Tutushka, a makeup artist from Nikolaev, Ukraine, specializes in lip makeup. She can turn your mouth into a living canvas that speaks of tropical beaches, vibrant fruits, and scenic vistas. Her designs pop out of the screen, drawing you into little stories. You can see more of her work on her Instagram page.
I try to get to the bottom of one of Mount Vernon’s greatest mysteries. https://t.co/R6387AOqRi
— Howard Dorre (@plodwithme) October 15, 2019
If you were to visit Mount Vernon, and if you were at all curious about how wealthy people in 18th-century America lived, you would of course want to see the toilet. Well, that was in a building outside. Or, to be more precise, those were in an outhouse.
On a recent visit to George Washington’s home of Mount Vernon, I was struck by one particular building – the “necessary,” AKA privy, outbuilding, outhouse, or latrine.
It was actually a replica of Washington’s original necessary house, an educated attempt to recreate the structure where America’s #1 went #2.
What struck me about it was that there were three holes.
No stalls. No partitions. Just three open holes, right next to each other.
You can imagine that privacy would be dispensed with in a large family with only one outhouse, but you have to wonder whether the father of our country was in the habit of pooping with friends. Howard Dorre of Plodding Through the Presidents goes to great lengths to explore the answer to that question. -via Strange Company
Wing, an Alphabet (Google) subsidiary has successfully delivered packages via drone, making the company the first in the United States to deliver by drone. The test location was Christiansburg, Virginia. The residents ordered products from Walgreens or other local businesses, but the packages were delivered to their doorsteps via drone. The drone actually completes the last mile of the actual delivery, as Rappler detailed:
One family used the Wing app to order Tylenol, cough drops, Vitamin C tablets, bottled water and tissues, the statement said. An older resident ordered a birthday present for his wife. Although the majority of the delivery was done by a FedEx truck, the last mile was completed by drone.
The yellow and white drones are loaded with packages at a local center of operations called the "Nest," where Wing employees pack them with up to three pounds (1.3 kilograms) of goods, deliverable within a six mile (10 kilometer) radius.
Once they have arrived at their destination, the drones don't land. Instead, they hover above the house and lower the package with a cable.
image credit: Wing Aviation LLC/AFP via Rappler
Don't let bad breath get you down. Add a little peppermint happiness to your day with the Bob Ross Happy Little Mints from the NeatoShop. The collectible tin features your favorite effervescent artist. They are sure to paint a smile on your face and add freshness to your breath.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Mints & Candies. New items arriving all the time.
Don't forget to stop by the store to see our large selection of customizable apparel. We specialize in curvy and Big and Tall sizes. We carry baby 6 months all the way to adult 10 XL
For more than 50 years, trucks have been getting their roofs sliced off by a certain underpass in Durham, North Carolina, that has a clearance of 11 feet, 8 inches. There were so many low clearance accidents that in 2008, Jürgen Henn set up a camera to catch them. The videos on his website, 11 Foot 8, made the Gregson Street trestle famous for its frequent can opener crashes, some you may have seen here at Neatorama.
nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
— Magus (@Magus) October 19, 2019
But that era is coming to an end. The Durham Transportation Department has announced that the overpass, after standing at the same height for 100 years, is being raised. To see plenty of incidents from this underpass, watch the 12-minute documentary OVERHEIGHT MUST TURN. -via Metafilter
The final film in the Skywalker saga, Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker opens nationwide on Friday, December 20th, with previews beginning at at 6PM on Thursday the 19th. There's a way you can see the new movie at 5PM if you like, but there's a catch. AMC Theaters is offering a 27-hour Star Wars marathon beginning on Wednesday the 18th, where you can see all three trilogies on the big screen, ending with The Rise of Skywalker beginning at 5PM on Thursday. The run time is listed at 27 hours and 21 minutes. However, the total run time of the eight movies already released doesn't add up to 5PM Friday, so we assume there will be breaks between films. Which makes you wonder, if you have the marathon ticket, where does it say you have to watch all those movies instead of, say, going home to sleep during the prequels? Or is the thrill of seeing The Rise of Skywalker one hour early enough to limit the audience to hardcore fans who would sit through all of them? Maybe the ticket price for the marathon will tell us, but that has not been released.
