DebonairHeads is an artist in Texas who makes action figures, Polly Pocket type dolls, and other toys resembling pop culture folks you would never expect to see in a toy shop. My Little Danny comes in packaging that will remind you of My Little Pony, but the doll is Danny Trejo! Well, the star of many action films, including several directed by his second cousin Robert Rodriguez, deserves his own action figure, even if it is little.
The crowd at reddit wants one of these for their own, but alas, they are not for sale. My Little Danny is a work of art. DebonairHeads hand-sculpted the face and rooted all the hair. We will never find out if it really smells like tacos. Continue reading to see more of DebonairHeads' work.
Does this building look like a chocolate bar standing three storeys tall? That's completely intentional. This is the Meiji Chocolate Factory in Osaka, Japan. The facility dates back to 1955. When it was refurbished in 2011, the architecture firm Taisei Design proposed covering on side with a facade that looks like Meiji chocolate. It's visible to passengers on a rail line that passes nearby.
This chocolate factory is one of seven buildings in Japan that are shaped like the products sold from or manufactured in them. See Spoon & Tamago for more, including a brewery shaped like glasses of beer and a pet supplies warehouse that looks like a dog.
-via Nag on the Lake | Photo: Japan Travel
Josef Mencik, sometimes spelled Josef Menšík, was a real-life Don Quixote. We don't know much about his background, but he was born in 1911 in what is now Czechia. As a young man, Mencik bought Strakonicku castle in the village of Dobrs and lived there as if he were a medieval knight. He didn't use electricity or plumbing, nor a car, but he had a full suit of armor. By all accounts, he was what we would call "a local character" today.
He even had a suit of armour made in France.
— Fake History Hunter (@fakehistoryhunt) November 18, 2021
Local school classes were invited to visit the castle and see his huge collection and learn about history.
Josef became a bit of a local celebrity. pic.twitter.com/XRogxpY9KS
In 1938, the Nazis were eager to take what was then Czechoslovakia, which they considered historically their own. Mencik was 27 years old at the time, and fiercely patriotic. On September 30, 1938, a line of German tanks approached Mencik's village and his castle. Seating on his warhorse in full medieval armor, he stood bravely against the 20th-century army to defend his home and village all alone. Read the story of Josef Mencik, the knight of World War II, at Creative History. -via Strange Company
You are no doubt familiar with the iconic image of a cow being pulled up by a tractor beam into a flying saucer. You have to be a certain age to recall how this idea came about. In 1973, the first reports of mysterious cattle mutilations came in from ranches in the western US. Cattle were found dead, with their mouths, genitals, and anuses cut away, reportedly "with surgical precision." Other ranchers checked and found the same thing. By the end of the 1970s, around 10,000 such incidents were reported. Law enforcement agencies investigated, and found no evidence of human activity. So it had to be aliens, right?
That how the story was often framed in the media, and that's the story that stuck around long enough for the idea of cows being abducted and/or experimented on by aliens to become a permanent meme. Some speculated the cattle mutilations were the work of satanic cults. But cattle ranchers themselves blamed the federal government, citing covert biological weapons testing. It got to the point where ranchers were shooting at helicopters flying over their land. The story eventually died down in the national media, and the actual cause of the mutilations wasn't widely reported, or else we all forgot that part. But there's a perfectly reasonable explanation you can read at Jstor Daily. -via Damn Interesting
(Image credit: The NeatoShop)
We've seen plenty of clever song edits in which clips of words were selected from movies or speeches to recreate a song. Those are fun, but we've seen it a lot. The next step in this technology is here. Auralnauts has the characters of The Matrix singing the song "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice, but it's not a rapid-fire editing of clips. It honestly appears that the cast of The Matrix was reassembled to sing the song. You can believe that, or if you select the other pill, you'll find it's deepfake technology with artificial intelligence voice training, and it's really eerie how well it can put words in characters' mouths. The better you know The Matrix, the more impressed you'll be with the song. Oh yeah, there's a special guest artist in the middle who will surprise you. For the moment, we can put the implications of this video technique aside and enjoy the performance, if you can call it a performance at all. -via Boing Boing
Sleeper trains are the sought-out option for people traveling for multiple days, even before the introduction of air travel. These trains provide cabins and beds where people can sleep while they go from one place to another.
These kinds of trains are now making a serious comeback in Europe with their level of luxury, comfort, convenience, and affordability. New routes are being launched by different companies to provide more accessibility to travelers on the continent. With a lot of night trains launching, Back-on-Track, a European network that promotes cross-border night trains, decided to create a map that shows all the available routes running across the continent.
Check the high-res version of the map here!
Image credit: Back-on-Track via TimeOut
Dreams do come true. It’s a wonderful award season for Everything Everywhere All at Once star and now Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan. It was a triumphant moment for him when his name was announced as the victor of the Best Supporting Actor award during the ceremony last week.
For us at home, watching him take this award had us crying. From Ariana DeBose’s teary mention of his name, watch as the 51-year-old Vietnamese-American finally made a successful Hollywood comeback after decades of struggling in the acting industry.
Quan was a former child star who appeared in The Goonies and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and tried to get more serious roles but the industry just relegated him to a bunch of stereotypical Asian roles. “Mom, I just won an Oscar!” he exclaimed tearfully as he get the award from Ariana DeBose and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
Image credit: Ke Huy Quan/Instagram
March 17 is celebrated as St. Patrick's Day, the feast day of the priest who converted Ireland to Christianity. The feast day of a saint is often on the date of that person's death, particularly those dating back before birth dates of non-famous babies were well documented. Patrick died on March 17, 461. But March 17 is also the death date and feast day of a lesser-known saint of the seventh century, Gertrude of Nivelles.
