Since 2014, a cat named Horatio has been the face of the Centre County Library & Historical Museum in Bellefonte, Centre Hall, and Philipsburg, Pennsylvania. Horatio is their Caturday star, dressing up as movie characters and literary icons in order to promote the library's books and programs. Horatio's owner, Lisa Shaffer, makes all the costumes that Horatio so patiently wears.
Of course, you will recognize the nod to Carol Burnett's greatest skit ever.
Horatio always looks like he's really enjoying his photo shoots. Bored Panda made a gallery of Horatio's 100 best pictures, or if you have the patience to look through years of them, you can see them all at Instagram.
I was impressed with not only Smac McCreanor's creative idea, but her masterful execution of the premise. It turns out that she's a professional dancer and actor, so it's no wonder that she was able to physically demonstrate the crushing of each object displayed in the Hydraulic Press Channel's emotionally soothing TikTok page.
-via Born in Space
After hearing the requests for years, Disney is launching the first official Star Wars anime series. Star Wars: Visions is not canon, however. It's an experimental anthology series in which seven Japanese animation studios have free rein to tell nine stories. They range in the Star Wars timeline from before The Phantom Menace to after The Rise of Skywalker.
While purists say you should watch anime in Japanese to catch the inflections of the original voice artists (subtitles are fine), you will also have the option to see the English dub (featuring many well-known Western actors), so here's that trailer.
Star Wars: Visions will begin streaming on Disney+ on September 22. Read a description of each episode at Inverse.
If you're in high school, classes start really early. Redditor 1ew put this map together to show the average start time for high schools in each of the American states. View it full-size here. As you can see, they are going at it awfully early, despite research showing teenagers do not get enough sleep and benefit from later start times at school.
Some of these early start times are because schools share buses, and once the high school students are delivered, they go back and pick up elementary students. Starting earlier also gets high school students out of class earlier for extracurricular activities, jobs, and supervising younger siblings. Whether those are good reasons is up for debate.
My school, back in the day, started at 8:30, and the doors weren't even unlocked until 8:15. We still thought that was too early.
-via Digg
The 2009 movie Coraline is an "animated dark fantasy horror film," while still being cute and whimsical enough for parents to take their children to see it. While some kids were traumatized, those who've read the Neil Gaiman book the movie was based on say it was much darker and more terrifying than the film. I'm not sure where this was originally posted, but Just Sock Thoughts collected the discussion thread for a Facebook post. I have neither read Coraline nor seen the movie, but one part of the discussion jumped out at me.
Now that's what you call a cool literary tidbit! You can read the entire discussion about the difference between the book and the movie at Geeks Are Sexy.
Heraclitus, also known as the ‘Obscure,’ the ‘Riddler’ or the ‘Dark One,’ was one of the Greek philosophers that predated Socrates. The ‘Riddler’ has influenced Plato, Aristotle, Jung, Kafka, and so many others. His oddly dark nicknames came from the cryptic and often paradoxical nature of his work. Speaking of his work, the Herclitean philosophy believed that everything is constantly changing. The philosopher defended the unity of opposites (the idea that opposite things are identical), and was the first philosopher in Greece to use Logos in his theory to describe the cosmic order. To learn more about him, check the Collector’s full piece here!
image credit: The British Museum
In an old yet charming video filmed during the 1990s, a king penguin can be seen trotting his way home to the fish market. This is LaLa, who left the cold regions of his home and ventured to a hot and humid town in Japan where he became a companion of a local resident. LaLa, as captured in the video, can be seen venturing to the local fish market with his penguin-shaped backpack every day:
So, how did LaLa find himself in Japan? As the story goes, he was found trapped in a fishing net with an injured beak and wing. A fisherman discovered LaLa and kept him on the boat with him. When the man returned, he brought the bird to the Nishimoto family. They took care of his injuries and nursed him back to health. LaLa never left his caregivers, and so they built a refrigerated room for him under their house.
Years after the release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, players still find some things that are fairly new or unknown to the player base. Reddit user RogueRequest2 has stumbled onto a quest they’ve never encountered before. For the record, RogueRequest2 has put over 600 hours into the RPG. Upon sharing their discovery with the Internet, the player base responded with complete surprise:
"600+ hours, never encountered this troll before," wrote RogueRequest2 (via WeGotThisCovered). As you can see below, the meeting in question involves Geralt and a troll who likes to cook with various body parts.
It's hard to understand everything the troll is saying without subtitles, but I think the main takeaway is that he enjoys juicy elf heads in the same way you or I might chomp down on a fresh tomato. Lovely.
While this encounter is clearly super rare, there are a few players who've stumbled across it. It's called Harassing A Troll, and is an unmarked secondary quest tucked away in a corner of Velen. It's easy for players to miss, given that it doesn't show up on the map at all.
"I guess I never explored over there for some reason," RogueRequest2 said. "I just keep finding stuff and it's pretty awesome."
Image Credit: CD Projekt RED
Mexican photographer and art director Felix Hernandez was commissioned by Audi Middle East to shoot images of their $40,000 Q2 crossover for Audi magazine. Hernandez, instead of shooting with the actual car, created a small-scale desert, roadway, and a 1/43 scale model of the Q2. This artistic choice does not come as a surprise, as the photographer is known for his miniature photography:
Felix normally works with 1/18 scale models. This was the first time he was using a 1/43 model and he claims to have “learned a lot in the process.” A smaller model meant that he needed to make the car look full-sized against realistic-looking backdrops and sets. He used foam core, LEDs and sand paper to build the indoor roadway. For the desert, Felix used polvo fino powder mixed with water and moulded into miniature sand dunes.
