Daum is a South Korean web portal. It has a map application that resembles Google Street View. While mapping the island of Ulleungdo, a friendly dog accompanied the photographer -apparently all day long. You can see the dog appear in quite a few panoramas as you trace his route, or just enjoy these "best of" shots that were posted to reddit and even more at The Verge. That's a good dog. We hope that the cameraman took some time to give him an ear scratch or two.
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Enjoy a few minutes of sequestered kittens mewing while their moms take a break. There are seven kittens in this bin. Three of them are five weeks old, and the other four are four weeks old. The two litters are cousins, as their mothers are sisters. A couple of the kittens are already escape artists.
You have to wonder if they sort themselves out when they return to their mothers, or if the moms sort them out, or if they just nurse them as they come. -via Metafilter
If you'd like to have a cat around the house that doesn't scratch or beg for food, you might be interested in a life-size LEGO cat sculpture. These come in kits from the Hong Kong company JEKCA. You can select from different colors and poses, but you put them together yourself. They aren't cheap, but eventually you'll save enough on cat food and cat litter to pay for the cat kit. See more images of how they'd look in your home here. -via Swiss Miss
Jerry Lynn of Ross Township, Pennsylvania, had a great idea that turned bizarre. He tied a battery-powered alarm clock to a string and lowered it through a vent into a wall, in order to determine where he should install a cable outlet for his TV. The alarm was set to go off in a few minutes, and he would drill the hole near the sound, ensuring that a cable would have an unobstructed path. Surely there are better ways of doing that, but the plan seemed sound. Until the string broke. The clock fell too far down to be retrieved.
“As I was laying it down, all of a sudden I heard it go ‘thunk!’ as it came loose,” he said. “I thought, well, that’s not a real problem. You know it’s still going to go off. And it did.”
He couldn’t pull it back up, but figured, “Maybe, three-four months it’ll run out of battery. That was in September of 2004. It is still going off every day. And during daylight savings time it goes off at ten minutes ’til eight. And during standard time it goes off at ten minutes to seven at night.”
Clocks do not draw much power from a battery, but the longest I've had one last is six years. This one has been ringing daily for 13 years. I would have torn the wall apart by now. -via Boing Boing
Simon Tofield presents a new episode of Simon's Cat Logic, in which we look at how cats communicate with body language. Body language is what the Simon's Cat cartoons are all about. Cat expert Nicky Trevorrow explains what certain cat postures mean.
A cat meows to get your attention, then they move around to let you know what they want. For my cats, that means running to either their food dish or the door. They communicate quite clearly. I have one cat that will come and tell me when the others want to come in. At the end of this video, we get a chance to see the very first Simon's Cat video that went explosively viral in 2007.
What if you could see the way the wind blows? Or even the small changes in air movement or temperature in the room you're in? Derek Muller of Veritasium explains the process called Schlieren photography, which shows us those things that we can't normally see.
It boils down to concentrating an image of those invisible movements into a form that becomes visible to the eye. No, I don't totally understand it, but it certainly is cool to watch! -via Laughing Squid
(Image credit: Flickr user Mykl Roventine)
The FAST Corporation factory in Sparta, Wisconsin, is where large fiberglass advertising icons are made. FAST stands for Fiberglass Animals, Shapes, & Trademarks. They make the molds, cast the statues, and then what? The molds go out to pasture when they are no longer needed, to the factory's backyard, which has become an otherworldly graveyard.
After the job is done the company keeps the mold but their sheer size precludes storage – and of course many were made on a one-off basis. Over the years the field’s inhabitants have grown to number in their hundreds in every conceivable shape and size. Big Boy rubs shoulders with vampire bats and sharks. Giant skulls rub imaginary shoulders with oversize ice creams. There is even something Darth Vader-ish to guard over the more timid denizens of this ever so slightly eerie place.
(Image credit: Flickr user Jim Sheely)
If you can get to Sparta, you are welcome to see the molds, as they are spread out enough even to drive through. If not, see a collection of pictures of the FAST graveyard of icon molds at Kuriositas.
