Galaxy's Edge is the new Star Wars theme park located at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Both put visitors on the planet Batuu at a time point just after The Last Jedi in the Star Wars canon. Several months after the parks' openings, Wired takes a look at the origin, architecture, and engineering that goes into creating a fantasy world in the Star Wars universe.

There are two ways to talk about Galaxy's Edge. Both are true.

One:

The remote planet of Batuu was once covered with trees thousands of feet tall. After a cataclysm petrified them, only their trunks remained. For mysterious reasons, one looks like obsidian, giving a town that grew up around it its name: Black Spire Outpost. A disreputable trader named Hondo Ohnaka recently opened a cargo business there, for which he is recruiting pilots to fly off-books cargo runs that may also be in support of the galactic Resistance movement. Stormtroopers from the First Order have just arrived to hunt for Resistance sympathizers.

Two (this one is longer):

In 2012, George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to the Walt Disney Company for $4 billion.

Following that is the story of how Galaxy's Edge came about. But most of the article is a description of the Galaxy's Edge experience, which is not only geographically and chronologically placed in the Star Wars universe, but also follows an immersive storyline, while offering the rides, games, and character interactions you'd expect from a Disney park. You can even become a character in that world by logging in with your phone and unlocking games at various locations that follow the plot. Before you plan a visit to Galaxy's Edge, read what to expect at Wired.

Lauren Green McAfee decorated her home for Christmas. Her daughter saw the decorated trees for the first time in her life. She decided that the appropriate reaction was to walk around and greet them by shaking their hands--that is, their limbs.

-via Kurt Schlichter

The best architects are also visionaries. A really good building will be able to accommodate features that aren't even available yet! Tom Scott takes us on a tour of the Cooper Union building in New York, ground zero in the history of the elevator.

In a few weeks, 2019 is going to be over, and another decade is closing as well. If someone comes to you and makes you list all the events, inventions, and memorable memories you know that happened during the 2010s, can you name them all? I can’t, but Buzzfeed’s Katherine Miller sure did, and reading through her rundown of the 2010s made my brain melt and made me ask, “All of these happened in the 2010s?” See her whole rundown of the decade at Buzzfeed, and maybe she can make your brain melt as well. 

image credit: via Buzzfeed

Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk was the bop that made everyone dance and groove to it during its release back in 2014. The track also dominated for 14 weeks in the Billboard Hot 100. With that reception, who would be surprised that Billboard hails the song as the song of the decade? I personally am more surprised that ten years have gone by so fast rather than Uptown Funk being the song of the decade. CBS News listed the top 10 songs of the decade from Billboard as well, if you want to check to see if Adele's Rolling In The Deep made the cut!

The Guardian’s Megan Nolan turned to Spotify’s White Noise For Infants after she moved to London, wanting to drown all the unnecessary noises of her surroundings during her downtime. The heterogeneous mixture of sound waves extending over a wide frequency range, or the sound that drowns out other sounds, white noise can improve functioning in adults, as Nolan details: 

A 2018 study published by Oxford University Press showed white noise can improve functioning in adults with attention deficit disorder. Another in the same year in South Korea suggested weighted white noise – which attempts to account for the particular wave frequencies found in sufferers of depression – can have a positive effect. In Taiwan, a 2018 survey of people living with dementia showed it can provide a simple way to reduce their agitation.

White noise itself is simply a random mixture of sound frequencies, but what it’s used for by me and others like me is often an attempt at a kind of augmented auditory life. It’s a modern, western habit that is too new in general populations for there yet to be much solid research on its effects. But adapting to a stressful environment by creating a personal soundscape is nothing new.

image credit: via wikimedia commons

Fook Lam Moon, a Macau restaurant, is currently offering a special menu called the “Manchu-Han Imperial Feast”. The highlights of this special menu include sea cucumber, wild goose, bird’s nest soup, and leg of water turtle. The menu is inspired by a legendary feast in Chinese history — a feast so spectacular that it appeased sworn rivals and stabilized a nation. It was a memorable feast, and probably something that never really happened.

