Mrdesplaines

Lila the basenji has learned to walk up the stairs backwards for some unknown reason. Her owner Charles Redden speculates, “she can’t seem to handle wooden stairs very well, so for some reason she walks up backwards.”

via Viral Viral Videos

Bebo was supposed to be a very, very big social network—so big, AOL paid $850 million for it back in 2005. Ha, ha, ha. That never happened. It's dead. But today, the site's founder says he's buying it back for 1/850th of the sale price, just for "fun." Fun! This is what's fun, now.

I guess, looking back, this might be the day These People decided money doesn't mean much of anything anymore:

We just bought Bebo back for $1m. Can we actually re-invent it? Who knows, but it will be fun trying...

— Michael Birch (@mickbirch) July 1, 2013

Will this amount of money I just spent end up mattering at all? Who knows.

Birch, who created Bebo and has long since massively profited from its sale and implosion, just bought it as a goof. A hobby purchase. Like someone might purchase an old junker car, or a broken lamp, and maybe tinker around with it on weekends in the basement, Michael Birch spent $1 million to play around with a dead website. Maybe it'll become a real thing again—it very well could be. Maybe not. More importantly, who cares—if we live in a word where $850 million can be shifted around so weightlessly, why wouldn't you treat web properties as a diversion?

It'll be worth it just to talk about at The Battery, the geeky private social club for other rich people Birch is bankrolling. Remember when I bought Bebo back? Guffaw. Birch, you crazy son of a bitch. AOL will not be laughing.

This 1958 Chevrolet Cameo pickup has a little over one mile on its odometer.

In what might be the ultimate barn find, Yahoo! Autos Motoramic is reporting that Ray and Mildred Lambrecht of Lambrecht Chevrolet in Pierce, Nebraska will be auctioning off an incredible collection of 500 vehicles that have been stored away for decades (many of which are nearly undriven). VanDerBrink Auctions will host this amazing auction on September 28th and 29th, 2013 in Pierce. Motoramic reports that fifty of the cars have “less than 10 miles on their odometers.” There are a bunch of photos of the collection at the auction’s site (pdf of the complete inventory).

While many of the cars in the Lambrecht collection were customer trade-ins that were left outside to rot, the Lambrechts would occasionally take something they couldn’t sell and just put it in storage. City folk might find it unthinkable to leave so many vehicles lying around for so many years, but there’s always more space in rural Nebraska, and the annual costs fall to zero quickly. I wouldn’t call it hoarding, but I know many people who gather old metal like this do form an attachment to their kingdom of rust; every ride has a story, even when there’s weeds growing around it. Jeannie Lambrecht Stillwell, the Lambrecht’s daughter, says the decision to sell wasn’t an easy one for her parents, and that the cars “comprise a lifetime of hard work, tears, and joy.”

images and video via VanDerBrink Auctions

The grande burritos at Gordito’s, a Mexican restaurant in Seattle, Washington, are so big that they have photographed them next to babies to prove it. Seattle Times reports that parents can bring in their under 1 year old kid to be compared next to their ginormous 4 lb. burrito and they will get a free one.

images via Foodbeast

via reddit, Huffington Post, Incredible Things, Foodbeast

Everything is Terrible has posted VHS footage from A Vacation In Space, a television special that aired in 1986 to help promote the Star Tours ride at Disneyland. In this clip from the special, Star Wars protocol droid C-3PO performs a hip-hop rap song alongside his sidekick R2-D2.

‘A Vacation In Space’ was hosted by Gil Gerard and Ernie Reyes Jr. The show looked at how Star Tours was made, as well as the history of space travel and space-related films.

We're still amazed at the music people create with nothing more than an iPhone and Garageband — but watching someone play with their phone on stage sounds a bit like...

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Steve Mould from the TV game show Britain’s Brightest uses mesmerizing slow motion footage to explain why a self-siphoning chain of beads appears to float in midair and why the beads levitate even higher when he holds the beaker up in the latest episode of Earth Unplugged by BBC Earth Productions.

