Przemek Blejzyk, an artist based in Lodz, Poland, works in various media and genres, but I'm especially taken with his enormous murals. This one, which I think is entitled "Spring," is on the Urban Forms Gallery in Lodz.
Gallery -via Comics Alliance
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23-year old Xiao Feng doesn't want to get a job. He'd rather spend his time playing video games. To discourage this activity, Feng's father hired players to hunt down and slay his son's characters:
Unhappy with his son not finding a job, Feng decided to hire players in his son's favorite online games to hunt down Xiao Feng. It is unknown where or how Feng found the in-game assassins—every one of the players he hired were stronger and higher leveled than Xiao Feng. Feng's idea was that his son would get bored of playing games if he was killed every time he logged on, and that he would start putting more effort into getting a job.
Now that's creative parenting!
People have been flinging snowballs at each other longer than anyone knows. The folks in the Middle Ages seemed to enjoy it, if the paintings and illuminations of the era are any indication. Shown here is a detail from the fresco at Castello Buonconsiglio, created circa 1405-1410. The woman in the middle got it good -right in the face! See more artworks featuring snowballs at Retronaut. Link -via Buzzfeed
There are only a few hundred Rothschild giraffes alive today. Several of them live at Giraffe Manor, a resort in Kenya. There, guests can get a close look at them--and vice versa. The resident giraffes are comfortable sticking their heads through open windows to see what guests are doing. You can view more photos of them at the link.
Link and Official Website | Photo: Tamimi
You can see right through the whitespotted conger larva. This flat-shaped fish found in the waters around Japan is about six inches long now. But when fully grown, it will lose its transparency and be up to three feet long.
Link (Translation) -via Twisted Sifter | Photo: Mie Prefecture Fisheries Research Institute
@williamshatner Yes, Standard Orbit, Captain. And we're detecting signs of life on the surface.
— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) January 3, 2013
Commander Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut, is currently on the International Space Station. He got a tweet from James T. Kirk, the actor who played William Shatner on Star Trek. Hadfield showed the captain the respect due to him by rank and reputation.
Instructables member tstan1136's scratch made nutcrackers resemble Jake from Adventure Time and Lincoln from Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. He turned the main body parts on a lathe and laser cut the accents. Both are ready for action. A crossover episode, please!
Dog Fun For Feet Knitted Slipper Socks
Sadly, the holidays are over and that means it's back to working like a dog. Give yourself a break and treat those dog tired feet to the adorable Dog Fun For Feet Knitted Slipper Socks from the NeatoShop. This great pair of adult-sized slippers, with anti-slip soles, is destined to become your new best friend.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more Fun Footwear.
Have you been endlessly searching for the perfect spot to store your most prized steampunk baubles? You need the Steampunk Box With Compass from the NeatoShop. This fabulous little container is decorated in steampunk-style and features beautiful hand painted details. The lid showcases a working compass.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Home Decor items.
Babies got to eat to grow big, and a baby star is no exception. Astronomers studying a young star noticed that it is being fed a steady stream of gas from nearby planets:
Astronomers observing the still-forming sun HD 142527, located about 450 light-years away, have found that it is being fed by two hidden gas giant planets several times the mass of Jupiter. The planets, which are also still forming, each live in and are obscured by their own river of gas, which flows from a large, misshapen halo on the outer edge of the system [...] The planets' gravity draws gas from the halo, but much of that gas overshoots them and hurtles across a vast gap toward the star instead ...
Little kids sure pick up languages fast - but what you probably don't know is that even newborn are linguistic whizzes from learning the sounds of their mother tongue while in utero:
Research led by Christine Moon, a professor of psychology at Pacific Lutheran University, shows that infants, only hours old showed marked interest for the vowels of a language that was not their mother tongue.
"We have known for over 30 years that we begin learning prenatally about voices by listening to the sound of our mother talking," Moon said. "This is the first study that shows we learn about the particular speech sounds of our mother's language before we are born."
Before the study, the general consensus was that infants learned about the small parts of speech, the vowels and the consonants, postnatally. Moon added. "This study moves the measurable result of experience with individual speech sounds from six months of age to before birth," she said. The findings will be published in Acta Paediatrica in late December.
Chris Higgins of mental_floss wrote a book called The Blogger Abides. It's about, you guessed it, blogging! In an excerpt he posted today, he gives many examples of misused words and phrases he's been called out on over the years. A couple of examples:
Tough Road to Hoe
A lot of idioms don’t seem to make sense, particularly if you (like me) never really heard them right, and just said what you thought you heard. It’s “a tough row to hoe,” not “a tough road to hoe.” Hoeing a row is something you do in a garden. With a hoe. It’s tough. You don’t hoe a road. I think maybe I thought it was “a tough road a-ho” for a while, which also seems to mean nothing (unless perhaps that’s short for “ahoy”), but maybe in some old-timey slang from my primitive brain it means something…anyway, pro tip: when using some seemingly nonsensical idiom in your writing, Google it first to figure it out what it really is and how to write it properly.
Myriad Plethoras
The word “plethora” traditionally has a negative connotation–so you’d say something like, “I’m pretty sure she’s crazy because she owns a plethora of cats and also never wears shoes.” In modern usage it’s often used much like “myriad,” just meaning “a lot of something”–but some readers will freak out, because of its traditional use as “a problematically large number or amount of something.” Further, the word myriad actually has a positive connotation–so you’d say something like, “Myriad stars shone from above.” (Note: debate rages over the possible uses of the word myriad. In the example just now, I used it as an adjective. It may also be used as a noun, just like plethora: “A myriad of stars shone from above.”)
In short: myriad good, plethora bad (due to quantity).
There's plenty more, from the obvious to the totally confusing. Link
New year, new laws. When the ball dropped on midnight, January 1st, we not only rang in the new year, but also a slew of oddball laws from around the country.
Good Morning America has a few examples:
Turns out 2013 will be unlucky for cat lovers in Wellington, Kan., where the city will be restricting the number of cats in a household to no more than four. [...]
Another unusual law taking effect at midnight is Public Act 97-743 in Illinois. This law imposes a fine of $1,000 on anyone who pops a wheelie on a motorcycle while speeding. [...]
Come 12:01 a.m. in Concord, Mass., plastic bottles will be considered contraband. Concord will be the first town in the nation to outlaw plastic bottles.
As of Jan. 1, it will no longer be illegal to flash your headlights in Florida to warn drivers about a speeding trap set by police.
In California, more than 800 laws are about to take effect, including one that allows driverless vehicles on the road. But a human must be present in the passenger’s seat of all computer-driven cars.
Read more over at ABC News: Link
Jeff Wysaski of Pleated-Jeans has a countdown of the ten most popular New Year resolutions as illustrated by cats. Good luck keeping yours! Resolutions, I mean. I very much hope you keep your cats. Link
Ah, Atari. You were my first gaming platform. How many hours did I waste playing Combat on you? Not enough, probably. The Pink Cake Box made this Atari 2600 cake for one man's fortieth birthday party.
Link -via Between the Pages
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