I doubt Adam West knew what an impact he would make on pop culture when he played Batman on the original TV show, but the outpouring of tributes after his death shows us his contribution to geek culture is timeless.
And here's the thing about Adam West's Batman- big name celebs were lining up to be on Batman even though the network wasn't sure if the show was even worth making, all because of Adam West.
The best place to spot celebs on the old Batman TV show was during the "Batclimb" segments, where random celebs would pop out of a window and react to Batman and Robin climbing up the wall.
And thanks to this old video by YouTuber A. Pennyworth you can see all the celeb Batclimb cameos in order of airing in one Bat-tacular compilation video!
It's no surprise most movies made for geeks feature a nerdy relationship far too good to be true, since roping the audience into the storyline of a movie is a textbook tactic to make viewer's feel invested in the film.
But movies also reduce real life to black and white generalizations, so their portrayal of nerd culture makes us all seem like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, which is an insult to nerd diversity.
So illustrator JHALL created this cute comic strip to show all the ways the movies get nerd love wrong, from the epic Con adventures to the male chauvinist friends to the drama of moving in together.
Animator Nina Paley (previously at Neatorama) has a real knack for bringing tales of history and mythology to life via animation, and her entirely self-made films may take forever to make but the end result is always awesome.
If you're a fan of Sita Sings The Blues then you'll be pleased to know her newest film Seder-Masochism, which deals with Christian mythology, is looking to be every bit as fun to watch as Sita.
So, while Nina takes a short break from production to learn some new software, let's take a look at a bit from Seder-Masochism entitled "Death Of The Firstborn Egyptians", trust me it's much more fun to watch than it sounds!
Cats have cast a spell on humans that we cannot dispel, and as we become ever more enchanted with the little furballs we look for more ways to express our love of kittehkind.
There's truly no better way to share your love of cats with the world than by wearing a t-shirt with some colorful cat-inspired artwork on the front, and the NeatoShop is full of cool cat designs you'd be crazy not to love!
When we're in full blown feline mode there's nobody we'd rather hang out with than our cats
Most people saw RadioShack as little more than a place to buy new batteries or a cheap RC car to give as a gift, but the Shack's main reason for being was as a store that sold supplies for electronics hobbyists.
And for a long time RadioShack was the only place to go if you were a CBer, computer user or basically did anything involving a soldering iron and a circuit board.
So it should come as no surprise the stuff they're selling in their corporate memorabilia auction is pretty darn niche, because only a diehard CBer would want a gold record for a trucker songs album called "Put the hammer down!".
Here's the album in its entirety, in case you're thinking about bidding:
There are lots of vintage tech enthusiasts out there today, but it seems unlikely there will be a bidding war for the RadioShack DuoFone Microprocessor Controlled, a fancy name for an ancient answering machine:
And for the ultimate RadioShack nerds out there who have fond memories of shopping in the store and admiring their unique wall art there's this RS Logo In Hurricane framed print, so the memories can live on forever:
I'm sure you've heard about Fidget Spinners by now, since they're super popular with the wee folk and on the news daily as schools ban them and people claim they were injured by these fad toys.
They were supposedly created to help people with ADHD by keeping their hands busy, but as soon as they became a full blown toy trend people started sharing "cool fidget spinner tricks", all of which look pretty lame to me.
Which is why these Kwist fidget sticks will probably take over for the spinners when the fad mania dies down, because they're not pretentious, they're virtually unbreakable, and "Kwisters" can do some pretty sweet looking tricks with them.
Kwists are pieces of rubber-tipped cherry wood cut into a special cylindrical shape that "allow it to turn, jump and twist in many different ways while retaining a surprising amount of kinetic energy."
Dance crews are typically known for their fancy footwork, but the performers from the Japanese Xtrap Dance Crew are looking to expand their repertoire by including fancy fingerwork in their performances.
And since their competition isn't hip to the finger jive the Xtrap dancers are pointing the way with their incredible choreographed digital display.
Check out this mesmerizing video by Status Silver featuring the Xtrap Dance Crew creating hypnotic kaleidoscopes with their hands.
Kawaii characters are so cute we can't help but think of them in a positive way, and when we see an image of a kawaii character we picture them doing pleasant things and speaking with a syrupy sweet voice.
That's why one of my favorite stylistic mashups is the meeting of "kawaii cute" and "violently bloody" because it doesn't seem like a combo that would work but the two really do go well together.
Case in point- Bloody Bunny, a series that's so kawaii it will give you cavities yet so bloody it might give you nightmares, plus frenetic martial arts mayhem!
There are two things every human civilization needs- potable water and a way to dispose of our waste, and every successful community places these two things far away from each other.
Unfortunately these two things come together more often than you think, and polluted drinking water can cause sickness, death and force a community to move and start over again.
To raise awareness about water pollution and how it affects people three students from the National Taiwan University of the Arts created "Polluted Water Popsicles"- strangely beautiful popsicles made from raw sewage.
Here's how the "Polluted Water Popsicles" were made:
Hung I-chen, Guo Yi-hui, and Cheng Yu-ti, three students at the National Taiwan University of Arts, collected sewage water from all over Taiwan and and turned them into popsicles for a project titled “Polluted Water Popsicles.” The project is intended to spread awareness about water pollution and its deep effect on our world’s population. The 100 pieces, which also included designed wrappers, was nominated for the Young Pin Design Award.
