One of the inconveniences of living in New York City is losing all cellular and mobile reception as soon as you walk down into a subway station. But that’s a thing of the past, as all 279 underground stations throughout Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx now offer public high-speed Wi-Fi for free, Engadget reports.
Here’s how it works: Once you’re underground, connect to “Transit Wireless Wi-Fi” on your smartphone or tablet to start using the free service provided by Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile. The Wi-Fi connection (along with cell phone service in several stations) is only good for one hour, but works between subway stops while you’re on a train. After the hour is up, just sign in again to surf the web, send emails and texts, or listen to music (with your headphones on, please).
In 2011, the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) partnered with telecommunications company Transit Wireless to deliver free Wi-Fi for Internet-starved commuters, beginning with a few stations in Manhattan. Of the now 472 subway stations (with the grand opening of the long-awaited Second Avenue Line) in New York City, 279 are underground and 193 stations are above; the MTA and Transit Wireless are working to deliver free Wi-Fi to the city’s elevated stations within the year.
When it comes to thievery, dental floss isn’t a high-priority item. AirPods, on the other hand, are—and the only way to replace a lost or stolen pair is to fork over $160 for a replacement. Which is why one crafty designer came up with a perfect, and inexpensive, solution to help prevent your AirPods from being pinched: turn them into a container of dental floss.
Over at Etsy, RyanFlosss is selling a translucent sticker that will immediately disguise your AirPod charging case as what looks like an innocuous pack of dental floss. The sticker costs $4.99 and takes just seconds to attach. No flossing required. As for keeping the slippery little pods in your ear? Well, that’s another issue—though this wire should help.
The the first deodorant for men was launched in 1935 (decades after the introduction of deodorants for women) because, at the beginning of the 20th century, body odour was not considered a problem for men; it was a part of being masculine. 10
In 1504 a German knight named Götz von Berlichingen lost his right arm when enemy cannon fire forced his own sword against him. He had two mechanical hands made for him, capable of holding a shield to a feathered pen. He was then known as Götz of the Iron Hand. 10
While the general public didn’t know about the charming Flash cartoons until 2000, Homestar Runner first came into being in 1996. Since his debut, Homestar has captured the adoration of millions and helped influence aspiring animators to create their own cartoons. Celebrate Free Country, USA and all its citizens with a quick rundown of Homestar trivia.
1. IT ALL STARTED AS A CHILDREN’S BOOK.
Before Homestarrunner.com, Homestar was a static character in a picture book created by Mike Chapman and Craig Zobel in 1996. The book is about Homestar who, along with Strong Bad and Pom Pom, enters a strongest man competition. Halfway through the contest, Homestar notices that Strong Bad is cheating with the help of the aptly named character The Cheat. He exposes the cheaters and helps Pom Pom win the contest. It’s a simple story with a happy ending. “Craig and I wanted the original kids’ book to feel like it was from another country or poorly translated from Japanese maybe,” Chapman told Adventure Gamers.
The books were Xeroxed and bound at Kinkos in the ’90s. All the characters were blocky and simplistic, making them easy to replicate.
Chapman and Zobel—along with younger brother Matt Chapman—gave the characters new life that Christmas when the animated gang was cast in a video made on the SNES game Mario Paint. The video was given to the eldest brother, Donnie Chapman, for Christmas. “[…] it was just by luck that half the characters don’t have mouths or hands and stuff, so they’re easy to animate,” Chapman told IGN. By 2000, Matt and Mike decided to get into the Flash animation game and brought their characters on to a new medium. In 2000, Homestarrunner.com was born.
2. THE PROCESS IS NOT VERY HIGH TECH.
As you can tell by watching the videos, the Chapman brothers were all about simplicity. Their characters had limited movement and the backdrops were often static. Generally the videos don’t go over five minutes.
“Originally, we sort of wanted to create the feel of Saturday mornings in the ’70s and ’80s of waking up early with a bowl of cereal and sitting in front of the TV watching cartoons, which I don’t feel like really exists anymore,” Mike Chapman told NPR.
