Internet Mixtape

Underwater Video from a Flooded Meadow

Following a heavy springtime snowmelt, an alpine meadow in Austria was recently, instantaneously, turned into a deep, crystal clear lake. A fairly well-trafficked spot, the meadow features hiking trails, flower bushes and benches, making for a super-surreal underwater landscape.

A few creative divers decided to check it out and produced the following beautiful video:

(via wimp.com)

The World's Second-Largest Aquarium

The following mesmerizing video is of the "Kuroshio Sea," the second-largest aquarium tank in the world, at Okinawa, Japan's Churaumi Aquarium. The tank holds 1,981,290 gallons of water, and is large enough to accomodate multiple whale sharks, as well as 80 other species of fish and marine life:

Kuroshio Sea - 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world - (song is Please don't go by Barcelona) from Jon Rawlinson on Vimeo.

The window itself measures 8.2 meters by 22.5 meters, and is more than 60cm thick, constructed from seven acrylic-resin sheets (the glue formula holding the sheets together is a secret). 

Which is all amazing, but begs the question....then what's the largest aquarium in the world? Apparently it's a title that's both highly sought-after and hotly-contested. Atlanta's Georgia Aquarium was the world's largest when it was built in 2005, with a tank that holds 6.3 million gallons of water and four whale sharks, but apparently when the Burj Dubai opens in Dubai, it will assume the title of world's largest aquarium (so claims the Burj Dubai and, apparently, Guinness).

But here's the thing...while it holds the dubiously obscure honor of holding the record for "World's Largest Acrylic Panel," it's tank only holds 10 million litres of water...that's about 2.6 million gallons, which would make the Georgia Aquarium's tank larger. So technically, the Burj Dubai's aquarium is the second largest, despite having the biggest acrylic panel. Nothing says "scandal" like some good old-fashioned aquarium judging shenanigans!

Anyway, even if they did have the biggest tank, it might be irrelevant given that the've been having a hard time keeping it populated.

On a side note, it's fascinating that the whale shark seems to be the standard gauge for measuring megaquariums.

Pure Synchronized Evil, Incarnate, in Feathers

It's like these birds know exactly how evil they are, and are really excited for you to find out how evil they are, and also know that because they're just owls, there's nothing you can ever do about it. This is like watching the most f****d up cuckoo clock ever.

Just another great example of why the GIF is one of my favorite content formats. I bet the entire, long-format video of these owls isn't actually that creepy (or maybe 3 seconds is all the cameraperson could capture before these owls telekinetically exploded his head), but reduced to a perfectly-choreographed, looped GIF, what would otherwise be a random few seconds of weird synchronization within a longer video becomes its very own piece of content.

What once had to be considered within a larger context now is it's own context, with an entirely separate meaning. This is even more true for animated GIFs culled from popular, familiar entertainment properties.

There are so many great examples of this phenomenon, including Party Hard, Party Mild, Captain Picard Facemelter and Batman Bomb.....Evil Owls is just the latest.