Hung and her teammates visited 100 locations across Taiwan to collect waste. They then placed the samples—complete with dirt, bugs, and trash—into a freezer, turning them into popsicles. In order to preserve them, they encased the popsicles in a polyester resin.
Surrealist art is harder than it looks to create because if the piece is too subtle viewers won't get those magical mystery feels, and if it's too strange viewers will dismiss it as incomprehensible.
So Wroclaw, Poland-based photographer Konrad Bąk has chosen to keep his surreal portraits simple and elegant, with just a hint of the bizarre.
Konrad's beautiful portraits bridge the gap between fashion photography and fine art, and each one tells a tale that's open for interpretation by the viewer:
“In my opinion, the camera lens should express feelings, tell stories,” he says. “In my photographs, I try to capture the fleeting beauty, the mood of the moment. In my images, I try to capture the sensuality of the female body, the uniqueness of feminine beauty, fluctuations in moods, The possibility of showing it all in a durable form is “that something” that drives me to arrange my photoshoots,” says Konrad.
Some people cannot start their day without a cup of coffee, feeling like a zombie until they kick-start their brain by sipping on some warm java.
Coffee becomes an even more valuable commodity in an office full of employees who need that cuppa joe to stay awake all day, since their job is so boring they'd fall asleep at their desks without coffee.
But something tells me no coffee is needed to stay awake in an office where people are battling in the hallways all day long...
Apocalatte was created by Luke Smith and a group of third year students at Sheridan College, and it'll make you appreciate how easy it is to get a cuppa joe in your office!
Bento boxes are the Japanese equivalent of a sack lunch, and the contents of these portable lunch containers range from freshly prepared meals to last night's leftovers.
But those foodies who put the same amount of love into the preparation of a bento box as they would any other meal turn bentos into a work of edible art.
A post shared by しあん (@kinakobun) on May 25, 2016 at 6:37pm PDT
Japanese Instagrammer @kinakobun makes fantastic and colorful bento boxes inspired by pop culture for her husband, including characters like the Minions, Totoro and Japanese mascots like Kumamon.
The lowly goldfish sit in their bowls all day watching the cats and dogs and birds of the household get all the love and attention from their humans- and the goldfish are green with envy.
That's why goldfish are best left alone in their bowl, and if they ask for a gun, a rope or a powered exoskeleton you should reply "fish, please".
But mad scientist Neil Mendoza is really bad at saying no to his goldfish, so he gave the finny little guy exactly what he's been asking for since Christmas '14- a hammer of his very own.
Neil's Fish Hammer Actuation Device uses a camera to track the goldfish's movements and drops the hammer when Smashie rotates in place:
People love to break ocean stuff. The Fish Hammer empowers fish to break people stuff.
As Smashie swims around the aquarium, his position is tracked with a webcam, using software written in C++ using openFrameworks and OpenCV. The hammer follows him around the tank on a carriage powered by an Applied Motion [applied-motion.com] stepper motor. The software calculates the velocity that the motor needs to be moving using a PID algorithm that takes the motor's encoder position as input and gives a velocity as output. This velocity is then sent over UDP to the stepper motor. The hammer head drops based on the slow rotation of a cam that the hammer rests on.
The Fish Hammer was designed using Autodesk Fusion 360 and Autodesk Inventor. Instructions on how to build your very own Fish Hammer actuation device at instructables.com/id/Fish-Hammer-Actuation-Device. This project was created as part of Autodesk's artist in residence program.
When somebody close to you commits suicide you're left with more questions than answers and can't help but wonder if there's something you could have done to prevent their death. This is a normal thing to wonder when you're given the bad news, and from there you start to wonder how well you really knew the person and what drove them to take their own life.
42-year-old Lori Ruff ended her life on Christmas Eve in 2010 leaving her husband Blake feeling devastated and full of questions- had Lori committed suicide because Blake filed for divorce, or was there a more sinister reason?
As Blake went through Lori's possessions he came across something suspicious- a sealed lockbox buried in the closet, which Lori had warned her husband to stay away from:
The grieving husband recognized the box. In life, Lori had warned him to stay away from it. Upon opening the container, Blake discovered why: inside was a birth certificate and IDs belonging to several different people.
His wife was not who she claimed to be. She was an accomplished identity thief.
Blake Ruff married the woman known as Lori in 2004. Her suicide came after Blake had filed for divorce and moved back in with his parents. Lori's behavior was highly erratic in the time between the separation and her death; she sent threatening emails to Blake and his family, and might have even attempted a break-in at Blake's parent's home.
Lori left behind two suicide notes, one of which was addressed to her husband and the other to her young daughter. Authorities inspected both letters, which they described as "ramblings from a clearly disturbed person." They contained no reference to Lori's life as an identity thief, nor a confession of her true identity. With little to no clues about who she might actually be, the woman once known as Lori Ruff was registered in the federal government's database of missing and unidentified persons as a Jane Doe. Investigators then began to search of her true identity — a process that would take six years to complete.
There are plenty of creatures in the animal kingdom with magnificent hair, and when people discuss magnificent manes they naturally talk about lions, horses and certain breeds of dogs.
But these lists are always missing one species with the most magnificent and luxurious hair all over their little bodies- the guinea pig.
Their flowing manes make the critter competition look wheek by comparison, and whether the guinea pig is sporting strawberry blonde locks, a jet black Mod 'do or curly hair the color of honey their hair game is always strong.
