We understand that when a character spends decades fighting crime in the comics, it's hard to come up with something new and different in a story. There's always a reach for an angle that the audience hasn't seen before. When your character is as weird as Batman, that quest can lead to some plots that, while they might make sense at the time, years later they have you wondering how they ever got away with it. Consider the unbelievable methods Batman has used to keep his true identity secret, some of which you may have missed if you don't read all the comics. The weirdest ones are related at TVOM.
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Adam Ellis lives in an apartment in Manhattan. Over this story, he's lived in two apartments in the same building, but he is coming to the realization that the building is haunted. In a series of Tweets over the last several days, he tells of some pretty strange happenings. It began with a dream.
He started appearing in dreams, but I think he's crossed over into the real world now.
— ˗ˏˋ ᴀᴅᴀᴍ ᴇʟʟɪs ˊˎ˗ (@moby_dickhead) August 7, 2017
He spoke to the kid in the dream. Weird happenings in the real world began, and escalated to the point that his cats are involved, and he's even taking photographs through a peephole.
And here we go. Just minutes before midnight. pic.twitter.com/vZ7MGCumpu
— ˗ˏˋ ᴀᴅᴀᴍ ᴇʟʟɪs ˊˎ˗ (@moby_dickhead) August 11, 2017
You can read the highlights of the story so far at Mashable. Keep up with the Twitter thread here.
Pandas are cute, but they've never been known for their grace. If you give them an enrichment activity or a toy to play with, they will get so excited they forget how to stand up. So enjoy a supercut of adorable but clumsy giant pandas falling down, from the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China.
It's a good thing these critters are round and fluffy. And they seem to bounce fairly well. -via Tastefully Offensive
(Image credit: Jennifer Dickert)
Is a diamond still a diamond if you can make it in a space-age oven? Inside one company's mission to find out.
It doesn’t look like the entrance to a paradigm-shifting, potentially world-changing start-up, but there it is: an unmarked door, facing out of a low-slung beige building on a street lined with tune-up shops. Inside, the scene is equally unassuming. There’s a man wearing black gloves, seated in front of a box about the size of a passenger van that’s blasting an ominous ommmm.
Welcome to California’s shiniest new diamond mine.
From the other end of the room, Martin Roscheisen, Diamond Foundry’s CEO, is explaining what, exactly, is going on here. That box is called a growth reactor, he says. Basically, it’s an atomic oven. Inside, a tiny diamond, known here as a “seed diamond,” sits waiting to be blasted with hot plasma. The reaction will cause the crystal latticework of the diamond to extend. In other words: From this seed, a new diamond will start to grow.
“They grow slowly, atom by atom, and there’s about one quadrillion atoms per layer,” Roscheisen shouts over the din. “So it’s a slow-growth process.” By slow he means two weeks, which is how long it takes the Silicon Valley–based company to hot-forge jewelry-grade diamonds identical to those the earth takes eons to mete out.
The Internet Archive has a project going in an attempt to save as many old sound recordings as possible. These are songs recorded on 78 rpm records made between 1898 and the 1950s, when 33 and 45 rpm records replaced them. These old records were pressed in shellac, which becomes very brittle after a few decades. The Great 78 Project invites people to digitize the music on these records, so they can be kept in a playable format for posterity. No, we don't know how long digital formats will last, but it's a step in the right direction for preservation. You can help by digitizing old records, sending in your existing digital copies, or donating your 78 rpm records. You can also volunteer to research and catalog the songs in the collection. But the best part is that you can listen to the 25,000 or so recordings that have already been digitized. They range from symphony recordings to political speeches, from Broadway tunes to hymns, from early jazz to novelty songs. Some suggestions:
"House Of The Rising Sun" (1942)
"Over The Rainbow" (1939)
"Original Jelly-Roll Blues" (1929)
"16 Old Ladies Locked In The Lavatory" (1949)
-via Kottke
You have to admit, that will work when everyone you're playing with is right there in the room anyway. How many cats are playing the same game right now anyway? When cats chat, does that make them French cats? And what are they going to say besides "meow"? This comic is by Samantha Whitten, who says,
Personally, I’m in favor of not having voice chat, but it’s fun to tease Nintendo about being so far behind the times.
