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12 Bizarre Japanese Hotel Rooms

12 Bizarre Japanese Hotel Rooms

Sadly, we’ve never been to Japan, but if their taste for themed and simply spaced-out hotel decoration is anything to go by, we pretty much belong there.
So we’re going to start planning our trip right now, and being that we’re largely ignorant of Japanese culture and history (a shortcoming the journey will hopefully remedy), we’re [...]

10 Early Bugs Bunny Cartoons

Beloved Warner Bros. character Bugs Bunny turns 69 today (his first appearance under that name aired on July 27, 1940), and what better excuse to watch some old WB clips? Technically, for the animation history sticklers out there, Bugs made three televised appearances before earning his name, so you could say that his birthday is [...]

10 Inventive Rubber Erasers

10 Inventive Rubber Erasers

Today is Rubber Eraser Day, because on April 15, 1770, Joseph Priestly first discovered that scratching paper with rubber would remove any pencil marks from said paper. Little did Priestly know that his invention would not only enable the correcting and improving of all manner of written and drawn art, but would in fact become [...]

12 Fantastic Photos of Japanese Factories

12 Fantastic Photos of Japanese Factories

Granted, delapidated post-industrial sites reclaimed by weather and vegetation look pretty cool, in a post-capitalist fantasy kind of a way. That said, really super-modern new factories with color-coded pipes, massive smoke and steam plumes, towering forms and space-age lighting make for differently photogenic sights. Just look at Bouncing Red Ball’s listicle of 12 Fantastic Photos [...]

8 Oscar Nominees’ Embarrassing Japanese Commercials

The Oscars are on Sunday, and though we’re doing our best to avoid giving you a predictions listicle, we’re happy to engage in more peripheral Oscar listing. After all, the Academy Awards aren’t really about art, they’re about money: movies with statues make better bank, and actors with Oscars get more lucritive contracts. Usually. Sometimes [...]

10 Strange Japanese YouTube Videos

Between creepy robots, incomprehensible game shows, unfamiliar modes of addressing audiences and cameras, and generally unfamiliar aesthetic sensibilities, Japanese TV not only offers a hilariously foreign viewing experience, but also throws our Western televisual expectations into a strange light. Why should TV robots be strictly utilitarian? Why should game shows be more about the plebeian [...]

15 Funny Fortune Cookie Fortunes

15 Funny Fortune Cookie Fortunes

Happy Chinese New Year, and welcome to the year of the ox. Because we here at Listicles embrace multiculturalism of only the most tokenistic variety (is multiculturalism tokenistic by definition? Discuss), we offer our predictions for the year ahead by way of China’s traditional oracular authority, the fortune cookie.
Actually, fortune cookies have typically been served [...]

12 Amazing Stadium Designs

12 Amazing Stadium Designs

It seems like most major professional sports teams in the U.S. have undertaken a stadium change in the last ten years. In New York alone we have the new Mets stadium Citi Field, Yankee Stadium, and the Meadowlands’ Jets stadium all under construction. There are also more long term (likely imaginary) plans for a new [...]

5 Innovative High-Speed Trains

5 Innovative High-Speed Trains

The slow, painful death of the airline industry spells great things for rail networks everywhere (even the one just proposed in California). No better time, then, to follow the green transporters at TreeHugger on a tour of the latest innovations in high-speed trains. So throw away that frequent flyer card, and get a glimpse of [...]