i really like looking at google image searches for “firemen rescuing cats” or something because you get super cute pictures like
AND THEN THERE’S THIS ONE
RELEASE THE KRACKEN.
(via ippoddity)
Benedict Cumberbatch’s deleted shower scene in Star Trek Into Darkness
#Porn
Is he on a turn table
Two types of people on this site, my friends. Two types of people.
(via cumberbatchattack)
The earliest known cave paintings fuel arguments about whether Neanderthals were the mental equals of modern humans.
Tim Appenzeller | NATURE
In a damp Spanish cave, Alistair Pike applies a small grinder to the world’s oldest known paintings. Every few minutes, the dentist-drill sound stops and Pike, an archaeologist from the University of Southampton, UK, stands aside so that a party of tourists can admire the simple artwork — hazy red disks, stencilled handprints, the outlines of bison — daubed on the cave wall tens of thousands of years ago. He hopes that the visitors won’t notice the small scuff marks he has left.
In fact, Pike’s grinder — and the scalpel that he wields to scrape off tiny samples — is doing no harm to the actual paintings, and he is working with the full approval of the Spanish authorities. Pike is after the crust of calcite that has built up over the millennia from groundwater dripping down the wall. The white flecks that he dislodges hold a smattering of uranium atoms, whose decay acts as a radioactive clock. A clock that has been ticking ever since the calcite formed on top of the art.
The results of an earlier round of sampling in El Castillo cave, published last June1, showed that the oldest of the paintings, a simple red spot, dates to at least 40,800 years ago, roughly when the first modern humans reached western Europe. Pike and his colleagues think that when they analyse the latest samples, the paintings may turn out to be older still, perhaps by thousands of years — too old to have been made by modern humans. If so, the artists must have been Neanderthals, the brawny, archaic people who were already living in Europe.
The answer won’t be known for at least a year, but if it favours the Neanderthals, it could tip — if not resolve — a debate that has rumbled for decades: did the Neanderthals, once caricatured as brute cavemen, have minds like our own, capable of abstract thinking, symbolism and even art? It is one of the most haunting questions about the people who once shared a continent with us, then mysteriously vanished.
[Photo: Pedro Saura]
(via centuriespast)
npr:
“There ought to be a monument to the man who invented neon lights,” the fictional detective of Raymond Chandler’s crime novels once said.
Los Angeles itself could be that monument. Our boulevards are lined with neon pinks and blues. The oldest operating neon sign ever found was uncovered just last year.
Photographer Vicky Moon set out to document the neon signs that are slowly getting overtaken by flashing LED lights.
For her project “Expired LA” Moon hopped on her pink scooter and made long exposures with expired film. See more of her work on KPCC’s AudioVision.
What adds a layer of intrigue here for me is that the film Vicky Moon used was decades old, discovered at a flea market. — heidi
(via ippoddity)
(via ippoddity)
I traveled for one month around California and I swear I saw the most breathtaking landscapes. It was a great experience to explorer new places, to try the local food and to meet new people. I got lucky enough to grab a few stills and I’m still working on a video.
Can’t wait to see it! :)
It’s home for me. <3
(Source: soniafelizv, via ippoddity)
historicity-was-already-taken:
Answer made rebloggable by request.
This post was written in response to a question regarding a. whether President Lincoln was racist, b. if he supported the deportation of black people, and c. if so, why we “extol” him. Original post and question deleted because the inquiring user was…
Totally agree. One of the things I love about Lincoln is the evolution of his morals. He segregated the army and black troops were paid less than white troops. Additionally, when Frederick Douglass met Lincoln for the first time, he was ‘not impressed.’ Yet there is evidence that Lincoln went through a significant moral transition, and Douglass’ opinion upon meeting Lincoln for a second time was definitely not the same as the first.
It really irks me when people idolize and ‘love’ Lincoln for the figurehead that we’re presented with. I love him for his evolution, for his miraculous written and oratory skills, for his tyrannical policies during the war, for his boxing, for his overwhelming guilt, for the depression he suffered. These are just some of the things that make him a real person!
When people interrupt me while I’m reading
They expect my reaction to be something like:
When really, my reaction is something like:
(Source: infamoushogwartsjaguar, via exhumingmccarthy)
A pair of green-tinted spectacles is on display in the Monticello Visitors Center. These are believed to have belonged to Thomas Jefferson, although we do not know precisely what he used them for. According to Silvio Bedini, tinted glasses first appeared around 1810. They were not typically used as sunglasses as we might think of them, but “to improve the vision out of doors.”
why is he not depicted wearing these in every portrait
Somebody with art skills please rectify this horrible oversight.
bitchin
a real american sphinx
(via fuckyeahhistorycrushes)
can we talk about how sherlock holmes says ‘neat’
oh these kids were eating themselves to death with mercury poisoned chocolate
neat
golly gee john come look isn’t that just nifty
(Source: tin-pan-ali, via notes-from-molly)
(Source: mystupidfinds, via exhumingmccarthy)
