Neatorama

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• 15 Halloween Movies for People Who Don’t Like Horror Movies
• Loose Ends: A Literary Supercut of Sci-Fi Last Sentences
• Pro Chefs Share The Most Common Cooking Mistakes
• Trek B-Sides
• Pierre André Latreille: The Entomologist Who Escaped Death Because of a Beetle
• How Bad Does Wildfire Smoke Affect Our Health?
• In Color In Japan By Shin Noguchi
• One of the Most Extreme Planets in the Universe
• Fast-Food Buffets Are a Thing of the Past. Some Doubt They Ever Even Existed.
• Ida Schnell, the 13-year-old Serial Killer
• Bicycle Ballet
• The Underground Fortress of Château de Brézé
• How The Self-Storage Industry Conquered America

15 Halloween Movies for People Who Don’t Like Horror Movies Posted: 04 Oct 2020 08:35 PM PDT Here we are in October, when we traditionally manage to dedicate an entire month to Halloween. One thing you'll notice is the prevalence of horror films, both new and old. But what if you aren't really into horror, but still want to celebrate the season? Mental Floss has a list of movies centered around Halloween and its themes that don't fit into the horror genre. Many are comedies, some are adventure, some are even animated! Bonus: the trailers for each are included.

Loose Ends: A Literary Supercut of Sci-Fi Last Sentences Posted: 04 Oct 2020 08:34 PM PDT Every book has to end somewhere. Science fiction authors try to make the final lines meaningful, either to leave the reader with a satisfying conclusion, or to give hope for the future, or maybe to set up a possibility of further adventures. Whether or not they mean anything to someone who hasn't read the entire book, you can tell they were meticulously thought out. But maybe they can mean something without the rest of the book.   "Loose Ends" is a literary supercut composed entirely of last lines from 137 science fiction and fantasy books. After gathering these lines, I found they fell into a number of patterns—some surprising, others obvious—in how writers end their stories. With these patterns in hand, I arranged them into a sequence of interconnected vignettes. In these ways "Loose Ends" doubles as narrative and archive, short story and data analysis. To read a version that reveals the names of the books, click here. —Tom Comitta The story Comitta constructed makes sense altogether, if you ignore the varying names, and it also makes you wonder what came before. Read "Loose Ends" at Wired. -via Kottke (Image credit: Elena Lacey)

Pro Chefs Share The Most Common Cooking Mistakes Posted: 04 Oct 2020 08:33 PM PDT Whether you are just learning to prepare food or you've been cooking for 50 years, there's always something new to learn. Professional chefs encounter everyday cooks who tend to make the same mistakes across the board, and many of them are willing to help the rest of us create tasty, satisfying dishes for ourselves. Read which mistakes they most want to correct.    You throw all your ingredients together at once and mix them without thinking about their order. If you see butter (or any fat) and sugar listed first in a recipe, it's a creaming method — which means you mix together the fat and sugar first, until it's light and kind of airy. When you add the eggs, add them one by one to make sure they mix in well and so that your batter keeps its light texture. If the recipe says an ingredient is supposed to be room temperature, make sure it's room temperature! Eggs are particularly important for this rule — room temperature egg yolks break more easily and incorporate better into whatever you're mixing. And for something like cheesecake, or anything else with high fat content, cold eggs can actually harden the fat and make your mixture lumpy. Learn what to do about 30 of most common cooking mistakes in a ranked list at Bored Panda. (Image credit: Flickr user Lucia Sanchez)

Trek B-Sides Posted: 04 Oct 2020 08:33 PM PDT Trek B-Sides is a fan-made series of Star Trek: The Next Generation videos produced by re-editing episodes to isolate just the minor side plots we don't recall as well as we should.    Uncovering the lost stories and forgotten side plots of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Sometimes it just takes a little creative editing to change the context of a familiar story. The results are mini-episodes that run from four to 15 minutes long. See a few select videos at Laughing Squid, and keep up with future episodes at Dailymotion.

