There’s something mysteriously captivating to Tokyo’s storefronts that have inspired many artists and designers. In fact, even artists not from Japan are inspired by these stores. Such is the case of Stockholm-based designer Christopher Robin (yes, he was named after one of Winnie the Pooh’s best friends).

...that inspiration came when he had the opportunity to visit Tokyo for the first time last year. Upon returning, he began a side-project called TokyoBuild.

Christopher Robin begins each project by going on Google Street View and clicking down the side streets of Tokyo until he finds a storefront that he likes. However, the replication stops here. Working largely from his imagination, Robin draws up plans for the storefront, but at a miniature scale of 1:20. Working with a combination of materials and techniques, the designer meticulously fabricates and assembles his creations with the utmost attention to detail. From rusting corrugated steel facades to manhole covers out front, nothing gets overlooked.

Check out the photos over at Spoon & Tamago.

(Image Credit: Spoon & Tamago)

When Brett Hereford was out fishing on a lake in Montana along with his family earlier this month, he wasn’t expecting to make a catch of a lifetime. The catch, however, wasn’t a fish at all — it was a bobcat.

Rather than leave the animal to try and make it back to dry land on his own, the Herefords stepped in — Brett scooping up the exhausted bobcat in a fishing net.

What happened next? Find out over at The Dodo.

(Image Credit: Bob Hereford/ Facebook)

Cactus Knit Hat / Beanie

Are you feeling a bit prickly about the change in weather? Are you finding it painful to embrace Fall? Hold onto that sunny Summer feeling all Fall and Winter with the Cactus Knit Hat / Beanie from the NeatoShop. This hat is really on point.  

The Cactus Knit Hat / Beanie is perfect for those with a sharp sense of style who hate being stuck indoors. This plantastic hat will really prickle your fancy. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Apparel & Accessories. New items arriving all the time. 

Don't forget to stop by the store to see our large selection of customizable apparel and bags. We specialize in curvy and Big and Tall sizes. We carry baby 6 months all the way to adult 10 XL shirts. We also offer custom and wholesale printing. We know that fun, fabulous, and plant loving people come in every size. 

In a New York press event, Google unveiled new Pixel smartphones. The Pixel 4 phones come in two sizes, both with higher quality cameras, a radar sensor to track hand gestures and a faster virtual assistant.  The radar sensor will allow users to skip songs or issue other commands by waving their hands above the screen. In addition, Google also announced its first moderately priced laptop and the brand’s first wireless earbuds, as Reuters detailed: 

The fourth-generation Pixel starts at $799 for a 5.7-inch (14.5-cm) display and $899 for a 6.3-inch display, and for the first time all four major U.S. wireless carriers will offer the smartphones, beginning Oct. 24.

Google slashed costs for Pixelbook Go by shifting to magnesium from aluminum for the laptop exterior and removing hinges and wiring that enabled the prior model to be used like a tablet, product leaders Ben Janofsky and Matt Vokoun said in an interview.

It also improved the design of components such as the trackpad to cut manufacturing mishaps and therefore costs. But the company still included a 15% larger battery and reduced the overall weight of the device to 2.3 lb (1.04 kg) from 2.4 lb.

Google also announced Pixel Buds, a set of wireless earbuds with hands-free access to Google Assistant launching next spring in the United States for $179.

image credit: via Reuters

Allie Davis had her boyfriend, Ty Birge, take a Beyonce exam to make sure they could be together. Even if Birge wasn’t able to give a complete narration of the Solange Met Gala elevator incident, it was still passable for Davis. For someone who has “zero interest in Beyonce”, as his girlfriend told The Huffington Post, it was pretty good. From passing the Beyonce exam, it seems that Birge has managed to finally put a ring on it, as the couple got married in a Beyonce-themed wedding:

The groom walked down the aisle to “Halo,” while Allie walked down to “Ave Maria” sung by Ty’s cousin. At the reception, the wedding party was introduced to the strains of “Crazy In Love.”

Now that Allie and Ty are married, we wondered: Has Ty become more of a Bey fan? Not really, Allie told us, but she still keeps him in the loop about Beyhive news.

“My husband has basically zero interest in Beyoncé but has learned way more than he probably cares to know about her,” she said. “He says he really respects her work ethic and drive, though.” (Clearly, he’s seen the Beychella Netflix doc.)