All the animation was done on Flash, while sound was created in Adobe Audition. Most of the music came from “old Casio keyboards or worse.”
3. MATT CHAPMAN DID MOST OF THE VOICES.
When it comes to voices, Matt is the master behind the wide array of characters, from the upbeat but goofy Homestar to the deranged Coach Z. The only voice Matt didn’t cover was Marzipan, who was played by Mike’s wife, Melissa “Missy” Palmer. According to the Chapmans, there was only one female character in Free Country, USA because Palmer could only do the one voice. Mike would also jump in and do the voices in The Cheat’s cartoons.
4. STRONG BAD WAS INSPIRED BY AN NES GAME.
Homestar Runner is littered with obscure ‘80s references, particularly nods to NES games that the brothers used to play. Strong Bad and the rest of the Strong family were originally created to be tag team wrestlers and were based off a team called the Strong Bads from the NES game Tag Team Wrestling. One of the Strong Bads, Mascross, wore a wrestling mask similar to the one on Strong Bad.
5. STRONG BAD (SORT OF) MADE IT ON TO TELEVISION.
Back in 2011, Matt Chapman started to work for the television show, The Aquabats! Super Show! The show has a character named Carl, who bears a striking resemblance to Strong Bad, thanks to his red luchador mask. Chapman co-directed and acted in an episode called “Cobraman!” in 2012 that featured Carl, who was of course, a villain. Chapman played this Strong Bad look-alike and even used the same distinctive voice.
A puppet version of Strong Bad also made an appearance on stage with The Aquabats in Atlanta. He volunteered some fashion tips and helped The Aquabats sing “Pink Pants!” Strong Bad’s voice is featured on the album version of the song (with a quick Homestar cameo at the end). Bizarrely, that’s not the only time Strong Bad’s voice comes up in the music world. You can also hear him on the Shellac track, “Genuine Lulabelle.”
6. THEY AIMED TO MAKE SIMPLE BUT ADDICTING GAMES.
Homestarrunner.com has a ton of mini-games that attempt (and arguably succeed) to capture the magic of early console games from the late ’80s. The Chapman brothers created their own fictitious gaming company called Videlectrix. The retro looking title screen comes up when visitors play any of the titles on the website’s game page. (Its employees are Matt and Mike wearing mustaches.) Videlectrix put out classic games like Trogdor, Awesome Cross, Peasant Quest, and even made some Wii compatible games.
According to the Chapman brothers, they wanted to create simple games that could be played for hours. They were inspired by Palmer’s love of the Nintendo game Animal Crossing. In it, the only objective is to build a town and run errands. There are no cinematic cut scenes, no plot, and definitely no sex appeal.
7. THE BROTHERS MADE A FULL-LENGTH GAME.
In 2008, Videlectrix entered the console business. They teamed up with Telltale Games to create Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People. While Videlectrix is not technically a real company, they still appeared as a partner in the game’s press release. (This detailed confused and concerned some shareholders).
Telltale understood the vibe of the Homestar world and wanted to accurately portray it in the game. They worked closely with the Chapman brothers, who wrote a good portion of the script. “We really wanted to make a game that felt like it came right from their minds,” Telltale Games’s executive producer Kevin Brunner told G4.
Matt ended up doing all of the voices, which took a heavy toll on his vocals. “Early on, we had to look for herbal remedies,” Matt told College Humor. “We figure by the end of this five-episode series we will have recorded as much as we did in eight years of doing the site.”
8. ONE PIZZA CHAIN ENLISTED THEIR EXPERTISE.
In 2005, pizza chain Mellow Mushroom asked the Chapman brothers to help them design their own pizza-themed version of Homestarrunner.com. The fully functional website included a similar menu page, with options like “toons,” “games,” “characters,” and more. Visitors could even switch the theme of the menu animation and make the animated mushroom float on a lazy river or stand in a kitchen. Other fun features included downloadable wallpapers, e-cards, and merchandise.