Image credit: Felix Hernandez
Japan created special kimonos to celebrate the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Through its Kimono Project, the county paid tribute to every country who competed in the recently-finished event. Every country was represented by a unique kimono and obi, so that means that Japan created 213 kimonos-- that’s a lot! The Kimono Project took six years to complete, and was led by designer and founder of Imagine One World (the organization who launched the project) Yoshimasa Takakura:
Also included are "countries that Japan has diplomatic relations but without Olympic committees, including Niue and Vatican City," says Kimono Project spokeswoman Orie Shimizu.
The kimonos and obis are not on public display, as was initially planned, due to COVID-19 restrictions. However, they will be shown during Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan.
Shimizu confirmed that the full set for each country cost around ¥2 million ($18,300), consisting of the kimono, obi, and smaller accessories. They have all been handmade with traditional methods, each taking between one and two years to craft.
"We wanted to show that Japanese elaborate dyeing and weaving techniques are not just ancient art forms, but a living art that we still have today, with many artisans active throughout Japan," Shimizu says.
Image credit: SoraNews24
Speedrunners love to beat the clock. And because they are always striving for the fastest possible time, speedrunners will look in every nook and cranny of a certain game to look for shortcuts and glitches that can save even the tiniest fraction of time. Thanks to the internet, speedrunners can share the glitches they discovered with other speedrunners. But sometimes, glitches can be discovered by people who just play to have fun, but speedrunners can still learn from them.
When Twitch streamer Boba played Metal Gear Solid for the first time ever, she stumbled upon a glitch which could save up to 2-3 minutes in a speedrun.
In Metal Gear Solid, you eventually reach a section where you need to go up and down some communication towers, fighting a helicopter, climbing a bunch of stairs, and even rappelling down a rope. It’s a lot. During this section, Boba was running from guards and reached a locked door, so she turned around to fight the swarm of angry armed goons. As she did so, she was shot multiple times, getting pushed back enough that Snake’s model clipped through the door and seemingly activated a trigger, letting Boba skip the stairs and enter the outside area early.
Players have already replicated the bug successfully, and they have also investigated if the strategy could be applied elsewhere in the game. Gamers are already calling this strategy the “Boba Skip.”
Amazing.
(Image Credit: boba_witch/ Twitter)
last night i broke metal gear
— 🌙 boba 🖤 (@boba_witch) August 15, 2021
get rekt speedrunners pic.twitter.com/6tqhBvP5LA
Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, or Tinder, the best thing you can do if you’re looking for a date online is to put your best foot forward by posting your most attractive pictures. But if you don’t know how to pose for pictures like a model, then it’s your lucky day! These animal photos over at Sad and Useless will teach you how.
(Image Credit: Sad and Useless)
Wolves gather in groups and hunt large prey such as moose and deer in the winter. Throughout the spring season, however, they become more solitary predators as their pups are born. We know these things thanks to decades of research dedicated to studying the lives of wolves. However, our knowledge about how wolves live in the summer is very limited. We only know that they hunt small prey like beavers, but they are very elusive. It is difficult for scientists to observe these animals in this season because of the dense vegetation. Thanks to modern technology, we now have filled this knowledge gap.
With the help of advanced GPS-tracking technology and remote video cameras, the Voyageurs Wolf Project has been able to get a closer look at the summer ecology of wolves in northern Minnesota.
[…]
The GPS-collars have helped reveal not only what wolves are eating, but also where they are killing prey and the locations of den sites. This research has revealed new aspects of wolf hunting behavior and has shown just how variable a wolf’s diet is during the summer. It's also given insight into the complex and fascinating lives of wolves in northern Minnesota.
The team has compiled hours of footage in this video which shows the wildlife in this game trail in Voyageurs National Park. Some wolves can be seen in this video.
(Image Credit: Voyageurs Wolf Project/ YouTube)
Mammoths may not have recorded their adventures on Earth in stone, but they have something else that documents their journeys: their tusks. This particular tusk, however, is very special, as it belonged to a mammoth that covered a distance enough to circle the planet twice.
Published in the journal Science, researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks looked at the isotopes inside a 1.7-meter-long (5.6-foot) tusk from a woolly mammoth that lived in present-day Alaska just over 17,000 years ago.
[...]
“It’s not clear-cut if it was a seasonal migrator, but it covered some serious ground,” added Matthew Wooller, senior and co-lead author of the paper from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “It visited many parts of Alaska at some point during its lifetime, which is pretty amazing when you think about how big that area is.”
Learn more about this mammoth over at IFL Science.
That’s a lot of steps!
(Image Credit: JR Ancheta, University of Alaska Fairbanks)
The San Diego Zoo is home to different animals like lions, koalas, and giraffes. They also have a YouTube channel where they show how these animals live inside the zoo. In this video, the Zoo shares with us footage of how flamingos eat. Watch as these pink animals poke their heads in and through the water and suck in water and mud through the front of their bills, and pump them at the side. Thanks to the filters found in their mouths which trap tiny shrimp and small critters, the flamingos can have a decent meal as they scan the waters.
Yum!
(Image Credit: San Diego Zoo)