Dan Martin is celebrating the 5th anniversary of his webcomic, Deathbulge. It's not Deathbungle, although that would be an easy misspelling. In the latest comic, everything about the anniversary party goes wrong. Everything. This is just a small sampling of the misery you can see at the comic page. Oh, and if you go back one comic, you'll find out why Ian the skull-faced fisherman is partying instead of Dan.
Drew Magary spilled a lot of flour on the floor, and her dog ate it. While seeking advice via social media, she learned of many other dogs who ate adventurously, which is all of them.
My previous dog ate a large Rubbermaid kitchen garbage can, lid & all. Didn't eat the garbage. Was totally fine. Strange dog.
— Jessica Valiquette (@ZandCsMom) June 16, 2017
I had a shepherd-collie that found the Halloween candy and ate a whole bag of fun-sized Snickers bars, wrappers and all. He did not eat the plastic bag, otherwise we'd have never known. Despite chocolate being toxic to dogs, he was fine. Ever since, I store any large amounts of candy in a secure place.
ooh. I have a good one. My dog as a puppy ate a glow in the dark frisbee. His poop had little glow in the dark bits for awhile.
— Aaron Combs (@RunSomeAarons) June 16, 2017
Read more things dogs have eaten at the Concourse. And let us know the most unusual thing your dog has eaten.
(Image credit: Stolbovsky)
In the 1950s, rock 'n' roll was music to dance to, with upbeat 2- to 3-minute records that were easy for disc jockeys to schedule, whether on radio or at sock hops. The in the mid-1960s, the Beatles sought enlightenment and evolved from "She Loves You" to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." The latter, more complex music spread and became the stadium sound of the 1970s.
In April, 1971, Rolling Stone reviewed the début album by a band with a name better suited to a law firm: Emerson, Lake & Palmer. The reviewer liked what he heard, although he couldn’t quite define it. “I suppose that your local newspaper might call it ‘jazz-influenced classical-rock,’ ” he wrote. In fact, a term was being adopted for this hybrid of highbrow and lowbrow. People called it progressive rock, or prog rock: a genre intent on proving that rock and roll didn’t have to be simple and silly—it could be complicated and silly instead. In the early nineteen-seventies, E.L.P., alongside several more or less like-minded British groups—King Crimson, Yes, and Genesis, as well as Jethro Tull and Pink Floyd—went, in the space of a few years, from curiosities to rock stars. This was especially true in America, where arenas filled up with crowds shouting for more, which was precisely what these bands were designed to deliver. The prog-rock pioneers embraced extravagance: odd instruments and fantastical lyrics, complex compositions and abstruse concept albums, flashy solos and flashier live shows. Concertgoers could savor a new electronic keyboard called a Mellotron, a singer dressed as a batlike alien commander, an allusion to a John Keats poem, and a philosophical allegory about humankind’s demise—all in a single song (“Watcher of the Skies,” by Genesis). In place of a guitarist, E.L.P. had Keith Emerson, a keyboard virtuoso who liked to wrestle with his customized Hammond organ onstage, and didn’t always win: during one particularly energetic performance, he was pinned beneath the massive instrument, and had to be rescued by roadies. Perhaps this, too, was an allegory.
What's not to love about that? But critics called progressive rock pretentious, radio programmers did not want to play entire concept albums, record companies wanted to sell singles, and younger listeners wanted to dance. That led to the disco fad. Now it's cool to hate progressive rock, especially among musicians, although it will always be a part of our cultural legacy. Read about the rise and fall of progressive rock and its critics at The New Yorker. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Dr. Ronald Kunze)
Carsen Parker had a raccoon inside his yard, which is surrounded by a sturdy, relatively high iron fence. He went out to remove the critter, thinking it would be a simple task of chasing it to the gate, but the raccoon had other ideas. He did not want to leave.
