LEGO crafts are totally out of control these days, with bigger and better looking models being made every day by average bricksters like you and I.

But if you want to create something truly spectacular you’ve gotta team up with some fellow bricksters and go all out for, say, two or three years.

That’s how long it took a team of LEGO builders from the U.S., Canada, Belgium and Norway to build this amazing, 14-foot-long StarCraft II model, which they recently unveiled at Brickworld Chicago.

The images and following video were shared by part of the team Siercon and Coral, who have lots more images for you to peruse in this Flickr gallery.

(YouTube Link)

The tiny pics don’t do this model justice, make sure you check out this video to get a really good look at this really good looking LEGO model!

-Via Geeks Are Sexy

Looking for a cool way to cool down on your next fifty-state road trip? Then you won't want to miss this great Delish article that features the strangest flavor of ice cream available in each state. As you might expect, not every state has particularly kookie flavors (Alabama, is black walnut really the wackiest you can come up with), but even so, there are plenty of outrageous tastes worth trying. 

Personally, I'd love to try Louisiana's champagne and violet or Kansas' pineapple cilantro sorbet, but I admit that I'm a little terrified of New York's horseradish flavor and Maine's lobster ice cream served with real chunks of lobster.

(Photo: Unihabitat)

My Papillon will crawl onto any open lap that he can find. He’s bred to be a lapdog, so it’s what he expects. Perhaps this new bed design by the Japanese pet supply company Unihabitat will be an adequate substitute when a real lap isn’t available. It contains gel-filled packets arranged like a pair of human thighs. Think of it as the canine equivalent of this home mainstay:

-via Home Crux

(Photo: Torben Hansen)

That’s according to Roberto A. Ferdman of the Washington Post. He writes that in the past few years, Oreo has come to dominate the cookie marketplace:

Since 2005, Oreo sales have grown by more than 60 percent, which is easily the largest increase among any of the top cookie brands sold in the United States. For context, consider that cookie sales market-wide rose by only 10 percent over that period, or that more than 7o percent of that growth is directly attributable to increased demand for Oreos.

Ferdman writes that Oreo’s popularity can be attributed to simultaneous but contradictory marketing strategies: it’s both innovative and stable. The company offers variants, such as Oreo Thins and key lime pie. But these are clearly labeled as different from the standard, which has remained constant for decades. If people want to eat an Oreo, they know exactly what they’re getting in the package.

-via Joe Carter

David Rind of ABC News awards that title to this glorious video. In 6 seconds, it summarizes the tragedy and comedy of the human experience: hope, victory, hubris, and defeat.

When this Vine is made into a feature-length film, who should play the hero?

-via David Burge

Izzy Swan loves to make machines that are driven by an ordinary battery-powered hand drill. He’s made a band saw, a lawn mower, and a mini bike this way.

His latest challenge was inspired by Theo Jansen’s famous kinetic sculpture Strandbeest. Swan’s walking machine uses the rotary motion of a 20 volt drill to move two actuated legs forward, pushing a little cart. It’s like a Segway, but way cooler. It can hold up to 370 pounds and move for a mile on a full battery charge.

(Video Link)

-via Make

(Photo: Laura Murray/Thrillist)

Matt Baldassano lives in a little apartment of the East Village of Manhattan. It has 550 square feet of living space, which I suppose isn’t tiny by New York City standards. But most of the space is taken up by his wine processing facility that produces 10 different wines using the 2 tons of grapes that are delivered there. It’s a lot of work, but Baldassano has help. He throws grape-crushing parties to do some of the work:

Twice a year, Matt throws a party where members and invited guests come over to crush. Most of them just grab a box of grapes and throw them into that electric crushing machine. But others take off their shoes and stomp on the grapes, because they’re in the club, and it’s their wine, so they can do what they want. The grapes ferment in vats in the yard for 8-10 days before they get pressed and racked (that’s a fancy way of saying the grape juice gets extracted and put into barrels). Once the wine is in the barrels, he sets the temperature in his apartment to a necessary 66 degrees. Then 10-18 months later, boom, you’ve got matured wine.

You can see more photos of his impressive in-house facility at Thrillist.

-via Nag on the Lake

(Photo: Tribune News Service)

In the Jim Crow era, racial segregation shamefully extended into many of America’s public libraries. Pearl Thompson experienced this herself in 1942. She went to the public library of Raleigh, North Carolina to check out a particular book. The library staff refused to issue her a library card because she was black. Thompson was permitted to read the book on site, but only down in the basement.