9. LIMOZEEN OPENED FOR OF MONTREAL .
Strong Bad’s favorite hair metal band was, in some way, actually real. While many Flash videos portrayed the band as various Chapman brothers in wigs (sometimes just Matt playing all the band members), they finally agreed on a band lineup and hit the stage. In March 27, 2008, they played a show that was shared on YouTube. November of that same year, the band actually opened for Of Montreal at The Tabernacle in Atlanta. The band played some of Limozeen’s greatest hits as well as some Homestar Runner songs like “Everbody to the Limit” and the Trogdor theme song.
It’s also worth noting that Limozeen had a coloring book way before the adult coloring craze took off. The “Ladies, We’re Staying in Room 302 at the Ramada” Tour coloring book has 12 pages of the band rocking out and can be printed out for personal use right here.
10. JAMES HUGGINS THOUGHT OF THE NAME HOMESTAR RUNNER.
The name Homestar Runner comes from a joke from James Huggins III, a family friend of the Chapman brothers. (He now goes by James Husband and plays the drums for the indie band Of Montreal.)
“[James] knows nothing about sports, and so he would always do his old-timey radio impression of this guy, and not knowing any positions in baseball or whatever, he would just be like, ‘homestar runner for the Braves.’ And we were just like, ‘Homestar Runner? That’s the best thing we’ve ever heard!’” Matt Chapman explained in a Kevin Scott interview.
11. THE CHAPMAN BROTHERS’ PARENTS HELPED THEM OUT.
Once the Homestar Runner brand really starting picking up, the Chapman brothers began to feel a little overwhelmed by their expanding business. By 2002, they were updating the site every Monday and fans were clamoring for merchandise. The various branded shirts, figurines, and messenger bags being sold were first kept in the creators’ parents’ home in Atlanta. The retired parents were happy to help store and organize items as a fun, post-retirement activity. It started in one spare bedroom and a closet but quickly expanded to fill multiple bedrooms, closets, the basement, and garage. Finally a warehouse had to be rented out to reduce some clutter (and give the parents a place to park their car again).
Don Chapman, the father of the family (formerly the chief financial officer at an insurance company) helped the brothers set up copyrights for their characters after they noticed bootleg merchandise was competing with the authentic products. “We’ve had to chase people all over, from eBay to little boutique shops,” Don Chapman told The Eugene Register-Guard in 2003. “I said at the beginning this was going to be the Peanuts of the 21st century. I’m now starting to believe that now.”
12. HOMESTAR DOESN’T HAVE ARMS BECAUSE HE DOESN’T NEED THEM.
After all, his name is Homestar Runner. The athlete only needs to run, so the idea of arms seemed superfluous. “I guess maybe, I don’t know, since he’s just Homestar Runner and runner is in his name. It’s like, ‘well what does this guy needs arms for?'” Mike explained in an interview. “It’s in his name. You know what he does.”
13. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER GIVES IT A NOD.
Homestar Runner definitely had some reach in its fan base, but did you know it extended all the way to Buffy the Vampire Slayer? In the final episode of the popular television show, Giles can be seen playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons with Xander, Andrew, and Amanda. Strong Bad’s character, Trogdor the Burninator, is mentioned as a beast in the game that badly wounds Giles. Andrew can also be seen on Buffy’s sister show, Angel, wearing a Strong Bad t-shirt.
14. ALL THE STRONG BAD EMAILS WERE REAL.
For the most part, you could tell that the emails coming into Strong Bad’s computer were authentic. They were nonsensical, littered with typos, and quite often rude. Not even the Brothers Chap could come up with Fhqwhgads. All the emails read were generously submitted by fans. The only one that wasn’t from a viewer was Mile, which was craftily created by The Cheat. It was apparently not too hard to find usable questions, because the fan emails were plentiful. In 2003, the Chapman brothers estimated that Strong Bad received about 7000 emails a day.
15. YOU CAN SEE MORE WORK FROM THE CHAPMAN BROTHERS ON DISNEY.
There hasn’t been a Homestar Runner update since April (save for some Strong Bad tweets), but that doesn’t mean the brothers are just sitting around twiddling their thumbs. They have been dabbling in the television world and have even started making shorts for Disney XD. Their short series, Two More Eggs, is a nonsensical cartoon that retains a lot of the charm of Homestar Runner.
