Cleave through space and time whilst cutting onions and tomatoes with this colorful Cosmos Kitchen Knives by Chef’s Vision. The set includes different types of knives (with each having a different design) for all your cutting needs. It only costs about $50 over at Amazon.

Slicing and dicing just got fun and colorful!

(Image Credit: Chef’s Vision/ Amazon/ Technabob)

Riccardo Bonci has an impressive organ and he knows how to play it. He's fond of using his organ to cover the theme music to favorite old cartoons, including Inspector Gadget and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

On his YouTube channel, Bonci also covers many 70s-era anime themes, only a few of which I recognize (sorry, Alex hired me for my good looks, not my knowledge). These include Captain Harlock and Mazinger Z, the latter of which I remember vividly in its American version as Tranzor Z.

-via Geekologie

A cockatiel named Peanut just wants to help out. Watch him bob his head as his human stirs his morning coffee. When he stops, Peanut stops, too. Just trying to be helpful. -via Laughing Squid

What's the most annoying trend from 2019 that you recall? Think carefully, eating Tide Pods was completely over sometime in 2018. Still, there are plenty of things that were all over the internet in 2019 that we can do without going into the new year. So let's say goodbye to them. Even if they began several years ago, we've had enough by now.

Oh, there are more than you think. See 28 things that we need to leave behind at Cracked.

First off, what follows is something we don't have to worry about. Our sun will someday go supernova, but it will have to grow an awful lot first, and that will take billions of years. There are many other ways to wipe out humanity that will take less time. So the scenario for experiencing a supernova explosion is a thought experiment, but a fascinating one.

As far as raw explosive power goes, no other cataclysm in the Universe is both as common and as destructive as a core-collapse supernova. In one brief event lasting only seconds, a runaway reaction causes a star to give off as much energy as our Sun will emit over its entire 10-12 billion year lifetime. While many supernovae have been observed both historically and since the invention of the telescope, humanity has never witnessed one up close.

Recently, the nearby red supergiant star, Betelgeuse, has started exhibiting interesting signs of dimming, leading some to suspect that it might be on the verge of going supernova. While our Sun isn't massive enough to experience that same fate, it's a fun and macabre thought experiment to imagine what would happen if it did. Yes, we'd all die in short order, but not from either the blast wave or from radiation. Instead, the neutrinos would get us first.

What follows is a detailed explanation of the carnage, which we would never see coming. Get the story at Forbes, but reassure yourself that it won't happen in your lifetime. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Judy Schmidt)

For a Nochebuena (Christmas Eve) party, artist Lissette Carrera assembled an oz of Yoda eggs using what appear to be apple slices for the ears. It looks like spicy hot wasabi, right? Carrera says that her husband wanted to, as a prank, make one egg pure wasabi.

-via Super Punch

Earth and Sun is a neat interactive tutorial on what makes a day for people on Earth. In specific, it explains the Earth's rotation, revolution, speed, axial tilt, solstices and equinoxes, and more that you haven't thought all that much about.

The duration between two solar noons is known as a solar day which lasts the familiar 24 hours. However, that’s not completely accurate. If you look closely at the simulation of the sidereal and solar day you’ll notice that we didn’t account for two important factors – eccentricity of the orbit and the axial tilt of the Earth. In fact, 24 hours is the duration of a mean solar day. The actual duration of each individual day varies, but before we witness that variation we have to discuss the most important consequence of the axial tilt.

In the visual shown here, you can drag the Earth around on any axis, but you can't change where the sun is, so depending on what time you do it, you'll see where daylight and dark falls. That's just one of the many ways you can visualize what's happening on Earth at the site. -via Metafilter

Intermittent fasting is a type of diet in which a person limits either his eating times to 6-8 hours per day, or the number of moderate-sized meals that he will eat in a week. The big question is, is it effective?

Mark Manson, a neuroscientist from Johns Hopkins Medicine, says that “it could be a part of a healthy lifestyle”. He has studied the effects of intermittent fasting for 25 years, and he adopted it in his life 20 years ago.

An array of animal and some human studies have shown that alternating between times of fasting and eating supports cellular health, probably by triggering an age-old adaptation to periods of food scarcity called metabolic switching. Such a switch occurs when cells use up their stores of rapidly accessible, sugar-based fuel, and begin converting fat into energy in a slower metabolic process.

Mattson says studies have shown that this switch improves blood sugar regulation, increases resistance to stress and suppresses inflammation. Because most Americans eat three meals plus snacks each day, they do not experience the switch, or the suggested benefits.

More about this study over at EurekAlert.

(Image Credit: congerdesign/ Pixabay)

#SolarEclipse2019 — in pictures https://t.co/rv9FO0hDDk pic.twitter.com/Bv6F91967V

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) December 26, 2019

The eclipse, which is known as an annular solar eclipse, was also viewed in space. The eclipse started in Saudi Arabia. The Moon passed in front of the Sun, but it did not entirely cover the Sun’s face, and this created a brilliant ring (“annulus”) which gave it a “ring of fire” effect. It is the last eclipse of the year, and also the last eclipse of the decade.

See the many photos and videos over at Space.com.

What a way to end the decade!

