(via Bad Newspaper)
Friday, May 31, 2024
Doodletown
This video looks at how nature moves in when people move out. Their main example is Doodletown, New York, which was overtaken by Bear Mountain State Park. Doodletown reached its population peak in the 1920s, with about 350 people. About that time, the push to expand the state park began, and Doodletown homes were bought up. Wooden buildings were deliberately dismantles, but stone foundations were left in place. The last building standing was a school made of stone, left in place as a shelter for hikers, but after too much vandalism, it was demolished in 1980. (via Nag on the Lake)
He's Guilty
Somehow, I've never seen this clip from the premiere episode of short-lived TV series Cop Rock in 1990. The song was written by Randy Newman and sung by Carl Anderson, who you might remember from the movie Jesus Christ Superstar. It's come up over and over in the many online discussions of yesterday's Manhattan verdict. It was posted to YouTube six years ago, and through the comments you'll find that it spikes every time there's a high-profile guilty verdict in the news.
Your Anthroponym Can Pinpoint Your Age
Everyone has an anthroponym, but that's okay. It's just a big word for your name. They come and go out of style. I recall hearing about someone naming their baby Layla around 1971 and even then I felt for the child, because she'd never be able to hide her age. The same for Shania and Daenerys. Silly me, although my name is not that common, even I have a name that came and went and only belongs to women my age (people just don't name their daughters "Miss" anymore). Dr. Erica Brozovsky explains why names become fashionable and then not. But hey, in 100 years or so, your anthroponym may come back into style! I personally know a family with a newborn named Mabel, and it seems perfect for her.
Miss Cellania's Links
Look At Me, I'm MTG! The latest song parody from Randy Rainbow. The ending is NSFW.
Autoweek's Father's Day Gift Guide for Car-Loving Dads.
What really went on behind the scenes of The Apprentice. A tl;dr from Metafilter: reality TV is fake, and they cut out a lot of T's racist and sexist comments. This older article on the subject is better.
4 Debts That Really Should Have Been Forgiven. I immediately thought of Haiti, but that story is not included.
Dad is a Major Player of Make-Believe.
Can Cats Actually Eat Lasagna? Sure, but it's not a good idea.
Pee-wee's Real Playhouse is on the Market. Paul Reubens' home is a real (expensive) gem.
Monster in the Village: Petar Blagojevic, the Vampire of Kisiljevo. (via Strange Company)
Tweet of the Day
(Thanks, WTM!)He is mine..ππΎπ¦❤️ pic.twitter.com/svhEx4v3Yk
— πo̴g̴ (@Yoda4ever) May 19, 2024
Thursday, May 30, 2024
Scar Wars
Bob Hope, Olivia Newton-John, Perry Como, and a special guest staged a musical Star Wars parody on The Bob Hope All Star Comedy Special in December 1977. The jokes were so topical that few people under 50 will get them now. Ignore the fact that Darth Vader wants to take the princess as his bride; there are certain facts about Star Wars we just didn't know at the time.
Giving Mabel a Good Life
A 12-year-old, blind, four-pound cat named Mabel seemed to be a hospice case when Malia began taking care of her. She was supposed to be a temporary foster, but that plan failed. Three years later, Mabel is still blind, elderly, and small, but she's very much loved and cherished. See more of Mabel at Instagram.
If all humans died, when would the last light go out?
We've spent more than 100 years illuminating the darkness with electricity. Over time, those electrical systems got bigger and more automatic. Randall Munroe's What If series received the question, "If all humans died, when would the last light go out?" To answer the question, Munroe completely ignored the theoretical scenario of our demise and got straight to the lights. It comes down to the power source, since some are more automatic than others. Those relying on fuel delivery will go out first, but some kind of artificial lights will last for way longer than you might think. And then we must consider what we mean by "artificial lights." Enriched nuclear fuel gives off a light even though we don't use that light for everyday (or every night) activities. Commenters brought up even more lights, like the Voyager space probes, which have manmade lights, although they are not on earth. There's also the burning coal seams like in Centralia, Pennsylvania, which are natural, but were ignited by human activity. They can burn for thousands of years, but whether you term them manmade lights is a matter of semantics.
