To promote new menu items at McDonald's, the advertising agency DDB Sydney built a pop-up restaurant that looks like a lunchbox in the iconic McDonald's red and yellow. It's touring major cities in Australia, including Perth, Adelaide, Sydney, and Melbourne. McDonald's is particularly interested in using this facility to promote its new rump steak wraps.
It is trendy these days for people to wear sexualized Halloween costumes. I confess that I will succumb to the trend this year.
What will you wear? If you're a mom, you've got a lot of options. Suzanne Fleet has photographed 8 wonderful possibilities that reflect actual parenting. They're all really easy to make. You can probably assemble them from your everyday gear. What will you be--the Crazy Carpool Mom or the Dirty Delouser?
A reporter from a Lebanese news program is interviewing a man standing on a pier. Behind him, another fellow thinks this is a great time to take a selfie with his smartphone. Or he's trying to record the scene in front of him. Anyway, he's not watching where he's walking and goes for a swim.
Artist Davin Morrow works in many media, including balloons. His gallery includes photos of many of his balloon sculptures in what appears to be a grocery store. I'm particularly impressed by his Adventure Time balloons, such as this detailed rendering of Marceline and her ax bass.
An ordinary business card helps someone contact you. An extraordinary business card encourages that person to pay attention to you.
Twisted Sifter rounded up pictures of and information about 26 really creative business cards. Many of them are practical tools or fun toys that I would definitely want to keep if someone gave them to me.
Behold the Bacon Cheeseburger D’oh Nut! This is the same kind of innovation and daring that sent America to the moon. It resides among the chefs at PYT, a restaurant in Philadelphia. Their sweet and salty wonder is a donut stuffed with ground-up cheeseburger, sprinkled with bacon bits, and glazed with sugar.
I would like to take two of these donuts and use them as buns for a cheeseburger. That would be true love because, PYT tells us, “A burger is when a bun gives meat a hug.”
Obviously this should inspire a crossover in which Sherlock Holmes enters the Star Trek universe to hunt down Khan, who has escaped from his cryogenic pod.
Or, alternately, Khan enters the Sherlock universe, and switches places with Holmes. John Watson and Bilbo Baggins must determine who is who.
Some people hate the cubicle lifestyle and the sedentary work of computer-centered jobs.
After I graduated from college, I worked in a warehouse for 3 years while attending graduate school. If I was ever susceptible to this perspective, 3 years of manual labor permanently inoculated me from it. Sitting down in an air conditioned office for 8 hours is totally awesome.
So I would flip out if I walked into my office and found one of Govert Flint’s Dynamic Chairs. Margaret Rhodes of Wired of says that using it “is like attending a new-age Pilates class.” You’ll get quite a workout:
Scroll around by shifting your body’s weight from side to side. Sensors in the seat detect the pressure and angle of your tush and communicate that data to three accelerometers that measure that movement on an axis, and translate it into activity on the computer’s screen. To click, kick up your right leg. Sensors will detect that motion too. For the time being, arms and hands are unencumbered, for typing, but Flint imagines plenty of future possibilities there. (That’s why the video that accompanies Flint’s thesis shows actors using their arms.)
The movements of ballet dancers inspired Flint’s design. Their hip movements in particular are ideal:
Flint also spoke with a physiologist at the ballet who pointed out that human hips weren’t designed to stay rooted in a chair. There’s a lot of cartilage in there that’s meant to allow walking, hence the hip rotations that let users scroll.
I’m curious about any productivity studies conducted on these chairs. As previously noted, treadmill desks may make you healthier, but can impair the accuracy of your work.
Occasionally, as you surf the internet, you may encounter thoughts and opinions that are different from your own. You should have a plan in place so that you can respond properly at the time. Some people feel a duty to correct faulty assertions. What will be the outcome of such an encounter? Julia Lepetit and Andrew Bridgman of Dorkly offer an interactive game on the subject.
Personally, to prepare for such a disaster, I keep a large supply of ponies just one click away.
At the age of 20, Mariam Fatima Paré was an art student in college. She had a promising career ahead of her. Then she was shot in the back and left paralyzed from the neck down.
