Okay, he's got this idea that he's very talented at what he does, yet for some reason he's complaining that people aren't buying it? You've probably known people like that. Then, somewhere between the third and fourth panels, he sees the contradiction. Or maybe he's just desperate for a little success. This is the newest comic from Jeff Lofvers at Don't Hit Save.
Cats are great listeners… until they aren't. While they're around, all fluffy and calm, they are your best friend, willing to keep you company as you pour your heart out. That is, until something better comes along, like a floating dust bunny. Then you may as well be talking to your stuffed teddy bear. This comic is from Yasmine Surovec at Cat vs. Human.
Children do not want to go to sleep at 8 PM, or whenever you've decided bedtime is. They're not sleepy, and they want to play. But their parents have been waiting all day for a chance to catch their breath, and they'd love to have a few minutes of calm before they fall into their own exhausted sleep. New Zealand dad Jordan Watson (previously at Neatorama) shares some of his wisdom about putting children to bed.
It's a losing battle. You cannot make a child fall asleep. You can only hope to outlast them so you can have a few minutes to yourself. Good luck. -via Tastefully Offensive
Fast Times at Ridgemont High was released 35 years ago today. It was a high school comedy full of unknown actors who went on to stardom, such as Jennifer Jason Leigh, Phoebe Cates, Sean Penn, Nicolas Cage, Forest Whitaker, Eric Stoltz, Judge Reinhold, and Anthony Edwards. Cameron Crowe wrote the screenplay, which was based on the book he wrote about a high school he attended and researched undercover. The movie wasn't promoted much, but it became a smash hits among teenagers and grew into a classic. Variety talked to Crowe and director Amy Heckerling about the film's origins.
Save for Ray Walston, as the acerbic history teacher and Spicoli’s nemesis, Mr. Hand, there are very few adults in “Fast Times,” including the characters’ parents.
“I hate parents,” said Heckerling. “Parents open a whole box of stuff I didn’t want to get into. I just wanted to say ‘Here’s the world of kids in their own universe. This is real. This is this particular time and place. These are real characters and what they were going through.’”
Crowe recalled being told that if you make a movie just for kids, it will fail because not enough kids will come to the movie. “That was strange to all of us,” he said. “So we banded together to make this movie where parents barely existed. It was raw in what it was showing. There was pot smoking and abortion and all of this stuff.”
Read more about the making of Fast Times at Ridgemont High at Variety.
Sweet treats, often including a very specific type of cake, are a near-universal part of a wedding celebration. We are used to the traditional tall wedding cake in America, and we've posted many modern interpretations. Wedding cakes and their traditions vary widely in other countries.
At weddings in France and parts of Belgium the croquembouche is served. The name croquembouche derives from the French “croque en bouche” meaning crack in mouth. This is apt as croquembouche is a tall, conical structure of cream-filled pastry buns enveloped in hard sugar. On top of the croquembouche are a set of figurines symbolizing the newlyweds. Similar to a croquembouche are the Icelandic wedding cake known as kransakaka and the Danish kransekage. These are wreath cakes consisting of multiple almond pastry rings of decreasing size placed one atop the other to form a cone of cakes. Each ring cake is decorated with white icing and the whole cake is filled with confectionary. According to Danish tradition the newlyweds should remove the top layer with the number of layers that adhere to it indicating how many children the couple will have.
Read how the idea of a wedding cake came to be, and how that tradition is interpreted in different European countries at FolkloreThursday. -via Strange Company
(Image credit: Eric Baker)
GirthyBurritos spotted this vehicle filling up at an interstate exit. This cat is clearly headed for a new life in a new place. Since he had to strap his cat tree on top, you can assume that the interior is full of catnip, Fancy Feast, and hair ties. The reddit thread underneath gives a collaborative speculation as to his story.
Salty
"Sitting in James' truck at the gas station, I began to question my choice to leave. No. Karen and James had their chance, that sparrow was the last straw.
I had hunted, killed and gifted 47 prey by that point and every one had been met with disgust and rejection. After duly showing gratitude for my humans handing me ownership of themselves and their land, Karen grabbed me by the neck and rubbed my face in the delicious meal I had brought them. I was baffled and deeply offended. I didn't understand them, they didn't understand me, it was time to move on.
Without me patrolling the garden, Karen and James would most likely be eaten by dogs. So be it, I had no more use for them."
Bifferer
...so, with 2 kilos of catnip and my lookout post strapped to the roof, I topped off the tank and left town.
Snarkhive
"We were just outside of barstow when the catnip began to take hold"
xtraordinaryshitpost
I would watch this movie.
Further down in the comment thread, the plot gets much weirder. Wherever he's going, he's definitely in the driver's seat. I bet his name is Toonces. The moral of the story: Never leave your car keys out where the cat can get them.
