Michigan State professor and urological surgeon David Wartinger noticed that some of his patients tended to come home from vacation with fewer kidney stones, mainly because they told him about passing kidney stones while visiting the Disney theme parks in Orlando. One man passed three kidney stones, one every time he road the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Wartinger decided to investigate by going to Florida himself.

First, Wartinger used a 3-D printer to create a clear silicone model of that three-time-stone patient’s kidney. He then filled the kidney with stones and urine. (Not real urine, I assumed, as I know the park already has plenty.) Then he and colleague Marc Mitchell bought two tickets and flew to Orlando.

Of course, the researchers had to get permission from Disney World before bringing the model kidney onto the rides. “It was a little bit of luck,” Wartinger recalls. “We went to guest services, and we didn't want them to wonder what was going on—two adult men riding the same ride again and again, carrying a backpack. We told them what our intent was, and it turned out that the manager that day was a guy who recently had a kidney stone. He called the ride manager and said, do whatever you can to help these guys, they're trying to help people with kidney stones.”

Amazingly, the fake kidney passed the stones in the real urine, in 16.67 percent of the rides in the front of the coaster and 63.89 percent of rides in the back of the coaster.

“No, it was urine. It was mine.”

Read about Wartinger’s roller coaster adventures (and more about kidney stones) at the Atlantic. -Thanks, John Farrier!   

(Image credit: SteamFan)

Free food by NemiMakeit & Licunatt

Most animals don't understand the words that come out of human mouths, but they've all learned to listen for one particularly rewarding word- "food". When critters hear the word "food" they come running, and even if the critter in question is a bit skittish around humans they'll stick around to see if they can score a free meal when the human's not looking. Urban critters like rats and raccoons have learned another important word that makes their hungry little lives much easier-"free". And when a city dwelling critter hears the words "free" and "food" used together in a sentence they know they won't be dumpster diving for their daily meal!

Celebrate the animal kingdom's bottomless appetite with this Free Food t-shirt by NemiMakeit & Licunatt, it's the cutest way to tell the urban wildlife you're down to throw some scraps their way!

Visit Nemimakeit's Facebook fan page and official webite, then head on over to her NeatoShop for more adorably geeky designs.

Visit Licunatt's Facebook fan page and official website, then head on over to her NeatoShop for more wonderfully geeky designs:

Adopt A Stardog	Dragon Cuteness	Homerbusters	Tic Toc Doctah

View more designs by NemiMakeit | Licunatt |More Funny T-shirts | New T-Shirts

Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

Corporations and other large companies are still figuring out how to use social media to help them create a buzz and make money, and just when they start to get their online act together they blow it big time, often via Twitter.

And yet, as this Rock Paper Cynic comic shows, these large companies still expect their social media managers to work internet miracles, convinced they hold the secret to creating a viral video...

-Via Geeks Are Sexy

Sam Klemke recorded some footage of himself every year from 1977 through at least 2011 (and probably since then as well). In this video, small clips are shown in reverse order. This project was eventually made into a documentary. 

(YouTube link)

While we see him getting younger, he constantly talks about how old he is getting. I suppose that’s normal. Today is my birthday, and I can’t help but think about how I’ve never been this old. Yet I think the same thought every year. -via reddit  

The Catbus in My Neighbor Totoro captured the imagination of cat lovers, who wondered what real cats would look like if they were extra long with a bunch more legs, like a cat-ipede.

Now, thanks to these panoramic photography fails by Japanese Twitter user @hanamomoact we needn't wonder what a real life catbus would look like any longer!

Hanamomoact shot these funny catbus photos in the Middle East using an iPhone in panorama mode, the elongation a result of the cat moving in the same direction as the lens.

-Via design you trust

“Curry” has become the unofficial cuisine of England, which has boosted that country’s culinary reputation considerably. It was once considered exotic, but shouldn’t have been, since it is eaten around the world and even appeared in an American cookbook as far back as 1824. In fact, the only place that doesn’t have a curry tradition is India.

That word “curry,” now as then, has a meaning as vague and inclusive as its ingredients. It can mean any stew made with “Indian” spices, as well as the yellow spice powder (usually a mixture of turmeric, coriander, cumin, and fenugreek) used in raisin-studded chicken salads. It’s not difficult to trace the spread of curry—it traveled by sea, following traders and slavers and laborers, the ancient vectors of colony and conquest—but the word itself is an altogether different beast, a bastard with many potential parents and no clear pedigree.

