Professional chefs are proud of their recipes and techniques, as they should be. But they are professionals, while the rest of us cook during our personal time. JJ Goode co-authors cookbooks, meaning he translates a chef's work into instructions we can follow. He often tries to convince the chef to bridge the gap between the professional and the reader by pulling back on the difficulty of those recipes, with varying results. He tells us some ways we can save time and trouble without making much of a difference in the resulting culinary creations.   

Having already told on myself for having an inferior palate, I will now deliver a broadside against chicken stock recipes. You know the drill: There are the chicken bones, the onions and carrots, the sprigs of thyme and parsley, the 12 peppercorns, and the bay leaf. And there’s the oh-so-gentle simmering and the straining, not to mention the occasional, criminally rude blanching of bones. I suppose some of you might be bothered by a little cloudiness in a stock and can detect the absence of that bay leaf. I’m not, and I can’t. My one-ingredient stock recipe—put rotisserie-chicken carcass in pot, cover with plenty of water, and boil until episode of Succession is over—has enabled countless dinner successes, because it’s twice as tasty and infinitely freer than the boxed stuff, and because its utter thoughtlessness precludes excuses not to make it.

Goode has other tips on how to simplify star-studded celebrity chef recipes at Taste.  -via Digg

(Image credit: Sarah Becan)

Beginning in the 1830s, New York City had a curious business called the Phrenological Cabinet. It was owned by brothers Orson and Lorenzo Fowler, and their sister and brother-in law, Charlotte and Samuel Wells. They studied phrenology, which entails the belief that a person's mentality and character can be determined by the size and shape of the skull, and that those characteristics can be generalized to entire racial groups. To this end, they collected evidence in the form of head casts, busts, portraits, and human skulls.

The Cabinet included replicas of famous busts depicting such men as William Shakespeare, Napoleon Bonaparte, and George Washington, as well as casts of “persons of eminence in talent and virtue.” They advertised specimens from “pirates, murderers, robbers, thieves, forgers, gamblers, pickpockets,” and more. Peter Robinson, who was described as having a “base, coarse, animal character,” sat among these.

Fowler & Wells spared no expense in filling the Cabinet. In his preface to an 1875 catalogue listing some conents of the Cabinet, which by then was located on Broadway near Astor Place, Samuel Wells described how “an artist was kept in requisition” to obtain casts of the famous and infamous, “and large sums of money have thus been expended sometimes, as a premium, for obtaining the head of some singular or vicious character.” In 1864, Wells specified that over the previous 25 years, they had paid “not less than $30,000” for busts, casts, and skulls. In today’s currency, that’s nearly half a million dollars.

As their reputation spread, people began offering skulls for sale from all over. As you can imagine, many of them came from suspicious circumstances. Fowler & Wells were not overly concerned about whether the skulls came from war, murder, or genocide. Read about the Phrenology Cabinet at Atlas Obscura.

Fright-loving couples can now spend 30 hours laying in a coffin, and get paid for it. Six Flags offers couples to join the Fright Fest 30-Hour Coffin Challenge, where they have to lie inside a coffin for 30 hours straight, with provided six-minute bathroom breaks. Contestants are required to leave all their gadgets (such as smartphones and gaming devices), but they can use their gadgets, take a toilet break, eat, or sit up from their coffins during their six-minute breaks. While the prospect of getting paid by lying around in a coffin (with your boo) for 30 hours sounds nice, Oddee details that it isn’t all convenient: 

In 2018, the first 30-hour Coffin Challenge was in St. Louis last year and all the contestants won. It wasn’t easy though as they faced cold weather and had to literally sprint to the bathrooms to make it to and fro in the alloted 6-minute time frame.

Also, the entire top of the coffins were open the first time around. “The open top was brutal,” contestant Brian Johnson said on Facebook. “Lights everywhere, people talking, you could barely sleep.”

image credit: via Six Flags

Though it is true that agriculture contributes a good chunk to climate change and the greenhouse gas emissions issue, Dutch farmers say that their government has unfairly singled out their industry and put them in a bad light.

So in protest, thousands of farmers drove their tractors to the Hague, bringing about tons of traffic in the Netherlands main thoroughfares.