Chat during games is mostly just distracting anyway, and often toxic. This is the latest from GamerCat.
Dr. Indiana Jones was a well-regarded, if fictional, archaeologist in his day. That is, well-regarded by his colleagues in the movies. In the real world, he's been criticized as a grave-robber, looter, and an all-around disaster as a scientist. His catch phrase "It belongs in a museum!" seems just plain silly, considering the way museums were run in the 1930s and '40s.
Jones is the last great monster of the treasure-hunting age of archaeology. To judge him by modern standards is to indulge the same comforting temporal parochialism that leads us to dismiss post-Roman Europe as a “Dark Age.” Jones may be a lousy archaeologist as we understand the field today. But is he a lousy archaeologist in context?
Max Gladstone presents arguments defending Dr. Jones' abilities as a scientist at Tor. He may have been an unrepentant looter, but at least he was good at it. -via Metafilter
A lot of people have curly hair that's hard to comb, but this is something else altogether. Shilah Madison Calvert-Yin has "uncombable hair syndrome," which is a real condition. Each shaft of her hair is triangular instead of round. It's caused by a gene mutation, and is very rare. Only about 100 people in the world have the syndrome. But Shilah's family has embraced her awesome hair.
“Shilah loves her unique hair, but that has come from constant positive reinforcement at home from friends and family,” her mom Celeste Calvert-Yin, who lives in Melbourne Australia, told TODAY via email.
“As a little, little girl she often told us she was like a unicorn as they are very special and unique just like her. It brought a tear to our eye.”
You can follow 7-year-old Shilah at her Instagram page. -via Boing Boing
In 1895, Marvin R. Clark published the essential cat dictionary, called Pussy and Her Language. The 150-page guide is full of cat facts, stories, and fanciful prose about felines, in an era when cats didn't get all that much respect. You can learn a lot from this book, about cats or, more precisely, about how Clark felt about cats.
11. There are 17 vital cat vocabulary words
12. Cats have French accents
“The word ‘purrieu’… is a note of self-satisfaction and content… give attention to the number of vowels and the Frenchman’s roll of the liquid ‘r,’ so that it comes to the ear like ‘pur-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-rieu,’ with a gradually ascending inflection.”
13. Cats can get very mad
“The word ‘yew,’ when uttered as an explosive, is the Cat’s strongest expression of hatred, and a declaration of war… The word ‘yow’ means extermination from the face of the earth.”
Atlas Obscura selected the twenty most interesting lessons about cat communication from Pussy and Her Language. You can also read the entire book online.
The fictional character Sarah Connor underwent a profound change between The Terminator and Terminator 2, which made sense. She went from victim to badass in order to protect her son and the world he lives in. Actor Linda Hamilton went the extra mile to illustrate that evolution, and impressed us immensely with her athleticism and physique in Terminator 2. In more recent movies, ripped muscles on women heroes have become more common, so that younger audiences might not even notice. Check out some of those heroes showing off their stuff in a video list at TVOM.
Chris Pool made a maze for his cats Cole and Marmalade. Lucky cats! This is a project so simple anyone can do it. And if you have more than one cat, the floor show that ensues will be worth the effort.
What's great about this idea is that it's modular. If you have the room, you can set up all 50 boxes, or 25, or ten, and put them in a different order each time. If the boxes are all square, like these, rearranging them would be very simple. -via Tastefully Offensive
Melting glaciers and ice caps are not good, overall, for the environment and sea levels, not to mention the polar bears that live there. As the ice recedes, we are finding some really strange things that were lost underneath them, some ancient, some as recently as the 20th century.
