In the short animated sci-fi comedy "Floaters," a bickering couple has painted a fake identification number on the side of their spaceship, then run into the real vessel with that number, whose captain is none too pleased. Directors Karl Poyzer and Joseph Roberts did a nice interview about the piece for those who are curious.
Image: YouTube / Karl Poyzer
David C. Roy (previously) creates mesmerizing wooden kinetic sculptures. Behold his 2020 creation "Synchronicity."
He was featured earlier this year for a nice profile by Wired. Some real beauties on display, and it's great that he turned his interest into a business!
Image: YouTube / David C Roy
A Belarusian fire show club called Maori lit up the night with an amazing synchronized pyrotechnic display for their finale at the annual Fire Life Fest in Uzhgorod, Ukraine.
If you're wondering about the material in the mesh baskets, it's probably lycopodium.
Image: YouTube / FIRE LIFE FEST
Pretty much anyone 16 and older can hunt big game alone in the United States, but many states allow pre-teens to hunt big game alone, not just rabbits and squirrels and the like. As list maintainer Outdoor Empire notes, "Generally it's recommended to be around 10 years of age to understand everything taught in the course." The states allowing pre-teens to hunt big game alone are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.
A couple of commenters expressed surprise that many middle schoolers in the US take hunting safety courses. This is why.
Image: Map created at mapchart.net using data from Outdoor Empire
This illusion done 18 times in under one minute is pretty impressive, especially the last one. If you want to see how it's done, there are videos online, but that kind of ruins the fun.
Image: YouTube / Guinness World Records
Joseph Plateau invented the phenakistoscope in 1832 and revolutionized visual media by paving the way to modern animation. This lovely tribute repurposes some of his most famous works.
Here's how to make your own, which kids can do with a little help.
Image: YouTube / kleshaproduction
Kris Genijn and Pieter Vanluffelen describe their award-winning film as "a poetic creational epic about perseverance and passion, crafted with the same traits." They also spoke with Belgium's Cinevox about Ultrapictura, which developed software specifically for this movie. The director was originally going to do the whole thing by hand, which sounds exceedingly laborious.
Image: Vimeo / iZeMo
Credulous Redditors have been busy spreading the claim that bubbles can bounce off lasers, so Seb Lee-Delisle emulated the fakery with his pal Steve Mould.
Here's the guy who allegedly started the hoax:
Image: YouTube / Seb Lee-Delisle
This nighttime demonstration with tracer bullets in an AR-15 shows why it's a bad idea to shoot a gun at water. This is why it's one of the first things they tell students not to do in middle school hunting safety class.
Image: YouTube / DoSomethings
Matthias Wandel explains how this self-inverting spinning top will flip over when spun quickly enough.
If you have a lathe, Matthias shows you how to make your own:
If you don't have a lathe, you can buy plastic ones and even fancy metal ones, spelled variously as tippie tops or tippy tops.
Image: YouTube / Matthias random stuff
These nifty gizmos use a set of gears to uncoil and recoil. Alex Fox shows how to make one with wood.
They can also be 3D printed. Below is the inspiration. Oskar's video mentions the Thinkfun Tail Spin, but that model is currently unavailable on many outlets following a lot of poor reviews.
Image: YouTube / Alex Fox
That's according to Dinosaur Database, a terrific site with an interactive ancient earth feature that lets viewers input a location and a time period to see what things looked like at the time.
LA would probably also have been under a glacier at the time:
Cryogenian Period. Glaciers may have covered the entire planet during the greatest ice age known on Earth. New types of life such as red and green algae appear during this period.
As the North American Plate moved into its current position, LA and many other cities were submerged at various times. The whole site is a lot of fun and very informative!
Laina Morris shot to fame in 2012 as the "overly attached girlfriend" meme. She shares what happens before, during, and after becoming a mega-meme.
Because she was always in on the joke (the look is from a comedy video about Justin Bieber), she never had to go through the "good sport" phase of some other memelebrities who woke up to find themselves unintentionally memed. She also discusses what has happened since she left YouTube to take a mental health break. Spoiler: it's a happy ending!
Image: YouTube / BuzzFeedVideo
Enjoy the delicious sounds of Mezerg's wired-up midi-melon in a funky song about swimming pools. Very nice work on the electro-kiwi carrying the melody, too. Bonus footage of him cavorting underwater.
If you're curious about what controller he's using, it's from Playtronica.
Image: YouTube / MEZERG
This video did not get the views it deserved when it went up a few years ago, so Jack Conte recently reuploaded it to his personal channel. He says:
No one talks about the epic failures that we all have. I fail most of the time. As a creator, and as CEO of Patreon, things can't go well all of the time. I wanted to share my epic failures because that is the interesting part of being a creator. The epic failures make up the journey along the way to getting the wins. No one ever talks about the duds, the fails, the things that you think are going to work that disappear into a puff of smoke, so I decided to talk about why nothing works.
A lot of success is just luck, so keep going to increase your odds of getting lucky!
Image: YouTube / JackConteExtras
Hong Kong-based sculptor Johnson Tsang (previously) is known for his fanciful ceramic artworks, and he was inspired during the pandemic to make a lovely piece that reflects the times, titled "Still in One Piece III."
During quarantine, he also shared a cool timelapse of a work in progress:
Image: Instagram / johnson_tsang_artist