Their recent promo video features a cartoon guy named Charlie who moved and can no longer find “dank buds,” that is until he uses Atlantis.

Atlantis is a recently launched “virtual black market” meant to compete with similar online anonymous marketplaces like Silk Road. The main difference is that Atlantis doing business openly, not underground, which is surprising when you consider they are selling drugs, fireworks, and other (legal and) illegal goods and services. They’ve made it easy and free to sign up and “trading” can be made through the use of digital currency, either Bitcoin or Litecoin. The CEO of Atlantis recently answered questions in an interesting reddit AMA.

The new and improved virtual black market. Cheaper rates, advanced features, ease-of-use, Litecoin and Bitcoin support, encrypted chat!

if you have had trouble trying to access Silk road then look no further Atlantis has been designed from the ground up to improve on all aspects of competitor markets. We use Litecoins and Bitcoins for trading.

The darkweb is now easier to access than ever before and gives you access to a totally different world where you can buy and sell drugs online through a totally anonymous marketplace, just download a new browser and you’re ready to access a world of legal and illegal drugs online.

A look at the psychedelics available through Atlantis.

Current main categories of goods and services that can be found on Atlantis.

via The Verge, BuzzFeed, Damien Basile

Digg has begun rolling out invites for the beta version of its RSS reader, less than one week before Google Reader’s imminent shutdown on July 1st, 2013. Digg Reader currently allows users to import their feeds from Google Reader, search for new feeds to follow, and browse a list of feeds recommended by Digg’s editors. It also supports keyboard shortcuts and lets users save articles to Instapaper, Pocket, or Readability, share to Twitter and Facebook, and Digg posts directly in the RSS reader. Users can also view their feeds in list view or expanded view, and sort their feeds to see a list of the most popular unread items. Digg also plans to add search, more sharing options, and the option to view only unread items in the near future. Prospective users can sign up for an invitation at Digg, and an iOS app is expected to be available for download in the iTunes App Store tomorrow. Digg plans to make an Android app available before the end of July.

image via All Things D

A fierce kitten steals a Russian ruble and doesn’t want to give it back in this video uploaded to YouTube by palachmbable.

via D3, Daily Picks and Flicks

Software engineer Nelson Minar created this beautiful map of every river in the contiguous U.S. The map is available in interactive vector-based form, and in high-resolution images.

Northern California

The Mississippi and New Orleans

via Wired

We recently featured some hairy stockings made for young Chinese girls and now Metro is reporting that dairy company Arla commissioned a “fur” coat made out of men’s chest hair to promote the launch of Wing-co, their new milk drink made for men. According to Field Marketing and Brand Experience, the product is a “chocolate milk drink with added protein directed at men in their 30s and 40s.” Metro reports the coat “took designers up to 200 hours to weave together up to a million strands of hair.”

images via Metro

via The World’s Best Ever

In this video, Slovakian professional cyclist Peter Sagan uniquely parks his bike by riding it onto a rack mounted on the roof of his car. He makes it look so easy.

video via Jakub Minka

via reddit, Daily Picks and Flicks, The Awesomer

Branch — the company behind the eponymous Twitter-based online discussion platform — has launched Potluck, a new social network based on sharing links. Potluck allows users to share links with friends, and the network gives users a constant feed of links shared by their friends. However, unlike other social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook, Potluck doesn’t show who shared the link until users have clicked through to comment on or discuss the video, photo, or article. Potluck is currently available on the web, and Branch promises that an iOS app will be available in the iTunes App Store soon.

image via Branch

Toffee, Rocky, Rosy, Raul and Ruby star as the “Sleeping Dancing Kittens.”

video by Funnycatsandnicefish

via Tastefully Offensive

A giraffe chases after a safari jeep in this video by Henk Roos. According to Roos, the giraffe chased the group for about five kilometers before he started recording on his phone.

via Say OMG

There's no question that shoe technology keeps evolving — ever since some genius thought to add pumps to a pair of kicks, we haven't looked back. The Adidas Springblade ($180)...