Now that injustice is being rectified. In a special ceremony at the Cameron Village Regional Library of the Wake County Public Libraries, Thompson was granted her library card. The News & Observer reports:

Ann Burlingame, deputy director of Wake County Public Libraries, said she was thrilled when Deborah Thompson reached out about getting a library card for her mother.

“I just feel like this woman was denied access to a library and a book,” Burlingame said. “I just wanted the opportunity to rectify that, not just for her but for us as the library system.”

Deborah Thompson said her mother loves to learn.

“That’s the legacy that she leaves,” she said.

Pearl Thompson could have spent the past seven decades being angry about what happened to her at the Olivia Raney Library, which now serves as a local history library.

But that’s not her style.

“I don’t hold any kind of hate in my heart, because that doesn’t do it,” she said. “That doesn’t get you there.”

-via Huffington Post

Maybe it's an unfair assumption, but if you're sitting here reading a blog right now, you're probably not a badass mercenary or undercover CIA operative. If you ever wished you could be a little tougher though, you might want to check out this great Flavorwire featuring 20 awesome quotes from some of the toughest guys on film -while it might not teach you how to be a scary ruffian, it could at least give you a little inspiration on how to talk like one.

Batman is a badass, and during his battle with a never ending stream of baddies he employs one baffling technique for maximum bad guy battery- the backhand.

Batman loves to backhand baddies, he even bakes up insane battle plans to ensure more backhandery will take place.

(YouTube Link)

Batman’s badass backhand is always a surprise to the bad guys, but ol' Batsy has another batch of badass moves in his bag of tricks, that's the power of the Batman Surprise- a film by CorridorDigital.

-Via GeekTyrant

Kids get excited when they have a loose tooth and hear about that mythical Tooth Fairy who will bring them money for their lost teeth while they sleep, but then they realize getting that tooth out is gonna hurt.

(Image Link)

Parents try to come up with creative ways of removing the tooth quickly while causing the least amount of pain, but some kids don't need help from their parents to pull a tooth.

These kids take matters into their own hands and in the process end up creating a video that they can rewatch when all their teeth start falling out again during their golden years.

(YouTube Link)

11-year-old Alexis from Colorado is one of those bold action kids, and when she finds a loose tooth she reaches for her slingbow and lets the arrow do the yanking for her!

-Via The Daily What

Move over kale and almond paste, tortillas are about to become the new superfood, but not because they’re great for your body.

They're a superfood because you can use them for more than just wrapping, chewing and swallowing- tortillas can make sweet music if you use a laser cutter to etch grooves into the smooth, floury surface.

Behold the power of the almighty flour tortilla!:

(YouTube Link)

This tasty project was cooked up by YouTube user Rapture Records, and it proves what Latinos have known all along- tortillas are the most versatile food product on the planet!

-Via Tastefully Offensive

We’ve always had viral content in our lives, but back in the day many of stories would have been considered nothing but gossip, and just like gossip viral stories rarely get properly researched before being shared online.

Internet sites have almost made an art of releasing fake or totally untrue news stories, and even though the story went viral when released the follow-up admission that the story was a fake rarely gets as many hits.

Cracked has put together a collection of 7 Fake Viral Photos You Probably Thought Were Real which includes the truth about the square dog grooming trend in Japan, the #holdacokewithyourboobs ridiculousness, and more! (Contains NSFW language)

Somewhere along the way video games became child’s play in the minds of consumer groups and ratings boards, but back in the radically square 8-bit arcade days there were way more adults playing games than kids.

The arcade game ads of yore were cheesy in all the right ways, with garish art and big haired models who look completely out of place standing near an arcade cabinet, let alone trying to play a video game (gasp!):

Explore the seamy underbelly of early arcade game advertising with this fun and funky collection entitled Sex Sells #31: Arcade Games. It's sure to put you in the mood...for some classic coin-op action!

-Via Dangerous Minds

Got annoying co-workers? Here's something fun you can do: classify them as rappers!

Sarah Cooper of The Cooper Review classified ten of the most annoying types of co-workers as represented by various rappers. For examples:

Someone who never leaves their cubicle is an Ice Cubicle:

Someone who volunteers for everything, then complains about all that work is a Kendrick Lamartyr:

Someone who's always looking at your screen is a Snoop Snoopy Dog: