The Taiwanese design firm Charm Villa makes tea bags that look like goldfish. Each one is assembled by machine and hand in a 16-step process. Tug on the cotton string and the bag will appear to swim within your cup.
(Photos: Charm Villa)
-via Lustik
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Nine months ago, Heather Penticoff, 40, and her daughter Destinee Martin, 20, of Lee County, Florida told each other that they were pregnant. The timing was coincidental and they kept it up. Both women had the same due dates. For different reasons, their 2 different doctors decided to induce labor for both women on Tuesday. Madeline, Destinee’s daughter, was then born. Two hours and 46 minutes later, Madeline’s nephew, Damien was born. That’s quite young to become an aunt!
But the family is happy with this experience. Bryan Anderson of NBC 2 reports:
"It's like having twins without carrying twins," said Heather.
Their experience expecting together is unique, just like the ages of other relatives of this Lee County family. Destinee has two aunts and an uncle younger than her.
"It's a blessing all around," Heather said, "I'm just proud of her, so proud of Destinee."
"To have my mom going through it with me is probably the most special, amazing thing ever," added Destinee.
-via AP
Etsy seller Natalie has an original idea for a craft: pop culture pillows. Specifically, she makes pillows that look like electric guitars and are covered in fabrics old school geeks will love. They're not playable, but they're plush and comfortable. Keep yours in a guitar stand and you might make a visitor do a double take. Then try to play the Pac-Man theme on it.
-via Technabob
(Photo: Lindsey Wilson)
Santa Claus planned to visit a mall in Evansville, Indiana to meet boys and girls who wanted to talk with him. But first, he needed breakfast. So he stopped at a Bob Evans restaurant.
Gracie Lynn, 3, and her mother and grandmother were also there eating breakfast. Gracie was appalled that Santa had to eat with no one to keep him company. So she decided to have breakfast with him. Kimberly Yam writes for the Huffington Post:
"They talked for about 20 minutes," Wilson, who is currently pregnant with a boy, told HuffPost, "and all she wanted to talk about was [her future baby brother]." […]
Wilson told HuffPost that the pair chatted about the North Pole's weather conditions and the movie, "Frozen." Gracie even asked Santa if she could visit him and his toy shop.
You may remember Josh Hara's extensive contribution to our Twaggies series. But he does a lot more than write funny tweets. He also draws elaborate cartoons--not just doodles--on coffee cups. Hara has developed an extensive following on Instagram as a result. Why? Hara says that:
I think there is some extra interest in taking something we see every day, something that often gets thrown into the trash, and transforming it into a piece of artwork.
It would be really cool if a comic book artist composed an entire story arc on coffee cups.
Neongrey's Cat Petting Simulator is a text-based adventure game which permits you to experience the joy of petting a beautiful cat without getting cat hair on you or cat urine on your furniture.
You get to name the cat, then interact with her. Decisions flow like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel.
Don't worry too much about making a bad decision. You can save your game and then return to that save point. Or, if you're in the middle of a good petting and your boss insists that you do some actual work, you can come back to it later.
-via David Thompson, who recommends the game to people with cat allergies.
We have seen amazing advancements in robotics in the past few years. For example, knife-wielding robots have been programmed to repeatedly stab meat. Other robots are programmed to comfort dying humans. Still other, completely unrelated robots, can process energy from human biomass.
Now ABB's line of industrial robots can fight with katanas.
Which is excellent because it's cool to watch increasingly intelligent and autonomous machines wave around swords with perfect precision and at incredibly fast speeds.
Good work, engineers.
-via Geekologie
(SMBC Comics/Zach Weinersmith)
Of course, as we've noted previously, most mad scientists are actually just mad engineers. Real mad science produces reproducible results and subjects itself to peer review.
Zach Weinersmith, the cartoonist, adds this postscript:
I would enjoy being a doctoral student in a mad humanities department.
This photo, according to a document from the government Norfolk County, UK, is a photo of the city of Norwich taking delivery of its first computer. It's an Elliott 405, a computer manufactured by Elliott Brothers, a now-defunct British company.
This 1957 article from The New Scientist describes it as the first municipal computer in the UK. The author, J.W. Cox, is an employee of Elliott Brothers. He states that the 405 was "specially designed for accounting and statistical purposes." It stores data on up to 1,000 feet of magnetic film.
Programming tip: lift with your legs, not your back.
-via David Thompson
This week, the Adult Swim short film Too Many Cooks broke the internet, becoming a massively viral hit. It's a brilliant and truly original work of storytelling that has earned its creators well-deserved accolades. If you haven't seen Too Many Cooks, you should do so. It's definitely worth 11 minutes of your time.
Then you should watch this parody by Tough Pigs. There aren't too many Cooks, but too many Cookie Monsters. (There's no such thing as "too many cookies.")
-via That's Nerdalicious!
Paul G. Lind of Portland, Oregon loved to play Scrabble. When he passed away, his friends and family erected this custom tombstone that shows in Scrabble form what they remembered most about him. Lind now rests beneath this monument at the Lone Fir Cemetery in southeastern Portland. A year ago, after vandals defaced the tombstone, local Scrabble players held a tournament to raise money for its restoration.
It's an unusual tombstone, but one of only several in that cemetery. A 2009 article in the Portland Tribune describes others:
At Lone Fir, an artist is buried underground in a paint can.
And a bartender has a large concrete urn beside his grave from which he and friends used to drink, until he died in 1883.
And a man's laser-etched granite headstone depicts a drag racing funny car and the words, 'Gone home to horsepower heaven.'
-via TYWKIWDBI | Photo: The Stone Saver
This is Bluey, a parakeet owned by Carli Jeffrey. Bluey loves to imitate sounds, including human voices, laser sound effects, and kissing sounds.
Jeffrey played a video of R2-D2 from Star Wars. After hearing it about 4 or 5 times, Bluey was ready to offer this perfect imitation of the droid.
You can compare Bluey's imitation with the original sounds of the foul-mouthed droid in this clip from Episode III. Bluey is ready to be a voice actor!
-via Twisted Sifter
The American artist Cassius Marcellus Coolidge is most famous for composing 16 paintings of dogs playing poker, pool, and engaging in other traditionally human pursuits. Poker can be fun, but for real excitement, you need to break out the dice and the rule books. Johannes Grenzfurthner with Heather Kelley made this poster showing the pups having a really good time on a dungeon crawl late on a Friday night. With Mountain Dew, Cheetos, and a slightly risqué poster on the wall, they're in the perfect basement for the adventure.
-via io9
If you're Daddy, then you're a superhero. Because you have to be. Your kids appear to be intent on killing themselves through their utter recklessness. Your job is to rescue them. You're already in costume, so it's time to spring into action.
This compilation video shows dads jumping in at the last second to save their kids from injuries. Go, Super Daddy, go!
-via Yababoon
(Photo: mararie)
Pictured above are deep fried starfish, scorpions, and a seahorse. They're traditional street foods in some parts of China and some of the amazing exotic foods rounded up by When on Earth. Would you like to try deep fried guinea pig? How about stink bugs in a tortilla or bear paws?
The dish on the list that I really want to try is cobra heart. Yes, cobra heart! It's the heart of a cobra (hence the name) served in a glass of cobra blood and venom with a splash of vodka.
Strangely, the list includes haggis, which is a perfectly normal food that should not be surprising to anyone.
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