I gave my boyfriend a Beyoncé exam to make sure we can stay together. He passed. pic.twitter.com/Lqv3VEKWFx

— Allie (#1 Bigger Stan) (@Fergyonce) April 6, 2015

image credit: Tracy Brewington Photography via The Huffington Post

People are starting to get fascinated with pigs, and some - even celebrities like Miley Cyrus - treat them as pets. While the pigs that are usually kept as pets are different from the wild ones, their ability to adapt in their environment is undeniable, and ecologist Meredith Root-Bernstein noticed the same thing with a Visayan warty pig in Jardin des Plantes.

One of the Visayan warty pigs—a critically endangered species native to the Philippines—picked up a piece of bark in its mouth and started digging with it, pushing the soil around. “I said, Whoa, that’s pretty cool,” says Root-Bernstein, a visiting researcher at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris and a National Geographic Explorer. “When I looked up tool use in pigs, there was nothing.”

Root-Bernstein got curious so she started a study and visited more often to observe.

Though many wild species use tools, from chimpanzees to crows to dolphins, no one has reported the phenomenon in any pig, including the 17 wild pig species and domestic swine. This surprised Root-Bernstein, especially considering the Suidae family’s well-known intelligence.

But because wild pigs are so little studied and, in most cases, either endangered or critically endangered, it may not be so unusual that such innovation has escaped human eyes, says Root-Bernstein, whose study appeared in September in the journal Mammalian Biology.

Upon observation, one of the key things that their team noticed when it comes to the Visayan warty pig's usage of tools is this:

The team noticed the animals—particularly the mama pig, Priscilla—would always use tools in the middle of the nest-building process. According to Root-Bernstein, this consistency in sequence, combined with the fact the pigs’ tools could physically move the soil, meets the scientific definition for tool use: “The exertion of control over a freely manipulable external object (the tool) with the goal of (1) altering the physical properties of another object, substance, surface or medium … via a dynamic mechanical interaction, or (2) mediating the flow of information.”

The scientists suspect that Priscilla may have learned how to use the tool herself, and passed on that knowledge to her mate and offspring.

Video Credit: Meredith Root-Bernstein / Youtube

Do you check your car's hood? You might want to, lest you find more than 200 walnuts placed under it by squirrels -- an experience this couple had.

Chris Persic told KDKA-TV his wife called to tell him their car smelled like it was burning. He told her to pop the hood, and she found walnuts and grass piled over the engine. The couple took the car to a mechanic, who found half a trashcan’s worth of walnuts under the engine.

Persic said the walnuts did not cause any extensive damage, though a squirrel may have chewed through or pulled out the fuel injector hose on his new truck. The couple has gotten a quote to remove a black walnut tree from their property.

“Funny thing is I was thinking that for how massive the tree is, and how many walnuts have fallen (and how many dents our vehicle received), there really aren’t many on the ground,” Persic told KDKA.

Image Credit: Chris Persic / Facebook

Redditor radamshome is a master crafter and dedicated father. He's built some amazing things for his kids, including an indoor fairy tree for his daughter and a lemon-shaped go-kart for his son.

His most recent project is a crib that looks like a colorful submarine. He built it for the magazine Fatherly, which will auction it off to benefit the Seattle Children's Hospital.

Radamshome learned how to use fiberglass, then shaped it around styrofoam parts and covered them with marine-grade resin.

You can see more build photos here. Radamshome thoughtfully covered even small details, such as including a propeller that actually rotates.

-via Geekologie

From ancient Egyptian mudbrick homes to the iconic turf houses of Iceland, humans have proven there is more than one way to build a house. 

Today, those ancient homes are nothing but ruins, but what if they were built using today's building knowledge and techniques? 

We used 21st century home building and architecture trends to renovate 6 ancient houses from around the world.

Turf House from Iceland

An Icelandic turf house consists of a wooden frame stuffed with blocks of turf (grass still embedded in the earth) on a stone foundation. Only the front around the doorway is bared. The entrance leads to a big hall (sometimes via an antechamber) with a firepit in the middle.