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Matt of the blog Dinosaur Dracula recently reviewed Nabisco’s new limited edition Watermelon flavor of Oreo cookies. He says that these vanilla sandwich cookies are “on one hand bizarre, yet still perfect for summer.” He furthers that they are “actually good” likening the two-colored creme to the taste of watermelon Bubblicious gum.

I recently came across the limited edition Strawberries n’ Creme flavor at the Walmart Supercenter in Dublin, Ohio (though I declined to taste them). We previously featured Candy Corn Oreos.

photos 1 and 2 by Dinosaur Dracula, photo 3 by Rusty Blazenhoff

via Foodbeast

A two-year-old girl who took a terrifying tumble out of a fifth-story window after her parents left her home alone was saved from certain doom by a group of delivery men.

The incident, which took place yesterday in China's Zhejiang Province, was captured by a nearby surveillance camera.

In the footage, five men can be seen congregating beneath an apartment building, preparing to catch little Qiqi.

The men, who work next door, heard the girl's cries, and rushed out to find her crawling precariously on the windowsill.

She eventually lost her balance, but luckily the men were in place to break her fall.

One of the rescuers injured his arm while another hurt his neck, but Qiqi managed to escape the harrowing fall relatively unscathed save for a few cuts and bruises.

Interviewed by the authorities, the girl's parents said Qiqi was asleep when they left her home alone, but must have woken up before they returned.

[image via Sina.com.cn]

This product looks really cool! NeverWet is a two-part coating that can be applied to nearly any surface — cloth, electronics, concrete, and so on — and it totally repels liquid. It was developed by Ross Nanotechnology who licensed it to Rust-Oleum, and you can buy it at the Home […]

Read more on MAKE

The big fluffy grey cat in this video enjoys sleeping in a round glass fish bowl.

via reddit, Tastefully Offensive

BuzzFeed shows us the proper way to make a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream sandwich: with two cookies, a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, and a big knife.

via Tastefully Offensive, The Cheat Sheet, Los Angeles Times, The Webby Awards

With today’s unveiling of the first trailer, dubious moviegoers will have a better idea of what to expect when Jobs – the Steve Jobs biopic starring Ashton Kutcher — arrives in theaters. Premiering to mixed reviews at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, Jobs was originally scheduled for an April release, but the film’s studio, Open Road, pushed back the launch date, eventually announcing a widespread release for August 16th, 2013. In addition to Kutcher, the film stars Dermot Mulroney, Lukas Haas, J.K. Simmons, Matthew Modine and Josh Gad as Steve Wozniak. As for the trailer itself, it indicates a seemingly straightforward biopic with what the filmmakers hope is an inspiring narrative. Near the end, Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs declares that Apple will be “cool again.” Will the movie do the same? Check out the trailer below.

Read the rest of JOBS featuring Ashton Kutcher – Official Trailer 1 | Video

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Post tags: Apple, Ashton Kutcher, Dermot Mulroney, J.K. Simmons, Josh Gad, Lukas Haas, Matthew Modine, Open Road Films, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak

Tim Bartlett, a mechanic from Alberta, Canada, was enjoying a long motorcycle ride down British Columbia's scenic Highway 93 when he spotted something unusual emerging from the woods: a massive wolf. And the wolf didn't just stand there – it chased Bartlett for nearly a mile, at times coming within ten feet of the mechanic.

“It was coming at me. It probably got to within a couple meters, easy, maybe a meter,” Bartlett told the National Post.

After the initial encounter, during which the wolf darted into the road, Bartlett slowed, took out his camera, and turned back for a closer look.