Thousands of farmers in the Netherlands staged a national protest on Tuesday, in support of their industry.

At least two thousand farmers took to Dutch highways and roads on their tractors, in a slow procession toward the country's capital, The Hague. Some drove their tractors along the North Sea beaches that lead to the city.

It was a visible demonstration of their trade, but it also caused major traffic chaos.

The Dutch motorists association ANWB said the tractors, along with bad weather and accidents, made Tuesday the busiest ever morning on the nation's roads, resulting in more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) of traffic jams.

Read more on DW.

(Image credit: AFP/ANP/Vincent Jannink via RT)

It's out with the blue and in with the green as the Navy will finally have their Type I Navy Working Uniforms replaced with a better design that not only makes them blend in expertly at sea (which would be difficult if they were to be stranded in the middle of the ocean) but also wouldn't burn as robustly as their former ones.

After 11 perilous years of parading around looking like victims of an airplane toilet explosion, the Navy finally is saying sayonara to the Type I Navy Working Uniform, a heinous half-nylon boondoggle that not only wasted hundreds of millions of dollars but endangered the lives of everyone who donned the accursed “blueberry."

That’s because until 2012, sailors didn’t realize that a mere spark could turn them into blueberry flambe.

(Image credit: Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Todd A. Schaffer/Navy)

We use computers a lot in our lives. We can use it to surf the Internet, talk to our friends and families, watch videos, listen to music, and many more. Thanks to these computers, the massive digital information around us becomes arranged and organized, thereby creating order, and creating order is what computers are good at. But computers are not perfect; they can’t do everything. One such thing that they can’t do is the opposite of order — disorder, or more appropriately, chaos. It’s too… chaotic for them.

It's beyond the ability of digital computers to reliably reproduce the behavior of chaotic systems, researchers say.

Scientifically speaking, chaotic systems are "dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions." In popular culture, that sensitivity is best known as the butterfly effect.

“Our work shows that the behavior of the chaotic dynamical systems is richer than any digital computer can capture," says Peter Coveney, Director of the University College London Center for Computational Science and the study's coauthor, in a press statement. "Chaos is more commonplace than many people may realize and even for very simple chaotic systems, numbers used by digital computers can lead to errors that are not obvious but can have a big impact. Ultimately, computers can’t simulate everything."

Know more about this “chaotic” study over at Popular Mechanics.

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

With the current pace of life, from school, work, or family work, people might get really burned out after just going through one week. Some just take their weekend as a chance to sleep and get some rest after their stressful week, and some go out of their way to parks and malls to treat themselves and unwind.

But if you’re the type of person who’s really busy, just wants to unwind without going out of the way to a mall or a park, or you don’t want to wait for the weekend to give yourself a break, Buzzfeed lists some simple things you can do for yourself every day, without breaking the bank or travelling far. From calling or talking to your friends or family members, eating a mood-boosting food, petting a furry friend, to reading or watching something for enjoyment, these small tips prove that you can always make time for yourself! 

image credit: via wikimedia commons

An unsigned 10x8 inch painting by Florentine painter Cenni de Pepo (also known as Cimabue) was discovered hanging above a hot plate in the home of an elderly French woman in Compiegne. Philomene Wolf, an auctioneer, discovered the tempera-on-panel painting when he was hired by the French woman to “give an expert view on the house contents and empty it”. Cimabue is hailed as the first truly great creator of Tuscan painting, and considered to be the forefather of the Italian Renaissance. Wolf referred the painting for confirmation to Eriq Turqain, an Old Master appraiser, as Hyperallergic detailed:

The work is now titled the Mocking of Christ, as Turquin believes it to be part of a small polyptych by Cimabue that also included the Flagellation of Christ and the Madonna and Child Enthroned between Two Angels. Part of the basis for this theory is a constellation of centuries-old tunnels created by a larval infestation of timber that comprises the panels.

