Friday, October 31, 2014
The Shironeko Cats Celebrate Halloween
The most chill cats in the world are all dressed up for Halloween! And as usual, it's a non-stop party atmosphere... if your idea of a party is a good nap. This video will have you on the edge of your seat -Shiro’s eyes almost opened once! (via Tastefully Offensive)
My Kids' Halloween Costumes
It's been a long time since I posted a picture of my girls. Here they are, getting ready to leave for school on Halloween. My youngest is putting the goth back in Gothgrrl. Princess has given up on a Disney fairy tale life, but she still likes sparkly dresses, especially vintage fashion from the 1920s.
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These Simpsons Fans’ Costumes Are Insanely Clever And Detailed. Bonus points if you recognize all the characters and references.
On October 30, 1938, The Mercury Theatre on the Air offered an radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's 1898 novel The War of the Worlds. Ron Geraci’s mother remembers that broadcast from her childhood, and what her family did to protect themselves from the invaders.
5 Incredibly Creepy Zombie Books. That’s enough to creep yourself out for the rest of the year.
Ghosts in the Machines: The Devices and Daring Mediums That Spoke for the Dead. An overview of Spiritualism and the relics some practitioners left behind.
The Shocking True Story of My Life With a Flip Phone. The backlash against smart phones is not just chic and economical, it’s a lifestyle choice.
Scientific Reasons to Believe in Vampires, Werewolves & Zombies. And if you’re going to believe, today would be the day to do it.
Obamacare: what it is, what it’s not. A very thorough explanation in comic form.
15 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Ghost Islands: Eight of the Eeriest Abandoned Places on the Seas.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
9 Impressive Halloween Costumes from 2014
It’s often only after Halloween that we get to see the most brilliant Halloween costumes, because they are made to wear to functions on October 31st. This year, plenty of them were constructed for earlier events that are spread around the holiday season, or else they are modeled and photographed ahead of time. I have no doubt that we’ll some awesome costumes over the weekend, but here are a few from this year that we’ve already caught a glimpse of, in a list I posted at mental_floss.
College Soccer Player Not Bad at Basketball
Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee, offered $10,000 in tuition for performing an amazing basketball stunt: sink a layup, free throw, three-pointer, and a half-court shot, all within 30 seconds. Gustavo Angel Tamayo, a soccer player for the Lions, won the opportunity to try it. Tamayo grew up in England, and never played on a basketball team. Watch him rush through all four shots, ending with a Hail Mary toss from half court -and the crowd goes wild!
"It's just football [soccer], that's all I do," he said. "And I had a broken finger on my left hand."
Tamayo is a senior and his tuition is already paid, so he will take the prize money in cash. (via Daily Picks and Flicks)
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How Frankenstein's Monster Works. When science can breathe life in to a dead body, what could possibly go wrong?
How to live a long life, according to science. Unless you’re just genetically gifted, the secret is to live a good life.
Why Every Newborn Has the Same Blanket. (Thanks, Daniel Kim!)
Mississippi, Burned. How the state shot itself in the foot to oppose Obamacare.
15 Things You Might Not Know About Beetlejuice.
Ballad of the 13-Year-Old Bride. Myra Lewis Williams talks about when she was outed for marrying her cousin Jerry Lee Lewis.
The Doctor Who Starved Her Patients to Death.
5 Scary Places and the Legends Behind Them. Would you spend the night in any of them?
The Key Elements Of Every Truly Terrifying Horror Story. Forgets startles and gore and go for the dread.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Ambition
Ambition is a short film to advertise the European Space Agency’s Rosetta Mission. Rosetta met up with comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in August, and will deploy the the Philae lander to land on the surface of the comet on November 12th. It will be a major event in the history of space exploration.
Aidan Gillen (Littlefinger) and Aisling Franciosi star as master and apprentice talking about the mission as ancient history. The film was produced by Platige Image and directed by Tomek Bagiński. (via Digg)
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What The U.S. Could Learn From Denmark's Living Wages. (via Digg)
How KFC Makes Their Fried Chicken. In case you don’t already know how fried chicken is made.
10 Cases That Changed How We Investigate Murder. (via the Presurfer)
The Mid-20th Century's Most Brilliant Matchbox Art.
