Alien creature from the Alien film series
Illustrator and cartoonist Ed Harrington has created a funny collection of IKEA-style assembly instructions that show how to make iconic movie monsters. More instructions from Harrington’s ongoing series can be viewed on his Tumblr blog.
Pinhead from the Hellraiser movies
Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th films
via XombieDIRGE, Nerdist, Archie McPhee’s Endless Geyser of AWESOME!
The decades since the collapse of the USSR are the longest period of depopulation in Russian history, and the first peacetime loss of that scale anywhere in the world. Booze, violence, obesity, and poor standard of living alone don't account for the mortality either.
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Far Western is an upcoming documentary by Oklahoma-based filmmaker James Payne that takes a look at the rich and deep history of country and western music in Japan. The music first made an impact in the country after World War II through the songs of legends like Hank Williams and has since grown into a uniquely Japanese phenomenon.
Part music history and part character portrait, Far Western is told through the lives of musicians, fans, and live-music venue owners. Set both in modern Japan and the American South, the film explores the uncanny ability of a simple form of music to cross geographic and language barriers, forming a strange cultural bridge between the two countries.
The project is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter.
images via Far Western
submitted via Laughing Squid Tips
There is a new breed of students in town and they're looking for accommodation just a little smarter than your average digs.
Rich offspring of Middle Eastern royals, Russian oligarchs, African heads of state and super-rich east Asian businesspeople flooding into Britain for the start of university term are prepared to pay so much for flats in the swankiest parts of central London Mayfair, Knightsbridge and Kensington & Chelsea that agents say they have now replaced bankers as the most common tenants of the most expensive flats.
Continue reading...Imagine you have £275,000 to spend on a home. It is not a trifling amount more than the average UK house price and enough to buy a chocolate box cottage with acres of land in Northumberland. Or you could invest in "possibly the smallest house in the world", barely the size of a lock-up garage, in a street in north London.
Advertised as a "one-bedroom terraced house", the miniature home on Richmond Avenue is actually just one room. The house part of a trend for so-called "hutch living" in the capital is in the fashionable neighbourhood of Barnsbury and handy for the myriad trendy bars and restaurants on Islington's Upper Street. Which is probably just as well, because with just 188 sq ft of living space including an airborne shelf to sleep on, the lucky buyer won't be inviting many friends round.
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Chaumtoli Huq, former general counsel for NYC Public Advocate Tish James, attended a rally in Times Square with her family, and afterwards, waited on the sidewalk outside of a Ruby Tuesday restaurant while her husband took their children (10 and 6) to the bathroom.
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The towers attack the baseband radio in your phone and use it to hack the OS; they're only visible if you're using one of the customized, paranoid-Android, post-Snowden secure phones, and they're all around US military bases.
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Public Domain Review has scans from "Illustrations from Everard Digby’s De Arte Natandi (The Art of Swimming) published in 1587, considered the first English treatise on the practice." Here's the complete set.
Almost nothing is marvellous these days, but everything is awesome. According to a study by Lancaster University and Cambridge University Press, Britain has all but abandoned the former adjective in favour of the latter. Early evidence from their project, the Spoken British National Corpus 2014, shows that "awesome" now turns up in conversation 72 times per million words. "Marvellous", which 20 years ago appeared 155 times per million words, now appears just twice per million. "Fortnight" is also on the endangered list, as is "cheerio". (That's "cheerio" meaning goodbye, young people, as opposed to the singular form of the breakfast cereal, which you would only tend to use if you got one stuck up your nose.)
The study is the linguistic equivalent of that regularly updated shopping basket they use to determine the Retail Price Index: out goes whale meat and suspenders, in comes SIM cards and hummus. They aren't like-for-like substitutions, just signifiers of a fast-changing culture.
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Malaysia Airlines, who suffered the unprecedented and tragic loss of two jets this year, is having an understandably hard time attracting passengers; though the circumstances of the two losses do not appear to be related to negligence or anything other than terrible, awful random chance.
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Clothing retailer Zara yanked this child's shirt from stores after complaints that it very closely resembles the uniforms worn by prisoners in Jewish concentration camps during the Holocaust. Read the rest
Experimental & Clinical Cardiology published for 17 years out of Oshawa, ON, but is now owned by shadowy figures in Switzerland, whose payments are processed through Turks and Caicos, and they'll publish anything under the journal's banner, provided it's accompanied by a payment of $1200.
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The Mozilla Foundation -- who make Firefox -- have been doing some really cool things with Firefox's "start page" (the blank screen you get when you open a new browser tab or window), but this is the coolest: an interactive doodle that invites you to learn to code in the simplest, least-intimidating, most fun way possible.
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Despite being small enough to fit in your pocket, a tape measure is one of those tools that is almost impossible to use by yourself. Laser measuring devices are far easier to wrangle if you don't have an assistant—even with just one hand—but it's taken decades for a company like Bosch to finally create a version that's as compact as roll of metal tape.
Finger Hands are deeply unsettling finger puppets shaped like tiny human hands. They come in a set of five, allowing the wearer to perform a creepy “high twenty-five.” Finger Hands are available for purchase at Archie McPhee.
images via Archie McPhee
submitted via Laughing Squid Tips
YouTube channel Reactions recently debunked the myths surrounding the consumption of MSG. Specifically, the episode deals with the fact that, despite what many people believe, consuming monosodium glutamate isn’t unhealthy for the majority of people.
Few ingredients come with as much baggage as MSG. Otherwise known as monosodium glutamate, the compound has had a bad reputation for nearly 50 years, so we at Reactions felt it was time to clear its name. In this video, we debunk MSG myths and explain why the scientific consensus is that this flavor enhancer, known for its savory umami flavor, is perfectly safe for the vast majority of people.
From one of the best movie soundtracks ever. Also, Steve Zissou is my hero.
The mayor of Culver City, CA thought the above parking sign was too confusing, so she quickly remedied the problem: (more…)
Planes are giving us less and less leg room so it's no surprise that quarrels break out between passengers over space. Yesterday, one such altercation got so heated that a plane was diverted to Chicago. And at the heart of the conflict? A nifty little device called the Knee Defender, which prevents seats from reclining.
Mammal penises, including those of cetaceans, are pretty easy to find, while vaginas are more difficult to examine; historically, accounts of animal reproduction have emphasized the features of penises and theories of sperm competition, but a burgeoning scientific emphasis on whale vaginas is revealing structures and strategies that are amazing and wonderful.
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The university's new head of technology has instituted blocks for torrents, "obscene," and "unethical" pages, "misrepresenting identity," "political activities such as surveying, polling, material distribution, vote solicitation and organization or participation in meetings, rallies and demonstrations, among other activities" -- and any attempts to access blocked pages are logged and are grounds for disciplinary investigation by the school administration.
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Pop Sonnets is a tumblr that turns pop music into Shakespearean sonnets: above, YMCA ("Oh sweet and noble lad, be not aggrieved!").
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Spotted yesterday on a menu at my grandparents' retirement home in Toronto: "Kosher-style porkchops." I guess if you circumcise the pig and ensure that it has a suitable Bar Mitzvah...?
