It's Barbiecue sauce! Get it?

The Mattel and Heinz companies have secretly developed a Barbie-themed sauce in honor of the doll's 65th anniversary "after a huge public demand." It's a vegan mayonnaise that is tainted with beetroot juice to match the official Barbie shade of pink (hex code #e0218a).

Fortunately, Heinz is only releasing its product in the UK and Spain, and the United States is thankfully outside of the blast radius. My condolences to the Europeans, though. The trauma begins today at Tesco stores in Britain.

-via Fast Company, which calls upon the end of Barbie product collaborations for humanitarian reasons.

Photo: Heinz UK

Al Condominio, a restaurant that opened last month in Verona, Italy, would like for its patrons to fully enjoy the social aspects of public dining. This requires putting away phones and, hopefully, talking to other human beings who are physically present.

The Guardian reports that to encourage socializing, the restaurant encourages patrons to lock their phones in boxes. Once seated at a table, the patron hands the box key to a waiter, who provides free wine. So far, about 90% of patrons participate in this program.

Patrons can also write reviews and leave them in their phone boxes as they exit. Patrons who write the most positive reviews will receive free meals the next time that they visit. 

-via Messy Nessy Chic | Photos: Al Condominio

Would you like to smell like McDonald's French fries? The company clearly thinks so and is marketing its smell broadly, including, most recently, branded perfume. It's also counting on the smell of its food to be so recognizable that people will identify it without any other data aside from the company's particular shade of red.

Ads of the World reports that these billboards in the Netherlands are set about 200 meters (that's about 112.5 DeForest Kelleys stacked end to end) from McDonald's restaurants. The company hopes that the smell will trigger cravings for the actual food products.

"It's the first billboard where the smell becomes the ad." I wonder what other products, brands, or companies could market themselves this way successfully. Perhaps comic book and gaming stores, as they usually have a noticeable aroma.

-via Marginal Revolution

In the early 1960s, an American adventurer named Burt Kerr Todd fell in love the with the isolated and impoverished Himalayan nation of Bhutan. He wanted to help the nation economically develop and so proposed that the kingdom produce highly unusual and therefore collectible postage stamps.

Among these innovative stamps were tiny yet completely functional vinyl records that shared information about and music from Bhutan, such as the above recording of the national anthem. Others provide basic information about the nation to international audiences that might have never have even heard of Bhutan.

The Vinyl Factory reports that Bhutan issued a set of seven stamps in 1972 in both English and Dzongkha.

-via Nag on the Lake

In February, the US Patent Office granted Craig Wallace Coulter rights for this design for a unique version of the classic game. It consists of two 8x8 boards next to each other and wrapped around a cylinder. Four complete sets of pieces are necessary, possibly for four different simultaneous players. The pieces are attached to the cylinder with either velcro or magnets.

Coulter proposes, if I understand his application correctly, adding additional 8x8 boards to the cylinder, allowing for an even larger playing space, as well as additional players to the same game. At this point, like Risk or Succession Wars, diplomacy and treachery are likely components of the game.

Previously on Neatorama: 12 Bizarre Chess Variants

-via Weird Universe

Antarctica doesn't get a lot of fires, but it's the windiest and driest continent in the world and thus fires are always a potential source of danger. Given the extreme weather conditions of the place, it's necessary that any potential fire sources be addressed immediately.

Haikai Magazine talked to Nicki Schauman, the senior firefighter at the America's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, where 7 firefighters and 2 dispatchers respond to fire threats. Most of their work consists of responding to medical emergencies (they are also EMTs), but fire risks are especially acute when planes land and take off at Amundsen-Scott.

Schauman and his colleagues have specialized gear adapted to function in the extreme cold. When it's busy, they often spend half the day in vans near the runway, ready to respond the moment that an aircraft accident happens.

-via Nag on the Lake | Photo: Antarctic Fire Department

Scientists have long been fully aware that Uranus is filled with gas -- a lot of gas. But exploring deeper inside reveals more. Live Science reports that a recently published study describes a mushy substance deep in the interior of Uranus.

If we could actually get close enough, we might be able to smell this substance: semi-frozen methane. This conclusion departs from previous assessments of Uranus which concluded that the planet consists of mostly water and ammonia.