Miss Cellania's Links
Utopia Must Fall is an old-fashioned shoot-em-up in which you must protect your city from invading aliens, falling boulders, and bombs. (via Metafilter)
A road rage incident ends in the most delicious way.
Can Music Make Your Food Taste Better?
Brandtaucher: World’s Oldest Surviving Submarine.
Minecraft Players Celebrate 15 Years of World Building.
The Meat Anthony Bourdain Refused To Ever Eat Again. It's HΓ‘karl, Iceland's fermented shark.
Plate Tectonics Has a Surprise Silver Lining. Without this restless geologic process, which triggers destructive earthquakes, Earth would not be habitable.
Flood of Fake Science Forces Multiple Journal Closures. (via Metafilter)
Welcome To A Supercut
Burger Fiction’s latest supercut is a welcome change. It’s nice to be welcomed. I think you’ll recognize the majority of these films, not least because many of them have the title in the clip. The word “welcome” will sound really silly by the time this is through. You’re welcome. (via Tastefully Offensive)
Tweet of the Day
These are popsicle sticks or tongue depressors in a cobra weave. The energy is stored in the slightly bent sticks the way a coiled spring stores kinetic energy. (Thanks, WTM!)Physics
— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) May 22, 2024
pic.twitter.com/445wTvJirl
Wednesday, May 29, 2024
Somewhere Out There
The movie An American Tail came out in 1986, but I didn't see it until 1997. It's about a family of mice who immigrate to America and their son Fievel becomes separated from them in a strange land. This song devastated me. At the time, my mother was in Namibia with the Peace Corps, and my infant daughter was somewhere in China waiting to be matched with parents. I was super stressed about waiting so long for a baby, and I missed Mom, too. The song still makes me cry, remembering that year.
Cats Being Mischievous
The Dodo brings us a compilation of stories about cats with specific obsessions. Anna, Oliver, Ponderosa, and Rackarkatten are unique cats that are very much loved. You've seen Ponderos and Rackarkatten here before, but the first half of the video is new to me.
Squijeeblion
Leonard Solomon has made a career out of building and performing on his own musical instruments. In this video, he recreates Skrillex's 2010 song "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" on his instrument called a squijeeblion. It produces sounds that range from a nice melody to a foghorn fart to a crying beagle. EDM will never be the same, although you can't really call it that, since this song was played with no MIDI and the squijeeblion is powered by air, with both breath and bellows. (via Metafilter)
Calvin & Hobbes: Art Before Commerce
Everyone loved Calvin and Hobbes, and they still do, even though the comic ceased over twenty years ago. What is it that made the strip so special? Bill Watterson never phoned it in. He held his comic to the highest standard until he ran out of things to say …and then he quit. The strips never had a chance to become repetitive or cliched. But that’s not all there was to it. Even all these years later, seeing a Calvin and Hobbes strip is a delight. Little boys with vivid imaginations will always be with us, as well as the philosophical questions they have about our confusing world.
