Snob

Because today is effectively Friday afternoon for those of us in the U.S., here is Space Lich Omega, an "incremental RPG" inspired by previous MeFite favorite Candy Box.

Incremental games previously.

Since more than 1 billion people have played it, you’re probably familiar with the board game Monopoly, but we bet you don’t know its secret origins as a left-wing socialist teaching tool. Learn about the history, rules and cultural impact of Monopoly.

via Imgur and Cheezburger

No, cat milk does not actually come from cats (could you imagine having to squeeze milk out of cats?) - but camel milk, reindeer milk and yak milk do come from those respective animals.

And while we're at it, baby oil doesn't come from baby either, mmkay?

According to Whiskas, the maker of Cat Milk, cats and kittens love to drink milk, but most of them actually cannot digest regular milk - so they have to drink lactose-free version.

via

In his latest video, C.G.P. Grey explains the relationship between the many parts that make up the United States of America.


CGP Grey

Uno de los temas que siempre salen a debate en esta sección de señoritas exuberantes de otros tiempos es el asunto del matorral y de cómo han...

Sarah Peachez celebra la Declaración de Independencia.

"The slickness, the cosiness, the lack of spontaneity, the inevitable gallery-playing, Eric Idle's bloody songs (just what we needed, a slightly edgier Richard Stilgoe)... this is the kind of schlock they once stood up against, and worse, it will just compound the modern perception of Python as something unthreatening and whimsical, a posh boys' lark, an "icon of Britishness", a zany figleaf for the humourless and the deeply conventional, like brightly-patterned socks." On the back of mixed reviews on the Python reunion, Taylor Parkes looks at the other side of Monty Python.

En un contexto donde la fama y el dinero no están íntimamente ligados a las destrezas intelectuales sobresalientes, la gente encuentra pocos incentivos para ser más culta. Sí, aprender cosas nuevas resulta satisfactorio, saciar la curiosidad es casi como saciar la sed… pero ¿qué utilidad práctica hay en adquirir cultura más que ganar en la próxima partida de Trivial Pursuit?

A continuación, tenéis algunas razones eminentemente prácticas (siendo consciente de que la adquisición de cultura no tiene que tener un fin práctico inmediato). Tal vez convenza a algún descarriado para coger un libro o regresar de nuevo a clase.

1. Longevidad

La estimulación intelectual favorece la longevidad: las personas con título universitario viven más años que las que carecen del mismo, incluso después de tener en cuenta otros factores correctores, según Louis Cozolino en The Healthy Aging Brain: Sustaining Attachment, Attaining Wisdom.

2. Demencia senil

Los individuos con un vocabulario más amplio en la adolescencia son menos susceptibles de sufrir demencia senil, nos señala de nuevo Cozolino. Por lo general, el vocabulario pasivo de una persona normal puede perfectamente superar las 10.000 palabras (vocabulario pasivo significa palabras que conocemos pero que no usamos necesariamente en nuestra vida cotidiana). El vocabulario activo, no obstante, apenas es de unos centenares de palabras.

Tal vez los medios digitales estén reduciendo ese vocabulario, no obstante. Al menos es lo que sustenta Mark Bauerlein, profesor de lengua inglesa de la Universidad de Emory, porque en los medios digitales aparecen menos palabras raras o inusuales que en los medios impresos tradicionales, como los periódicos o los libros. Las palabras raras son aquéllas “no incluidas dentro de la lista de los diez mil términos utilizados más frecuentemente”, tal y como explica en su estudio al respecto publicado en The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.

3. Salud

Los viejos que participan en programas artísticos acuden con menos frecuencia al médico, toman menos medicamentos y en general disfrutan de una mejor salud, según Gene D. Cohen en The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain.

4. CI

Aunque los estudios no son aún concluyentes, también parece que hay una correlación entre recibir educación artística de pequeños y un pequeño incremento del CI, como también hay pruebas indicativas de que quienes asisten a clases de música y teatro parecen mejorar sus habilidades sociales.

