Fruits and ice cream are the staples of most parfaits. But we can count on Japanese cuisine to expand the boundaries of our palates to include other creatively-added ingredients. Sora News 24 sent a reporter to the Karafuneya Cafe inside a train station in Osaka to confirm rumors of a new type of parfait: one that includes fried chicken.
The cafe chain had already made headlines a decade ago with its fried shrimp parfait. Its fried chicken (karaage), which sells for about $9.70 USD has crispy fried chicken that is served warm. It contrasts nicely with the much colder ice cream and the sweet fruits.
What do accomplished cosplayers do to take their costumes to the next level? Make them stand out with glitter and shine! One can imagine this cosplayer wore numerous stormtrooper uniforms, and possibly other Star Wars costumes before adding rhinestones to every surface. Or is it sequins? I imagine rhinestones would be pretty heavy, but that won't stop the most dedicated. The stormtrooper was front and center at Laval Comiccon this past weekend in Laval, Quebec.
They weren't the only one reflecting the light at the con, either. Snow White poses with the Evil Queen, who was totally covered in sequins as she offers her stepdaughter a poisoned apple. There were also superheroes, fantasy and science fiction characters, and clever mashups dressed to the nines at Laval Comiccon, and Geeks Are Sexy was there to document the best costumes. See them in a this gallery, and cick on each one to bring up the full-size version.
Captain America: Brave New World is the fourth movie of the Captain America series from Marvel, unless you count the TV miniseries The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which was, of course, on TV. But you have to have seen the TV show to understand who this new Captain America is. Harrison Ford is in this one, typecast as the US president. And the Red Hulk. Brave New World hit theaters in February, and needed a box office take of hundreds of millions to cover production and marketing costs. The movie opened strong, and then petered out as word of mouth got around. Reviews were mixed, and Brave New World seemed like another formulaic MCU movie. It may yet break even, as Captain America: Brave New World will be available on Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD on May 13. Meanwhile, Screen Junkies would like to help you decide whether to watch it or not with this Honest Trailer.
The price of gold has risen steadily in the past year, with a noticeable jump in mid-April. Perhaps this rise has driven attention to a viral video from China showing a machine similar to an ATM.
You can deposit gold into it. The machine, which is located in a mall in Shanghai, melts the gold, assays it, and gives you credit for its value, minus a small fee, depositing the money in your bank account.
I've just discovered this amazing Scottish musician named Ruairdh Maclean (the most Scottish of all possible names) who has gained internet fame for his remixes of popular songs. He attributes "Dueling Banjos" to his native fishing village in northern Scotland, although I think the song originates with a South Carolinian named Arthur Smith.
Maclean has also covered "Ring of Fire" popularized by Johnny Cash, "Delilah" as sung by Tom Jones, as well as classics of Celtic music, such as "Jean's Reel."
I've got to say that AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" works very well for the accordion.
Blowing out the candles on a birthday cake is a grand tradition to celebrate the passage of life and hopes for its future. But it's also somewhat unsanitary. It's done with the breath of the celebrant and therefore contaminates the cake with the blower's germs.
In 2014, Brian Donnelly of East Northport, NY received a patent for a series of shields that cover different sized cakes with perforated shields that allow for the passage of candles while providing some protection for the cakes.
Donnelly provided six different designs to reflect a variety of cakes, including circular cakes, layer cakes, cupcakes, and pies.
We love watching outtakes from film sets, which often are a collection of actors flubbing their lines and then laughing about it. This happened on the set of The Usual Suspects, during the lineup scene. The laughter wasn't in the script, and in fact the actors were supposed to stand stoically through the scene. But Benicio del Toro kept farting during take after take, and the cast couldn't keep a straight face. So the laughter was included in the scene, which became quite memorable. More often, on set injuries ended up producing genuine fear or anguish, and the footage was deemed the best take on a particular scene, which happened in The Two Towers, Django Unchained, Die Hard, and Tora! Tora! Tora!
While test driving a Mercedes in Georgia, the driver heard a strange sound coming from the car. There was nothing wrong with the car, but it was meowing. The driver pulled into Royalty Auto Service where mechanic Sherwood Cook located the culprit- a tiny kitten (this was Sherwood, Jr. There's also a Sherwood III and Sherwood IV on the staff). The kitten wasn't easy to get to. They had to put the car on a lift to reach her! Meanwhile, Sherwood fell in love with the kitten, and declared that she would be part of the staff as well. After all, his grandchildren are already on the roster without actually having to work, why not a kitten, too? Besides, she's seen parts of a car that you and I never will. She was checked out by a veterinarian and given a new name- Mercedes.
The Bayeux Tapestry is a 230-foot-long embroidered banner that depicts the events of the Norman conquest of England. It is believed to have been completed not long after the Battle of Hastings. It is a remarkable artifact, and the subject of much discussion. One of those discussions is about the number of penises that are illustrated in the needlework. One scholar declared the number is 93, meaning 88 on horses and five on men, while another scholar argues that there are six men with their anatomy showing. Don't bother looking in the picture above; I chose a random portion of the tapestry.
