Untoward violence against animals, especially if unprovoked, should not be allowed. Regardless, it still happens, and there are animals that die too early. Some are lucky enough to pull through and survive. Maggie is one of those lucky dogs.
The dog was discovered in Lebanon after having her eyes shot out, her ear cut off, and having her jaw broken. The poor pupper! Rescuers found Maggie pregnant and tied to a box by herself. Fortunately, animal charity Wild at Heart Foundation took her to a home in Brighton, where she was able to recover. The dog now works as a therapy dog. Cheers to you, Maggie!
We've been to Wild West amusement parks where a gunfight in the street was scheduled for every hour, on the hour. When Palisade, Nevada, did it, those gunfights were scheduled according to when passengers arrived on the railroad train -and those disembarking had no idea it was all staged. See, when the transcontinental railroad opened for business, travelers complained that the Wild West wasn't nearly as wild as it had been depicted in dime novels. In 1870, the tiny new railroad town of Palisade decided to do something about that, and maybe drum up some tourist business.
Their plan worked magnificently. Gunfights broke out in the street every time a train stopped. The town developed a reputation as a "must-see" among tourists, and journalists were eager to describe the carnage, albeit without too many facts about the perpetrators or victims. The town also staged bank robberies and Indian raids, which kept the people coming to town for a few years. Despite all the "killings," the population of Palisade peaked at about 300 people during this period, almost all involved in the performances. Read about the Palisade Wild West show at Messy Nessy Chic.
You know what they say: Nothing succeeds like excess. When something works, you use it again and again, or even steal the idea from someone else. That's how trends start, and they keep growing until people can't help but notice. Book lovers scanning the shelves of their local bookstore have already noticed, and now they are having trouble distinguishing one new book from another, because they all have that colorful blob cover. They even have a name for it: the Book Blob.
We've seen this happen before. If a romance novel has a shirtless man on the front, it is a bodice ripper. If it has a woman in 18th-century farm dress, it is a more chaste romance. What do these colorful blobs mean?
They are usually fiction and nearly always written by women, often women of color. They have literary sensibility but broad enough appeal to contend for the bestseller list; they’re the sort of books that generate a good deal of buzz and media coverage, likely candidates for an Oprah Book Club nod or a spot on a major literary prize’s shortlist.
This is a Collignon projection. How does that work? I'll explain: [insert math here].
Got it?
It’s very straightforward and, thanks to the work of Florian Ledermann, adjustable. At his website, Map Projection Playground, you can experiment with dozens of different world map projections, all of which distort the curved Earth on a plane in different ways. You can also see all of these different types of projections on a single page here.
Ledermann knows his business. He’s engineer and computer programmer who teaches cartography at the Technical University in Vienna. Ledermann executed this project for students in his course titled “Cartographic and Geodetic Foundations for Planners.”
The Awesomer introduces us to this art exhibit by FudouKamui, a student at the Xi’An Academy of Fine Arts in northwestern China. Pay and the machine will dispense one of the ceramic plates, each of which has a different price. When the plate hits the bottom port, it breaks.
The exhibit is subtly titled “This Is the Proof of Our Stupidity.”
I don’t get it, but perhaps if I buy a few more plates, I will. I mean, eventually, I have to win the game, right?
Not even considering a few gender reveal parties that have caused death and destruction, the entire custom is suspect. To be honest, no one outside the family cares whether your baby will be born a boy or a girl. Even inside the family, the importance of a baby's sex implies that one is preferable to the other, which can leave scars when someone's disappointment is seen in the video years later. If it's just an excuse to throw a party, there's nothing wrong with that, but there has been a tendency to make a big production out of the reveal in order to score internet points.
Bored Panda has a gallery of images that reveal the cringe factor of gender reveal parties. Some mock the custom, some display truly bad taste, and some are downright disturbing. There are quite a few gender reveal cakes which are beautifully executed, yet show extreme gender stereotypes for the sake of an alliteration. See them all in this list.
This may have flown under your radar, but you don't see much of Ronald McDonald anymore. The McDonald's advertising mascot was everywhere in the 1980s and '90s, encouraging children to bug their parents about going to McDonald's for dinner. Today he's almost fallen off the radar, and is completely gone from advertising in the UK. Well, there was that rash of scary clown sightings, but that was in 2016. Ronald was gone from British advertising in 2014. So what happened to the clown?
Attempts to get to the bottom of the mystery demonstrate that while Ronald has left our screens, he looms large in our memories. One media man who worked on McDonald’s UK advertising for three years simply said, “I don’t fancy being sued by a clown”. Aye Jaye, an LA-based former Ronald who wrote the official rulebook for playing the character (don’t hug kids, pat them on the back) said, “Unfortunately I’m not allowed [to talk]”. The co-author of a 1972 rulebook named Ronald and How, which warned Ronalds to never tell children that hamburgers are made of cows, also declined to speak, noting that he no longer has a copy of the book after returning his materials to McDonald’s upon his retirement.