In other news, the final trailer for The Rise of Skywalker will air during this week's Monday Night Football, and then will go online soon after. -via io9
This week has found more and more regions in the U.S celebrating Indigenous People’s Day. However, many more know the federal holiday as Columbus Day. Over 500 years ago, a man named Christopher Columbus “got famous for something he never did, having never even set foot on the North American continent, much less having 'discovered' it.” Perhaps Columbus should be more notorious, and infamous rather than famous, for something he did do.
It’s remarkable the lopsided stories we tell in order to conveniently ignore or deny an uncomfortable reality. As we continue to celebrate the sepia-toned world of a false past, full of men and monsters and their colonial cruelties, as entire cultures, their languages, their knowledge, and their science were destroyed along the way.
After getting lost somewhere in the Bahamas, the friendly Arawak people Columbus met helped him, bringing food, water, and gifts. He even wrote of how kind they were. Columbus repaid their generosity by mocking their “ignorance” of things they had never seen before, forcing them to be his slaves, and demanding that they lead him to the source of the gold that their earrings had been crafted from. Columbus and his men proceeded to commit brutal acts, to destroy this peaceful population, thinking “nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades.” One of his associates, Bartolomé de las Casas wrote: “Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight as no age can parallel. My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature that now I tremble as I write.” Bartolomé de las Casas promptly quit the world to become a priest.
Some historians argue that you can’t blame Christopher Columbus for being a product of his time, which is a nice, convenient story. Nevertheless, contemporary accounts of Columbus’s senseless cruelty, and his subsequent arrest for his behavior, suggests that even taking racist historical attitudes into account, this was unspeakably barbaric. Once you know the full stomach-churning story, it’s hard to imagine how such a person, who treated whole populations as less than human, could be celebrated.
We lose something very important when we lose indigenous knowledge.
Find out what it is over at JSTOR Daily.
(Image Credit: Kordspace/ Pixabay)
Some gardeners may be put off at the first sight of ants on their flowers. A new study indicates, however, that insects can be very effective at protecting crops from diseases. It even suggests that ant-derived antibiotics could be applied on a commercial scale.
Because ants live in colonies where they’re constantly in close contact with each other, there is a great potential for a disease to spread quickly among them. For this reason, ants secrete antibiotics from glands on their body. Aside from that, they also cultivate colonies of antibiotic-producing beneficial bacteria on their legs. These antibiotics can get transferred onto plants as the ants walk on them.
In a previous study, it was found that when wood ants moved into an apple orchard, there was a notable reduction in two bacterial plant diseases – namely scab and apple rot. Inspired by this finding, researchers from Denmark's Aarhus University looked through other scientific literature, uncovering evidence that ants may inhibit at least 14 such diseases. On average, throughout the various studies reviewed, the presence of ants reduced pathogen levels by 59 percent.
Amazing!
More details of the study over at New Atlas.
(Image Credit: wenthografie/ Pixabay)
Tetragonula carbonaria or the sugarbag bee creates spiral hives! It is a type of stingless bee found in Australia. pic.twitter.com/A2etQVseGW
— Nature Is Weird (@NaturelsWeird) August 18, 2018
Not every bee stings. Of the 20,000 species of bees, there are over 500 of them who have lost that ability. They do, however, protect themselves in other ways, such as showering intruders with wax, plant resin, and mud. Larger predators are usually engulfed by their strength in numbers.
There are fourteen species of stingless bees native in Australia. Among the fourteen species, there stands one who is notable for their attractive beehives.
Tetragonula carbonaria, or the sugarbag bee, tend to be smaller in size compared to other stingless bees. They are predominantly black and their bodies are covered in microscopic hairs. The sugarbag bee builds hives in a distinctive spiral pattern unique to the species. The hives are broad and flat but each spiral rises in height as they turn, giving the hive a flattened conical shape. A fully developed nest may consist as many as twenty spirals.