Another question is why all these penises are there in the first place. The tapestry is full of symbolism, so there are several theories and no official explanation. But even if the question of counting penises in a thousand-year-old tapestry never occurred to you, you shouldn't be surprised that it occurred to certain art historians. Read about this controversy over the Bayeaux Tapestry and what it "reveals" to us at Popular Science. -via Damn Interesting
Greenlandic ice is noted for its natural purity and age. Dubai partygoers are noted for being very wealthy and profligate. Put them together and you have a business opportunity.
The Wall Street Journal reports that a startup company in Greenland is breaking up icebergs that roll off of the island's icecap, packing the ice cubes for refrigeration, and then shipping them to Dubai in packages of six cubes priced at about $100 USD.
In Dubai, bartenders place them in expensive cocktails. Customers are willing to pay extra for drinks that have unique origin stories. Their tastes may allow Greenland to expand the diversity of its economy, which consists primarily of fishing and mineral extraction.
Australia is home to some of nature's most dangerous predators, as well as nightmarish heat and drought. But Valerie, a Miniature Dachshund, survived for a year and a half on her own after she got separated from her humans.
BBC News describes how Valerie got lost (or escaped) while camping with her humans on Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia. Owner Georgia Gardner asked for help online and many volunteers combed island for the missing dog.
They finally set a trap baited with Gardner's clothes (and therefore scent) to attract Valerie. The dog fell for the bait and remained inside the trap until Kangaroo Island residents could contain her. Valerie is now back at home where she belongs.
A mansion that's on the National Register of Historic Places is for sale in Gardner, Massachusetts. This is the SK Pierce House, built in 1873-75, it is considered one of the most haunted houses in the US. It certainly looks the part. You might be reminded of a Charles Addams creation. However, the house wasn't always gray and black. See what it looked like before the recent renovation.
This mansion offers nine bedrooms and four bathrooms, and has 6,988 square feet of living area, but not much of a yard to speak of. So who lives there? A ton of ghosts, according to local lore. Soon after Sylvester Pierce had the house built, his wife Susan died. Later, the home was turned into a boarding house where numerous incidents occurred, including murder and a possible case of spontaneous combustion.
The ghosts of S.K. Pierce himself, Susan Pierce, Edward Pierce, as well as a nanny named Mattie Cornwell, a gentlemen named David who some believe to have been the red room strangler, the prostitute who was murdered in the red room, a young boy, a younger girl who was perhaps the granddaughter of Pierce, Eino Saari, and some unnamed dark entities in the basement have been described as some of this mansion's many ghostly residents.
There are quite a few videos on this mansion, but most are pretty long. In 2015, the owners of Dark Carnival, a haunted attraction company, bought the mansion and restored it to its former glory under the watchful eyes of historic preservationists. They offered tours and overnight rentals, but couldn't make up for the renovation costs, so the home is for sale for $1,200,000. You can see 42 photographs the home at the real estate listing. -via Fark
At Less Wrong, a blog devoted to rational thinking, Arjun Panickssery notes that English language sentences have gradually decreased in length. Jane Austen (1775-1817) wrote sentences that were on average 42 words long. The modern writer J.K. Rowling, on contrast, wrote the Harry Potter series with sentences about 12 words long.
Why has this changed?
Panickssery suggests a few possible causes. One is that journalists, who tend to have a terse style, inserted their writing norms into writing as a whole. Another is that much writing in the past was intended to be read aloud rather than silently, the latter of which emphasizes shorter sentences for clarity. Panickssery also suggests that writers learned a style derived from classical Latin works with very long sentences and the abandonment of this style led to reduced sentence lengths. Modern writers are taught to write with short sentences, whereas their predacessors were taught to write very long, complex sentences.
As World War II was drawing to a close in the spring of 1945, the Allies were advancing on German occupied territory, and the Nazis were keen to destroy evidence of the Holocaust. SS chief Heinrich Himmler was under the illusion that he could lead Germany after the fall of Hitler, and was interested in gaining credit for a humanitarian gesture, as long as der Führer didn't find out about it. Himmler negotiated with a Swedish diplomat to evacuate concentration camp inmates with convoys of Red Cross buses. Around 15,000 people were evacuated, first to Denmark, then by ferry to neutral Sweden. Thousands were taken from Ravensbrück, a camp for women, mostly political prisoners, in northern Germany.
To accomplish the rescue, every bus that could be commandeered was quickly painted white. The evacuation was fraught with danger, as Himmler's secret plans could be discovered by Hitler loyalists, and in fact, a couple of convoys were bombed on their journey. The Red Cross evacuations from Ravensbrück occurred only weeks or days before the camp was liberated by the Red Army. From the vantage point of history, the women who ended up in Sweden were much luckier than those who later found themselves residents of East Germany. Read about the secret negotiations that led to Sweden's Red Cross rescue at France 24. -via Damn Interesting
A controversy among linguists which has been raging for a long time is the concept of universal grammar. Is there a fundamental set of rules that people use, no matter what their language is? Anyone who has tried to learn a second or third language knows how different these languages can be. English speakers have a hard time wrapping their heads around gendered nouns. People who speak other languages don't understand why we put adjectives before nouns in English. But there are certain features that almost all languages have in common, such as subjects, verbs, and objects, although their order can vary. But is this universal grammar due to something innate in the human brain, or did it come about when written language developed, or does it point to how languages were all originally related? Dr. Erica Brozovsky (previously at Neatorama) explains how linguists have disagreed, or even fought each other, over this controversy.