Our renovated turf house complex plays with the ‘badly hidden’ appearance of traditional turf houses, which seem to sink back into the landscape. The steel-frame dome looks partly natural yet completely alien. Panels of turf and timber alternate with glass windows, using reflections to create an improbable, angular mound of grass, wood, and… clouds! In a subtler touch, the wooden planks that form the facades have been rearranged at decorative angles.

Solar panels only work when the sun’s out, while wind turbines only work when there’s wind. Without a means to store the energy generated from these devices, they can’t work to produce energy forever. Energy storage is an increasingly large problem with renewable energy, and this is why the said topic is so crucial to talk about.

Check out this company’s idea of storing energy by using stacked concrete blocks.

Visit Popular Mechanics for more details.

(Video Credit: Energy Vault Inc/ YouTube)

Hitesh Sirohi had been digging a grave to bury his own daughter, who died a few minutes after birth, when he found an earthen pot with a newborn girl inside it. The baby girl was wrapped in a cloth and crying when Sirohi found her, and he immediately rescued her and dialed for help. The case of the newborn baby girl being found buried has shone a light on female infanticide in India. Female infanticide is widespread in the country because of parents preferring sons (who are viewed as investments and heirs) instead of daughters (seen as a liability). A local politician is paying for the newborn’s hospital bills,  as she is now receiving medical care. 

(via The Guardian) 

image credit: Allison Joyce/AP via The Guardian

Saharan silver ants (Cataglyphis bombycina) were already on the list of extreme species because of their unique ability to tolerate the heat of the desert in midday. A new study of the ways they've adapted to the Saharan environment describes their amazing ability to run.

Around noon each day in the Sahara Desert, silver ants emerge from their underground nests. Despite this being the hottest part of the day, they come out to scavenge dead insects, which are most likely to drop dead when sand temperatures can reach 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius). The ants have to be quick, though. Their prey is scarce, and they have lots of desert to search.

Just how quick these iridescent arthropods can be, and how they achieve those speeds, is explained for the first time today in the Journal of Experimental Biology. Saharan silver ants can travel at 108 body lengths a second, the researchers found. This makes them one of the fastest known running species, bested only by the California coastal mite and the Australian tiger beetle.

To illustrate how fast that is, 108 body lengths per second is the equivalent of a human running more than 400 miles per hour. Read how these ants do it at Discover magazine. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen)

What's your first thought when you see the photo? Did you think of the Face Swap app, but this time between a dog and a human? Nope, it's not edited!

With large almond shaped eyes that make him look like a wise old soul and a genuine smile, the Aussiepoo mix's owners have got used to being stopped whenever they leave the house.

This is Nori, a Toy Australian Shepard and Toy Poodle mix who has human eyes and often looks like he's smiling. His hooman parents shared:

"When he was a puppy, his fur was much darker and he often was compared to Chewbacca or an Ewok, which are characters in Star Wars."

Honestly, seeing his photos at first felt weird, but eventually I got to appreciate his amazing features! Did you feel the same thing?

Image Credit: Caters News

From TYWKIWDBI comes this fascinating photo and the note that the singular form of ravioli is raviolo. So this is a snow raviolo. It's technically edible and probably goes well with marinara sauce. As you can see, it can feed a family of four.

In the past decade, psychologists, in their desire to include people from all over the world, have expanded their narrow focus away from just North America, Europe, and Australia. This has given them a greater insight on global distribution of cultural features such as the society-level differences in psychological phenomena like individualism and happiness. This greater knowledge can help us better understand the various roots of cultural similarities and differences.

Powerful cases in point are studies demonstrating that countries differ substantially in terms of mean happiness and the additional finding that this pattern is anything but random. In both the Northern and Southern hemispheres, happiness is higher in countries farther away from the equator (such as Denmark or New Zealand) than those closer to it (such as Vietnam or Cambodia).

Even more intriguing, we have uncovered the same pattern for individualism and creativity. Like happiness, these cultural features trend higher as one moves away from the equator. When we looked at aggressiveness, we found the opposite pattern: the closer you live to the equator, the more likely you are to exhibit aggressive behavior. To explain these robust links between latitude and culture—from happiness to aggressiveness and beyond—science needs a new field. Latitudinal psychology seeks to explain why societies differ so much and why location on the north-south axis of the earth is so critical.

What is latitude psychology? And why are the people near the equator more likely to exhibit aggressive behavior? Find out the answers over at the Scientific American.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)