Tweet of the Day
Don't try this at home, because it won't work. (Thanks, WTM!)The combination of colorsπ
— Tansu Yegen (@TansuYegen) May 20, 2024
pic.twitter.com/PZUi4JBG3B
Tuesday, May 28, 2024
1990 Flashback
Saturday Night Live always tried to be topical in their opening skits. In this one that aired on February 17, 1990, Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks portray Donald and Ivana Trump during their notorious divorce. Hartman died in 1998 and Hooks died in 2014. Ivana died in 2022. Thirty-four years later, The Donald is still with us. (via Digg)
Expressions
They say cats are inscrutable, but you just have to know a particular cat well to know what they are feeling. But if you really want to turn your cat into a cartoon version of itself, there are ways. (Thanks, WTM!)ε―ζγπΉπΉπΉ pic.twitter.com/2FEI88Wb7T
— γγγ―γ©γ€γ πΌ (@tannokasa6) May 22, 2024
The Immortal Gus Fring
Drug lord Gustavo Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) made quite an impression as the toughest of tough guys on Breaking Bad. He managed to survive many attempts on his life during the series with style and menace, so (spoiler coming) when he was eventually assassinated by a nonverbal colleague in a wheelchair, we were doubly shocked. YouTuber Alternative Cuts spent two months editing together a video illustration of how bulletproof Fring really was. He confidently steps into danger, brought by all the badasses from Breaking Bad, then by other movie characters who shoot to kill. The walk get longer and longer as every cinematic killer, no matter how ridiculous, is thrown at him. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Miss Cellania's Links
Derek steals his friend's dog. Derek is a good friend.
AZULIK launches EK, a doorless electric car with fiberglass body and wooden steering wheel.
An Exhibition of Historic Travel Posters Traces the Rise of New York, the ‘Wonder City.’
Medieval Memes with Medievalist Matt.
Batman's Coming Back to Have One Last Long Halloween. Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's acclaimed series returns to bring its holiday-themed story to a close.
6 Completely Insane Teddy Roosevelt Stories That Are Somehow Completely True.
How Kid Rock Went From America’s Favorite Hard-Partying Rock Star to a MAGA Mouthpiece. Many close to him wonder what the hell happened. (via Metafilter)
The Most Iconic Sci-Fi Horror Ever Somehow Hid its Bigger Spoiler. The suspense paid off big for Alien.
Get in the Boat!
When the captain tell you to get in the boat, you better not waste any time! A playground at Munson Park in Monroe, Michigan, is the setting for an epic high seas adventure. When you’re James Hashimoto, the Action Movie Kid, you can go with the flow, because you know that sooner or later, the stories in your adventure will come to life on video. But even if you aren’t, your parents can learn to do this from the tutorials his dad shares. You can see how this particular video was made here. (via Metafilter)
Tweet of the Day
(via Neatorama)the train station has a mystery vending machine where you can buy whatever is in the unclaimed packages from delivery lockers pic.twitter.com/a3beWbXxCi
— michael (@bovineflu) May 20, 2024
Monday, May 27, 2024
The Last Chance Lagoon
The Great Lakes of the US and Canada are the world's largest freshwater ecosystem in the world, and those who manage it have been battling invasive Asian carp for 50 years, to the point that migrating fish must go through gates and be sorted or rejected by species. But as conservationists are starting to win the battle against carp, they are confronted with a growing number of goldfish in the lakes. They started out as discarded pets, but in the wild, they grow to enormous size and reproduce like no one's business. They displace native species and wreck the ecosystem.
Goldfish are commonly a beloved family pet, but when they outgrow their tank or otherwise must be discarded, people understandably don't want to take the easy way out, like, say, feeding it to the cat. Flushing a goldfish seems cruel, and does not guarantee their death. To solve this dilemma, the Erie Zoo launched the Last Chance Lagoon, a place to "retire" pet goldfish without releasing them into the wild. The zoo has taken in 52 pet goldfish. That doesn't seem like much, but it may inspire other communities to launch similar programs to keep goldfish out of public waterways.