Why Your Cat Thinks You’re a Huge, Unpredictable Ape. They may be right, but we should find a better way to communicate with our pets.
The 50 Best “Ripped From the Headlines” Law & Order Episodes, Ranked. Along with information on the real-life cases that inspired them.
How can we misspell “yard sale’? Let me count the ways.
A Psychiatric Evaluation of Michael Myers and other horror villains. We can’t stop them, but we might try to understand them as they kill us.
Historic Vampires. The stories of six people who were accused of vampirism, deserved or not.
Ten Hours of Street Harassment in Two Minutes
Shoshana B. Roberts walked around Manhattan for ten hours (probably not all at the same time) with a guy in front of her carrying a hidden camera to record any interaction from strangers. That has been edited down to a couple of minutes in this video. This is the kind of thing women go through every day. Read about the project at Hollaback! If you go to the YouTube page, you’ll see that the majority of commenters do not believe this is harassment, and they are offended that it is portrayed as harassment. However, if you read the comments at Metafilter, it’s a completely different story. That’s why I prefer Metafilter to YouTube. Okay, that’s not the only reason, but you know what I mean. The comments at reddit are a mixed bag.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Don't Panic! ...It's Just a Horror Movie Tribute!
Hey, you wanna see something really scary? Then be warned before you watch this montage of horror movie clips that it is graphic and gory. If you’ve seen the movies, it shouldn’t bother you, but it will bring back memories of that first frightful time you saw them. If you haven’t seen a lot of horror movies, the clips are disturbing and you might want to just skip it. This horror fest is set to the song “Panic Station” by Muse. Another masterful supercut by Robert Jones.
Miss Cellania's Links
20 Celebrities and Their Historical Twins That'll Give You The Chills.
Dance Dance Revolution: 1812 Overture Edition. I also managed to wreck the opera hall quite a few times. (via b3ta)
That Time it Rained Flesh in Kentucky.
Star Trek in Mayberry. (via Metafilter)
Madison Rowley has the most magnificent beard in the world. That’s not just my opinion- he won the World Beard and Mustache Championships over the weekend.
What Is America's Spookiest Sound? Vote in Funny or Die’s tournament to determine what you least want to hear alone in the dark.
24 hours of horror with a dozen of the genre’s freshest voices. The A.V. Club constructs a hypothetical movie marathon with the favorites of various horror experts.
The Macabre Romance of a Man and a Mummy. Carl Tanzler couldn’t let go of Maria Elena even after she died.
20 Cute and Creepy Vintage Halloween Cards. Even the friendliest of these greetings can induce a feeling of dread.
Monday, October 27, 2014
I Won't Let You Down by OK Go
Get ready for an awesome music video. OK GO released the video for their new song today: “I Won’t Let You Down.” The innovative video features kaleidoscopic Busby Berkeley-style dance formations in what appears to be one continuous take, although I can’t picture how they did it. The credits list one cameraman, Makoto Okuguchi, plus a “Multi-Copter Pilot,” Kenji Yasuda. The band members are each riding a UNI-CUB personal mobility device. I am looking forward to the “making of” video. (via Viral Viral Videos)
Sugar
As we prepare for the annual sugarfest that is Halloween trick-or-treat, John Oliver explains just how much sugar we consume. It’s not all in the candy -the sugar you don’t see is what’s blindsiding us. And if you check your groceries for ingredients, beware of "organic dehydrated can syrup," because that is what's normally called sugar. (via Uproxx)
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Creepy Historical Drawings of Skeletons Contemplating Mortality. An eternal reminder of our inevitable fate -or maybe just a neat collection of pictures.
10 Strange American Traditions. Our national ability to make a mountain out of a molehill leaves us with some bizarre customs.
This Is What A Cat Dude Looks Like. Ladies, the line forms to the right.
The Dyatlov Pass Incident. Eight people died in 1959, and we still don’t know why.
Ghosts Of My Youth. Personal ghost stories are a way to share a nightmare with a friend.
Learn about 8 of the Undead from Around the World and 9 More of the Undead from Around the World. Visits by the formerly-living are a universal nightmare that takes slightly different forms in different cultures.
Can you spot the parking assholes? Once you are satisfied with your answers, here’s the key. (via reddit)
Disney Princesses Are My (Imperfect) Feminist Role Models.