We will, though, have to wait for more advanced probes to deeply penetrate Uranus instead of relying only on data gathered by flybys, such as that procured by Voyager 2.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: NASA

Normally competitive jujitsu takes place in a gym on a mat or an otherwise fairly open space. But car jitsu contests take place entirely within the confines of a car. One competitor must compel the other to submit. There's a world-level championship program in addition to local events.

This is a great idea for practical training in the martial arts. The karate that I study practices self-defense techniques for specific scenarios (e.g. while seated, from behind, or when lying down). But not for while in a car.

This combat sport could be further improved by placing it inside a self-driving car in motion to add to the chaotic ambiance.

-via Born in Space

Writing out HELP or SOS while stranded on a desert island is such a cliche that it has its own TV Tropes page. The US Coast Guard says that it actually happened when, on Tuesday, it rescued three men who became stranded on the island of Pikelot in Micronesia. This 31-acre island is 100 miles away from the nearest settlement.

When a relative of the three men, who had set out across the sea on a 20-foot boat with an outboard motor, reported them missing, the Coast Guard launched a search and rescue mission. A US Navy aircraft spotted them and snapped this image. Then the cutter Oliver Henry picked them up.

It's a good thing that they spelled HELP correctly, as The Far Side warned us many years ago.

-via Kottke

In 1978, Patrick Moriarty was in his first year of teaching science to ninth graders. He told them that there would be a solar eclipse across their location in Upstate New York on April 8, 2024. Moriarty proposed that they reunite at that time to watch the event together and renewed that invitation for his new students for the next 16 years.

Now, 46 years later, about 100 of these now-adults gathered together at Moriarty's home to get reacquainted, remember old times, and enjoy the celestial mystery unfold in the daytime sky. You can see photos of this gathering at the Democrat & Chronicle.

-via My Modern Met

Death Comes Lifting is a unique gym in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The decor, ambiance, and even the fitness routines reflect a fascination with the macabre. People don't so much join as members so much as enlist in an army of the undead who improve their health through online and in-person classes and weightlifting.

STAR TREK STATE DINNER:

Japan PM Fumio Kishida: "Let me conclude with the line from Star Trek: To boldly go where no one has gone before. By the way, @GeorgeTakei who played Hikaru Sulu, the helmsman of the USS Enterprise, also has roots in Hiroshima ... Boldly go. Cheers!" pic.twitter.com/FJGPRdMH5K

— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) April 11, 2024

Fumio Kishida, the Prime Minister of Japan, attended a dinner at the White House yesterday. During this event, the Associated Press reports, offered a toast by quoting the most famous line from Star Trek.

Mr. Kishida is a native of Hiroshima and, at the end of his toast, noted the connection between his city and that of Japanese-American Star Trek actor George Takei.

Perhaps someday a US President will visit Japan and offer a similar toast quoting, say Space Battleship Yamato.

A little nod to Peter Higgs, to mark his passing. I interviewed him at Cheltenham Science Festival a few years ago, and asked him to sign this silly note, which he was delighted to do! There are only two of these in existence (a certain other Irish comic has the other). RIP. pic.twitter.com/vgI6yx50FN

— Dara Ó Briain (@daraobriain) April 9, 2024

Peter Higgs, the physicist who proposed the existence of the Higgs boson subatomic particle, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 94. The Associated Press informs us that in 2012, the scientists at CERN used the Large Hadron Collider to confirm the existence of it. This work led to Higgs and the Belgian physicist Francois Englert earning the Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery.

On Twitter, Dara Ó Briain, an Irish comedian, shares this gag that he made with Higgs's help.

Daniel Whiteson is a particle physicist at the University of California at Irvine. Along with Jorge Cham, the cartoonist behind PHD Comics, he hosts the podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe. This podcast makes the field of particle physics accessible to those of us who lack the necessary academic preparation.

On Twitter, Whiteson shares the journey of one of his younger fans who started her path into applied physics by listening to the podcast and is now ready for the next step in his classroom at UC Irvine.

One of the highest aspirations of a teacher is to make a difference to his students. It looks like Dr. Whiteson has succeeded.

I've been following the Twitter user and Substack writer Old Hollow Tree for a few months. He has an interesting life story about his return to the Vermont woods of his youth and writes about his quest to find meaning in family and a newfound rural lifestyle.

What is his authentic way to experience today's solar eclipse? With pie, of course. His mother prepared this Boston cream pie to show the path of the moon across the sun.