Hpecker

When a party of 13 dines at London’s Savoy Hotel, the management wards off bad luck by setting a place for Kaspar, a two-foot-tall statue of a black cat.

According to legend, when diamond magnate Woolf Joel held a dinner party for 14 guests at the hotel in 1898, one guest dropped out, and another predicted that the first person to leave the table would die. Joel left first and was shot dead a few weeks later.

To allay any further trouble, architect Basil Ionides sculpted Kaspar in 1927. When he joins a dining party, the cat has a napkin tied around his neck and is served like a regular diner, with a full place setting, champagne and wine.

Winston Churchill so admired Kaspar that he called for his attendance at every meeting of the Other Club, the political dining society that he founded with F.E. Smith. Kaspar has attended every fortnightly meeting for the last 88 years. Presumably he has a tell-all memoir in the works.

Please support Futility Closet on Patreon!

In 1969, California attorney Russell Tansie sued God for $100,000 on behalf of his legal secretary, who blamed Him for destroying her Phoenix home with a bolt of lightning in 1960:

Plaintiff is informed and believes that defendant (God) at all times mentioned herein is responsible for the maintenance and operation of the Universe, including the weather in and upon the State of Arizona, and that on or about August 17, 1960, defendant so maintained and controlled the weather, in, around and upon Phoenix, in such careless and negligent manner as to cause lightning to strike the plaintiff’s house, setting it on fire and startling, frightening and shocking the plaintiff.

Tansie added that God “did this with full knowledge and that the act was committed with malice and ill will.” He hoped to win a default judgment when the defendant failed to appear in court. I don’t know the outcome; maybe they reached a settlement.

Please support Futility Closet on Patreon!

Before steam power became widespread, some locomotives were powered by horses on treadmills. This version, dubbed Impulsoria by Italian inventor Clemente Masserano, was driven by four horses that walked continuously at their best speed; a gearbox could be set to forward, reverse, or neutral.

The “horse locomotive” successfully climbed a hill at trials in London in 1850 and was displayed at the Great Exhibition the following year. It was hoped that a final version might reach 20 mph, outrunning the steam engines of the day, but mechanical engines soon surpassed it.

Please support Futility Closet on Patreon!

Hovertext: Will you BEE enforcing that restraining order?

10 points for using row one, 20 for row two, 50 for row three.

Hovertext: I still want one.

Man, fuck Peter Liang. Dear Racist Asian People: the levers of power see you as white or not white depending on how it serves their needs.

Even if it were wrong (it’s probably kinda wrong), that wrong would pale to nothing compared to the outright evil that fuck hath wrought upon this world.

Hopefully one day he can peek up from hell to see all the other bigotry he helped perpetuate crumble too.

Hovertext: This is exactly how arms work.

I’m about a 3 and a half sexy.

kimtextileart:

realindevelopment-returns:

staticdiplomat:

fuckyeahcomicsbaby:

Sometimes a Son’s Greatest Fear is Becoming His Father

That was bloody fantastic.

Pat Grant

Wow

OK, this is a good joke.

The post Very strong opinions. appeared first on Indexed.

Hovertext: If you could work gravity waves into it, I'd appreciate that.

Client: I need to make an order.

Me: Do you have your account number?

Client: No.

Me: That’s okay, I can look it up. What is your shipping address?

Client: I don’t know. I just talked to you last week, you should have it.

Me: I’m sorry sir, I deal with hundreds of customers a week. Would you be able to find the address or ask someone?

Client: I’m not sure, just a sec.

Me: Where do you work, sir?

Client: Hang on.

Also, it’s like, racists, maybe ask yourself: hey, talking about killing police is pretty extreme, WHAT KIND OF OPPRESSION BY LAW ENFORCEMENT WOULD CAUSE YOU TO BE FRUSTRATED AND ANGRY ENOUGH TO EXPRESS THIS VIEW

Hovertext: It can violate conservation of information, but it can't have rounded corners.

“it’s a luxury phone”

we watched the super bowl commercials (and related football game) yesterday, and i couldn’t believe the number of ads ruined by a dumb, overwrought hashtag that was tacked onto the end

yiannisun:

Living above busy streets. :-D 

Hovertext: But, when I look at bees, I don't see caste.

Hovertext: Behold! As the show continues, entropy inexorably increases!

When David Huffman died in 1999, the world lost a talented computer scientist — Huffman was best known for discovering the Huffman coding technique used in data compression.

But it also lost a pioneer in mathematical origami, an extension of the traditional art of paper folding that applies computational geometry, number theory, coding theory, and linear algebra. The field today is finding wide application, helping researchers to fold everything from proteins to automobile airbags and space-based telescopes.

Huffman was drawn to the work through his investigations into the mathematical properties of “zero curvature” surfaces, studying how paper behaves near creases and apices of cones. During the last two decades of his life he created hundreds of beautiful, perplexing paper models in which the creases were curved rather than straight.

But he kept his folding research largely to himself. He published only one paper on the subject (PDF), and much of what he discovered was lost at his death. “He anticipated a great deal of what other people have since rediscovered or are only now discovering,” laser physicist Robert Lang told the New York Times in 2004. “At least half of what he did is unlike anything I’ve seen.” MIT computer scientist Erik Demaine is working now with Huffman’s family to recover and document his discoveries (PDF).

“I don’t claim to be an artist. I’m not even sure how to define art,” Huffman told an audience in 1979. “But I find it natural that the elegant mathematical theorems associated with paper surfaces should lead to visual elegance as well.”

Please support Futility Closet on Patreon!

Hovertext: Every sociology education should start with an explanation of the Big Bang.

billiecostacanread:

http://1041uuu.tumblr.com/