Tom Burns showed his daughter Star Wars. She then had a great idea for Halloween costumes. (via Metafilter)
If Driving Was Taught Like Sex Ed
The way we teach sex education in American schools is so weird that you can’t compare it to anything else, but if we did, it would be weird. Don’t do it, if you do it, don’t enjoy it, but don’t do it. (via Buzzfeed)
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Saturday, October 25, 2014
The Slow Mo Guys Do Internet Memes
Gav and Dan, the Slow Mo Guys, were challenged to illustrate internet memes in super slo-mo video. The memes they selected are actually just internet slang terms, and whether you are familiar with them has little bearing on how enjoyable the vignettes are. You can bet your bottom dollar that this will be made into animated gifs that will be used on reddit and other forums for eternity. Some of these stunts were really difficult to get right, but my favorite was the easiest: flipping the table. (via Viral Viral Videos)
Cat Eats Corn
This kitten like corn so much that he has to threaten anyone who comes near! It doesn’t matter that there is plenty more corn right beside him. (via Laughing Squid)
Friday, October 24, 2014
World Record Skydive
In 2012, Felix Baumgartner set a world record for skydiving from an altitude of 128,100 feet. We followed his quest to achieve it for years before it actually happened. in contrast, we heard nothing about another man's quest to break the record.
Early this morning, Alan Eustace, a senior vice president at Google, went upon a helium balloon to a height of 135,890 feet above the earth -that over 25 miles! He then cut the balloon away and fell to earth. It took two hours to go up and only 15 minutes to come down.
“It was amazing,” he said. “It was beautiful. You could see the darkness of space and you could see the layers of atmosphere, which I had never seen before.”The life-support equipment Eustace used was developed by Paragon Space Development Corporation. Google had offered support when Eustice first revealed the project to them, but he didn’t want the jump to turn into a marketing event. Read more about the jump at the New York Times. (via Laughing Squid)
Mr. Eustace cut himself loose from the balloon with the aid of a small explosive device and plummeted toward the earth at speeds that peaked at 822 miles per hour, setting off a small sonic boom heard by people on the ground.
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The Entitlement Culture War. Why do the haves resent the have-nots so much? (via Will Wheaton)
What are Your Chances of Surviving a Plane Crash?
13 Classic Scenes that Explain How Horror Movies Work. With video examples you’ll surely recognize. (via Metafilter)
City of South Miami Officials Call For 'South Florida' Secession. They want to break away from the rest of Florida to focus on the problem of climate change and rising sea levels.
5 Must-Read Ghost Stories for Halloween. You have time to read every one of them before All Hallow’s Eve.
If you have a mouthful of teeth shaped by a childhood in poverty, don’t go knocking on the door of American privilege.
Using 11 Common Household Objects to Decorate Your Pumpkin. See, your home is already full of the proper tools.
10 self-sabotaging interview mistakes to avoid. Yes, they are trying to trip you up, but keep smiling through the pain.
Modern Werewolves You Need To Know. They’re the animals of pop culture -especially during a full moon.
Men Try On Ladies’ Sexy Halloween Costumes
You ever heard the saying, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander?” Well, take a gander at these guys who are willing to try on sexy Halloween costumes designed for women. Sure, these costumes are overly revealing, poorly-constructed, and dumb. But at some points, the fellows start to enjoy it. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Thursday, October 23, 2014
The Terminator: 30 Years Later
This Sunday will be the 30th anniversary of the release of the movie The Terminator.
Outside of Sarah Connor’s hair and clothing, there’s not a lot in the
film that indicates how old it is. Oh, there have been some advances in
special effects, but anyone who is old enough to have seen The Terminator
in a first-run theater probably doesn’t see any problem with that.
Those effects were astounding at the time. But in 1984, the star-studded
cast and crew weren’t as star-studded as they seem now. The success of
the film changed their lives, some of them exponentially, which you'll find out about in this article I wrote for mental_floss.
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The TV series American Horror Story: Freak Show is new to Britain. To promote the show’s premiere, Miss Cakehead was commissioned to bake up some ghoulish goodies!