So we are left to reconstruct the demise of Ronald McDonald in a roundabout way. It appears to be a confluence of a push for better nutrition for children, the reputation of clowns in general, and McDonald's drive to make their restaurants more upscale to appeal to adults. There have been few missteps along the way, which you can read about at Vice. Ronald is not quite as extinct in the US, which may have something to do with the prominent Ronald McDonald House charities. -via Digg
It's been a few years since someone figured out you can create a picture by combining location tracking and an internet map, creating a genre called Strava Art. Fitness trackers show you where you've been and how far you've run or cycled. By planning a route, you can draw something really neat for internet points. We've seen few of these Strava Art images that go viral, but way more people do this than you ever realized. After all, runners and cyclists love a challenge more than anything, and this combines art with teh pohysical activity they were going to go through anyway. Gary Cordery has collected a ton of these Strava Art map images at his website Stravart.
You can look through images in different categories: people, plants, reptiles, cats & dogs, Christmas, fiction, words & numbers, etc. You can also submit yours, if this inspires you to make your own Strava Art. -via Boing Boing
It seems that Amazon has seen the advantages of releasing online video games and has released one themselves. New World is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) for PC. The game topped more than half a million concurrent players on Steam, which is impressive. However, the reviews for New World are mixed. Fifty-three percent of the respondents awarded the game with a positive rating. The remaining percentage complained about the lack of SEA (Southeast Asia servers) and other connectivity issues. These comments are legitimate concerns. Another genre of comments disliked the game because of its lack of ‘catgirls.’ Yeah, ridiculous, I know. Check more funny Steam reviews here!
It’s difficult to work at home. Why? Well, sometimes you’d rather lie in bed instead of opening your computer to do tasks. There are also tempting activities that can be done instead of work or other important tasks, and being cooped up in your home with the uncertainty of the current pandemic makes us more irritated and impatient. FastCompany shares some tips and tricks on how to be more patient at home and at work. Check the full piece here.
Beer, Soda, Lotto is a photo series by Ben Hassett that showcases liquor stores in Los Angeles. The images in the collection look like paintings with their saturated colors, good compositions, and heavy textures. The way Hassett presents the stores highlights their decay and beauty as if these establishments were long abandoned. More photos from Beer, Soda, Lotto can be seen here!
Our Moon has experts tied up in conflicting theories! Scientists believed that our Moon was created 4.5 billion years ago. Just like how different materials clumped together to form planets, experts believe the Moon had the same origin. However, two recent studies have shed new light on the natural satellite’s origins. One study claims that multiple collisions birthed the orbiting rock, while another claims the Moon is younger than scientists had previously believed. Learn more about the two theories here!
Forget weather forecasts, looking up bird migration forecasts is much more entertaining! BirdCast is a forecast that provides a three-day outlook of how many birds will be flying overhead across the US — and where. The tool, which was developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and a handful of other universities, presents real time information. BirdCast can help migrating birds by guiding cities on when to turn off the lights to stop bird deaths due to disorientation caused by city lights.
The Schmid Peoplemover is an elevator/tram that takes you up, across, and down without stopping to change directions. Only three of them were ever put into service, and one has been closed since 2009 "due to economic reasons." Tom Scott went to another, at the Berlin-Rummelsburg Betriebsbahnhof train station. Its design is intriguing.
Tom also talked to its inventor, Emil Schmid, who explains that the peoplemover was built elsewhere and installed over the railway in only three hours! This device is cheaper and takes up less room than bridges with stairs, but it does have some drawbacks. One might assume that the closed Schmid Peoplemover was taken out of service to save money on power and maintenance. The ones that still run really make a difference for people in wheelchairs.
When the clock strikes midnight, weird things begin to happen in this house. The stuff on the walls begin to move, the furniture starts to dance, and monsters pop in from every corner! Kieron Rose went all out constructing his haunted house automaton. He submitted this video to the Facebook group Grayson's Art Club.
This has taken me nearly a year to build, all completely from scratch. Everything inside the room is 3d printed (apart from the ceiling light) and much of the mechanism is 3D printed too. It has 3 computers, 3 smoke machines (also 3D printed), 27 servos, 60 LEDs and 3000 lines of code. It's based on a 1940's haunted house working model by Bolland but mine is a lot more complicated and a third of the size.
I'm seriously impressed with the work that went into this. -via Everlasting Blort