Instead, a misrepresented episode from Chinese history is today an enduring national symbol of ethnic harmony and reconciliation, reenacted time and time again in restaurants throughout the country.

The Qing Dynasty Emperor Kangxi (1654–1722) was no stranger to opulent dinner parties. He neutralized the Mongolian threat to China’s northern border early in his reign by holding a series of “Mongolian Vassal Banquets” in the Forbidden City, famously sending his princely guests home with leftovers. Later in life, he invited 3,000 of Beijing’s septuagenarians to his 61st birthday party for an event dubbed “The Feast of a Thousand Elders.”

When members of the Manchu ethnic group began taking over ministry positions long-held by the ethnic Han, tension gripped the country. As the story goes, Kangxi, himself a Manchu, turned to a proven solution: food. He planned his 66th birthday feast accordingly.

I guess the saying “a way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” is proven to be true by this emperor. What do you think?

(Image Credit: Galaxy Macau)

Brooklyn — During New York’s harshest weather, Shayla would open her kitchen window, as well as the screen. This means that bugs, dirt, ice, or humidity, depending on the season, can come in unhindered to her house. But why does Shayla expose herself to these elements? The answer is, so that a stray cat can go through the window and seek shelter, that is, if he wants to.

I moved into my apartment in the fall of 2014. It’s a first-floor railroad in a brick rowhouse overlooking a garden that none of the tenants have access to. As a result, the yard is a wild place. Its only human trespassers are the occasional handyman or gardener.

The cat appeared shortly after I moved in. He was a small grey and white tabby, with a fuzzy nub on his behind where a tail should be. I named him Nubbin. After seeing him dart through the yard a few times, I bought a can of Friskies, put it on a plate on the windowsill, and was happily surprised when he came and ate it all up. Now, I feed Nubbin two or three times a day.

Nubbin, like Shayla, is an anxious and neurotic creature. But how did Nubbin teach Shayla a lesson about anxiety? Know more about this story over at Vice.

(Image Credit: Shayla Love/ Vice)

Spanish artist Maximo Riera paid homage to the animal kingdom with his lifelike rendering of different animals in his Animal Chair collection, made in polyurethane and leather. The collection is composed of chairs in different designs such as hippos, octopus, rhinos, and elephants, getting attention in any room they’re placed in, and quite a good conversation starter with their eye-catching details, not to mention their life-like size. If you have the £35,000 to £65,000 ready to spare, you can have one chair made to order!  

(via Plain magazine)

mage credit: via Plain magazine

Most of the dinosaurs roamed Earth when the planet was in a different part of the Milky Way, as NASA scientist Jessie Christiansen showed in her animation of our solar system’s movement through the Milky Way. Christiansen also showed how long the dinosaurs existed, and what a short time humans have been living on Earth in comparison. ScienceAlert has the details:

Christiansen got the idea to illustrate this history when she was leading a stargazing party at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Attendees were astonished when she mentioned that our Solar System had been across the galaxy when dinosaurs roamed.

"That was the first time I realised that those time scales – archaeological, fossil record time scales and astronomical time scales – actually kind of match along together," Christiansen told Business Insider. "Then I had this idea that I could map out dinosaur evolution through the galaxy's rotation."

even as our solar system travels through the Milky Way, it doesn't approach the inhospitable centre, where life probably wouldn't survive.

"There's a lot of stars, it's dynamically unstable, there's a lot of radiation," Christiansen said. "Our Solar System certainly doesn't pass through that."

That's a huge part of why dinosaurs, mammals, or any other form of life can exist on Earth.

image credit: via wikimedia commons

It might look like your conventional plastic, but it really isn’t. It’s made up of fish waste and algae. In other words, if in an unfortunate moment it goes to the ocean, the plastic could be eaten safely by a fish. Called MarinaTex, this plastic won this year’s James Dyson Award.