Disney Television Animation reached out to the Brothers Chap because members of the team were so enchanted with Homestar Runner. At first, the brothers tried to create a traditional television show with longer episodes.
“That version of our show would have consisted of two 11-minute-long shorts per episode,” Matt told The Huffington Post. “There would have been consistent characters and a plot. But in the end, I think that Mike and I—along with the team at Disney Television Animation—realized that that wasn’t really playing to our strengths.”
In the end, they settled on shorts that are almost all under two minutes. This gave the creators a chance to churn the videos out quickly and further explore the world they were creating. Since animated shorts are the Chapman brothers’ bread and butter, they flourished.
16. BUT THE NEW MEDIUM COMES WITH CHALLENGES.
The Chapman brothers have been enjoying a relative amount of freedom with Disney while working on the shorts, but it’s not all easy. They admit the thing they have the most trouble with is the character bible—an extensive guide to the personalities of different characters.
“It’s hard to nail that stuff down arbitrarily early on and just decide these things. You put the character in situations, and then that stuff happens naturally,” Matt told Vox. The brothers explained that the best way to hash out characters was to stick them all in the back of a police car and see how they interact.
“I still don’t think I could write a decent character bible or bio for Homestar, and we did that for a decade. It’s like an open beta. Our cartoons are an open beta, and we’re slowly evolving it, and we’re making you watch it.”
January 2, 2017 would be author Isaac Asimov’s 97th birthday. Or maybe not. But were he with us, today he would celebrate with us.
The date of Asimov’s birth isn’t known with precision; he was born at an inflection point in Russian history. He know he was born in the town of Petrovichi, near the border with Belarus, in what was then called the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (the U.S.S.R. didn’t exist until late 1922). The Asimov family left the Soviet Union in January, 1923 and arrived in New York City the next month. Asimov’s mother proceeded to lie about his birthdate—pegging it as September 7, 1919—in order to get him admitted to the New York schools a year early. He later changed his official birthdate, choosing January 2 instead.
“The date of my birth, as I celebrate it, was January 2, 1920. It could not have been later than that. It might, however, have been earlier. Allowing for the uncertainties of the times, of the lack of records, of the Jewish and Julian calendars, it might have been as early as October 4, 1919. There is, however, no way of finding out. My parents were always uncertain and it really doesn’t matter. I celebrate January 2, 1920, so let it be.”
So let it be, and let us celebrate Mr. Asimov on this 97th anniversary of his birth. Here’s a thoughtful 1988 interview with Asimov by Bill Moyers, which remains extremely relevant today:
In 1937, celebrated aviator Amelia Earhart embarked on her second attempt to circumnavigate the globe—and on July 2, she and navigator Fred Noonan vanished while flying over the Pacific Ocean, en route to a largely uninhabited coral atoll called Howland Island. To this day, Earhart’s fate remains a mystery. But over the years, experts and conspiracy theorists alike have come up with numerous theories to explain her disappearance. Here’s a small sampling of them.
1. EARHART’S PLANE CRASHED AND SANK INTO THE PACIFIC OCEAN.
Many experts believe that Earhart’s Lockheed Model 10 Electra never arrived on Howland Island because it ran out of gas, crashed, and sank in the Pacific Ocean.
The aviator’s world flight began in Oakland, California, on May 21, 1937, and on June 29, she and Noonan reached Lae, New Guinea. A few days later, the duo embarked on the journey’s third-to-last leg: a 2556-mile nonstop flight to Howland Island, a tiny coral atoll in the South Pacific. There, they planned to refuel before traveling to Hawaii, and then California.
At 6:14 a.m. on July 2, Earhart and Noonan’s plane made radio contact with U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca, which sat off the coast of Howland to provide Earhart with radio navigation, communication support, and a smoke plume. Earhart reported that they were only 200 miles away—but around 7:42 a.m., she contacted the Itasca again to say they were running low on fuel and couldn’t spot land.
