(via The Chive)
Saturday, August 16, 2014
He Looks So Perfect
Video game characters often look impossibly extreme, with bodybuilder physiques and perfect hair. They are supposedly drawn that way because the players want to be those guys, you know, identify with them. But when does identification and admiration go just a little further than you might be comfortable with? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. After all, female game characters are also a fantasy, but there’s no pretense that they aren’t drawn to be attractive to the game player. The Warp Zone had fun with that idea in this parody of “She Looks So Perfect” by 5 Seconds Of Summer. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Solving a Rubik's Cube Around The World
When Nuseir Yassin graduated from college, he wanted to travel the world, as many graduates do. He also wanted to chronicle his adventures of video, like many travelers do. To make his different, Yassin took along a Rubik’s cube, and asked people along the way to help him solve it by giving it one move each. Eleven countries and 84 movies later, the Rubik’s cube is solved, and the video is ready. The result is like some combination of Flat Stanley, and Where In The Hell Is Matt? (via Time)
Friday, August 15, 2014
Kitten vs. Dachshund
You know how kittens are. They think they are invincible, and will take on any size foe. They even imagine rivalries and battles where none exists. This curly-tailed kitten is willing to fight the dog for a spot in the playhouse cubbyhole.
You also know how dogs are. They are eager to please, yet often completely flummoxed by cat behavior. The bewildered Dachshund tries to figure out the rules of the game, but in the end just gives up. After all, he’s trying to be a good dog. (via Daily Picks and Flicks)
The Salmon Cannon
Once upon a time, salmon swam upstream to spawn on their own with no real problems. It was exhausting, but it was their natural life cycle. But dams and other manmade water barriers have caused the fish no end of problems, yet they still try their best by instinct. And lately, with water levels lower than ever, wildlife agencies have been trucking salmon around the barriers.
But now comes the salmon cannon from the hilariously-named company Whooshh Innovations. http://whooshh.com/ It’s a vacuum-powered tube that shoots the fish 100 feet or so uphill on their journey (they have a 500-foot tube, but so far that’s only for frozen fish). What fun! As soon as the tests are done, some enterprising engineer is going to adapt these for water parks, just you wait and see. Read more about the salmon cannon at The Verge. (via Daily of the Day)
Miss Cellania's Links
13 People Who Actually Live Shark Week, Every Week. They could tell you fascinating things they’ve discovered about the fish they specialize in.
15 Real-Life Scientists Share Their Favorite Science Fiction Books and Movies. It’s not surprising that many love stories close to their own field.
5 delightful science experiments from 100 years ago. They are still educational today, and can double as parlor tricks.
The Alfred Hitchcock Cameos.
What’s scarier than human parasites? Nothing, unless it’s real human parasites photographed with old-fashioned equipment and rendered as some steampunk Lovecraftian nightmare. (via Science Chamber of Horrors)
What’s this about a work ethic?
13 Scientific Terms You Might Be Using Wrong. There are also videos further explaining some of the terms.
My Short Career in the Internet Outrage Business. (via Boing Boing)
The 2014 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest Winners. (via Metafilter)
How the Sun Sees You
Thomas Leveritt showed people what they looked like on video shot in ultraviolet (UV) light. You can see the changes your skin goes through by contrasting young children with adults. But UV light does not see through sunscreen, which is sunscreen’s entire purpose. In UV light, it looks black! But you can see how it protects your skin from the damaging sun’s rays. And it looks pretty funny, too. Want some sunscreen? (via Bad Astronomy)
Thursday, August 14, 2014
11 Wild and Crazy Sandwich Mashups
I’m not a big fan of the word “mashup” when applied to art or videos, because the words “combination,” “crossover,” or just “mix” will do just fine. The neologism “mashup” makes me think of food, so the term will do just fine when applied to these sandwiches that are a fusion of different styles, ingredients, or unrelated recipes. Note that I use the term “sandwich” pretty loosely as well, in this list of wild and crazy sandwiches I posted at mental_floss.
Doors Are No Match for Mulder the Cat
Mulder is a clever cat. He’s not only figured out how to open a door, he works around a trap (a tray of water) to do it. This is why we went from latched doors to round knobs, although I suspect that bears had more to do with it than house cats. (via Daily Picks and Flicks, where you can see another video of Mulder’s cleverness)
30 Weird Sports Injuries
Professional athletes are covered by journalists and sports fans closely, and when they are injured, which they are quite often, it goes down in the record books. So when a pro athlete suffers an odd injury, they never get to live it down. In this week’s mental_floss video, Akilah Hughes (smoothiefreak) tells us about some really weird and memorable sports injuries
Ferguson, Missouri
PHOTOS: Police fire tear gas near Al Jazeera crew, then disassemble the gear after they flee. #Ferguson pic.twitter.com/It5FOxVWhB
— Cassidy Moody (@CassFM) August 14, 2014
For the past week, there have been protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot multiple times and killed by a police officer for the crime of being a black male teenager. And let’s be honest, if there weren’t mass protests, you and I probably wouldn’t have even heard about the incident. Ferguson is a small suburb of St. Louis, with a police force that is 94% white. The town population of 21,000 is 52% black.
Police further angered citizens by leaving Brown’s body in place for several hours, insisting that Brown was resisting arrest despite eyewitness accounts to the contrary, and refusing to release the name of the police officer who shot him.
And last night, police showed again that their criteria for arrest is somewhat different in Ferguson from what’s in the law books. A St. Louis alderman (who provided constant updates from the protest scene) was arrested. A reporter from the Huffington Post was arrested. A reporter from the Washington Post was arrested. You can read their social media accounts here.
A TV crew from Al-Jazeera was tear-gassed while prepping a report. Ferguson's state senator reported that she was tear-gassed on Monday.
And regular citizens of Ferguson? They got tear gas and rubber bullets. Is this any way to run a democracy?
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