If Cats Had a Podcast
People don't realize what's going on in a cat's brain, but we get a glimpse from The Pawcast, a podcast by cats. Human podcasts can be wonderful when it's someone with expertise explaining something we are interested in, but people don't realize that the vast majority are a couple of friends shooting the breeze for an hour about nothing in particular. If cats were to take this format and run with it, people don't realize that we might get a little glimpse into their habits and motivations, but like many other podcasts, it eventually devolves into self-affirming gibberish with little meaning. People don't realize that at least with cats, that devolution is funny. This video took an original skit by Ryan George with animation by Mason. If you like this, you should see what dogs will do with a podcast. (via Everlasting Blort)
English Spelling Sure is Weird
We all know about the ridiculous varying pronunciations of cough, tough, bough, through, and though, which are all spelled alike but cannot be made to rhyme successfully. It's just one of the many ways that English is thoroughly weird, and very hard to master if it's not a language you learned in early childhood. How did our language get this way? To begin with, English is a mishmash of other languages, constantly changing over the centuries. When the spoken language began to be a printed language, there was no authority over spelling, like a bureau of language standards. Words were spelled whatever way the printer wanted, usually to give some idea of how they were pronounced. But pronunciation changes over time and place, and the printed word, for the most part, stays the same. (via Laughing Squid)
Miss Cellania's Links
The Boss Butcher. A serial killer in 19th-century Nebraska. (via Strange Company)
How the 18th-century ‘probability revolution’ fueled the casino gambling craze. (via Damn Interesting)
Tyler James Williams Talks About That Amazing Abbott Elementary Finale. Quinta Brunson gives us a look into what may be in store for season four.
How many men does it take to fold a stroller?
Microsoft Copilot will watch you play Minecraft, tell you what you’re doing wrong. Another steps in the process of making friends obsolete.
Soldiers Put an Ancient Greek Suit of Armor to the Test, and It Passed.
What Should You Do with Your Stuff Before You Die? This essay isn't really about stuff, it's about confronting the fact that life isn't endless.
Were Egyptians Really the First to Domesticate Cats? Try Cave Men.
Tweet of the Day
Who says juggling will never get you anywhere? I don't recall ever seeing Steve Martin before his Johnny Carson appearances, and only kept up with him after SNL debuted. (Thanks, WTM!)Steve Martin shows his juggling skills on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" in 1968, his first major television appearance pic.twitter.com/GrjfyjMulX
— Fascinating (@fasc1nate) May 19, 2024
Sunday, May 26, 2024
The Preacher and the Bear
The song "The Preacher and the Bear" performed by The Jubilaires in 1945. I thought this song would be some variation of the atheist and the bear joke, but I was wrong. You'll find the lyrics here. I love the idea of taking six naps before his shadow catches up. (via Everlasting Blort)
Hole Food
Circular breads, shaped like toruses ("donuts") have been a part of the history of baking all around the world. Why have there always been bakery goods with holes in the middle? They have a couple of advantages that are common wherever they were developed, which is explained in the first couple of minutes of this video. But who came up with bagels and donuts? Bagels are more ancient, and became unique by being boiled before baking. The origin of the bagel itself has many versions, and we don't know how each story (if true) contributed to the bagels we eat today. Donuts are sweeter and fried, which makes them particularly American. (via Laughing Squid)
Mario's Turnip Trouble
When you're playing Super Mario Bros. 2, or any other adventure game, you keep your eye out for new challenges. When you see something new or different, you go for it. What's the worst that could happen? You might waste time not getting points. Of course you go for it, and you never stop to think about the implications for anyone else, because you're just thinking about yourself, aren't you? Yeah, I thought so. Maybe before you pull someone's turnips out of the ground, you could stop just a minute and look up what those turnips really mean. Sure, it cost you a few seconds for nothing, but the folks who planted those turnips were counting on them for survival. It's easy to point out Mario as the bad guy, but who's playing this game, anyway? This pixilated cartoon from Dorkly is only two minutes long, the rest is credits and promotional.
Trapped in a Bathroom Stall
She went into the ladies’ room and used the
This is not so much a tragedy but an illustration of poor design. Poor design, in this case, resulting from retrofitting a small bathroom with 1.
Tweet of the Day
(via Everlasting Blort)Skye was born deaf, but like all dogs, she enjoys the words "let's go for a walk", in a language that she understands.
