Can color kill? Not by itself, but humans love color so much that we are drawn to things that may be really dangerous, just because we like the pretty colors.
The problem was that there was such a lag between discovering something that gave us a wonderful color and the point we realized it was killing people. You'll hear several of those stories in this TED-Ed lesson from J. V. Maranto. -via Boing Boing
When a cat has a poor opinion of something, they will let you know, clearly, in their own way. In this complication video from the Pet Collective, you'll see cats hating on modern technology, toys, food, family members, and everyday objects.
To be fair, some of these clips aren't so much dislike for objects, but more of a cat wanting to see how much destruction and chaos they can cause. Yet we still love them.
Sooner or later, just about every family takes a road trip to Six Flags, Disney World, or some other large theme park to show the kids a good time. That means standing in line for a hour to ride a one-minute ride, paying out the wazoo for lunch, and dealing with tired, cranky kids (or even worse, bored teenagers) and sunburn. There's a price to pay for everything.
In the latest Honest Ad from Cracked, Roger Horton dresses up like Walt Disney and welcomes us to Hortonland, where all your dreams will come true- even if they are nightmares.
Around 4,000 people around the world die from lightning strikes every year, but about ten times as many are hit by lightning and survive. For those who survive a strike, the experience is so memorable that they've formed an international survivors group. Some only have memories of the experience, while others face lifelong effects and health issues, both mental and physical. Their stories are always scary.
A crashing boom. A jolting, excruciating pain. "My whole body was just stopped — I couldn't move any more," Justin recalls. "The pain was… I can't explain the pain except to say if you've ever put your finger in a light socket as a kid, multiply that feeling by a gazillion throughout your entire body."
"And I saw a white light surrounding my body — it was like I was in a bubble. Everything was slow motion. I felt like I was in a bubble forever."
A couple huddled under a nearby tree ran to Justin's assistance. They later told him that he was still clutching the chair. His body was smoking.
When Justin came to, he was looking up at people staring down, his ears ringing. Then he realized that he was paralyzed from the waist down. "Once I figured out that I couldn't move my legs, I started freaking out."
Read the stories of several lightning survivors, and a little of what we know about lightning's effect on humans, at Mosaic. -via Digg
The family at the core of The Simpsons has been around for thirty years now, and in that time we've gotten to know dozens of the other residents of Springfield as they came and went, and came back again. However, there are a few characters that only appeared on the series once. Whether that's because the voice actor didn't want to repeat a performance, or there just wasn't a story fit for them, they became one-hit wonders. If you can recall the one episode these characters were in among the hundreds that have aired, then you're in rarified Simpsons fandom territory. Meet five of those characters at TVOM.
The latest hipster food obsession is the "avolatte," a latte (which is a fancy term for coffee with milk) served in an avocado shell. Developed at the Truman Cafe in Melbourne, the idea has spread through the internet and around the world, pretty much instantly.
It appears to be an eco-friendly way to add a bit of avocado flavor to the drink, but not everyone likes the idea. Personally, I do not like avocado, and I do like having a handle on my coffee cup. -via Laughing Squid
(Image credit: ozeatingwa)
Jürgen Horn and Mike Powell continue their adventures in Vietnam, where they've been exploring villages on their own, without guides, away from the tourist spots. They'd heard that Tan Chau was where Vietnamese black silk was produced, so they set out with a map and their motorcycles -after three ferry trips across the river.
Properly motorized, we headed off in search of silk, stopping in a few towns where, to judge by the dumbfounded stares we received, foreigners are not an everyday occurrence. And nobody could help us. In fact, the famous black silk of Tan Chau didn’t seem to be all that famous in Tan Chau. Scouring the map, we decided to head to Long Chau, which looked like the region’s largest town. It was also the furthest away; if we struck out here, we agreed to give up.
Pressed right up along the river, Long Chau was cute, but we weren’t here to see the sights, dammit. We directed ourselves to the town’s central market, to look for silk vendors. If anyone knew where to find a silk manufacturing center, surely they. The owners of the first silk store were friendly but weirdly insistent we go to “Tân Châu Xứ Lụa”, which Google identified as a restaurant. “No, you must misunderstand us. But thanks anyway!”
But they eventually found a silk factory, and got some really neat pictures and video, which you can see at For 91 Days.
If we're going to have triangles, we may as well go whole hog with the geometry analogies. I think we cam all relate to the anxiety fractals more than the rest, amirite? This is the newest comic from John McNamee at Pie Comic.
If you didn't learn to swim as a child, it can be pretty difficult -and downright embarrassing- to ask someone teach you as an adult. What do you do? You buy a backyard pool like this guy and try to figure it out on your own.