Pierre André Latreille: The Entomologist Who Escaped Death Because of a Beetle Posted: 04 Oct 2020 08:31 PM PDT In 18th-century France, one would be lucky to receive an education at all if he came from difficult circumstances, much less the education one really craved. Pierre André Latreille spent six years in a seminary to become a priest, when he really wanted to study bugs. Upon graduation, he never sought a parish nor did he preach, but instead learned about entomology and botany from several notable naturalists.    Meanwhile, a major socio-political storm was brewing in France. People were fed up with the monarchy and the feudal system and rose in revolt. The Estates General took control of the Assembly and the peasants stormed Bastille, the symbol of Royal authority. Many aristocrats and members of the clergy were arrested, including King Louis XVI. A new law was passed that caused the immediate subordination of the Catholic Church to the French government. This law demanded that every priest take an oath of allegiance to the state. Many Clergy refused to take the oath, because they couldn't make themselves put their loyalty towards France before their loyalty towards God. Latreille was one of them, and consequently he was arrested and imprisoned. Soon, he would be exiled to a penal colony where death was certain. So how did a beetle save Latreille's life? Read that story at Amusing Planet.  -via Strange Company (Image credit: Pierre-Yves Beaudouin)

How Bad Does Wildfire Smoke Affect Our Health? Posted: 04 Oct 2020 04:14 PM PDT Seeley Lake, Montana — Three years ago, a fire broke out in the state of Montana. This fire would then consume thousands of acres of land. A day after the smoke cleared out in the area, a group of researchers arrived in the town. Their plan was to chart how long it took for people to recover from living for seven weeks surrounded by relentless smoke. Unfortunately, They still don't know, because most residents haven't recovered. In fact, they've gotten worse. Forest fires had funneled hazardous air into Seeley Lake, a town of fewer than 2,000 people, for 49 days. The air quality was so bad that on some days the monitoring stations couldn't measure the extent of the pollution. The intensity of the smoke and the length of time residents had been trapped in it were unprecedented, prompting county officials to issue their first evacuation orders due to smoke, not fire risk. So how bad does wildfire smoke affect our health? Very bad. Worse, it's a long-term effect. More details about this story over at Undark. (Image Credit: National Park Service/ Wikimedia Commons)

In Color In Japan By Shin Noguchi Posted: 04 Oct 2020 04:14 PM PDT We live very busy lives. We are so busy that most of the time, we unconsciously ignore the weird and funny things that happen around us because our mind is occupied with lots of things. But not for photographer Shin Noguchi, who managed to capture these moments. Taken around Japan, the photographs appear as objective shots, glimpsing candid moments that are enigmatic and sometimes humorous. "Street photography always projects the "truth". The "truth" that I talk about isn't necessarily that I can see, but they also exist in society, in [the] street, in people's [lives]. and I always try to capture this reality beyond my own values and viewpoint/perspective," he says in a statement. One-hundred-thirty of Noguchi's photographs are compiled in a forthcoming monograph, In Color In Japan, which is currently available for pre-order. The book was printed in two editions, a black and a white, and the former contains an extra, unique image that's never been shown before and won't be reproduced in another format. Follow Noguchi on Instagram to see his latest shots from the streets of Japan. See some of the photos over at Colossal. (Image Credit: Shin Noguchi/ Colossal)

One of the Most Extreme Planets in the Universe Posted: 04 Oct 2020 04:11 PM PDT The space telescope CHEOPS has detected some really wild data about an exoplanet 322 light years away. The planet is named WASP-189b, and it orbits the star HD 133112. At least that's what they are known by now; better names will come along sooner or later. Monika Lendl of the University of Geneva tells us how weird this planet really is.    "WASP-189b is especially interesting because it is a gas giant that orbits very close to its host star. It takes less than three days for it to circle its star, and it is 20 times closer to the star than Earth is to the Sun," Monika Lendl says. The planet is more than 1.5 times as large as Jupiter, the largest planet of the solar system. Monika Lendl further explains that planetary objects like WASP-189b are very exotic: "They have a permanent day side, which is always exposed to the light of the star, and, accordingly, a permanent night side." This means that its climate is completely different from that of the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn in our solar system. "Based on the observations using CHEOPS, we estimate the temperature of WASP-189b to be 3,200 degrees Celsius. Planets like WASP-189b are called "ultra-hot Jupiters. Iron melts at such a high temperature, and even becomes gaseous. This object is one of the most extreme planets we know so far," says Lendl. The star it orbits is pretty extreme, too. Read about the findings from CHEOPS at PhysOrg. -via Damn Interesting (Image credit: ESA)