"The days I've spent here have been the best of my raccoon life. I find this yard to be quite pleasant, and I'm considering settling here on a permanent basis. Your attitude about this matter concerns me, but overall, I enjoy your company. Why don't you want me to live here?" -via Tastefully Offensive
The first thing to remember about credit cards, and the most important thing, is to not spend more than you can afford. Once you refine that habit, credit cards make everything easier. You don't have to carry cash, you get receipts and a monthly statement so you know where your money went, you can build a good credit history, and you have a backup for emergencies. And you might even get reward points! The second most important thing about credit cards is protecting them from theft. There are so many ways that other can access your account, but there are also safeguards. For example,
Never Use the Same Password on Different Accounts
Upon waking up a few weeks ago to see that someone decided to take it upon themselves to break into my PayPal account and transfer $3000 from my bank account to PayPal, I was furious. Thankfully, they didn’t realize there is a processing period and I was able to fix the issue before the funds were deposited and anyone was able to steal them. But I had to change all my passwords to just about everything, because I always used the same password for all accounts (oh, don’t judge me. I have four kids. I need easy to remember stuff). My husband was horrified when I told him my passwords were all the same, and I’m pretty sure he momentarily wondered why he married such an idiot.
That's just the beginning of the list of tips for safeguarding your credit card accounts you'll find at SheBudgets.
(Image credit: Lotus Head)
Atlas Obscura continues their Children's Literature Week with a look at the fable "The Tortoise and the Hare." The story, attributed to Aesop, comes down to us from antiquity, and has been told in many different ways.
In the tale, the two animals challenge one another to a race to prove who is fastest: mid-race, the hare lays down to rest, certain that it’s going to win. Then out comes the tortoise, plodding along without pause, the winner; slow and steady wins the race, as the moral goes. Then there’s a huge forest fire, and almost everybody dies.
Wait, what?
That's in Irish writer Lord Dunsany’s 1915 version of the tale, which is turned into a political joke with a terrific punch line. Read it and several other confounding versions of "The Tortoise and the Hare" that turned its message sideways.
(Image credit: Alex Eben Meyer)
Necessity is the mother of invention. But a little kookiness could preserve Mother Earth.
1. WE NEED: TO STOP CONSUMING SO MANY RESOURCES
Solution: Downsize Humankind
At 6-foot-5, Dutch artist Arne Hendriks isn’t proud to be using more than his share of global resources. We’re running low on everything, and humans are making matters worse by growing taller, living longer, and reproducing more. So Hendriks thinks people need to shrink. More specifically, he wants to bring the human race down to 20 inches tall. At that height, we’d need only 2 percent of the resources we use now. To get started, Hendriks says we should stop eating growth hormone–stimulating foods and get genetic counseling so we can select for shorter kids. He argues that gene manipulation could make people, not just the planet, healthier: Laron syndrome, a form of dwarfism, confers near-immunity to cancer and diabetes.
2. WE NEED: MARS TO BE INHABITABLE
Solution: Nuke Mars!
Mars is as cold as an Antarctic winter. So billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk threw out this idea: If Mars is too chilly for human habitation, why don’t we drop some thermonuclear bombs there to heat it up? Musk doesn’t want to nuke the Red Planet itself—just the sky over its two poles, creating twin suns that would heat the planet’s surface, by turning Mars’s store of carbon dioxide (currently trapped in its ice caps) into gas. At some point, the greenhouse effect would kick in. If we got it warm enough, we could even plant trees to thicken the atmosphere with oxygen. Academics reacting to Musk’s ideas ranged from dismissive to tentative (“It’s possible, but …”). For one, we’d need to send thousands of nukes over centuries. Others warn that radiation could harm the planet. And if there is life on Mars, this wouldn’t be the smartest way to say hello.
3. WE NEED: TO ALL GET ALONG
Entrepreneur Jerome Dauffy wanted to build a flying machine that could travel around the world in 80 days. He might not be there just yet, but he designed a flying car he calls Pegasus that resembles a dune buggy crossed with a paraglider.
On Wednesday, pilot Bruno Vezzoli took off from Calais, France, and flew it to Dover, England, across the English Channel. The 36-mile flight came off without a hitch! Read more about the stunt here. -via Nag on the Lake
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