— theworldofdog (@theworldofdog) April 27, 2024
(themilestwins IG) pic.twitter.com/pNRwpbWCy4
Saturday, May 25, 2024
The Power of Explosions
Yes, we manage to blow things up real good. MetaBallStudios takes us through the power of various explosives starting with a firecracker, which is not supposed to kill anyone but could under the right circumstances. The comparison moves up through ever-more destructive big booms. Some of the real explosions are shown in fictional scenarios so that we can understand the effects better. For example, the nuclear bomb detonated in Nagasaki in 1945 is shown over modern-day Tokyo, and the 2020 Beirut explosion (which was an industrial accident) is shown over New York City. That can be pretty unnerving. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Lab Test Cat 698
Cat 698 spent his first four years in a toxicity testing laboratory. The lab was closed down and then bought by the Beagle Freedom Project, but who wants to adopt a lab cat? They aren't kittens, and they've been deprived and exposed to toxic chemicals. Erin Sharoni wanted to. She's doing research in bioethics at Harvard Medical School, particularly on developing animal-free testing testing techniques. Sharoni flew to Oklahoma to get one of the lab cats and couldn't resist #698, who she renamed Bagel.
Bagel was healthy, sociable, and affectionate, but he had some strange gaps in his knowledge of the world. For example, he didn't know what cat toys were for. Or a sink. But with love and patience, he is learning, and settling into the world of a pampered pet. You can follow the story of Bagel at Instagram.
Cadborosaurus
Cadborosaurus sounds like a legitimate dinosaur, and in fact has a Wikipedia page. But this creature is not extinct, because it is a cryptid. It's name comes from Cadboro Bay in British Columbia. Sightings of the creature called Caddy in the Pacific Northwest have been plentiful for more than a hundred years. This monster looks terrifying, as reported by those who have seen it, but has never proven to be a danger to humans. So it came to be a beloved legend along the Pacific Northwest. Caddy is far from the only giant sea serpent reported, as they've been seen and reported all over the world for as long as people have lived near or sailed upon the ocean. Oh yeah, there are plenty of logical explanations for sea serpents, but we don't know which one explains Caddy. In this episode of Monstrum, we learn the history of sea serpent sightings and lore, and learn what we know about the notorious Caddy.
Game of Molds
Slime molds grow just like the buildings and towns in the opening credits to Game of Thrones. If that's not a stretch, I don't know what is. (via Neatorama)
Tweet of the Day
genius level: orange pic.twitter.com/9jkRZY1xpM
— cats being weird little guys π (@weirdlilguys) May 17, 2024
Friday, May 24, 2024
Kayak Water Slide
The question is, just how much water is really required to go kayaking? Not much, as a group of crazy friends in British Columbia found out. They took their kayaks out after a rain storm in Lion's Bay to slide down a really long drainage ditch into the ocean. Getting their kayaks deployed was a job, but then it's just like a waterslide, right? Not quite. It's a good thing they were wearing helmets. Notice the blood on one guy's hand when they are through. A good time was had by all. (via Born in Space)
So You're Raising a Telekinetic Child
There are no guarantees with children, there are only individual differences. Sometimes these differences can throw a parent into a tizzy, even if it's a special talent you don't understand. There is help available. Jon Spurney went to great lengths to produce a public service video in the style of the 1970s to offer help and hope to parents who are thrown a curve ball when they realize that the child they spawned has a supernatural power that no child can adequately control. Just know that you're not alone, and that eventually, they will grow up and wreck havoc somewhere outside your home. (via the Awesomer)
Head Transplant Machine
You will be forgiven if you start watching this video and think it to be a comedy skit. Or a movie trailer. I started reading what I considered to be a serious tech article and then the video came up, and I had to read more carefully to make sure it's not a parody -especially when they went into doing a face transplant to go along with the brain transplant. BrainBridge is a medical engineering startup, and the "head transplant system" you see here is just a concept. It has a long way to go before it can actually be used, or even built. The real hurdle is that we do not know how to successfully attach brains to bodies.
