These are Christmas toy parodies made by Jeff Wysaski. He has them distributed in local stores. Why? Because it’s hilarious.
Some of these toys I can buy for my enemies, such as the frog that can tell him how much I hate him. Others I can buy for myself, like the crippling depression supervillain action figure.
See the other toys over at Sad And Useless.
Which toy do you like the most?
(Image Credit: Sad And Useless)
Architecture flirts with nature in expressive but subtle ways. Oftentimes, the idea behind this is to harmonize and not dominate the landscapes. When faced with steep slopes, cliff faces, and mountainsides, this could prove to be a challenge.
Check out these houses that have overcome this challenge, and where they can be found, over at CNN.
(Image Credit: Chen Hao / Bengo Studio)
After the recent incidents involving selfies, the US National Park Service wants to reinforce good and safe photo etiquette. There’s no better way to get the attention of your intended audience than to depict the possible effects of their bad selfie behavior through gingerbread cookies. These gingerbread cookies aim to convince all to stay a safe distance away from the wildlife, as Cnet.com details:
"Use a zoom lens on your camera," the NPS tweeted on Friday. "If you are close enough to take a selfie with wildlife, you are wayyyy too close ... gingerly back away."
The agency set the scene with photos showing a gingerbread man posing for a selfie with two bison. The next image shows the cookie flying through the air with a "WTF just happened" expression on its face.
The NPS doled out some more detailed advice in an Instagram version of the post. "Animals may appear to be calm and docile but are unpredictable and can easily be startled," the agency warned. It suggests sticking to trails and boardwalks and keeping your eye on the trail rather than your camera.
image via Cnet.com
Christmas time primarily means two things: reunions, and giving and receiving gifts. That, and it also means that there are etiquette landmines that await you. How do you respond when you receive a gift that you don’t like? How do you handle the person who always brings up politics at the Christmas table? Thomas Farley, also known as Mr. Manners, joins TODAY to provide timely advice for those tricky situations.
See the interview over at the site.
(Image Credit: meelina/ Pixabay)
70-year-old Robert Fox already knew where he wanted to spend his Christmas —where his daughter is. He has a problem, though: he doesn’t know how any of that could happen.
As he sat down on a bench in downtown Washington’s Franklin Square, he imagined that he would be welcomed by his daughter with a hug and a kiss. Christmas was then less than 48 hours away.
His daughter lived 61 miles south, in a small town just outside Fredericksburg, Va. He has a cellphone but can’t afford to pay for service. He didn’t know his daughter’s number or even the number of anyone who did. He hadn’t seen her since a relative’s funeral five, maybe six years ago, and they hadn’t talked in four. He didn’t own a car, and in his pocket was all the money he had left in the world: 62 cents.
[...]
Fox figured he should take a Greyhound bus from Union Station to Fredericksburg, where he planned to call her.
A bus ticket, however, costs $27. Will he be able to find that much money?
Find out more about his story over at The Washington Post.
(Image Credit: Michael S. Williamson/ The Washington Post)
I'm muddling the headline a bit because there's quite a lot of unpack. Michael Siegrist and Angela Bearth, professors at a university in Switzerland, polled people in eight European countries and asked them if they would like to live in a world without chemical substances. Ilya Somin writes at Reason:
A recent study published in Nature Chemistry finds that 39 percent of respondents in eight European countries say they "agree" with the statement that "I would like to live in a world where chemical substances don't exist." Another 39 percent say the "slightly agree" or "slightly disagree" with this statement. Similarly, 40% say "they do everything I can to avoid contact with chemical substances in my daily life."
As the study's authors—Swiss academics Michael Siegrist and Angela Bearth—point out, such "chemophobia reflects stunning scientific ignorance, because human life would be virtually impossible without chemicals. Indeed, pretty much everything we use or touch is a chemical or combination of chemicals.
So it's even worse than we thought! The chemicals are everywhere!
For several years, when I've conducted one-shot information literacy classes at my library, I've done a cold open in which I pull up the hilarious DHMO.org website and launch into a fast-paced and hopefully terrifying rant about the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide.
That's water.
Increasingly, though, I find that I can't lead with this shtick because the students already know what dihydrogen monoxide is or have already seen the website. That's an unscientific sample without even casual methodological rigor, but it's encouraging.
-via Instapundit | Image: A Cure for Stupid People t-shirt now on sale at the NeatoShop!
Hannah Fry is a mathematician with expertise in the algorithms tech companies use. She is also a privacy expert, and has warned against allowing Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa into the bedroom.
While Amazon previously denied that its Echo devices were used to spy on people, earlier this year they admitted that their employees listen to customer voice recordings in order to improve speech recognition.
It was also revealed that recordings of personal moments were inadvertently caught up after the smart speaker was triggered by words that sounded similar to "Alexa".
After requesting audio data from Amazon that had been recorded by her Echo speaker, Dr Fry discovered it had picked up conversations that were never directed at the voice assistant.
With an estimated two million UK households owning Alexa devices, the associate professor warned people to be careful how they use them.
Dr. Fry believes that there should be spaces in our homes that should remain completely private, such as the bathroom and the bedroom.
Scary!
(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
How should you wrap your cat so that she or he fits neatly under the Christmas tree, ready to be opened in the morning? Anne Holdren provides this helpful instructional video.