Gertrude was born around the year 628 in the Kingdom of Austrasia. Having a prominent family, she was considered to be a good marriage match for various royalty, but Gertrude refused all offers. After her father died, her mother Itta of Metz founded an abbey so that Gertrude could live under protection from an arranged marriage. Gertrude took over the administration of the Abbey of Nivelles in what is now Belgium after her mother's death.
Gertrude died at the age of 33 the day after receiving a premonition from an Irish priest that she would die on St. Patrick's Day. And she did, in the year 659. St. Gertrude is the patron saint of several places in the region of the abbey, and the patron saint of travelers. She is also known as the patron saint of gardeners, as she was an avid gardener and was particularly successful in protecting the abbey's gardens from rats and mice. Gertrude's talent in that area led her to become known as the patron saint of cats in the modern era, starting around 1980 and propagated by the internet. -via She Who Seeks
An extremely worrisome bacteria has infected over 50 Americans across 13 states to the point that the government started investigating the issue's source. While illnesses can be easily cured, what got their attention is the fact that these affected patients turned blind.
Some of them can sense light but see nothing else. According to government officials, one died and at least five suffered permanent vision loss. Upon their investigation, they found that all these patients used tainted eyedrops. Each of them got infections in different parts of their body, such as blood, and lungs.
This case had doctors and experts concerned about the nature of this bacterial infection and how it evolved so far to the point that antibiotics can no longer counter it. “This really shows us that it’s not something theoretical and in the future. It’s here,” said Dr. Luis Ostrosky, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston.
Learn more about the case here.
Image credit: Towfiqu barbhuiya
There’s a certain market for these devices, even in the era where smartphones are all we need for streaming different kinds of music.
Having a digital audio player is for the audiophiles, collectors, hardware lovers, as well as those who want to listen without being distracted by other platforms, such as TikTok and various forms of social media.
Aside from its appeal for nostalgia and its specific design, MP3 players also provide good sound quality. If you pair it with a great pair of noise-canceling earphones, then your work or study session would be in full swing. Esquire’s Jason Murdock compiles a list of the best MP3 players in the market today. Check them out here!
Image via Esquire
If you have the extra cash to get on a journey for a year, would you ever want to live on a cruise ship? Well, for those interested in such a lavish and interesting lifestyle, Life at Sea Cruises might just be for you!
The company is currently planning to operate a three-year cruise around the world. Prices start at $30,000 per person, which includes a one-year stay on a 130-square-foot interior stateroom on the ship. Those interested in staying for the whole three years of the journey will have to pay $90,000 per head.
Travelers will be onboard MV Gemini, a 30-year-old cruise ship. The vessel will start its journey in Istanbul on November 1, and slowly pick up guests along the way. The ship can accommodate up to 1,074 travelers with its 400 cabins. The company states that the cruise will have travelers reach all seven continents. They can also visit several popular destinations such as Half Moon Island, Antarctica; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Seoul, South Korea.
Image credit: Life at Sea Cruises
Dustin Ballard, known on the Internet as There I Ruined It (previously at Neatorama), occasionally comes up with something sublime and improved instead of ruined. He scraped the word "Yeah" out of a bunch of different songs you will recognized and strung them together in a really catchy tune. I saw this elsewhere a few days ago, but it was not in an embeddable format. Now it's hit YouTube, and there's a bonus song! He also collected a bunch of "No" clips (or "Nein" in the case of Rammstein) and made another song, although that's more of a comedy than a symphony. I think you will like it. -via reddit
Gustav Hogan became enthralled with Star Wars as a 6-year-old kid in the Netherlands watching Return of the Jedi. His fascination with the production of Star Wars movies stayed with him and inspired his life's work. Hogan grew up to excel in animatronics, and as creative director at Biomimic Studio in London, he has spent 30 years designing and giving life to Star Wars characters like Admiral Ackbar, Maz Kanata, the Crystal Foxes, and Babu Frik. Hogan has a long portfolio of creatures for other movies, too, from cute animated animals to horrific monsters. In this video from Great Big Story, you can see the enthusiasm and perfectionism he puts into his work. -via Laughing Squid
It's Peeps season! And in addition to jousting, making dioramas, and even possibly eating them, you can now pay homage to ancient art with them. Art collective MSCHF is offering Peeps in the shape of the Paleolithic sculpture the Venus of Willendorf.
These Peeps come in yellow, purple, and pink, and while they aren't quite as detailed as the original, they are completely edible. Or, as edible as regular Peeps, anyway. But who would want to even think about consuming a work of art?
You can buy a 4-pack of each color, 12 peeps in all, for $75. -via Everlasting Blort
A total of 3,888 identified casualties are buried in the British Commonwealth’s Ramleh War Cemetery. But one grave attracts a disproportionate share of visitors. It belongs to Private Harry Potter, number 5251351 in the Worcestershire Regiment. pic.twitter.com/NLcYk9Vqgj
— Atlas Obscura (@atlasobscura) August 6, 2018
I've read only the first novel in J.K. Rowling's generation-defining story, but I take it that Harry dies at the end. Otherwise, why would this grave exist?
A better interpretation is that a real person also named Harry Potter died. The Commonwealth military cemetery at Ramlah, Israel contains 3,888 interments, including Private Harry Potter. This Harry Potter joined the British Army at the age of 16 according to the official webpage of the Worcester Regiment, in which Potter served. He was deployed to British Palestine, where he drove trucks and earned the nickname "Crash Harry." In 1939, Arab guerillas ambushed a convoy that Potter was in. He was killed in action and buried nearby.
Private Potter's grave has become a tourist attraction since news reports about his grave in 2010. But he's actually one of at least thirteen Harry Potters buried in located war graves around the world.
-via Amusing Planet
