Category: starred

Aragorn’s sword the Narsil had been famously shattered into pieces before the Lord of the Rings trilogy and was then reforged from the shards into the Anduril by the Elves in the last movie. Man At Arms: Reforged recreates that in real life by building the Narsil and then breaking the sword (it wasn’t tempered after heat treating) only to reforge it into the Anduril.

To make it even harder on themselves, they used a bunch of old methods to make the sword too.

---

SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

via Gizmodo
Video: Shattering and then reforging the sword from Lord of the Rings

A national park is a great summer vacation option. Problem is, parks can be crowded in high season. But in low season, you might meet bad weather and not have the same experience. This infographic tells you the best time to visit 23 national parks, factoring in crowds, weather, and also price.

Based on author picks from their National Parks Guides, Lonely Planet gauged the best months to visit National Parks across the U.S. and Canada. They found that, overall, October was the best month to visit.

Why October? It’s a combination of several factors that add up to make the so-called ‘shoulder season’ – the sweet spot between high and low season – the favorite time to be on the road and exploring the great outdoors for many savvy travelers:

Fewer crowds: kids are back in school after the summer break and ski season hasn’t started.

Weather: Temperatures in desert regions have dropped to reasonable levels and are not fully into the cold season in most montane regions. October is prime time for Indian summer, so don’t be surprised if you luck into some unseasonably warm temperatures.

Cost: Low-season rates for lodgings have kicked in for many areas to attract more travelers as the crowds thin.

Foliage and wildlife: It’s not just the maples of New England putting on a show, trees are turning colors across the continent. Aspens, cottonwoods, oaks, willows, dogwoods and more are all putting on their autumn best. October is also rutting season for many of the large mammals of North America (elk, moose, antelope, bison), so it’s a great time to see wildlife and the sometimes dramatic mating behavior.

But of course, that’s just overall. If you want to know the best time to visit a specific park, see if it’s in the graphic below. Red represents high season, white is low season, and blue is Lonely Planet’s pick of best time to go.

When is the best time to visit US and Canada’s National Parks? | Lonely Planet

via Lifehacker
This Infographic Shows the Best Time to Visit National Parks in the US

If you’ve ever made cupcakes, you’ve probably noticed the bottoms are often greasy when they’re done. There’s an easy way to fix this: prep the muffin tin with rice.

How to Cake That explains that the rice absorbs the excess oil, leaving your liners grease-free. Here’s how to do it:

To begin, add a heaping teaspoon of white rice (regular, not instant) to each cup in the cupcake pan. Next, evenly spread the rice so there is a nice even layer. If your cup has uncovered spots (like the one to the right in the photo), add a little more rice to achieve a nice evenly covered space. Place cupcake liners in the cups over the rice. Liners will sit slightly out of the cup. Fill liners with cupcake batter and bake according to recipe instructions.

To check it out for yourself, head to the link below.

Rice Trick- Grease-free Cupcake Liners | How to Cake That

via Lifehacker
Grease-Proof Cupcakes by Adding Rice to the Pan

via Dilbert Daily Strip
Comic for June 01, 2015

 Raising massive rounds these days is so commonplace that most of us tune out fundraising news altogether. The fundraising environment has changed so dramatically over the past four years, it’s almost incomprehensible to those of us who lived through it. Read More

via TechCrunch
A Fundraising Template Every Entrepreneur Can Use

YES. If you don’t remember the crazy bananas movie that was Kung Fury, go and watch the trailer again. You’ll see a completely over the top preview that includes Kung Fu, dinosaurs, DeLoreans, time travel, killing Hitler, Vikings and more. It was glorious. Now the entire movie is online for free to watch on YouTube.

It is totally cheesy and it is totally silly and it is weird but it is all in that in all the right ways. Here’s what we said after watching the trailer:

Kung Fury is an over-the-top (you couldn’t tell?) action comedy movie directed by David Sandberg. It nails the balance between ridiculousness, self-awareness, awesomeness and every other -ness adjective ever.