When [the wolf] heard me coming, it jumped back over a [roadside] barrier and it started running. I sped up a little bit, it got in nice and close and I was driving with my right hand and clicking pictures with my left. When I first came back around, it came in really close; probably a bit too close. It would have been a real bad time to run out of gas.

According to Bartlett, the wolf continued the chase for roughly a kilometer, at speeds of 30 to 40 km/h.

"It was bigger than the biggest dog I’ve ever seen," he said the National Post. “Even over the motor, I could hear it. I could hear its feet on the road."

The chase ended after other cars pulled up behind Bartlett and the wolf. "I didn’t want it jumping out into the path of an oncoming car," he said. "The last I saw it was running into the trees."

[Images via AP/Tim Bartlett]

Red Bull has released “Imaginate,” a 7-minute riding film where professional street trials rider Danny MacAskill performs incredible bike stunts on giant toys. There is also an interactive version of the film that allows you to watch behind the scenes footage from some of Danny’s mind blowing tricks.

Two years in the making, street trials rider Danny MacAskill releases his brand new riding film. Whilst previous projects have focused on locations and journeys, MacAskill’s Imaginate sees Danny take a completely different approach to riding. Enter Danny’s mind and enjoy.

Red Bull is also in the process of releasing a 6-part series showing Danny’s 2 year “Imaginate” adventure.

Here is episode 1 through 4:

videos and image via Red Bull

music by Houston – “Runaway”

via reddit, The High Definite

Solo self-taught dance performer Kenichi Ebina of Ebina Performing Arts Company recently auditioned for America’s Got Talent and performed an amazing Matrix-style Robot “dance-ish.” He even incorporated a head drop move.

via Viral Viral Videos

Los Angeles-based entertainer and pancake juggler Scot Nery flips a pancake, adding in an impressive double spin, and the whole thing is captured in super slow motion by Woody Thompson of Eyeboogie.

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

In an incident caught on camera by a nearby security camera, Lissette Lupo Mamani is seen attacking a woman she believed to be her husband's lover after catching the two having a conversation.

The assault took place in Arequipa, Peru, back in January, but footage just started making the rounds this week.

It is unclear what Renzo Zanabria Huanca and Sandra Bruna Morales were discussing, but they quickly ended the conversation as soon as they saw Lupo approaching.

Zanabria quickly fled the scene, leaving his 25-year-old paramour to face off against his jilted spouse.

In the surveillance video, Lupo can be seen grabbing her alleged rival by the hair and throwing her on the ground.

She then proceeds to drag the victim to a nearby ravine and toss her in.

Lupo is heard shouting a few obscenities into the ravine before finally walking away.

Bruna, who fell about twenty feet, managed to escape the altercation with only minor cuts and bruises.

She later denied being the husband's lover, telling a local media outlet that Zanabria had harassed her repeatedly, leading his wife to falsely believe they were having an affair.

When retailers ask you for your ZIP code at checkout, it seems innocuous: Maybe they're just trying to see where customers are coming from. Forbes reveals, however, that the five-digit number can actually get your personal information (including address and phone number) added to consumer marketing databases.

How does this work? In one of their brochures, direct marketing services company Harte-Hanks describes the GeoCapture service they offer retail businesses as follows: “Users simply capture name from the credit card swipe and request a customer’s ZIP code during the transaction. GeoCapture matches the collected information to a comprehensive consumer database to return an address.” In a promotional brochure, they claim accuracy rates as high as 100%.

Forbes mentions Fair Isaac Corp also does this ZIP code and name or phone number matching to help direct marketers overcome challenges such as asking customers for their contact information or "complying with regulations." One woman sued Williams-Sonoma for matching names on credit cards with ZIP codes to build a database for future marketing efforts.

Not all retailers use your ZIP code to find out your exact address or contact information, but why give them that key?

There's a Billion Reasons Never to Give Stores Your Zip Code | Forbes

Photo by Mike Mozart.