5. Flynn

Tornarse más culto no significa necesariamente adquirir conocimientos ortodoxos, puramente académicos: también tiene que ver con estar expuesto a una dieta mediática estimulante, que incluye televisión, videojuegos, blogs, etc. Saciar nuestra curiosidad y zambullirnos en las fuentes que la sacien. Incluso la telebasura puede ser estimulante, a juicio de Steven Johnson.

El propio Johnson están convencido de que el llamado efecto Flynn, que cada generación se incrementa el CI de la población en general, se debe principalmente a la rica dieta mediática a la que estamos expuestos. Podéis leer más sober ello en ¿Cada vez somos más inteligentes? El Efecto Flynn (I), (II), (III).

Bonus Track

Para quitarte de la cara la expresión de cenutrio. O como escribió un poco más románticamente Arturo Pérez-Reverte: En el mar puedes hacerlo todo bien, según las reglas, y aun así el mar te matará. Pero si eres buen marinero, al menos sabrás dónde te encuentras en el momento de morir. Podéis leer cómo me explayo al respecto en Los libros que me enseñaron a mirar.

Foto | Maksim (CC) | Tom Murphy VII

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La noticia Cinco razones para empezar a ser más culto fue publicada originalmente en Xatakaciencia por Sergio Parra.

By Paul K Pickett,Lesia Pickett  Published: July 03rd, 2014  The world is full of shady self-help gurus and workplace seminars telling us how we can turn our lives around just by using the right words ("Don't say the cheese is 'spoiled' -- say it's 'aged'!"), as if language is a form of magic that can alter re

The Netherlands has a quaint Christmas tradition that’s come under fire in the recent years for maybe being a wee bit racist. As best embodied in the epic David Sedaris story “Six to Eight Black Men,” the Dutch Christmas goes like this: Santa rides a boat over from Spain to Netherlands on a white horse, accompanied by “six to eight black men” all named Black Pete. They roam the land for a couple weeks and then on December 5 if you’ve been a good child they fill your shoes with presents (and how many presents can fit in a shoe, really?). If you’ve been bad, Santa and his Black Petes kick you, hit you with a stick, stuff you in a sack and take you back to Spain. What happens next is anyone’s guess.

The Dutch have been celebrating this tradition every year with a faithful reenactment of Santa’s arrival with his Black Petes in Amsterdam for generations. Since Netherlands is a fairly homogeneously white place, the Black Pets consist of white Dutch in blackface makeup, with kinky afro wigs and exaggerated bright red lipstick. Plus, any actual black people in Amsterdam probably wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere near this farce.

Some Dutch try to justify Black Pete as just being a helper who got soot on his face from coming down the chimney. But as one Hollander told David Sedaris, they were slaves in the original story, but “now they’re just good friends.”

As Black Pete turned into a controversy the Dutch people uncovered their potential to get nasty. Really nasty. Suggestions that Black Pete was maybe a tad bit racist drew death threats for poet Quinsy Gario. On the other side, champions of beloved Black Pete submitted him for the UN’s UNESECO list as an asset of “intangible cultural heritage.”

On Thursday a Dutch judge ruled that Black Pete is “a negative stereotype of black people” and should be retired. The court cited the “irritation and dismissal” of white Dutch when the possibility of racism is raised, and recommended Black Pete be expunged from Amsterdam’s Christmas tradition.

If the past is any indication, the Dutch are not going to give up Black Pete any easier than some Americans will give up the Washington Redskins. Black Pete goes way back—longer than a football team—and is a national mascot.

Associated Press notes the Amsterdam organizers of the Christmas tradition are already considering alternatives to the black face paint used in the Black Pete celebration—including “different colors of face paint for Pete, or merely smudging his cheeks with soot.”

Yeah, something tells me progress is going to be slow on this one.