She also provides an alternate version in which the person wrapping the cat (the same cat) is a hunky shirtless firefighter. I asked my wife which one I should post and she just glared at me. So I'm going with the first one.
Nota bene: not all cats will approve of being wrapped and may resist quite vigorously.
-via Ace of Spades HQ
What is unclear is whether the Taiwanese online retailer is hoping to convince toilet seat customers to buy a Switch or Switch customers to buy a toilet seat. Nintendo Life reports:
A Taiwanese retailer has decided that the best way to flog Nintendo Switch systems is to chuck in a smart toilet seat - you know, for those lengthy play sessions. According to Chinese Nintendo, the bundles' names translate to "Sit well full-length" for the original Switch model, and "Loneliness Eliminator" for the Switch Lite. Truly inspiring.
With the pace of gaming technology, this won't even be an issue within a year or two, as most toilet seats will be gaming consoles anyway.
-via Dave Barry | Image: Chinese Nintendo
It’s official. Cats are the nemesis of Christmas trees. It doesn’t matter how big or small the Christmas tree is — a cat can and will bring it down at all costs.
Note: When I say cats, I don’t just mean the domesticated ones. I also mean the big cats (they are part of the family, too!)
See the other photos (and GIFs) of cats destroying Christmas trees over at Meowingtons.
(Images Credit: Meowingtons)
Looking forward to a unique food experience this Christmas time? Try making this Puerto Rican Christmas meal called pernil. It is a slow-roasted pork roast meal commonly shared in Puerto Rico on Christmas. For the Puerto Ricans, it is not Christmas without this.
The downside to this meal, however, is that it takes a lot of time, and you might not be able to prepare the meal in time with Christmas Eve. Nevertheless, it’s worth trying to cook this.
Know how to prepare this meal over at the Los Angeles Times.
(Image Credit: Celeste Noche / For The Times)
Ever since the release of the first iPhone in 2007, a US study has found that phone-related injuries have risen dramatically. The injuries greatly varied from exploding batteries to injuries sustained via walking to a lamppost.
Readers of The Guardian provided their own stories of phone-related injuries. Here is just one of them:
One morning I was watching a YouTube video of the Superbowl half-time show where Madonna kissed Britney and Christina. I slipped down a steep set of stairs, taking off most of the skin on my left side and leaving me with a terrible ache in my elbow in cold weather that I now affectionately refer to as “Madonna elbow” whenever it strikes. I learnt a lesson that day!
More of these stories over at the site.
Do you have phone-related injuries?
(Image Credit: DariuszSankowski/ Pixabay)
Social media has gone into a frenzy thanks to this picture of a bride and her bridesmaids who posed with “bouquets” made of beer bottles. A guest shared the wedding snap on the discussion website Reddit, and the bride was shamed a lot.
A commenter said that the bottles, some still with labels on, had no “class.”
The women in the snap all hold a beer bottle each containing a single white flower to resemble "bouquets".
"That could've been cute if they either put more flowers inside the beer bottle, or made something ornate with the bottle caps to look like flowers,"
Some criticized the wedding for its “lack of sophistication,” such as the lack of footwear or the hideous color and shape of the skirts.
Personally, I feel like the wedding is totally fine, and I believe that everyone had a blast. But what are your thoughts about this one?
(Image Credit: Reddit/ Mirror)
43-year-old Veronica Duque arrived at the lesson at Maria Teresa Inigo de Toro school in Valladolid wearing a white coat. When she removed the white coat, however, there were "confusion, shouts, applause and some covered their eyes" — apparently, she was wearing a bodysuit which depicted the internal organs of the human body. Her reason for doing this? To help her year four class "visualise the disposition of internal organs".
She wanted to make the class more practical, so used the outfit to pique her students' interests before turning to the traditional plastic bust the school uses to teach anatomy.
Ms Duque revealed she found the costume by pure chance after seeing an advert online and decided to buy it.
What a very passionate teacher. I hope more teachers follow her example and create inventive ways to teach students.
What are your thoughts about this one?
(Image Credit: @mikemoratinos/ Sky News)
Happy Hanukkah to all those who celebrate it on Earth! #HappyHanukkah pic.twitter.com/FKC2M5iXni
— Jessica Meir (@Astro_Jessica) December 23, 2019
As Hanukkah began at sundown on Sunday, NASA astronaut Jessica Meir sent a photographic greeting to earth via Twitter. She's been aboard the ISS since September, and had planned ahead well enough to take a pair of festive socks for the occasion. That may be the extent of her celebration, considering the restrictions of space.
But lighting fires in outer space can be especially challenging, considering that flames can react to the absence of gravity in an uncontrolled manner.
Perhaps for this reason, for her messageMeir opted for a picture of her feet wrapped in a pair of entertaining socks featuring pink menorahs and green stars of David on a blue background. And she did follow the tradition of placing the menorah close to the window, since behind her feet, the earth is visible thousands of kilometers away.
In case you are wondering what a lit candle looks like in space, you can see that. Also, since there are around eight "sundowns" per day on the space station, Meir began the holiday using her home coordinates. Meanwhile, a Twitter user in Jerusalem is wearing astronaut socks.
Happy Hanukkah from Jerusalem pic.twitter.com/zSLmwzZTPg
— Yiftah Curiel (@yiftahc) December 23, 2019
-via reddit