The Portuguese first came to India’s palm-toothed southern shores in 1498, in search of cardamom, cloves, and black pepper, each among the world’s most valuable commodities. Lacking a word to describe the spicy, coconut-thickened stews they found there, they went ahead and made one up: carel, taken from the Tamil word kari.

From those early traders, the Indian dishes we call curry followed the spread of imperialism. Read about how curry took over the world at the A.V. Club.  

(Image credit:  Nick Wanserski)

Teddy bears and other plush toys are often all that's physically left behind after a couple breaks up, and the couple's attachment to these toys varies according to what these items represent.

But does anybody ever stop to wonder how these toys feel about being a physical reminder of love gone sour?

Of course we don't, which is why it would be easy for the events that transpire in Almog Avidan Antonir's short film Teddy Bears Are For Lovers to go down in a bedroom near you. (NSFW language)

TEDDY BEARS ARE FOR LOVERS from Short of the Week on Vimeo.

This is why you should always keep a Teddy Ruxpin doll loaded with a death metal tape at the ready, so he can help you quell a plush toy uprising...

-Via io9

The Lord of the Rings showed us the cozy underground homes of the Shire, where Hobbits live. They were intriguing, how they meshed with the surrounding natural world, and their Middle-Earth details. There are quite a few Hobbit homes in the real world, either specifically designed to be Tolkien or that happen to share the esthetic. Underground homes are quite eco-friendly and energy-efficient, and some of these houses fit into the landscape so well that you might not even realize they are there, like the Dune House in Florida.  

Look too quickly, and you may miss the fact that a house is built under all of the greenery. It’s called the Dune House, is located in Atlantic Beach, Florida, and is practically hidden in the landscape. As far as Hobbit houses go, this one is completely decked out. It’s a two story building and was built in 1975 by famed architect William Morgan — that means he had a jump on the trend before LOTR was even a thing. The home is worth $1.4 million dollars, and it definitely looks expensive inside.

Well, The Hobbit was published in 1937 and The Lord of the Rings trilogy in the ‘50s, but most of the ten homes on this list are relatively recent and resemble the Hobbit homes in the movies. You can even visit and sleep in a couple of them!

Role players love their dice, but not all die are created equal. While percentile dice require you to roll two different dice, it's still less unwieldy than using a D100 like the one pictured above. I'm sure you can imagine it doesn't stop roling very easily.

The Robot's Voice has compiled a list of the 10 most shameful dice of all time and while I don't agree with all of their decisions (I'm a sucker for crystal dice no matter what anyone says), their criticisms are hilarious. 

The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research, now in all-pdf form. Get a subscription now for only $25 a year!

by Marc Abrahams, AIR staff

In the film Good Will Hunting, a college janitor came to be recognized as a genius. Something vaguely -- very vaguely -- akin to that happened during the 2005 Ig week.

For some time now, Roy Glauber has been a vital participant in the annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. By spontaneous tradition, the Ig audience throws paper airplanes at the stage during the entire ceremony (and the people on stage waft some of them right back). The airplanes accumulate so rapidly that it is necessary to have two people spend the entire ceremony sweeping them off. Roy, a Harvard physics professor, has nobly, stylishly, and vigorously swept the stage for ten long years. Like Gandhi, Roy patiently pursued humble tasks in the long years before the world at large came to appreciate his greatness. Two days before the 2005 Ig Nobel Ceremony came the news: Roy Glauber has been awarded a Nobel Prize in physics.

First, try to answer this question from your own experience. Don’t spend too much time thinking about it. I immediately said Hamlet, maybe because that was the first of Shakespeare’s plays I ever knew about. My mother had to read it for college, and she read most of it out loud to me. It was years before I knew there were any others. We studied a half-dozen or so of Shakespeare’s plays in school, but not the one play that is the most performed now. According to data from the site Shakespearances, these are the William Shakespeare plays most often performed by professional troupes since 2011.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the most popular even when you divide the list into American and non-U.S. performances, but the rest of those two lists are different. Read about how modern audiences prefer Shakespeare’s legacy at Pricenomics. -via Digg  

It's safe to say Subway is serving up some of the most sub-par sandwiches in America, but there's one thing you can say about them, and indeed most chain restaurants- they're consistent.

People know what's on the menu and they expect it to be available and ready for consumption when they arrive, but do you know what happens when those expectations are diced like an onion?