Kelli tried to kill her violent, autistic daughter Issy. Now Kelli is in prison and safe from Issy, but the rest of the family is not. (via Metafilter)
There are a lot of great tidbits in the list of 20 Things You Might Not Know About The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, such as Geoffrey’s full name, the inspiration for the Carlton dance, and the reason Will Smith took the job.
The Stone Dolls of Kuklica.
’90s Pop-Culture Witches, Ranked. Guessing from the text, the list goes from worst to best.
Here's why you pay close attention during fire extinguisher training. Plus, you might someday need to put out a fire.
The Man with the Golden Blood. Some extremely rare blood types, and the struggles of the people who live with them. (via Metafilter)
How to Trap a Cat. An experiment that was immediately replicated by cat owners worldwide.
9 Halloween Pumpkin Projects. Because just carving a face is so 20th century.
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
LED Minnie Mouse Stickman Costume
Last year, Roy Hutain created an internet sensation when he created an LED Stickman Costume for his toddler daughter Zoey. This year, Zoey is a year older and the costume is more elaborate. Her “Glowy Zoey” LED costume changes color in response to sound, and has Minnie Mouse ears for her trip to Disneyland! This version is a prototype, but you can buy the basic Stickman Costume at Glowy Zoey. (via Tastefully Offensive)
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The Crucified Sheep, Tattooed Frogs, and Crocheted Skeletons of a Rogue Taxidermy Fair in Brooklyn. I’m just so happy that headline doesn’t describe a food festival.
This Thursday, October 23rd, 2014, the moon will pass in front of the sun without totally blocking it out. This partial solar eclipse will be visible to almost everyone in the United States and Canada.
50 of the Scariest Short Stories of All Time. Most of them are available to read online!
The true story of Stronzo Bestiale (and other scientific jokes). Stronzo Bestiale, who is cited in quite a few papers, means “total asshole.” (via Look at This)
People often wonder why abused women don’t just leave their partner. It’s because leaving is even more dangerous than staying.
The Weirdest Attractions From Coney Island's Heyday. A new book chronicles exhibits, freak shows, and rides we’ll never see again.
Suni, one of the last two northern white rhino breeding males, has died at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. That leaves only six northern white rhinos left in the world.
How Leper Colonies Work. The slow-working, easily treatable disease leprosy used to be the most horrible thing that could happen to you.
What dogs think about. They’re pondering the big questions.
Is The Walking Dead All a Dream?
There’s a discussion at Warming Glow about the possibility that The Walking Dead will end when Rick Grimes wakes up in the hospital and finds it’s all a dream. That would be …disappointing, but a few rather hilarious scenarios were posited.
The first, addressed in the post, would be Rick waking up in the hospital as he did in the first episode, only there’s no zombie apocalypse. Lori and Shane are there, Carl’s in college, his doctors are Hershel and Dale, Maggie and Beth are nurses, Glen and Daryl are lab techs, and Merl comes to take out the trash. The rest of the cast are seen as various friends and loved ones.
The second scenario is cobbled together from the comments. Rick wakes up in bed with …Suzanne Pleshette! He goes to the shower, but Patrick Duffy is in there. Then he realizes he’s at St. Eligius, which is contained in Tommy Westphall’s snow globe. Whew!
The first, addressed in the post, would be Rick waking up in the hospital as he did in the first episode, only there’s no zombie apocalypse. Lori and Shane are there, Carl’s in college, his doctors are Hershel and Dale, Maggie and Beth are nurses, Glen and Daryl are lab techs, and Merl comes to take out the trash. The rest of the cast are seen as various friends and loved ones.
The second scenario is cobbled together from the comments. Rick wakes up in bed with …Suzanne Pleshette! He goes to the shower, but Patrick Duffy is in there. Then he realizes he’s at St. Eligius, which is contained in Tommy Westphall’s snow globe. Whew!
The final scenario, from a comment, is actually a pretty good idea. Rick dreams that he wakes up in the hospital, where his family is with him and the cast members are hospital employees. It’s like a cast reunion. Everything seems hunky-dory until Rick actually wakes up, back in the zombie apocalypse. I could go for a scene like that.