Finally, when a British traveler is injured in America and needs something to stop the bleeding they should ask for some aid- a Band-Aid that is:

These charts might be just what we need to bring our two countries together in linguistic harmony, but if you're a fan of discord make sure you check out the rest of Samantha's informative charts, including the ones pertaining to slang and insults, over at 22 Words.

After two years of public playtest and discussion, the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons makes its debut today. The Basic Rules are now available as a free PDF.

The Starter Set is available in hobby stores today and bookstores on Wednesday. The Player's Handbook is set for August 19 (just in time for Gen Con Indy) and will launch with the adventure Hoard of the Dragon Queen. The Monster Manual hits in late September, then the next adventure The Rise of Tiamat in October and finally the Dungeon Master's Guide in November. Four pre-release 5th edition adventures are available in PDF on D&D Classics.

Every Fourth of July, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture is heard all over the United States, timed to the burst of fireworks. How did this Russian composition, celebrating the Russian victory over the French in that War of 1812 (not the war between England and the US), become a staple of the United States' Independence Day celebrations? We can thank the Boston Pops.

After conductor Walter Damrosch convinced Andrew Carnegie to build what would become the famed Music Hall (renamed Carnegie Hall in 1894), he needed a big name draw for the Hall's opening festivities. At the time, there were certainly very few names bigger than Tchaikovsky's.He noted that "people in the United States know my work better than they do in Russia, in my own home."

The Russian composer's 1812 Overture debuted in 1882, and he conducted the composition for the debut of Carnegie's Music Hall in 1891. Even though Tchaikovsky intended for his "very noisy" composition to be played outdoors, with church bells, sixteen cannons, and even fireworks (Google books preview), and the composition was performed in the early 20th century as part of Independence Day fireworks shows, the pairing of the Overture with fireworks wasn't a Fourth of July tradition until the mid 1970s. It came about thanks to a quirky friendship between two men: Arthur Fiedler, the late, legendary, curmudgeonly conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, and David Mugar, a millionaire Boston businessman who has sponsored all Boston's Fourth of July concerts since they took on this explosive form 40 years ago.

Given the duration of this paring, it might not be surprising that it's popularity is waning a bit. A few years ago, Macy's fireworks display over the Hudson Bay featured 50 songs voted on by people on Facebook, where the 1812 Overture didn't get selected, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic's performance at the Hollywood Bowl also excluded the Overture.

If you want to relive some of the past excitement with the pairing of cannons and chrysanthemums, or other prior Fourth of July shows, you may enjoy the Boston Pops bicentennial celebration, with Arthur Fiedler conducting (television coverage), or the 2011 performance of the 1812 Overture (decent audience recording), or enjoy the extended coverage of Macy's Fourth of July celebration (televised, with various special guests).

(Image: Fox)

The Simpsons episode "Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?" reunited Homer with his long-lost brother, Herb Powell. Herb, who was voiced by Danny DeVito, was a highly successful car manufacturing executive. He was so overcome with emotion upon meeting his brother that he asked Homer to design a new car.

Homer gladly did so, devising a radical car design that he named "The Homer," after himself. The Homer, priced at $82,000, was "powerful like a gorilla, yet soft and yielding like a Nerf ball." It was also a catastrophe that promptly drove Herb's company into bankruptcy and Herb himself into poverty.

Last year, custom car builders modified a pre-existing car to look like The Homer. It's an impressive machine. But Alexander George of Wired would like for us to look at Homer Simpson's original specifications. George argues that The Homer was actually a work of genius, far ahead of its time when the episode aired in 1991. Actual cars now have many of the features that Homer put into his prototype:

A ball on the antenna (remember those?) so you can find it in a parking lot
Antennas have been replaced with 4G LTE connectivity, so Homer’s simple solution doesn’t work anymore. But there are lots of apps and even hardware to help drivers find their parked cars, so the industry has got this one covered.