Customers get all crusty, like the lady in this video who was deeply hurt by Subway's lack of meatball subs. (NSFW due to language)

(YouTube Link)

-Via Distractify

catch the demogorgon by haplo

Way before a game called GO made people want to go out and catch pocket monsters there was a portable game called Catch The Demogorgon, but it didn't last very long due to numerous fatalities. The game involved tracking down a creature many people thought to be imaginary, but since the game was in 8-bit it didn't include information on catching or killing the creature so kids were at its mercy when they finally managed to track it down. Things got even stranger when kids who'd played the game started claiming they had traveled to a parallel dimension called the Upside Down, supposedly the home of the Demogorgon. But parents blamed the whole thing on Dungeons & Dragons, and in a misguided attempt to save their children D&D was banned but the Demogorgon was allowed to go about its business...

Show the world why it's okay to catch pocket monsters but real monsters should be left alone by wearing this Catch The Demogorgon t-shirt by Haplo, it's strangely appealing!

Visit Haplo's NeatoShop for more old chool cool designs:

bikes for dark background	kodos	la petite eleven	Love cookies

View more designs by haplo | More Funny T-shirts | New T-Shirts

Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

While the alien race we know as the Klingons appeared in the original Star Trek TV series, they only achieved the iconic look and used their own language in the first Star Trek feature film in 1979. The language they spoke in Star Trek: The Motion Picture consisted of words made up by James Doohan, who played Engineer Scott. The role of non-human species and their languages would expand for further movies. About that time time, Marc Okrand of the National Captioning Institute was preparing to do close-captioning in real time for the 1982 Academy Awards.

During preparations in L.A., Okrand was having lunch with an old friend when serendipity struck. The friend was working on what would become Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and the film just so happened to need a linguist to dub a conversation between Vulcans Spock and Saavik (played by a young Kirstie Alley). Using clues from the little bit of Vulcan spoken in the first film, Okrand got to work. But Vulcan at this time wasn't really a language. "The scene was filmed with the actors speaking English. My job was to make up gobbly-goop that fit the lip movements and then was dubbed in," Okrand says. Two years later, he was asked backed to work on the third Star Trek movie, but this time the task was a bit more complex: to develop the Klingon language.

Okrand started with the scraps of words the Klingons had already used, and built an entire language from the bottom up. He tells a little of how he did it at Popular Mechanics.  

A man tries to back a horse trailer into a spot at the stable. He’s not very good at it. The horses find this hilarious. Their laughter is infectious!

(YouTube link)

This ad is trying to sell us something hi-tech, but all I heard was laughing horses. -via Tastefully Offensive

Celebrities like to keep secrets, and their favorite secret to keep is how old they are, because we'll assume they're 25 for the rest of their lives if we don't know their actual age. (sarcasm)

In an effort to keep Hollywood's age a secret California has passed bill AB-1687 which forces sites like IMDb to remove the age of an actor from their page if the actor requests it.

This bill was supposedly put in place to protect actors from age discrimination, assuming casting directors look on sites like IMDb for info on potential hires and might pass due to their posted age.

But the bill doesn't apply to news outlets, so an actor's true age will still be easy to look up online, which makes this quote from Larry Gelbart just as true today as it was in his day:

(Image Link)

-Via Gizmodo

Russian history in U.S. schools is usually limited to Lenin, Stalin, the space race, and maybe now they include the fall of the Soviet Union. Depending on your age, you likely learned about Nicholas II, the last Tsar and his family from movies, because it was a very dramatic story. There were several movies about Rasputin, and I would recommend the 1971 film Nicholas and Alexandra. But even more people recall the movies Anastasia (1956) or Anastasia (1997), neither of which tell us much about the family or the Russian revolution. They are about Anna Anderson, who was presented as the youngest of the Tsar’s four daughters, Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna. Anderson was only taking advantage of the rumors that Anastasia was the only member of the family who had survived the assassination of 1918 and had been missing ever since. How did those rumors ever get started? Probably because, despite the Soviet Union's refusal to say anything about the Tsar's fate, there were a few people who knew that not all the Romanovs were buried together.  

In the spring of 1979, Alexander Avdonin and Geli Ryabov discovered the pit in which five of the seven Romanovs (and four of their servants) had been buried. Since the Communists were still ruling Russia at the time, Advonin and Ryabov decided to keep the finding a secret. The pit wouldn’t be officially opened until 1991, the same year that the Soviet Union dissolved.