Now Turquin, who is selling the painting in conjunction with Actéon, estimates that “Mocking of Christ” will to go for between €4 million and €6 million ($4.3–$6.5 million). Wolf, quoted in the Art Newspaper, denies the possibility of a pre-action sale, insisting on the public date in late October: “It will be sold only at auction. It’s going to be the first public result for Cimabue.” 

image credit: Eric Turquin and Acteon via Hyperallergic

Going away from its past unrealistic and hyper-feminine Barbie doll releases, the doll manufacturer is now keen to release toys that break the gender stereotype. After introducing female dolls that come in all shapes and sizes, Mattel has launched Creatable World, a customizable line of dolls that abandons the idea of binary-gendered toys. A “one-of-a-kind play experience,” Creatable World gave new life to the traditional dress-up doll, as My Modern Met detailed: 

Described by Mattel as a “one-of-a-kind play experience,” Creatable World is a refreshing take on the traditional dress-up doll. The line features six different kits that each comprise an androgynous, childlike doll, two interchangeable hairstyles, and “endless styling possibilities.” Together, these components allow children from all walks of life to create the doll of their dreams—whether male, female, neither, or both.

View this post on Instagram

See how we’re making play more inclusive than ever before. Link in bio. #AllWelcome

A post shared by Creatable World (@creatableworld) on Sep 24, 2019 at 3:59pm PDT

image credit: via Creatable World on Instagram

Ask any parent and they'll tell you of the time their kid was more interested in playing with the cardboard box that the toys came in, rather than the toys themselves.

But that was then! This is now, and this Facebook post by Wesley Metcalfe is how kids today "play" with cardboard boxes.

Twitter user @mattomic, author of the famous Sandwich Alignment Chart, presents his assessment of which food mascots he thinks that he could or could not take in a fight. I think that he underestimates Lefty, the mascot of Hamburger Helper. Lefty has always stuck me as having the capacity to suddenly snap one day. He won't limit himself to just his fist.

-via Ian Miles Cheong

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is the best-selling PC game with over 50 million copies sold worldwide. And just recently, its mobile version PUBG Mobile, was able to reach over $1 billion in revenue, all thanks to its Chinese variant, Game for Peace which helped it break through and tap the Chinese market.

The original PUBG Mobile wasn’t allowed to make money from players in China. But when Tencent replaced it with Game for Peace -- where, among other things, players who are shot and defeated aren’t killed, but instead wave farewell to their opponents -- the Chinese government granted them a license to monetize, opening the floodgates.

(Image credit: Screen Post/Unsplash)

Why do dogs leap at the opportunity to stick their heads out of car windows while riding? Megan Schmidt of Discover magazine runs through several possible motives. The first is that dogs' sense of smell is so strong that sniffing all of that passing air is a exhilarating sensation to them:

The canine olfactory system is highly developed and far superior to ours. For starters, a dog’s nose is equipped with a complex maze of 300 million scent receptors, compared to our measly 5 million. The more receptors, the more sensitive the nose is.

And dog noses aren’t just cute — they’re practically designed to savor smells. Dogs have two air passages, one for breathing and one dedicated to smelling. To top things off, the canine olfactory cortex, the part of the brain responsible for processing smells, is 40 times larger than that of a human.

[...]

“When sticking their head out the window, they can smell every person in the street, every trash can they go by, every patch of grass, restaurant and other dogs. It’s like watching TV for us,” says Jennifer Cattet, an animal behavior researcher and owner of Medical Mutts, a service dog training center in Indianapolis.

Additionally, dogs may enjoy the passing sights, the air blowing on their faces, and the opportunity to contemplate escape.

-via Instapundit | Photo: Dane

David Tracy of Jalopnik found this amazing luxury vehicle for sale on Facebook Marketplace. You might not normally think of the Ford Festiva as an example of elite performance automotive design, but this one takes two 1993 Festivas and slams them together to create the ultimate ride for a first date, the prom, or a VIP motorcade. It's only $2,000 and, according to the seller, street legal.

If you go halvsies with me, we can catch a bus to its home in Kearney, Missouri and drive it home together.

If you’re like this one-eyed monster who wants to go to a black hole that bad, then here’s a safety video for you made by NASA. It will tell you what a black hole is, and where to find one.

(Video Credit: NASA/ YouTube)