Hpecker

The loading time is the only downside.

In 1885 George C. Hale had the bright idea of weaving a zigzag cord into a pair of suspenders. Now if the wearer is trapped in a burning building, he can free the cord, lower it from a window to receive a rope, and escape to safety.

Hale’s patent application says, “I have found by experimenting that from fifty to one hundred feet, or even more, of the cord can be secured to the suspender in the manner heretofore described.”

The application was granted. I wonder if he ever went into business with this.

The post Escape Suspenders appeared first on Futility Closet.

Reviews of a test pattern on Netflix:

• “Not as good as the book. If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve pretty much seen the whole thing. I hope ‘Downscaling 2998fps: Too Down, Too Scaler’ is better.”
• “This is truly some of the best acting I’ve ever seen Keanu Reeves do. Hands down.”
• “Not since Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist has there been such a grim exploration of nihilism, peppered with gratuitous exploitation as ‘Test Pattern: Downscaling 2997fps 10Min.’ I found it beautiful and filthy with a soundtrack that puts Frozen‘s ‘Let it Go’ to shame.”
• “I had not seen any of the previous test patterns, and I was afraid I would not ‘get’ this one. Boy was I wrong! Talk about exciting! Going in my list. I’ll be watching this one again!”
• “I turned it off at 01:17:18. Pretty obvious where this thing was going. Really sad to see that cyan has resorted to doing test pattern work, another hue that started out with so much potential. The circle with the spinning colors showed promise and that ‘bleep’ sound was kinda clever.”
• “What happened Netflix? A year or two ago your test patterns were good clean fun. Yes, you might attract more subscribers with this kind of material, but at what cost? You’re better than this Netflix!”

Reviews of a gallon of milk on Amazon:

• “Unfortunately, after a terrible night’s sleep, I have concluded that this product is not suitable for use as a pillow.”
• “This is a fine milk, but the product line appears to be limited in available colors. I could only find white.”
• “I cannot say that Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 gal, 128 fl. oz. was entirely responsible for my winning the Sveriges Riksbank Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. However, I would be remiss in not mentioning it.”
• “Has anyone else tried pouring this stuff over dry cereal? A-W-E-S-O-M-E!”
• “Bought it for my cousin who had cancer, item never arrived and my cousin died.”
• “You know, if you click on the different image views, it looks like it’s coming to GET you…”
• “WANTED: Somebody to buy milk on the internets with me. This is not a joke. You’ll get paid after we drink it. Must bring your own weapons and be able to crawl through a series of tubes. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.”

See Beach Reading.

The post Commentary appeared first on Futility Closet.

didn’t i tell you elephants were mad chill

homey in the back is like yasssss he got my zoobookss

cyberho:

COUTURE, HO!!!!

Shirogane

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Why Are We Smug?

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 If you're having deja vu, it's because I accidentally posted this comic for a second yesterday. Press Z :)

Alexander Woollcott set a world record for the shortest review of a Broadway play.

The play was titled Wham!

Woollcott’s review, in full, read “Ouch!”

The post Critical Sensitivity appeared first on Futility Closet.

During China’s Han dynasty, artisans began casting solid bronze mirrors with a perplexing property. The front of each mirror was a polished, reflective surface, and the back featured a design that had been cast into the bronze. But if light were cast from the mirrored side onto a wall, the design would appear there as if by magic.

The mirrors first came to the attention of the West in the early 19th century, and their secret eluded investigators for 100 years until British physicist William Bragg worked it out in 1932. Each mirror had been cast flat with the design on the reverse side, giving the disk a varying thickness. As the front was polished to produce a convex mirror, the thinner parts of the disk bulged outward slightly. These imperfections are invisible to direct inspection; as Bragg wrote, “Only the magnifying effect of reflection makes them plain.”

Joseph Needham, the historian of ancient Chinese science, calls this “the first step on the road to knowledge about the minute structure of metal surfaces.”

The post Chinese Magic Mirrors appeared first on Futility Closet.

chaosophia218:

Minimalist Posters of Great Mathematicians.

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Monocles are here!

You can stand under my

Umbrellas in the rain (1899), Maurice Prendergast / Umbrella, Rihanna

deep-dark-fears:

Happy holidays! An anonymous fear submitted to deep dark fears. Just trying to draw like Helen Jo today.

awesome comic, awesome response to fear, and a shoutout to one of my favorite illustrators

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 OH MY GOD IT'S HAPPENING

Tumblr the leader of BuzzFeed’s sited content

flyartproductions:

WHO WILL SURVIVE IN AMERICA?

Guernica (1937), Pablo Picasso / Who Will Survive In America?, Kanye West ft. Gil Scott-Heron

Robert Heath thought we should all wear luminous hats. Confronted with the resounding question Why?, he offered this poetic paragraph:

Among the advantages of the invention are, the facility of seeing and finding the hat, &c., in closets and dark rooms and places, the presentation of a hat, &c., of different shades during day and night, the beautiful appearance of the article when worn at night, and the provision of distinguishing or indicating the localities of those who may wear the hats, &c., whose occupations are dangerous, such as miners, mariners, &c. For persons who are exposed to weather, sea, &c., the head-wear will be suitably waterproofed, so that the self-luminous nature thereof will not be injured by water.

Simple enough. His patent was granted on Feb. 27, 1883.

Recently I was able to try bungee jumping. It’s terrifying! Back when I was a teen I went skydiving, and while it’s QUITE A RUSH, bungee jumping was infinitely scarier.

If you’re some amateur showing up for a skydive, you do a “tandem dive” which means you get lashed onto some other dude who does this a thousand times a day. And if you’re doing the skydive in backwoods Oregon like I did, then you’re also paying like 60 bucks which is dirt cheap and honestly just adds to the thrill. You know you’re in good hands when the plane is held together with actual duct tape and the pilot is also wearing a parachute.

But regardless of everything that could go WRONG, at the end of the day you’re just along for the ride. You can pretty much go limp and close your eyes and you’ll still have skydived, and they’ll print out a little certificate using a Microsoft Word default template saying “Hey, you did it, good job. Way to be strapped to someone who actually did the thing.”

But with bungee jumping it’s your choice to jump. All the survival instincts are going nuts in your brain to NOT DO IT but you paid like 50 bucks and everyone is watching and OH GOD OH GOD.

Basically it’s the privilege to give in to that little suicidal spark in all of us without all the hassle that comes with dying.

wes

bartkiraroadshow:

ca-tsuka:

Some previews of Bartkira the Animated Trailer based on project by Ryan Humphrey and James Harvey.
http://bartkiraroadshow.tumblr.com/
If you want to animate on it, submissions are open : bartkiraroadshow [at] gmail [dot] com

Thank you for the coverage, Catsuka! Kaitlin Sullivan is producing the animated trailer and submissions are closed since this is being finished very soon. :)

 Exclusive bonus comic at The Nib!

"PEOPLE OF COLORED" LOL

listen, I have to tell you, if you think racist fucks like you need help looking stupid, I, uh, nevermind.

 Sorry about the RSS bug. Should be fixed now.