One of the most significant challenges in realizing this ambitious concept is the current inability to fully repair nerve and spinal cord damage. BrainBridge acknowledges this hurdle and is actively recruiting top specialists in various fields to collaborate on finding solutions.It's no surprise that BrainBridge is actively recruiting investors as well. At least they got a talented graphics company to put the concept video together. It would make a decent movie trailer, but that idea has already been done a few times. (via Damn Interesting)
Miss Cellania's Links
Keith Haring Painted This Mural on the Wall of an Iowa Elementary School Library.
Magnificent Church for Sale in St. Louis.
Massachusetts has a new Millionaires tax. Revenue reaches $1.8 billion, on pace to double estimates. (via Kottke)
The real reason it costs so much to go to a concert. Scalpers, yes, but it's more than that.
Alaska's rusting waters: Pristine rivers and streams turning orange.
“Our job is to think of the well-being of those coming behind us,” Cladusbid said. “It’s not to die with the most coffee beans. It’s to share my coffee.” (via Fark)
Eight Free Things That Are Shockingly Good.
The Universe in 4 Minutes
The explanation of the universe starts with the very basics and grows from there. You probably won’t understand any more about the universe once it’s done, but you will enjoy a few laughs. Well, an explanation of the universe is quite complicated, so exurb1a must jump from one type of explanation to another, which is only more opportunities for puns. Who says physics can’t be funny? Or astronomy, biology, geology, etc. (via reddit)
Tweet of the Day
Cats know what's going on with mirrors and video cameras. Even if they initially don't know what their faces look like, they know what their human looks like, and can figure the rest out. When you subvert that expectation with a filter, it fries their brains. (Thanks, WTM!)The way these cats react pic.twitter.com/V9wJWRhGxp
— Tweets of Cats (@PostsOfCats) May 17, 2024
Thursday, May 23, 2024
Band of Gold
"Band of Gold" was a big hit for Freda Payne in 1970. As an 11-year-old kid, I thought it was extremely tragic that a marriage could fall apart so quickly, but loved the way she conveyed the feeling. Motown did a lot of that while getting us to dance at the same time. What exactly went wrong is left a mystery, probably to make it more relatable. Yeah that worked, too.
Jelly Belly's Disgustingly Weird Flavors
When I first encountered Jelly Belly jelly beans, I would sort them by color so I would learn which ones were popcorn flavored. They tasted like butter and corn, but also were very sweet, and I didn't find that tasty at all. I wanted to eat the eggnog flavor beans, but I didn't want to eat them in the same mouthful as, say, lime flavor. Since then, the range of flavors that the jelly beans come in has exploded.
Where did all these jelly beans come from? The Goelitz family made candy, but their businesses in the US had their ups and downs. You have to admit that Jelly Belly was a better name for a candy company. They didn't invent jelly beans, but they made them better, with more and better flavors. However, it still took a celebrity fan to make these beans a global hit.
But why do they make them in flavors called earwax, earthworm, barf, and black pepper? Mainly to keep you on your feet, but there's more to it. You can even get jelly beans that act as a dare, because the good flavors and the bad flavors can't be distinguished by color. As for me, I prefer to get mine from a fancy candy store, where you can mix and match only the flavors you want.
Donny's Orange
In the pantheon of tricks that advertisers use, the confusion between the terms "orange" and "oranges" is subtle and maliciously genius. What better way to confuse the viewer? Oranges, as in the fruit, are discrete units and therefore takes a plural form with an "s." Orange, as in the color, is a continuous quality and has no plural form. This poor spokesperson, er, orange, doesn't see the distinction until she is corrected on it. The manufacturers of the "orange" drink are counting on no one else catching the difference, either. That's why it's important to have an educated public. Despite schools' best efforts, most kids aren't listening during this lesson because they don't realize that it may be important to their lives later, and they end up believing they are really drinking orange juice. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Miss Cellania's Links
Here's Why Planting a Bradford Pear Tree Is Never a Good Idea—And What to Plant Instead. They stink in more ways than one.
25 of the Worst Horror Movies Ever Made, According to Rotten Tomatoes.