Multiples horns, all of which play “La Cucaracha”
Automakers have stuck with standard noises (good choice), but today’s steering wheels do have multiple spots to hit for the horn. As Homer says, “You can never find a horn when you’re mad.”

A separate soundproof bubble dome for kids, with optional restraints and muzzles
The auto industry has gotten more and more careful about putting kids as old as 12 in child and booster seats, but the focus there is safety, not keeping them quiet.

-via Glenn Reynolds

Joey van Koningsbruggen pouring himself a glass of Joylent

It's 2014 and we still have no idea what we should be eating. The food pyramid turned out to be a lie and the whole gluten debate continues to rile up anyone who chooses to get involved; while seeds have been lionised, cocoa solids could apparently save the world and you're now categorized as a fucking n00b if you have to ask someone what spelt is. 

I'm guessing this neurosis about what we put in our mouths had something to do with Rob Rhinehart coming up with his food replacement drink, Soylent—the thought being that we can just shut up about food already, start subsisting on a liquefied regimen of nutrients and get on with our lives. Unfortunately, that remedy currently only works for Americans, as Soylent isn't yet shipped outside of the US.

However, for any Europeans who feel like trading in pizza, pasta and burritos for three daily doses of beige liquid, Dutch artist Joey van Koningsbruggen has taken it upon himself to help. Conveniently, Soylent list all of their ingredients on their website, so Joey just ordered each individual component and smashed them all together himself.

He wasn't planning on selling the stuff, but people began taking an interest as soon as he started blogging about his experiment. And after his first video was shared by a Dutch celebrity—the writer Ronald Giphart—Joey officially went into business. When I spoke to him he had 20 people drinking his powdered nutrient mix, which he's dubbed "Joylent."

“I'm trying to upscale it," he told me. "I have all these 25 kg bags of maltodextrin, soy flour, fine Scottish oats and shit like that in my bedroom.”

Nobody put a lot of faith in Rhinehart when he first started Soylent—probably because he used to be a software engineer and didn't really have any experience when it came to completely redesigning the way humans survive. However, everything began to change for him when he successfully survived on Soylent alone for an entire 30 days in a row and started blogging about it. He then crowd-funded millions of dollars and Soylent became a legitimate product that people trust.

Joey's story is a little different to Rob's. Before he started selling his food replacement powder he enjoyed a brief period of local fame after releasing a song about a man with a pink bag; ran a popular website dedicated to erotic literature; and successfully made the switch from drug dealer to full-time visual artist.

“I got robbed of £1,700 worth of cocaine," he told me. "I took a risk to make it back, but I got locked up, lost my house and support from my parents.”

After losing his house Joey slept rough for two weeks—not because he had nowhere to go, but because he "liked the drama" of sleeping on the street. After finding himself a new flat, his art—mostly portraits based on Facebook profile pictures – caught on, and before long he was making a living purely through painting.  

His nickname on the Soylent forums is "Hosselman," which is Dutch for "hustle man."

Besides Joylent's banana flavor, there's really not a lot of difference between Joey's product and the original Soylent. But he's not afraid of a lawsuit. “That would be funny, actually," he said, chuckling at the idea of being sued. "I think our products are very much alike, but the difference is in the fun. I try to make it tasty. Maybe I'll add some color in the future. I'm just trying to have some fun with it.”

Rob Rhinehart once said that his vision was of a world in which every water tap has a Soylent tap next to; that way, he hopes, nobody should ever have to be hungry again. This grand vision is probably the only thing the two entrepreneurs have in common.

“I'd like to be a big multinational that's able to duck taxes and pay my own fictional taxes in the form of me giving Joylent to poor countries," Joey told me. "I fantasize about that sometimes.”

You’re all boo-tiful!