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Alphonse Bertillon and the Identity of Criminals
Alphonse Bertillon was a French forensic documentarian who developed or improved upon several methods of identifying criminals and solving crimes. Some of those methods, such as the mug shot, are still in use today, while others, particularly anthropometry, were abandoned over time in favor of more accurate methods. Bertillon is considered by many to be the first forensic expert. Read about Bertillon and his techniques in an article I wrote for mental_floss.
OSU Marching Band Does Classic Rock
When Ohio State played Rutgers on Saturday, TBDBITL marched and gave us a tribute to classic rock. The complicated formations include a musician smashing a guitar onstage. Honestly, I don’t post the Ohio State Marching Band’s halftime show every week, just when it’s awesome. (via Uproxx)
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Fake deaths, cheap resurrections, and dealing with real grief. Those who have confronted death find the pop culture version altogether unrealistic.
This Is What It’s Like To Live In An Ebola-Quarantined Apartment Building. Two guys in Dallas give a firsthand account.
A $150 Pair Of Sneakers Taught Me A Lesson That's Lasted 22 Years. Better to make those money mistakes when you’re still young enough to recover from them.
38 Facts on Frankenstein (Including the Aerosmith song it inspired and the reason the Munsters never got sued).
What the World Eats. National Geographic brings us a data visualization project that breaks down world food consumption.
Things I wish I knew when I started my PhD…
The Uncanny Language of Medical Instagram. An app for medical professionals provides horror, information, and entertainment.
America’s Favorite Sandwich Fillings.
A science professor explains why men and women have the same number of ribs, despite Adam having one removed to create Eve. (via Metafilter)
If I Had Known My Mother Back Then. Graphic artist Danielle Delph combed through old family photographs and combined some from her childhood with those of her mother’s childhood. (via mental_floss)
Marcel the Shell (With Shoes On)
Monday, October 20, 2014
Working with Cats Around
Working at home is wonderful, but it has its drawbacks. My kids have been on fall break this past week, which makes getting anything done difficult. However, they did clean up the house. The cats won’t do that. They just want your undivided attention while you’re home with them. Cole and Marmalade demonstrate exactly what working around cats is like. At least I’m in a position to put all the cats outside when they get too annoying. (via Fark)
Middle East Translators
John Oliver looks at the dangers of being a translator for the U.S. military if you live in Afghanistan or Iraq. You’d be lucky to make it out alive. It reminds me of a certain Southeast Asian country we were involved in in the 1960s, except that worked much better than this time around.
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The Evans Family is Living in This World. It wasn’t always that way. (via Metafilter)
Is sex only for rich people? You’d think so by examining our policies.
Can You Guess These Horror Movie Houses? Or maybe you were too busy screaming to take notice of the architecture.
Deadly Destinations Around the World. There’s a booming business in serving adrenaline-junkie tourists with a death wish.
10 True Stories of Survival Cannibalism. Consuming corpses is a desperate measure, but most of these cases stop short of murder.
The Women Who Shaped The Computer Age. Women were founding software companies before they could open bank accounts in their own names.
Bizarre Sea Creature Caught In Singapore Looks Like Kraken Come To Life. It’s a relative of the star fish, with tentacles that grow like fractals.
A Real Life Cave of Death. Twice, someone visited Kenya's Kitum Cave and came out with the Marburg virus, which is deadlier than Ebola.
Inside the rise of embryo adoption. In vitro fertilization leaves many embryos frozen in limbo, until someone wants them.
Six Seriously Spooky Cemetery Stories. Read them with the lights off, hanging on to someone you trust.
Finnish Cough Drops
This is an ad for Zyx, a brand of cough drops sold in Finland and Sweden. You can see what’s going to happen a mile away, but it’s still pretty amusing. (via Daily Picks and Flicks)
Sunday, October 19, 2014
A Tale of Momentum and Inertia
A rock creature does what he has to do in this really short story from House Special. I love how expressive his face is; which is the exact opposite of the “stone face” you’d expect. And since it’s just animation, you can laugh without feeling guilty. (via reddit)
How to Dance to AC/DC
A group of Bulgarian folk dancers hoof it to AC/DC’s song “Thunderstruck.” It works, because they are obviously having a great time! Whatever this dance is called, it sure looks like old fashioned hillbilly clogging to me, which is probably as universal as AC/DC music. (via Daily Picks and Flicks)
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