Fast-Food Buffets Are a Thing of the Past. Some Doubt They Ever Even Existed. Posted: 04 Oct 2020 04:10 PM PDT The all-you-can-eat buffet of America's prolific fast food chains is a thing of the past, though sometimes it feels more like a dream https://t.co/FSpyN2ql5s — Eater (@Eater) September 29, 2020 Fast food began in the mid 20th century with the idea of walking in and picking up hamburgers and fries that were already made, but fresh because that was the only thing on the menu. In the 1980s and '90s, casual restaurants offered all-you-can-eat buffets, which became so popular that eventually fast food chains jumped on the idea. But the concept was experimental, never universal, and didn't last long. Now people can barely remember ever seeing a fast food buffet. Have you ever been to a McDonald's outlet that had food out for patrons to pick up as much as they wanted?  MM Carrigan found that stories of such buffets are few and far between, and corporate offices tend to not talk about them.       McDonald's isn't the only chain with a buffet whose existence is hazy. Yum Brands, the overlord of fast-food holy trinity Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Pizza Hut, is said to have had buffets at all three restaurants. I confirm nothing, however, when I reach out to the corporate authorities. On the KFC side, a spokesperson offers to look into "some historical information," but doesn't get back to me. My contact at Taco Bell tells me, "I'll look into it. Certainly, nothing in existence today. I've never heard of it. Looks like there are a couple threads on Reddit." Reddit, of course, speculates a possible Mandela Effect — the phenomenon of a group of unrelated people remembering a different event than what actually occurred — in the existence of Taco Bell buffets. But I have a firmer lead in Payel Patel, a doctor who studied at Johns Hopkins, who tells me there was a Taco Bell Express in her dorm that was included in an all-you-can-eat meal plan option, though it only lasted one fleeting year. "You could order anything, like 15 nachos and 11 bean burritos," she says, "and they would make it and give it to you, and you walked off without paying a cent." A Johns Hopkins student newsletter published in 2001 corroborates the existence of the utopian all-you-can-eat Taco Bell, saying, "you can also gorge yourself on some good old Taco Bell tacos and burritos. Don't forget, it's all-you-can-eat. Just don't eat too much; you don't want to overload the John." While I had heard about fast food buffets in the past, I only encountered one in 2019 at a KFC in a tiny town at a sparse interstate exit. At the time, I quipped that the outlet would go bankrupt if anyone knew about it. Read about the rise and fall of the ephemeral (and possibly apocryphal) fast food buffet at Eater. -via Metafilter

Ida Schnell, the 13-year-old Serial Killer Posted: 04 Oct 2020 04:10 PM PDT Ida Schnell was a young nursemaid, taking care of infants in her hometown of Munich. She was only 13, but was described as appearing older, and none too bright. Schnell moved from job to job because the babies she cared for kept dying. No one suspected the young teen of the deaths of their children until after the funeral of the 6th infant that died in her care. Each one had died sudden and mysterious deaths within six months and all under her care. It was decided that they would exhume the body of the last victim, a 14-day-old son of Mr. and Mrs. Bichler of Ampermoching. The investigation revealed that the baby had been killed. The death was caused by a perforation of the child's soft skull with a sharp instrument. The sad fact is that many infants died in that era; it was just a fact of life. Another sad fact was that this nursemaid killed babies for the simple reason that she did not want to hear them cry. Read an overview of the case at Murders in History, or for a more in-depth look, here are five contemporary newspaper accounts that tell the story. -via Strange Company

Bicycle Ballet Posted: 04 Oct 2020 04:08 PM PDT Viola Brand is an artistic cyclist in Germany. Here she takes over the ballroom of a castle to dance with her bike and show us the things we will never, ever be able to do. -via Nag on the Lake

The Underground Fortress of Château de Brézé Posted: 04 Oct 2020 04:07 PM PDT Château de Brézé is a perfectly lovely 16th-century French castle near the village of Brézé. It was built over the foundations of an earlier fortress, one that sported a deep moat and an underground bunker system consisting of numerous rooms and three kilometers of tunnels that connect them.   The underground refugee is accessible from within the moat; the entrance tunnel being dug on the moat face. The underground quarters, designed like a fortress, would have made it possible for the Maillé-Brézé family to defend itself against enemy attacks, as well as escape harsh winters and even epidemics. In times of need, they would have quickly abandoned the castle above and retreated into their subterranean refugee. Among the maze of corridors, there was every conceivable luxury including bedrooms, bakeries, cellars, kitchens, as well as room for livestock and cattle, and stables for horses. For defense, holes were carved into the walls of the corridors through which the castle defenders could shoot arrows into approaching intruders without exposing themselves. Fortunately for the Breze family, they never had to find out whether their defenses were adequate because the castle was never sieged. Take a visual tour of this ancient and unique underground refuge at Amusing Planet. (Image credit: Flickr user Martin Burns)

How The Self-Storage Industry Conquered America Posted: 04 Oct 2020 04:07 PM PDT There are about 50,000 self-storage facilities in the US. How did that ever happen? Sure, it's a great way to make money, mostly passively, if you have a place to put one of these businesses. But why are they so popular? And why do we have so much stuff that we have to rent a place to put it all? Cheddar explains. -via Digg

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