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Steven Bamford made this marvy text generator that lets you recreate words using images of real galaxies. The Geekologie Writer thoughtfully and accurately predicts that a real-life version of this is the future of skywriting.
Link -via Geekologie
Screen tests offer an interesting look at actors before they fully "become" a character. As Alison Nastasi at Flavorwire puts it, "It’s a chance to see popular stars, who always appear so glamorously surefooted, build the framework for the movies that made them famous in a smaller, bare-bones setting." Indeed. Check out Ralph Macchio testing for Karate Kid, above, and click through for more classic hits like ET, Tootsie and Titanic. Link
Oli Beale was fed up with his neighbors' loud singing one Saturday night, and decided to deliver a critique on the housing complex's communal board:
Thank you for your EPIC performance. Your terrace faces 115 windows so you really did have the perfect stage. I'm sure you're keen to hear our verdict.
If you saw the episode in question, then you know that the characters didn't bother counting it to find out. But this stack of money, shown above, has maximum and minimum values that can be determined by the estimated dimensions of the stack. Since the midseason finale, all kinds of people have tried their thumb at counting that cash without actually counting it. Cockeyed.com is no stranger to calculating quantities and volumes from images, and based on various angles from the Breaking Bad episode, this is their guess. And here, another estimate from Quora's Tom Cook. And finally, a roundup of guesses from TV.com. How much money do you think is there?
Image: Lewis Jacobs/AMC
Jeff Wysaski of Pleated Jeans demonstrates "wrap rage" in a video he calls Your Food Packaging is Bad and You Should Feel Bad. Wrap rage is when you can't open your lunch because the packaging is designed for someone besides mere humans. And why I keep scissors, a screwdriver, and pliers in the kitchen. Link
Photo: Nicolle Rager Fuller/National Science Foundation
Quick: what's the connection between climate change and conspiracy theory?
According to a new study published in the upcoming issue of Psychological Science, people who tend to believe in conspiracy theory are also more likely to be climate change deniers:
Believing that climate change isn't happening or that it's not human-caused requires a belief that thousands of climate scientists around the world are lying outright, Lewandowsky and his colleagues wrote in their new paper. Conspiracy theory beliefs are known to come in clusters — someone who thinks NASA faked the moon landing is more likely to accept the theory that 9/11 was an inside job, for example. So Lewandowsky and his colleagues created an online survey and asked eight mostly pro-science blogs and five climate-skeptic blogs to post a link to the survey for their readers. The respondents were self-selecting, but highly motivated to care about climate science, the researchers noted.
The responses came only from the eight pro-science blogs, the researchers reported. Of 1,145 usable survey responses, the researchers found that support for free-market, laissez-faire economics was linked to a rejection of climate change. A tendency to believe other conspiracy theories was also linked to denial of climate change. Finally, climate-change deniers were more likely than others to say that other environmental problems have been solved, indicating a dismissive attitude toward "green" causes.
And as you can expect, the findings of this study sparked its own conspiracy theory. Stephanie Pappas of LiveScience has the story: Link
There's no indication of where this bus stop is, but it's a great idea for the entire world! Link -via Breakfast Links
Update: Neatoramanaut Joshua Frazer identified this! It's an art installation in Montreal called 21 Balançoires in which the swings play music. Link -Thanks, Joshua!
Photo: Shutterstock
Who says that watching TV is bad for you? Kids, listen up - According to a new study, watching your favorite TV reruns may actually be good for you:
A new paper that describes two studies by Jaye Derrick, PhD, research scientist at the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions, found that watching a rerun of a favorite TV show may help restore the drive to get things done in people who have used up their reserves of willpower or self-control.
"People have a limited pool of these valuable mental resources," explains Derrick. "When they use them on a task, they use up some of this limited resource. Therefore, they have less willpower and self-control for the next task.
"With enough time, these mental resources will return. However, there may be ways to more quickly restore them."
One of these ways is to re-watch your favorite TV show, Derrick's research found. Doing so, she says, taps into the surrogate relationship people form with the characters in their favorite shows. We find it comforting, mainly because we already know what the characters are going to say and do. All we have to do is sit back and enjoy it.
"When you watch a favorite re-run, you typically don't have to use any effort to control what you are thinking, saying or doing. You are not exerting the mental energy required for self-control or willpower," Derrick explains. "At the same time, you are enjoying your 'interaction,' with the TV show's characters, and this activity restores your energy."
Text from the poster above:
We Should Ban Life Jackets & Other Flotation Devices
They only encourage risky behavior. The only 100% effective way to prevent drowning is total abstinence from going in the water. And if you do, by chance, find yourself struggling with drowning, then no life-saving or otherwise procedure or act should be allowed to be administered. You got yourself into this mess, you have to live with the consequences.
You should see drowning as a gift.
Also, if you were forcibly pushed into the water, don't worry. If it was a legitimate pushing, your body will find a way to shut out all the water and survive the drowning.
Via Accordion Guy
Acrylic Tank Manufacturing is a builder of luxury and custom fish tanks. Among its more astonishing products is this bed, built beneath a 650-gallon tank. This unforgettable experience will cost you $11,500.
Bank of Baroda in Jaipur, India, is facing a bit of a problem: burglars keep on stealing money from its ATMs. So it came up with a rather ingenious solution ... it started installing cash machines inside of police stations.
The police have rented out the space at 20,000 rupees (£227; $286) a month. Jaipur has 59 police stations.
Thieves have often targeted unguarded ATMs in the city to steal cash. In one case, they escaped with a machine.
A Bank of Baroda official said they would no longer need to deploy security guards at the ATMs since burglars would not dare to enter a police station.
To say that the optical art installations created by Esther Stocker are trippy would be an understatement, because they are positively mind altering!
Each space evokes a unique perception shifting feeling in simple black and white, and even the individual pics of the rooms have a unique optical effect on the viewer.
Link --via Hi Fructose
You can design a Rubik's Cube with Braille letters to signify colors. Doing so, howevever, presents a problem:
But when you turn a braille letter upside down, it becomes a different braille letter. So as the user rotates the cube it becomes impossible to read the colors.
Brian Doom solved that problem by giving a cube six distinct textures, each of which represents a color.
Link -via Smart News
What do you get when you add Rice Krispies and marshmallow fluff to a milkshake? A Rice Krispie treat milkshake! Yummy!
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