Communication was spotty, and Earhart couldn’t hear most of the Itasca’s replies. The plane radioed the ship several more times—the last time at 8:43 a.m—before losing all contact. Earhart’s last, garbled message is thought to have said, “We are on the line 157-337… We are running on line north and south.”
Today, many parties—including the U.S. government and experts at the Smithsonian Institution’s Air & Space Museum—say that the plane likely ran out of gas and plunged into the ocean, killing both Earhart and Noonan.
Earhart and Noonan were officially declared lost at sea on July 19, 1937, following a widespread sea and air search involving 4000 crewmen, nine vessels, and 66 aircraft. In recent years, Nauticos—a company in Hanover, Maryland that performs deep-ocean searches—has looked for Earhart’s plane, but their efforts have yielded no findings.
2. EARHART WAS A SECRET SPY WHO SURVIVED THE VOYAGE AND LIVED HER FINAL YEARS IN HIDING.
In his 2016 book Amelia Earhart: Beyond the Grave, author W.C. Jameson builds on one theory that Earhart wasn’t simply a pilot: She was also a spy, hired by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to monitor Japanese military installations on the Marshall Islands.
According to Jameson, Earhart’s plane was outfitted with cameras. However, the pilot’s surveillance mission didn’t go as planned: She was shot down by the Japanese, or captured in the Marshall Islands after she crashed or made a forced landing.
As the story goes, Earhart was reportedly held captive for years, but Roosevelt stayed mum on her whereabouts, not wanting the public to know he had hired the world’s most famous female aviator to monitor the enemy. Meanwhile, officials altered Coast Guard logbooks to say her plane disappeared. (Jameson says he interviewed a former U.S. Army official’s nephew, who said it was known among select, high-ranking parties that Earhart was part of a spy mission.)
According to the theory, Earhart was liberated in 1945, and she returned to the U.S., changed her name to Irene Craigmile Bolam, and lived undercover as a banker in New Jersey. In 1982, Bolam—a.k.a. Earhart—died.
Variations of this theory are posited in several other books, including Amelia Earhart Lives (1970), written by author Joe Klaas with the help of Joseph Gervais, a former Air Force major. Gervais met Bolam while meeting with a group of aviation enthusiasts, and became convinced that she looked just like the missing pilot. After investigating Bolam’s life, Gervais claimed in Klass’s book that few public records existed to support her accepted identity, and that she was, in fact, Earhart in hiding.
This theory was widely debunked, and Bolam called it a “poorly documented hoax.” She filed a $1.5 million lawsuit, and the book’s publisher, McGraw-Hill, pulled the book off the market. The case was reportedly settled out of court. As for the so-called “resemblance” between Bolam and Earhart, people who have compared photos of the two (including a criminal forensic expert hired by National Geographic) say they aren’t the same person.
3. EARHART WAS CAPTURED BY THE JAPANESE, AND SHE DIED AS A PRISONER.
Some people say that Japanese forces apprehended Earhart and Noonan—perhaps as spies, or simply as stranded crew members—either on the island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands or in the Marshall Islands. They eventually died in captivity.
Several books propose variations of this theory, including Fred Goerner’s The Search for Amelia Earhart (1966). Goerner posits that that Earhart and Noonan crash-landed on Mili Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Natives are said to have seen Earhart’s aircraft land, and to have helped the Japanese remove it and ship it to Saipan, nearly 2000 miles away. As for Earhart and Noonan, they were captured alive and sent to Saipan, where they died as prisoners.
In 2009, Wally Earhart, Amelia Earhart’s fourth cousin, corroborated these claims. According to him, his relative succumbed to dysentery, and Noonan was beheaded by the Japanese. (Wally Earhart declined to name his sources, so this premise is hearsay until proven otherwise.)
Recently, Parker Hannafin Corporation, a motion control technologies company, funded search efforts in the Marshall Islands, where search and salvage nonprofit Amelia Research, Inc. had found pieces of metal believed to have come from Earhart’s plane following its crash. The results of the expedition haven’t been announced.