(Image Credit: Al Jazeera English/ Twitter)

Spotify has sent a number of USB drives to reporters last week. The USBs had a note with them which said, “play me.” While it is not uncommon for reporters to receive USB drives in the post (as companies distribute USB drives which often contains promotional materials or very large files), anyone with basic security training knows that plugging in a USB drive with no precautions is a big no-no.

People over at TechCrunch have examined the drive sent by Spotify.

It was benign and contained a single audio file. “This is Alex Goldman, and you’ve just been hacked,” the file played.

The drive was just a promotion for a new Spotify podcast. Because of course it was.

Jake Williams, a former NSA hacker and founder of Rendition Infosec, called the move “amazingly tone deaf” to encourage reporters into plugging in the drives to their computers.

USB drives are not inherently malicious, but are known to be used in hacking campaigns — like power plants and nuclear enrichment plants — which are typically not connected to the internet. USB drives can harbor malware that can open and install backdoors on a victim’s computer, Williams said.

More details about this over at the site.

(Image Credit: TechCrunch)

Shark skin may be tough, but it is not tough enough to handle the acidified oceans of the future.

For nine weeks, researchers have exposed three puffadder skysharks to seawater modified to mimic projected acidic levels in 2300, and what they found out was corrosion had frayed the edges of many denticles (which are the toothlike protrusions that make up sharkskin). Sharks with damaged denticles could be more vulnerable to infection or injury.

“Shark denticles are made from dentin, which we know from human dentistry is susceptible to degradation from carbonic acid,” says Lutz Auerswald, a fisheries biologist at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. “That could make [sharks] especially vulnerable.”

More details over at ScienceNews.

(Image Credit: Albert kok/ Wikimedia Commons)

The Court of Historical Review and Appeals was an unofficial court in San Francisco that tried cold cases, often very cold cases that were thought to have been settled decades ago. It was a publicity stunt concocted by San Francisco publicist Bernard Averbuch in 1975. The first case it heard was that of police chief chief George W. Wittman, who was relieved of duty after being charged with accepting bribes to allow gambling to flourish in Chinatown -in 1905.

Averbuch had heard of Wittman when city archivist Gladys Hansen discovered police personnel records dating back to 1853. He saw injustice in Wittman’s firing, noted briefly in the ledger in red ink, and enlisted the help of his friend Harry Low, a Superior Court judge, to stage a rehearing. Local TV cameras turned out for the much belated trial. With the benefit of hindsight, Wittman’s “defense team,” a collection of civil servants, including Hansen, told a twisted tale of turn-of-the-century yellow journalism, mayoral corruption, racism and greed that had been hidden from the public at the time. Wittman, they argued, had been a pawn in a scheme to paint Chinatown as an unseemly and dangerous place, part of a bigger effort to move the Chinese immigrants off of their valuable land. With a bang of his gavel, Judge Low rewrote history, ruling that Wittman’s firing was unjust.

The "re-trial" was so popular that the Court of Historical Review and Appeals continued, examining many other historical cases for possible injustice over the next 25 years. The findings were not binding, but drew a lot of national press. Read about some of the other cases heard by the court at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Shaylyn Esposito)

Accessories sized for 11-inch fashion dolls will also work for 12-inch action figures. Redditor adultish- scored a used beachfront mansion made for Barbie dolls for $20 and converted it into a superhero headquarters for her son! While the superheroes don't need a kitchen or bathroom (at least not for adventures), they do need a roomy garage. And sure, that couch is too small for Hulk, but life-size couches are too small for life-size Hulk as well. See the before and after images here.

An American doctor has spotted something amazing on David, the statue created by Renaissance artist Michelangelo. That something is an anatomical insight made by the artist, which have gone unnoticed on the statue for more than 500 years.

In the vast majority of sculptures, and in the everyday physiology of living people, the jugular vein running from the upper torso through the neck is not visible.

But in the Renaissance masterpiece, the vessel is clearly "distended" and made visible above David's collarbone, as would occur in any healthy young man who's at a pitch of excitement about facing a potentially lethal opponent—in this case, Goliath.

"Michelangelo, like some of his artistic contemporaries, had anatomical training," Gelfman wrote in a letter published Dec 26 in the journal JAMA Cardiology. "I realized that Michelangelo must have noticed temporary jugular venous distension in healthy individuals who are excited."

But what is so amazing about this feature on the statue? This observation came to the artist over a century before its documentation by medical science! Talk about awesome powers of observation.

(Image Credit: Jörg Bittner Unna/ Wikimedia Commons)

Take your time to properly clear the ice and snow from your tactical vehicle before initiating your morning reconnaissance, or even just taking the kids to school and picking up groceries. That's how you stay safe and alert to potential threats.

The police department of Mansfield, Massachusetts appreciates your diligence. Several months ago, to encourage proper snow and ice removal, it invented the Snow Enforcer. This advanced device, ideal for urban operators such as yourself, has an extended buttstock, red dot sight, and side-mounted light.

What it lacks is a couple Picatinny rails and sling mounts for essential accessories. You may have to take your Snow Enforcer to a skilled scrapersmith to fully equip it.

-via reddit