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Friday, June 13, 2014

Friday links

Paraskavedekatriaphobia: Why is Friday the 13th Considered Unlucky?

22 Stunning Examples Of People Painted To Look Like Animals.

All The Horrible Ways Animals Can Kill You With Venom.

Tomorrow (June 14) is Flag Day and the birthday of the U.S. Army.

Gallery: The Strange History of the Sunflower, and the History Of Light. (including how much light, historically, you could get for a day's work:

Antiquity: 10 minutes (candle)
1800s: 5 hours (kerosene)
Today: 20,000 hours (electricity))


ICYMI, Wednesday's links are here, and include vintage tech, turning paper airplanes into drones, richest superheros, and PSAs for dogs.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Check out these excellent Iron Throne shoes

Get ready for this Sunday’s Game of Thrones season four finale by wearing appropriate footwear: Iron Throne shoes!

Of all the things I regret about my arthritic knees, the inability to wear high heals is generally rather low on the list. Not today, though. These are by artist Nixxi Rose; although I see no indication that she's selling them, it's easy to see how you could make your own version with heels or flats, cocktail picks shaped like swords, and some paint.


Via Fashionably Geek

Previous posts:

For $20K, Game of Thrones Author Will Write You Into Future Novel Then Kill You Off

Valyrian steel, length of the seasons, dragon biology: The Science of Game of Thrones, bonus geological map.

If Game Of Thrones Characters Were Drawn By Disney

Game of Thrones infographic chronology: 4 seasons of the 4 main families and the Night’s Watch.

Video: Hodor (Kristian Nairn) Describes His Awkward Game of Thrones Nude Scene.

Game of Thrones Wine Map: The Wines of Westeros.

Supercut of pithy quotes from Game of Thrones, Seasons 1-3.

Fallen behind on Game of Thrones, or want a refresher before Season 4? All 3 seasons recapped in 9 minutes.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Wednesday links

Important Public Service Announcements for Dogs.

Paper Planes Transform Into Tiny Drones.

Infographic: The World’s Richest Superheroes (and Supervillians). (Iron Man and Batman are numbers 2 and 3, respectively)

The Forgotten Firsts: 10 Vintage Versions of Modern Technology.

Did our male ancestors evolve facial features specifically designed to take a punch?

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include facial reconstructions of famous historical people (and the Neanderthal reconstruction that looks just like Chuck Norris), killing mammoths with dogs, and a table-flipping supercut.

Monday, June 9, 2014

Infographic: The World’s Richest Superheroes (and Supervillians)

I've heard of Black Panther before, but only vaguely. Wikipedia's description of him and a video of his meeting with The Avengers is below the infographic.:


Black Panther, per Wikipedia:
The Black Panther (T'Challa) is a fictional character appearing in publications by Marvel Comics. Created by writer-editor Stan Lee and penciller-co-plotter Jack Kirby, he first appeared in Fantastic Four #52 (July 1966). 
Black Panther was ranked the 71st greatest comic book character of all time by Wizard magazine. IGN also ranked the Black Panther as the 51st greatest comic book hero stating that Black Panther could be called Marvel's Batman.
The Black Panther is the ceremonial title given to the chief of the Panther Tribe of the advanced African nation of Wakanda. In addition to ruling the country, he is also chief of its various tribes (collectively referred to as the Wakandas). The Panther habit is a symbol of office (head of state) and is used even during diplomatic missions. The Panther is a hereditary title, but one still must earn it.
Black Panther vs The Avengers - apparently this is when he meets them and fights to see how good they are:



Previous posts: 

The Price of Being a Superhero in Real Life: Then & Now.

The 1960s Superhero Who Powered Up By Smoking (and other dubious superheros, including the girl with super PMS and the guy with super vomit)

This Comic Reveals Why Female Superheroes Wear Skimpy Armor.

For some reason I've never seen this before: Lawrence Welk does "One Toke Over The Line"

Sweet Jesus.

From the Wikipedia entry on Lawrence Welk:
In one of his most infamous incidents, he asked singers Gail Farrell and Dick Dale to perform Brewer & Shipley's hit song "One Toke Over the Line" (a mock gospel tune riddled with drug references) as a modern spiritual, apparently oblivious to the meaning of the word "toke." Brewer responded that although it was "absurd," the duo "got more publicity than we could pay for" from the out-of-place performance. Despite other stations having banned the original song from the broadcast airwaves, neither Welk nor anyone else received any sort of punishment from the FCC for performing the song.

Monday links

Cool - Calvin and Hobbes Creator Bill Watterson Returns to the Comics Page (briefly - he actually sort of snuck in and back out)

How Do You Kill 86 Mammoths? With Dogs.

Getting angry and flipping over a table: the supercut.

10 facial reconstructions, using scans of skeletal remains, of famous historical figures. Richard III looks kind of like Jim Carrey, although not as much as this reconstruction of a Neanderthal looks like Chuck Norris.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include squirrel CPR, testing your knowledge of fictional planets, and paying the Game of Thrones author to write you into a future novel then kill you off.

Hugh Jackman, LL Cool J, and TI perform the train song from “The Music Man” as rap

I have no use for rap, but this totally works - the Rock Island song, which involved 8 salesmen on a train (original below). Last night at the Tony Awards:



By the way, in a recent post from Mark Steyn's excellent Song Of The Week series, he provides a lot of background information on The Music Man.

Here's the original:


via 22 Words.

Sunday, June 8, 2014

From Dante's Divine Comedy: The Nine Circles Of Hell, Done In Lego

Dante (wiki) would probably be rolling over in his grave:

Click here to embiggen and/or see additional views.

Click here to embiggen and/or see additional views.

Click here to embiggen and/or see additional views.

Click here to embiggen and/or see additional views.
Personally, I find it difficult to imagine that anyone would find this objectionable, but Lust comes with an explicit content warning due to the Lego version of particular body parts, blurred out in the image below but visible if you click on the link in the caption.

Consider yourself warned.

Click here to embiggen and/or see additional views.
See the whole set here, via BoingBoing.