Desde muy niño, en casa siempre he visto hacer tomate frito casero y siempre recuerdo a mi madre y mi abuela friendo tomates. Quizás por ese motivo, en casa siempre hacemos nuestra propia salsa de tomate y por eso me ha encantado descubrir la que os voy a presentar hoy, una salsa intensa de tomate con chocolate y vermut, una receta de tomate solo para adultos. Sí, lo habéis leído bien. Con chocolate y vermut.

Cuando vi esta receta en el libro Chocolate Gourmet me quedé muy intrigado y ya en ese momento, supe que tenía que hacer esta receta y probar su sabor. ¿No os intriga a vosotros también? Ahora os cuento cómo preparar la receta de esta salsa con todo detalle, porque vale la pena descubrirla.

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La noticia Salsa intensa de tomate con un toque de chocolate y vermut, la receta de tomate solo para adultos fue publicada originalmente en Directo al Paladar por Pakus .

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Presentouse en Ferrol unha iniciativa cidadá pola xestión pública e social do ciclo da auga e do saneamento que inclúe unha Consulta Popular prevista no Regulamento de Participación Cidadá. En Teo, Vigo ou Cangas tamén hai propostas e campañas para que a xestión da auga volva ser pública.

OMG

(All links are safe for everyone unless you don't like cute things.) Pit bulls in a photo booth. Pit bulls being true to type. Pit bull fight! Pit bulls true to type part 2: Yes, they suddenly snap. Gratuitously cute Pinterest board of pit bulls.

A Real Academia Galega decidirá entre estes cinco nomes a persoa homenaxeada no 17 de maio do ano próximo. O pleno da institución reunirase o sábado para votar e anunciar a elección

Los responsables de la basílica buscarán recursos en diversos países europeos donde este sistema está más consolidado

A worksheet to help you talk to your partner about sex

Homenaje al compositor neoyorquino, el letrista mitad del tándem formado junto a su mujer Carol King con quien forjó delicadas joyitas del pop de los 60. Gerry Goffin falleció el 19 de junio y reivindicamos su legado recordando temas originales y curiosas versiones de sus canciones. Playlist; The Shirelles (Will you love me tomorrow), Little Eva (Leet's turkey trot), The Crickets (Please don't ever change), The Drifters (At the club), Dion (This little girl), The Animals (Don't bring me down), The Beatles (Chains), Herman's Hermits (I'm into something good), The Trashmen (Keep your hands off my baby), The Byrds (Goin' back), The Monkees (Take a giant step), Grand Funk Railroad (The Loco Motion), Blood Sweat and Tears (Hi de ho), Even In Blackouts (One fine day), Me First and the Gimme Gimmes (Who put the bomp in the bomp bomp bomp) y Carole King (Take good care of my baby). 

(Photo: BBC)

On September 28, 1066, William the Bastard crossed the English Channel from Normandy to England. On October 14, his army met that of King Harold Godwinson at the coastal town of Hastings. As a result of that match, William the Bastard became William the Conqueror and Harold Godwinson became dead.

To commemorate that battle and the Norman conquest of England, William's brother Odo commissioned the creation of an enormous tapestry depicting the events. It is a marvel of early sequential art, beautifully detailed and measuring 230 feet in length.

But it was probably longer. The extant tapestry ends with the death of King Harold. Scholars think that there was probably an 8-10 section now missing. It likely depicted the subsequent coronation of William as King of England.

The English were not inclined to let that problem stand. So for a year, embroiderers on the island of Alderney (one of the Channel Islands) reconstructed that section of the tapestry using historic methods and materials. Pictured above are the results of their work. You can view larger images of these new panels at the BBC.

-via Nag on the Lake

Up to three-quarters of women have admitted faking an orgasm, and a third of those fakers reported faking it "every time." Do you think you can tell the difference? We got five porn stars to provide us with two videos; one of them having a real orgasm, and one of them having a fake orgasm. Underneath each video we reveal which is the genuine orgasm. See if you can guess:

 

 

 

 

 

 

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