“It began with my desire to work with waste,” says Lucy Hughes, a recent graduate from the U.K.’s University of Sussex, who began developing the material as a student. Through a contact at the university, Hughes visited a fish processing plant to see the massive quantity of waste generated by the industry and find new ways to use it. She focused on fish skins and scales. “When I had it in my hands, I realized this has got potential,” she says. “It’s super strong and flexible and pliable.”

Hughes spent months experimenting with fish waste in her kitchen, running more than 100 experiments to find a binder and a process that could hold together the proteins in the fish skins and scales. “I had a lot of failed attempts—a lot of things either went too brittle or too gooey or somewhat moldy,” she says. She finally landed on a type of algae that can be locally sourced.

More details about this wonderful invention over at Fast Company.

(Image Credit: Dyson)

Vaccines are safe and effective in preventing the spread of disease. Failing to vaccinate your children not only puts them in danger from diseases when outbreaks occur, it also puts vulnerable people around them at risk.

Now it seems that Germany, Australia, and a number of other countries are fed up enough with vaccine-refusing parents that they’re experimenting with punitive measures...

This marks a pretty aggressive shift in how we manage vaccine refusers and the costly, deadly outbreaks of diseases like measles and whooping cough they help spark.

Germany and Australia are not the only countries who implemented severe measures against vaccine-refusing parents. Check out the global crackdown on parents who refuse to vaccinate their children over at Vox.

(Image Credit: whitesession/ Pixabay)

Cell phones have become an essential need for most of us. It might be next to food, if I dare say so. After all, it’s what keeps us updated to the latest news, and what keeps us connected to our friends whenever and wherever we go.

When it comes to traveling, battery power is usually one of those things that we worry about. When I myself do travel and arrive at a place, the first thing that I always look for is a charging station. But in doing so, I am risking myself to juice-jacking.

This week, the LA County District Attorney’s office put out a warning to remind everyone of one way you shouldn’t keep that device charged: a public USB port.

The issue is that public USB ports can potentially be hacked so that they install data-stealing malware onto your phone while you charge up. Called “juice-jacking,” the hack could result in scammers getting access to your passwords, personal information and more.

Yikes!

Thankfully, there are better options than just looking for public USB ports. Check out the alternatives over at LifeHacker.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

People drink two billion cups of coffee a day! I'm only responsible for about ten of those. While coffee drinking is universal, cultures approach the drink, and prepare it, in different ways. Still, it's a kick to the system and an excuse to be sociable, so coffee is not going away anytime soon. -via Geeks Are Sexy

The countdown to Thanksgiving has begun. Be prepared for the dangers that lie ahead with a good sense of humor and these 6 great items from the NeatoShop. 

Cactus Knit Hat / Beanie for maintaining that cheerful look when in fact you feel incredibly prickly about having to be out grocery shopping for the 30th time in one week. Seriously, how is it possible that one meal requires so many trips to the market?

Extra Squishy Stress Turkey for keeping you calm during all the tense moments that Thanksgiving week has to offer. Whether you are traveling far to see loved ones or staying close to home, you are bound to have plenty of aggravation over the next few weeks. Think long lines, cranky people, culinary headaches, and family. Did we mention family? 

Family Shmamily ... I'm Here For The Turkey shirt. Comfy Thanksgiving attire is a must for surviving the holiday. This festive piece of apparel is incredibly versatile. It is the perfect shirt for playing football in the yard, eating a hearty meal, or curling up on the couch for nap. 

Someone forgot to take out the giblets. The bird is undercooked. The bird is overcooked. The dog ran off with the turkey. When culinary catastrophe strikes the Inflatable Turkey is there to save the day. A picture perfect turkey can be inflated in minutes. 

The Emergency Disappointed Sigh In Your Pocket for when your family dinner conversation has gone  off the deep end. We can't change who you are related to, but we can help you put the fun back into family dysfunction. 

The Grim Reaper - Finger Puppet and Magnet to remind people stay away from your precious leftovers. Hang him on your fridge as an ominous visual warning to others. 

Happy Holidays from the NeatoShop!