However, it can be a traumatic experience, from the blowing up part, to the hose that doesn't work, to remembering why you never learned to swim in the first place. He should have invested in a lifeguard, too. -via Viral Viral Videos
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!
(Image credit: mcfarlandmo)
Research about mechanisms to reduce a particular kind of noise
compiled by Nan Swift, Improbable Research staff
Engineers dare to take on tasks that nature may have neglected. Here are four attempts to solve the noise-related problems arising from human sneezes or coughs.
Apisa’s Simple Sneeze Catcher
“Sneeze Catching Method and Apparatus,” US patent 8910312, issued to Joseph Apisa, December 16, 2014. Apisa specifies:
An apparatus for catching bodily fluids ejected during a sneeze or cough, said apparatus comprising: a sleeve having a first open end... a closure being mounted on said sleeve and releasably retaining said frame in said closed position; a pad being removably positioned in said receiving space, said pad having anti-bacterial properties; and wherein said sleeve is configured to be worn on an arm of a person such that the person may sneeze or cough into said pad and that said pad captures and destroys bacteria exhaled by the person.
This news anchor at the Russian channel MIR 24 is telling us about the planned renovation of some areas of Moscow, when she's interrupted by a Labrador retriever that had snuck behind the desk. It was startling.
She tries to keep her cool and continue with the news, but all the attention is on the dog. Finally, she ends this clip by explaining that this is why she is a cat person. It's not nice to be upstaged. -via Tastefully Offensive
You can always find an argument somewhere on the internet about what is and what is not a sandwich. With new food items constantly being developed, the line has grown quite thin. Is a hot dog legally a sandwich? It depends. How about a corn dog? A burrito? An ice cream sandwich? A Pop Tart? It all depends on who you ask, and why. For some jurisdictions, whether a food item is a sandwich makes a difference in how it is taxed or zoned. Some definitions come from courts, others from organizations. Mental Floss dug up five definitions of a sandwich from different governing bodies, which should be enough to keep the arguments going for a while.
(Image credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture)
Cosplayer Cindy Salvus Artistry took a few lines from Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and made it a real thing. The character Yondu is mashed up with Mary Poppins! Here's the dialogue from the movie:
Star-Lord: You look like Mary Poppins.
Yondu: Is he cool?
Star-Lord: Hell yeah, he’s cool.
Yondu: I’m Mary Poppins, y’all!
And he certainly is. You can see more pictures of the character at Facebook and Instagram.
-via Geeks Are Sexy
The word "brainwashing" came about because of the Cold War. In the 1950s, Americans were shocked when thousands of soldiers captured by North Korea eventually confessed to war crimes they hadn't committed, and some even refused to return to the US when the war was over. That was unthinkable.
Suddenly the threat of brainwashing was very real, and it was everywhere. The U.S. military denied the charges made in the soldiers’ “confessions,” but couldn’t explain how they’d been coerced to make them. What could explain the behavior of the soldiers besides brainwashing? The idea of mind control flourished in pop culture, with movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Manchurian Candidate showing people whose minds were wiped and controlled by outside forces. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover referred to thought-control repeatedly in his book Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It. By 1980 even the American Psychiatric Association had given it credence, including brainwashing under “dissociative disorders” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-III. Had Chinese and Soviet Communists really uncovered a machine or method to rewrite men’s minds and supplant their free will?
The short answer is no—but that didn’t stop the U.S. from pouring resources into combatting it.
“The basic problem that brainwashing is designed to address is the question ‘why would anybody become a Communist?’” says Timothy Melley, professor of English at Miami University and author of The Covert Sphere: Secrecy, Fiction, and the National Security State. “[Brainwashing] is a story that we tell to explain something we can’t otherwise explain.”
Brainwashing seemed like mystical mind-control magic to the American public, although psychological change can be readily explained by simpler concepts, from persuasion to indoctrination to torture. The US government went into overdrive to research brainwashing in the 1950s, which you can read about at Smithsonian.
The Breaking Bad prequel series Better Call Saul is now in its third season. Fans are trying to put clues together to figure out where the story is going, and how it will all tie together. Since Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould are behind both shows, it only makes sense that all the elements of Better Call Saul will come together to lead into the Breaking Bad series, and elements that appear to have no significance at first will eventually be meaningful. This leads us to fan theories about how the story will play out. Some are pretty bizarre, but so is the world in which these shows exist. Read the bare bones of five widespread fan theories about Better Call Saul that may or may not pan out at TVOM.
