No, You Weren’t “Born in the Wrong Decade”

If you just look at the pictures, you could easily become enamored of a former era. The fashions were fabulous! But no part of the past was perfect. This skit from College Humor points out that you have to consider the bad along with the good. People who reminisce about a “simpler” era are people who enjoyed the privilege of the time. And younger people who wish to taste the “good old days” often don’t understand how far we’ve come since then. The present isn’t perfect, either, but all you can do about that is work to improve the world you are in. A lot of people have done that throughout history, and that’s one reason we enjoy the life we have today. (via Tastefully Offensive)

Tweet of the Day

😂😅🥰🥰🥰🥰 pic.twitter.com/2FMNmKiVNO

— Original Spike1962 (@Spike19621) May 26, 2024

(Thanks, WTM!)

Hero and Villain

(via Bad Newspaper)

How Birth Control Works

There are lots of different ways to prevent pregnancy, and the variety of methods are rarely covered in school, from what I hear. When I attended school, there was no sex education whatsoever. Later on, schools were caught up in "abstinence only" education, and today it varies from place to place at the whims of state and local politics. So I should not be surprised at how many people do not know the mechanics of how birth controls methods work, even if they use those methods. Minute Earth takes an overview of the most common modern birth control methods and explains what they do to interrupt the process of beginning a pregnancy. (via Geeks Are Sexy)

Recycling Bin

(via reddit)

What Is A Cat?

Friskies commissioned this mini-documentary in 1972. (via Boing Boing)

Miniature Dreams

(Thanks, WTM!)

When You Have To Eat Your Friends To Survive

Weird History tackles the subject of that Uruguayan rugby team that crashed into the Andes in 1972. Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Santiago, Chile, crashed into a mountain in Argentina at an elevation of 11,710 feet. Search teams scoured the area, but eventually gave up.  Of the 45 people aboard the plane, only 16 survived to make it home.

Being stranded on a high mountain in the snow for two months called for some hard decisions. They could melt snow for water, but there was nothing to eat -except for the frozen corpses of those who had already died. There's a huge difference in killing someone in order to eat them and taking advantage of someone who already died, but cannibalism is a deep-seated taboo either way. The survivors really had no choice, because otherwise they would have all perished. But their story stays with you, no matter how many times you've heard it.   

Ball!

(via Fark)

Black Hole Sun

Vocalist Haley Reinhart and Postmodern Jukebox perform Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” in a really different style.

Tweet of the Day

Trump fought the law and the law won. pic.twitter.com/MfAqfD0sY4

— The Tonight Show (@FallonTonight) May 30, 2024

(via Everlasting Blort)

Dental Fad

From 1932. (via Undine)

Bad Indian

The band is Dead Pioneers, headed by artist and activist Gregg Deal. He's got a couple of great TEDx Talks. You can find more of his projects linked at Metafilter.

Shark

(via Fark)

Not-Dead Opossums and Their Weird Defenses

There are all kinds of opossums, plus the rather cute Australian animal that's just a possum, but this video is about the one that lives in the US and you've surely seen them hanging around your garbage cans. The point of this video is to highlight the opossum's defense strategies, which lead us to their notorious talent for "playing possum." That's why we call it that. But opossums aren't the only animal that feigns death, and we get to see plenty of other species try that tactic, too. As with most of Ze Frank's True facts videos, this one contains language and jokes that you might not want your children to hear. There's a 70-second skippable ad at 6:16.

(via She Who Seeks)

Saturday Morning Cartoons

I will never get tired of these old cartoons pic.twitter.com/cTf3WDRScq

— Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) May 24, 2024

Get the sugary cereal!

The Mail

(via Fark)

He Stole the Show

It’s the senior talent show. The entire student body has already sat through singers, musicians, and drama students with amazing talent that they’ve seen dozens of times before. Then this guy steps up. He has one talent, and he wrings all the drama he can out of it. Well, to be honest, he probably has other talents. Like showmanship, and making a lot of friends. How else would you draw a standing ovation for tossing a water bottle? The other question is, how long did he train to master this maneuver? (via Viral Viral Videos)

Tweet of the Day

This is a reverse Ishihara test, where the number is only visible to people who *are* colorblind.

Everyone who said "lol I know this isn't a number, you're just messing with me": congrats! You're not colorblind. :) https://t.co/81bOuMSfXs

— Isaac King 🔍 (@IsaacKing314) May 28, 2024

Protanopia and deuteranopia are two specific kinds of color blindness that makes it hard to distinguish red and green. No doubt you've seen a lot of these "colorblindness tests" on the internet, taken from the Ishihara test. Most of the images you've seen from the test are easy to decipher if you see a full range of colors. Plate #19 looks like a mishmash of colored dots to most people. If you have deuteranopia, you are liable to see the number 73. If you have protanopia, you are more likely to see the number 23. Check out how others see this glob of colored dots, including some manipulations of the original image that shed more light on what you are seeing. (Thanks, gwdMaine!)