5. WWI SOLDIERS // NORTHERN ITALY
As the highest settlement of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the small village of Peio in modern-day northern Italy was dragged into the conflict of World War I in 1915. Here, at altitudes over 6500 feet, intrepid soldiers fought in what became known as the White War. Due to the inhospitable conditions and the freezing weather, specialist mountain soldiers were recruited—the Italians had the Alpini, who sported distinctive feathered caps, and the Austrians had the Kaiserschützen. The fierce conflict high in the mountains went largely unnoticed by the rest of the world at the time but today, as the region's ice melts, archaeologists and historians are learning more about the amazing feats of bravery of those involved.
A variety of artifacts have been uncovered from the melting glacier, including a poignant unmailed love letter to a girl named Maria, soldiers’ helmets and guns, and, of course, bodies. In 2012, the mummified bodies of two blond and blue-eyed Austrian soldiers, aged just 17 and 18 years old, were uncovered from the ice—both had been shot through the head and buried in a crevasse on the Presena glacier by their comrades. Locals held a funeral for the pair in 2013, and 200 people from around Peio attended.
Read about artifacts, frozen bodies, geologic formations, and even pathogens unearthed by melting glaciers at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: Agnes Monkelbaan)
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
"People always wanted us to stay the same, but we can't stay in a rut. no one else expects to peak at 23, so why should we? Rubber Soul, for me, is like the beginning of my adult life." - Paul McCartney.
"You don't know us if you don't know Rubber Soul -John Lennon
Rubber Soul was the sixth studio album recorded by the Beatles. The title came from Paul, who said he'd overheard another musician refer to Mick Jagger's singing style as "plastic soul." You can hear Paul use the expression "plastic soul," for the first time, at the end of the first take of the Beatles record "I'm Down" (released a few months earlier). John confirms the title credit: "That was Paul's title... meaning English soul. Just a pun."
It was the second album (after A Hard Day's Night) to feature all original Beatles songs. It was the first album to feature composing credits from all four Beatles. The U.S. Rubber Soul album featured 10 new songs, with two carry-overs from their previous album Help! The British LP featured 14 all-new songs. The recording sessions for Rubber Soul began on October 12, 1965.
Odette Doest is a veterinarian and a wildlife rehabilitator on the island of Curaçao. The few rescued birds she cannot return to the wild find a permanent home with her. That includes Bob the flamingo. Bob was injured when he crashed into a window. Doest nursed him back to health, and found out he was raised by humans and is not equipped for life in the wild. So Bob became an ambassador for his species, visiting schools with Doest to teach children about island wildlife and the importance of conservation.
While Doest would have preferred to free Bob, she says he’s helping to instill a conservation ethic in the next generation. Kids want to know all about the four-foot-tall pink bird: how his life differs from that of his free-flying cousins, why his feathers are pink (as a result of compounds in the shrimp and algae he eats), and his favorite snack (caviar, which he tries to eat straight out of Doest’s hand). After each school visit, Doest asks one student to carry Bob back to her car. “You see them glowing with pride,” she says of the newest members of Bob’s growing fan base.
Doest's cousin Jasper Doest is a wildlife photographer. He visited Dr. Doest and accompanied her to a school and a television station with Bob. You can see those photographs, along with Bob's story, at Audubon magazine. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Jaspar Doest)
Here's something you probably haven't seen before: a domino run for pyromaniacs! Kaplamino, who brought us Magnets and Marbles last year, built a chain-reaction featuring matches, sparklers, candles, fireworks, and open flames. Rube Goldberg would have been proud.
This had to be terribly precise, as it even harnesses warm air currents.
The ideas you can see in this video are more reliable than you think and work almost everytime if you build it correctly (the hardest part was to find how to build it correctly, in the screenlink you have the first version of the trick and in the final machine the 100% working version). And when there was a fail it was never caused by the part with the rubber band ( the match always lights up). Feel free to use it in your videos ! I'm sure there is so many tricks to invent with this concept.
If you try this kind of thing, be sure to have a garden hose or a fire extinguisher handy. -via Digg
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