But that didn’t stop her. Paré began the long, difficult struggle to learn how to live with her new limitations. She wanted to paint again, so she learned how to hold a brush with her mouth. Over the years, Paré has developed as an artist, holding exhibitions and selling her works to collections.
In other news: the United Kingdom has a Chocolate Week. What does that mean? I choose to avoid further investigation, lest it damage my fantasy of a week-long celebration of chocolate by the people of the UK.
For Chocolate Week, Caroline McCall, a wardrobe designer for Downton Abbey, made this Art Deco-inspired dress. It took 3 months and 132 pounds of chocolate, a few of which presumably did not make it into the actual dress but were judiciously expended in the creative process.
If you're the President, you may feel the weight of the nation and the world on your shoulders. But that doesn't mean that you can't pour yourself a tasty alcoholic beverage and rest a bit.
George Washington Washington sold whiskey (made near Mount Vernon), but he probably rarely, if ever, drank it. The formula was about 60% rye, 3% corn and a very meager amount of malted barley. As for his favorite drink — he loved dark porter (laced with molasses) that was made in Philadelphia. […]
Thomas Jefferson Jefferson’s huge wine purchases helped bring him to the brink of financial ruin. […]
Andrew Jackson When he wasn’t fighting Indians or the British, the Hero of New Orleans made and sold whiskey. He offered and drank whiskey as a matter of social routine when guests visited him. […]
Chester A. Arthur When a representative of the Temperance movement tried to pressure Arthur into a no-liquor policy in the White House, he thundered: “Madam, I may be the president of the United States, but what I do with my private life is my own damned business!” […]
Grover Cleveland Grover mostly drank beer, and lots of it. He and a fellow politician once took a vow to hold themselves to four beers a day. When they found this too arduous a task, they simply switched to larger beer steins. […]
Teddy Roosevelt Teddy liked Mint Juleps and used them to entice his cabinet to come play tennis with him at the White House. He used fresh mint from the White House garden:
10 to 12 fresh mint leaves “muddled” with a splash of water and a sugar cube 2 or 3 oz. of rye whiskey ¼ oz. of brandy Sprig or two of fresh mint as a garnish […]
Warren G. Harding Even though Harding was president during Prohibition — and it was unlawful to transport liquor — he habitually stashed a bottle of whiskey in his golf bag and thought nothing of taking a pop before he teed up. (He rarely broke 100, so that might explain it.)
Calvin Coolidge “Silent Cal” drank very little, but he was very fond of Tokay wine. The Coolidge Cooler was concocted by Vermont Spirits on Cal’s birthday:
1.5 oz. of Vermont White vodka ½ oz. of American whiskey 2 oz. of orange juice Club soda
Are you going to be a nice Pokémon trainer or an effective one? Andy Kluthe and Andrew Bridgman of Dorkly explain the stark choices that you have. You certainly don't want your Pokémon battle ending before it begins with a hug between the opposing monsters.
But perhaps guide is simpler than it seems. Dorkly commenter Enrico Fethry Migliorini writes:
This exquisitely carved jack-o'-lantern by Melissa, the Empress of Squee, shows the main control room of the TARDIS. The console is an orange with seeds for the controls. Very clever!
Hopefully someone expands on this idea and creates a jack-o'-lantern that shows all of the other rooms of the TARDIS, including the swimming pool, the bedrooms, the wardrobe, and the armory.
Comrades, our moment of liberation is at hand! Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the President of Belarus, has declared that toilet paper is completely absent from the sausage that his nation produces. This, he says, is in sharp contrast to the sausage of neighboring Russia. The dictator, referring to himself in the third person, told reporters that Belarus has kept the food standards that it maintained while it was in the Soviet Union. Radio Free Europe reports:
He told Russian reporters on October 17 that Russia had lowered its food-quality standards after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union "while we, thanks to Lukashenka, retained state standards."
"Belarusian [food] is of substantially higher in quality. There is no toilet paper in the salami and never was," he said.
He added that "such facts have been discovered at Russian enterprises -- toilet paper, soy, all kinds of additives."