4. EARHART DIED AS A CASTAWAY.
Some people believe that Earhart and Noonan, unable to locate Howland Island, searched for another island to land on. The duo ended up making it to Nikumaroro (also known as Gardner Island) in the Pacific republic of Kiribati, which lies some 350 miles southeast of Howland. There, they radioed distress calls for days until their plane was swept away by the tide. Earhart (and presumably Noonan) both died as castaways.
The leading proponents of this theory are the members of a nonprofit group called the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR). Led by executive director Richard Gillespie, they’ve spent decades investigating Earhart’s last flight, and have traveled to Nikumaroro Island multiple times since 1989. Their expeditions have uncovered artifacts including leather shoe parts, fragments of a jar that may have been freckle cream (Earhart had freckles), and Plexiglas and aluminum fragments.
Recently, TIGHAR made headlines when they announced that a new analysis of bones discovered on Nikumaroro in either 1939 or 1940 may support their castaway explanation. The 13 bones—including a skull, a humerus, and a radius—were found along with the sole of a woman’s shoe, an empty box that may have once held a sextant, and other debris. Long ago, a doctor named D.W. Hoodless determined that they belonged to an elderly man, and over the decades, the partial human skeleton was discarded. But in 1998, TIGHAR re-examined the bones’ recorded measurements, and claimed that Hoodless was wrong: They actually belonged to a woman with the same stature and ethnicity as Earhart.
In the latest round of speculation, a forensic imaging specialist named Jeff Glickman analyzed photos and the original skeleton measurements and noted that the skeleton’s forearms were particularly long, just like the missing pilot’s. However, many experts have dismissed these new conclusions, saying they—along with TIGHAR’s other theories—aren’t strong enough to confirm Earhart’s fate.
Dorothy Cochrane, a curator at Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, even told Smithsonian magazine that “Gillespie’s theory is based on conjecture and circumstance. He repeatedly ignores facts such as the found sole of a woman’s shoe being the wrong size for Earhart—a fact stated by her sister.” Even the identification of the skeleton as female is in doubt. In 2015, a different set of researchers noted flaws in the 1998 paper and came to the conclusion that the original male classification was more likely.
5. EARHART’S PLANE CRASHED IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA.
In 1945, a group of Australian World War II soldiers on the island of New Britain, in Papua New Guinea, reportedly discovered civilian aircraft wreckage in the jungle [PDF]. A reconnaissance patrol map from that mission names the plane’s construction number—C/N 1055—which matches the one on Earhart’s own aircraft. Its engines also resembled the ones on Earhart’s Lockheed Electra.
David Billings, an Australian aircraft engineer who lives in Papua New Guinea, reportedly owns video testimonies of the discoverers, and to this day, a patrol member’s widow safeguards the map. That being said, Earhart was supposed to land on Howland—not New Britain—so Billings theorizes that she may have turned around while en route to Howland and flown hundreds miles to find another island. However, many people say it’s unlikely, as this theory contradicts Earhart’s final radio messages. Plus, they argue, her plane was too low on fuel to make the journey.
These arguments haven’t stopped Billings and other believers from trying to prove their theory: In 2012, they launched a crowdfunding campaign to fund an expedition to search New Britain’s jungles for the downed aircraft, but it didn’t meet its goal amount.
Additional Sources: Amelia Earhart: Beyond the Grave
21 Little Ways To Be Happier In 2017. Everyone could use a little mental health maintenance.
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The Last Dog At The Shelter Receives The Sweetest Farewell Party. For the first time ever, the Hawaiian Humane Shelter adopted out all of its animals just before the new year.
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Inspiring Lessons from Movies for the New Year. A little wisdom to start 2017 with.
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The Most Anticipated Movies of 2017. Mark up your new calendar with the release dates.
* Work Days in America vs. Sweden. Some employers there want to reduce employee burnout.
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What Are the Odds You’ve Met a Psychopath? Higher than you realize, but you shouldn’t worry.
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Everything you need to know to get a jump on your 2016 taxes. The sooner you deal with them, the sooner it will be over.
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11 Beautiful Black Chickens. They can’t help it, they were bred to be attractive.