98-year-old Marine veteran in hospice care finally receives his high school diploma. (via Fark)
Danger Sausage vs. the Black Pudding. A comic written by a 6-year-old. (via Digg)
Elden Ring‘s Shadow of the Erdtree's Gorgeous But Confusing Trailer.
RFK Jr.'s brain worm's guide to third-party voter brains. The latest from Tom the Dancing Bug.
50 Times People Felt Pure Joy Living Next Door To Their Funny Neighbors.
How One Guy Built a Saab Sanctuary in the Middle of New York City.
How to Move a City
18,000 people live in Kiruna, Sweden’s northernmost city. It’s a mining town in the Arctic Circle. There’s a lot of interesting things to learn about Kiruna and its charming people, but the big move is the most interesting. Mining has turned the ground under the city to Swiss cheese, so to speak. To avoid the entire downtown falling into a sinkhole when it collapses, they are moving the town square and the surrounding buildings two miles away. Although the move is still a couple of years away, preparations have been going on for quite some time. It won’t be easy, but there’s really no alternative. The mine is too profitable to close down, the huge operation needs the town to sustain it, and the people who live there love their town. (via Digg)
Tweet of the Day
(via Nag on the Lake)This lady is an English teacher who’s been roasting incels by correcting their grammar and it’s currently my favorite thing on the internet pic.twitter.com/yfaQyPdofm
— chris evans (@notcapnamerica) May 19, 2024
Wednesday, May 22, 2024
Honest Trailer: The Mad Max Trilogy
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the sequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, opens this weekend. While we were all astonished by the magnificent full length chase scene that was Fury Road in 2015, Furiosa is said to be even better. In honor of the occasion, Screen Junkies is paying tribute to the man behind all the Mad Max films, George Miller, by looking at the first three of these movies.
First, there was Mad Max in 1979, in which a cop named Max Rockatansky tries to keep order as society is collapsing in Australia. He was played by a 21-year-old American-born newcomer Mel Gibson. The 1981 sequel was titled Mad Max 2 in Australia, and The Road Warrior in the US because so few Americans had seen the original, they did not want it to appear to be a sequel. The world had gone full dystopian by then, but fashion and road racing were paramount. The third movie in 1985 was Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, which was supremely silly but starred Tina Turner, so we all went to see it. It is considered the weakest of all the franchise's movies. This Honest Trailer looks at all three movies of the Mad Max Mel Gibson era. And now we look forward to the Max-less Furiosa.
An Ugly Toucan Chick
Nikita found a baby toucan in rough shape in the Peruvian Amazon. He says it's cute, but with missing feathers and parasites, he looks like a cartoon version of a plucked vulture. You could say it had a face only a mother could love, but sadly, this bird's mother didn't, or he wouldn't be in this predicament. Nikita and Paul of Junglekepers took him in and fed him and named him Lucas. Lucas made an amazing recovery thanks to the love and care from the staff at the research station. Pretty soon he looked more like Toucan Sam, and that's the way it should be. This is like the story of the guy throwing starfish back into the sea. No, you can't save them all, but your efforts mean the world to that one starfish. Lucas could well be out there now, making baby toucans for the rainforest ecosystem.
How Duct Tape Works
Bill Hammack, the Engineer Guy, takes a mundane subject and makes it way too interesting. Duct tape (or Duck™ tape) is something everyone has, and everyone uses, but what makes it work so well? Hammack dissolved the tape into its component parts: The plastic backing, the cloth reinforcement, and the adhesive. The adhesive is key, because it has so many qualities that make it useful. It sticks things together strongly, but it's not permanent. Most of the time, it can be removed without leaving residue. We get an explanation of exactly how the adhesive behaves to give us the tape we want, and how adhesives in other kinds of tape differ. But the silver backing and the fabric reinforcement have important roles, too. Yes, there are many kinds of tape that vary in their components, making them useful for various applications, but duct tape is useful for almost everything in the world -except ducts. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)