DNA and skeletal analysis matched the remains in the pit to Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, Yevgeny Botkin, Alexei Trupp, Ivan Kharitonov, Anna Demidova, and three of the four grand duchesses. William R. Maples (a forensic expert) concluded that the two bodies missing from the family grave were that of Tsarevitch Alexei and Anastasia. However, Russian scientists believed that it was the body of Maria that was missing. Using a computer program to compare photos of the youngest grand duchess with the skulls of the victims from the mass grave, they identified one the bodies in the pit as that of Anastasia.

The actual fate of Grand Duchess Anastasia was not fully revealed until 2007. You can read the short version of the story at History Buff.

People tell you to follow your dreams when you're young, but if you get too old before you've turned your dreams into a monetary reality those same advice happy people start calling you a dreamer.

Dreams don't have an expiration date but we print one on them anyway, and then, as this comic from Blazers At Dawn shows, the expiration date arrives and we're forced to torch those dreams and draw up new ones.

-Via Geeks Are Sexy

This morning, redditor twilling8 found a skunk wandering around his neighborhood in Ontario with a Coke can stuck on his head. What to do? He could ignore the skunk, and go about his business, but that could return to haunt him later. Or he could risk getting sprayed.

(YouTube link)

He is indeed a brave man, and did the right thing. Now if people would only keep their trash picked up and lids on their garbage cans, this would have never happened.

(Image Link)

Right now signs are littering lawns across the U.S. urging us to vote in the upcoming election, but we don't have to restrict the statements made by our lawn signage to political matters- we can tell people to scram too.

(Image Link)

Signs are put up to tell people what not to do and signs are put up to tell people to go away, but sometimes signs are put up just to give people a good laugh and perhaps initiate a trade.

(Image Link)

And when you're able to combine two or more message types on one epic sign you have officially earned the title "master signer".

(Image Link)

See 30 Yard Hilarious Yard Signs That Will Totally Get Your Attention here

Plain or fancy, the addition of crown molding can make a cheap home suddenly look established and well-built, but only if it’s done right. There are a lot of factors to consider: the size and shape of the room, the size and shape of the molding, the cost of the materials and labor, and the final look you are aiming for. Get some design tips and see 100 examples of what crown molding can do for a room at Housely.  

If you love video games, Harry Potter, Star Wars, proper grammar or anatomy, then you officially have a geeky side. We at Neatorama support the geekification of the public and encourage anyone with even one of those interests to check out this fun Distractify article with over 20 awesome things for geeks to bring into their home.

A few highlights from the list include the marauder's map scarf and respect the chemistry spice rack seen above, as well as this Super Mario light and this set of Pokemon gym pins. Of course, this hatching dinosaur candle is pretty lovable as well.

Japanese comedian Kosaka Daimaou, whose real name is Kazuhiko Kosaka, has a character he does named Piko-Taro. Here, Piko-Taro sings a little ditty about pens and pineapples. It doesn’t make a bit of sense, but since he posted it one month ago, it’s been covered and remixed by dozens of YouTubers.   

(YouTube link)

Now if you see the abbreviation PPAP or these emoji, you'll know what it means. Well, good luck getting that tune out of your head the rest of the day. -via Metafilter

Yoshimbo by Nicko Designs

Yoshi had been on a permanent vacation after winning the Mario Kart tournament and becoming a very wealthy dinosaur, but downtime was not good for Yoshi. After being cooped up in the house for six long months eating mushrooms and watching old samurai flicks he was starting to believe he was some kind of ronin, a deadly dino swordsman who was out for revenge against the Koopas. Mario tried to call Yoshi but he wouldn't answer, so he drove over to his house to make sure his old pal was okay. But when he walked up the stairs and saw Yoshi standing on the porch wearing a samurai costume, large sword on his hip, Mario knew Yoshi was starting to go bonkers...

Bring home this super Yoshimbo t-shirt by Nicko Designs and watch your wardrobe go from a negative zone to a total 1-UP!

Visit Nicko Designs's Facebook fan page, official website, Tumblr and Instagram, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more geek-tastic designs:

Singin' in the Stars	Clint McCree	Law of the Jungle	Main Street Road

View more designs by Nicko Designs | More Video Game T-Shirts | New T-Shirts

Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

If a pop culture character is properly created, meaning complete with an unique personality and a backstory, fans can predict what that character is thinking and willing to do.