And here’s a bit about the movie, that finished its funding through Kickstarter:

During an unfortunate series of events a friend of Kung Fury is assassinated by the most dangerous kung fu master criminal of all time; Adolf Hitler, a.k.a Kung Führer. Kung Fury decides to travel back in time, to Nazi Germany, in order to kill Hitler and end the Nazi empire once and for all. Kung Fury is a visually spectacular action comedy that has it’s foundation in 80s cop movies.

Watching this is a great way to spend a Friday evening, if you ask me.

SPLOID SELECTS is a series where we feature the interesting short films we love. If you are a filmmaker with awesome short films you’d like to showcase, please drop me a line here.

---

SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

via Gizmodo
Everyone should watch this ridiculously awesomely fun movie right now

The numbers are truly saddening and absolutely staggering. If you have time on your hands, sit through this illuminating data visualization video that details how many lives were cut short from World War II. It’s a lot. It’s not all bad though, Neil Hailoran, the maker of the video, shows how we’ve grown since then.

---

SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

via Gizmodo
Visualization shows the sad truth on how many lives were lost in WWII

Ohio State University is taking steps that could lead to reining in pay for top-level employees.
Officials caution that the process is early and will take time, with the early components potentially changing before the board of trustees give final approval. But the school, whose compensation for administrators under former President Gordon Gee drew criticism, has formed a new committee to look at executive compensation. The Talent and Compensation Ad Hoc Committee’s goal is to formally outline "the…

via Columbus Business News – Local Columbus News | Business First of Columbus
Are Ohio State execs paid too much? School taking renewed look at salaries

When we look at the history of new technologies, we tend to think of only our most recent past. But more than a thousand years ago, blacksmiths succeeded in making a set of ultra-strong swords — that are tricky to re-create even today.

After reading about the technology behind the legendary swords of Damascus, Kinja-user Formless-One reminded us of another set of famous, very old swords — swords that were also a technological marvel of the time:

Consider this: making Damascus is not the only lost art of ancient weapon smiths. The Vikings also had swords made of crucible steel, known as Ulfberts (because that was the name stamped onto all of them, in accordance with Nordic tradition). This was before the 10’th century. Crucible steel wouldn’t be seen again until basically the dawn of the industrial revolution. This is big, because crucible steel is springier and tougher all around than Damascus and anything else from the time— Ulfberts were, materially speaking, the best swords ever made up until that point. Were they as sharp as Damascus? Probably not, but there is a limit to how sharp a sword really needs to be once you realize that they aren’t knives. Swords have a biomechanical advantage over knives because of their length— you can accelerate the tip of the weapon so fast and effortlessly that if they hit unarmored or lightly armored flesh, you can count on it cutting whether it is made of bronze, crucible steel, or Damascus. Thus, the advantage of crucible steel and other stiff-yet-springy steels that came around in the Renaissance period gave them durability and strength that you really want in a weapon. Those weapons were made to compete in an arms vs armor race where stabbing was often how you attacked a man in plate, that didn’t really happen in the middle east where Damascus comes from. In context, the weapons that came out of Europe were perfect for European warfare. The weapons made in India and the middle east were perfect for Indian and middle eastern warfare. And the two styles of warfare rarely came into contact during that time, except to some degree in Eastern Europe where there was contact with the Ottoman Turks.

A recent NOVA documentary featured swordsmiths from today attempting to re-create the Ulberfht swords, using modern techniques — a feat they did manage, but not without plenty of trouble along the way.

Image: Ulfberht sword, 850–900, From the Met’s Collection Lent by Laird and Kathleen Landmann, 2006

via Gizmodo
How Did The Ancient Vikings Make This Super-Strong Sword?

baegucb sends a followup to the news from March that professional internet trolls were operating by the hundreds at factories in Russia. A woman hired to be one of these trolls, Lyudmila Savchuk, spoke to the media about her job, which led to her being fired. She’s now suing her former employer and providing further details about how they operate. "The ‘troll factory’ operates based on very weird schemes, but all those firms are connected to each other, even though they are separate legal entities," she said. "I knew it was something bad, but of course I never suspected that it was this horrible and this large-scale." She describes how they flooded comment sections with pro-Putin responses, pushed out over 100 blog posts each shift, and doctored images to suit their employers’ needs. Savchuk is now gathering activists to oppose this form of internet propaganda.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

via Slashdot
Professional Internet Troll Sues Her Former Employer