Carbonaria bee hives have only one entrance, which is heavily protected by guard bees and coated with a mixture of beeswax and resins. Antibacterial properties from the resin clean any pathogens from the bees as they enter the hive. The substance also keeps out predators such as ants and beetles.
It is not known why the sugarbag bee make spiral hives. It may be to make air circulation better, especially since other bee colonies are not well ventilated.
Check out the photos over at the Amusing Planet.
(Image Credit: Nature Is Weird/ Twitter)
The question came from a reader, but before answering, Daven Hiskey of Today I Found Out has to give us a history of drink vending machines, starting with water fountains that featured a common cup for everyone to drink from. That in itself is quite interesting, but eventually he begins to approach the question at hand.
This finally brings us to slightly more modern times. Ubiquitous today, with Japan having the highest number of vending machines per capita at just under 6 million (or about 1 vending machine for every 22 people), one of the most popular vending machines is the kind that dispenses life giving water-based product. For some odd reason, many of these are placed in that eerie region that exists outside of our mother’s basements known as “out of doors”. This area, which exists in a region that has no solid barriers between you and the never ending void of space, occasionally gets cold (we’re told), despite the silent glowing orb in the sky watching, judging, showering us in ionizing radiation in its efforts to destroy us all!
In other words, he doesn't get out much. But he does give us several of the ingenious reasons that vending machine drinks don't freeze in cold weather at Today I Found Out. Of course, your mileage may vary.
(Image credit: 掬茶)
Nick and Voirrey Coole were heading out from their home on the Isle of Mann to catch a flight on a getaway to celebrate Nick's 40th birthday in New York City. They had packed their carryon bags lightly to leave room for souvenirs. When they went through airport security, they were pulled aside and asked if this was their bag. The one that x-rays showed had a cat inside.
You know that feeling, when you get ushered into a side room at airport security because you’ve got a cat in your hand luggage. Candy decided to sneak into our hand bag, thanks Barry and Lorna for picking her up so we can head off on our holiday. Fair play to airport security for helping to get her home so we could catch our flight
The couple managed to catch their flight and are having a great time in New York. See a video report of the incident from the BBC. -via Bored Panda
(Image credit: Nick Coole)
The band Doublewide Kings offers this hot and tasty custom guitar originally made by John Bolin of Bolin Guitars. A mere $6,500 will supersize your music.
The little details are nice, such as the golden arches painted onto the fretboard and the slogan "i'm lovin' it" written on the back. And it's completely playable, as you can see in this video:
-via Technabob
Obese and overweight people worry about the fat around their bellies. According to a recent study which came out Thursday, however, that is not the only thing which they should be worried about. The study suggests that fat can build up in a person’s lung airways as well. This discovery may help in explaining why some health problems like asthma are more common or worse in obese and overweight people.
Researchers from Australia, New Zealand, and Canada teamed up for the study. They looked at data from an earlier project that collected lung tissue samples from people in Alberta, Canada who had been diagnosed with asthma and had died recently. This set included people who died because of their asthma as well as those who died of unrelated causes. Then they compared these samples to a control group taken from people without asthma who had died of other causes.
All told, more than 1,300 samples of the lung’s airway walls were looked at under a microscope, taken from 52 people. The authors found fat tissue in the lungs of all three groups, but those who were overweight and obese had, on average, greater levels of lung fat than everyone else. As BMI increased, the chances of more fat in the lung also increased, and both greater BMI and lung fat was linked to greater thickness and inflammation of the lung airways.
Visit Gizmodo for more details about the study.
(Image Credit: kalhh/ Pixabay)
Cirque du Soleil is the largest contemporary circus producer in the world. Performing death-defying stunts in front of millions of audience, what does it take to be a member or a performer of the Cirque du Soleil? Without actually spending the time, effort, and money, watch as two regular people, Buzzfeed’s Eric Tabach and Spencer Althouse, go to Las Vegas and try to train like professional stunt performers!
When Bob Ross said, “you can do anything you want to do. This is your world,” he wasn’t joking. A Tumblr user named mochachild just proved that what Bob Ross said was true when she used the legendary boredom-killing program to paint.
Magnificent!
(Image Credit: BoredPanda)