But nobody could have predicted how many perfectly crafted pop culture characters would end up needing psychological treatment!

Cartoonist Lee Gatlin imagines what pop culture characters like Superman, The Hulk and Tarzan would say if they had a psych session with Sigmund Freud, and for most of them one sentence says it all.

-Via io9

The following article is from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids.

FLEAS AND RATS

Impact: Plagues, ending the Middle Ages

From 1347 to 1350, the a virulent disease ravaged the populations of Asia and Europe, killing more than 25 million in Europe alone— about a third of the population. Most people died just three days after becoming infected. Scientists remain perplexed by the outbreak, but many agree that the disease was probably the bubonic plague (or the “black death”) and it was probably spread all over the world by infected fleas traveling on rats. In those days, rats thrived among people— on ships and in cities. Infected fleas, the thinking goes, simply hopped off of dying rats and onto people.

The disruption to medieval society was immense and the outbreak helped bring about the end of the feudalism. Muslims in Crimea, in what’s now the Ukraine, blamed Christians and expelled them from trading cities, spreading the disease deep into Europe. The Christians blamed Jews and burned many of them alive, killing crucial tradesmen and leaving towns without blacksmiths, innkeepers, bakers, millers, and weavers. Many towns and farms were abandoned, leading to food shortages. Ultimately, the nobles couldn’t enforce control on their surviving peasant laborers. So, despite laws aimed at keeping serfs’ wages low, the desperate noblemen began doubling and tripling wages, encouraging the serfs of other noblemen to jump ship. Over time, the serfs were able to demand and get a higher standard of living and new rights, loosening the binds that kept them enslaved to one estate and bringing an end to the economic system of feudalism.

DOGS

Impact: Hunting, herding, self-defense

Any scenario in which someone wears the inflatable T-Rex costume is funny just because, and even funnier because they are so awkward. But this T-Rex managed to be funny and leave the awkwardness behind as he goes out on the lake on a jet ski!

(YouTube link)

This T-Rex is professional jet skier Mark Gomez, doing what he does best even inside a dinosaur costume. Guillermo Casas recorded him using a drone. A good time was had by all. -via Tastefully Offensive

Come see us this Saturday JULY 2! We open at 10 a.m.!

A photo posted by Dinosaur Kingdom II (@dinokingdom2) on Jun 30, 2016 at 3:17pm PDT

Imagine a theme park where life-size dinosaur statues exist in the middle of Civil War battles. Dinosaur Kingdom II in Virginia harkens back to the kind of attractions that popped up on roadsides between the rise of the American road trip and the construction of the interstate highways that bypassed so much of it. All you need are things people want to see, and that means dinosaurs and Civil War soldiers. Mark Cline is the owner of the new theme park which just opened this summer, but it’s far from his first. His bizarre vision depends little on historical accuracy and a lot on wacky entertainment. Read more about Dinosaur Kingdom II at Ozy.

Edward Grant of Middletown, New Jersey, caught this fish Sunday in Raritan Bay. It’s a fluke, in more ways than one. It appears that something, possibly a bluefish or shark, had taken a bite out of the fish. The fluke's massive injury was completely healed.

"We were very shocked," Grant said, adding, "We used a few other words, too."

Grant tossed the 18.5 inch fluke back into the bay, deciding it had been through enough already and deserved to live.

"I felt bad for it," he said.

Would you call the fish lucky for both surviving such a bite and also being tossed back by a fisherman? Or would you call him unlucky for being bitten and then being hooked?  -via Arbroath

(Image credit: Edward Grant)

Killing stuff is a big part of any roleplaying game, and RPG systems generally use enemy kills as the main source of experience points, so it's hard to imagine an RPG system that doesn't involve killing stuff.

It's even harder to imagine a game in which characters are penalized for resorting to violence, but somehow the new tabletop RPG Lotus Dimension makes that concept seem appealing.

Lotus Dimension forces players to figure out how to solve problems and conflict without violence, using powers like "sleight of hand" or "curl up like an armadillo" to peacefully resolve encounters.

The game was created by Scott Wayne Indiana as an interesting alternative to games like D&D, with a character advancement structure based on Buddhism's noble eightfold path and the concept of karma.

And while it probably won't appeal to your power gamer buddies who are all about loot and XP Lotus Dimension will definitely broaden the horizons of gamers who are sick of the same old RPGs.

-Via Laughing Squid