How Stray Cats Saved This Japanese Restaurant from the Pandemic

Alex

🐱 Like many other restaurants have lost customers due to the pandemic, an eatery in Osaka, Japan, was in the verge of closing down when unlikely saviors appeared: stray cats. Here's a heartwarming story of how a stray cat and his family that moved into the cafe saved the Railway Cats Diorama Restaurant.

Bonus cat story: Willow the First Cat of the United States was officially welcomed into the White House.

🩸 Not having watched any sci-fi horror flick in the past decade, scientists in Siberia have managed to extract the oldest liquid blood in the world from the heart of a 42,000-year-old mummified foal preserved in the permafrost. Oh, and they're planning to clone the animal - what could possibly go wrong?

🏠 The Billy IKEA bookcase re-imagined by two designers into stylish furniture.

🗡️ Humans suck: The horrible ways that gamers murdered virtual people in The Sims.

💀 In a 1986 Twilight Zone episode called "Button, Button", a man was given the choice of pressing a button which would cause a stranger to die in exchange of receiving a lot of money. Well, how would that moral dilemma work today? Funny or Die explores the story in a short comedy clip called "The Button."

🎵 Disney animator Jonah Sidhom explains how the opening scene of Disney's Encanto was animated. Fantastic!

Image: diorama_syokudou/IG

More neat posts over at our new sites: Supa Fluffy, Pictojam, Homes & Hues, Infinite 1UP, Laughosaurus and Pop Culturista. Thank you for checking 'em out!

Featured art: Caffeine is My Patronus by indie artist Dumbassman. Accio Americano!

Limited time special: Save up to 20% off all Valentine's Day T-Shirts, Funny Tees, Funny Sayings Shirts, and Cute & Kawaii T-Shirts.


Jay Ohrberg's Extreme Vehicles



Jay Ohrberg is the master designer of extreme cars. He was the one who built Kit, the car featured in Knight Rider, the Ghostbusters ambulance, the car in Robocop, and several iterations of the Batmobile. Oh yeah, and the Pink Panther car you see above. Somewhere along the way, he began to obsess about the limits of extreme cars: the widest, the longest, the most massive. And that's the origin of that limousine you saw on the early internet that you were sure was the result of image manipulation.



The limousine was real, held 72 passengers, and was 30.5-meters (100 feet) long. It sported a pool, a hot tub, a mini golf course, and a helipad, among other features. The limo made it into the Guinness Book of World Records. That was decades ago- what happened to the world's longest car since then? Find out where the limousine has been, and see plenty more of Jay Ohrberg automobile designs at Messy Messy Chic.


The Most Iconic Video Game Weapons

Look, we’ve been through a lot of video games. So much so that if you ask me the specific names of weapons I know from all of the games I’ve played, I probably could only name one or two. The master sword from the Legend of Zelda series is one of them. Video game developers have done their best when it comes to making weapons for players to play around with, each having their own name, use, stats, etc. all to make the gaming experience more fun. IGN’s Destin Legarie lists the top ten iconic, memorable weapons of all time (spoiler alert: the master sword is in the list). Read the full article here! 

Image credit: Nintendo  


Annual Giant Letter Installation In Chicago

Giant Letter is an annual art installation that was launched in 2012 by Chicago-based artists Caro D’Offay and Laura Gilmore. Each year, a massive construction that stands between eight and 12-feet high is displayed in different spots around Chicago. The art installations featured in Giant Letter are messages between an imaginary 100-foot-tall boy named Bobby and those who matter most in his life (aka his mother Lucinda, cat Mr. McFluffins, and Santa). The most recent installation can be found at the intersection of Glenwood and Albion avenues in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood. Organizers of the Giant Letter hope to be able to transfer the project to a museum or gallery in the future.

Image credit: Giant Letter via Colossal


The Mapping Error That Saved An Entire Forest

The Lost Forty, located in Minnesota, is the largest surviving patch of old-growth forest in the state. The 144-acre land, officially known as the Lost Forty Scientific and Natural Area, contains pine trees that are between 300 to 400 years old, which is close to the trees’ maximum natural life span of 500 years. 

The forest managed to avoid deforestation thanks to a surveying error in 1882. It turns out that the three-man survey team sent to chart the area between Moose and Coddington Lakes stretched the Coddington Lake half a mile further northwest than it actually exists. This mistake, which was embedded into maps until the 1960s caused the forest to be overlooked. Learn more about the forest here

Image credit: Minnesota Department of Natural Resources


Dissecting An Ancient Computer

The Antikythera mechanism was an ancient analog device built to capture the known celestial objects, sort of like an ancient computer, which records and targets known heavenly bodies. Experts believe that this mechanism was a collaboration between an astronomer-mathematician and a master craftsman. 

Made of bronze and stored in a wooden box, the artifact was sent for investigation to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. They discovered Greek writing and intermeshed gears. Learn more about the Antikythera mechanism here.  

Image credit: Joy of Museums/Wikimedia Commons


This Flat At The Heart Of Paris Revitalized To Showcase Effortless Intimacy

Italian studio noa has done their magic to bring life to a flat in Paris. The designers completely revitalized this flat to form a Parisian pied-à-terre for a young family that requested them to provide a feeling of being at home. The apartment, called ‘Nicolai Paris,’ showcases a curved line that symbolizes domestic comfort and yields a refined and timeless character. Learn more about this flat here! 

Image credit: Antoine Huot 


The Heroic Tale of Pumpkin Cowboy



This song comes across as rather silly at first, but once you get into it, it's a wonderful story. A cowboy, who also happens to be a pumpkin, is dedicated to his cattle. He's a pacifist yet still a hero, seeking neither revenge nor accolade. He just does what a man's gotta do. Or what a pumpkin's gotta do, in this case. You'll also enjoy the villain, Cowboy Cat. "Pumpkin Cowboy" by Brian David Gilbert (previously at Neatorama) and performed by Jonah Scott was inspired by the purchase of a somewhat-smiling pumpkin toy at a flea market. But you already figured that part out, didn't you? -via reddit


Dolly Parton's Southern Style Cakes



Country music singer, actor, and national treasure Dolly Parton grew up in Sevierville, Tennessee, in a big family, so she learned to cook a long, long time ago. Now Duncan Hines has teamed up with Parton to bring you a line of her Southern-style cakes in mix form, with frosting, too! In March, you'll be able to find the Dolly Parton Baking Collection, including her Southern-style Banana Cake mix, Southern-style Coconut Cake mix, Creamy Buttercream Frosting, and Creamy Chocolate Buttercream Frosting at your local grocery store. Yeah, if it's Southern, you can expect plenty of butter.

Once the mixes are available, use them as ingredients for Dolly's recipes. Duncan Hines has posted a recipe for Dolly's Favorite Coconut Cake, which appears to be just the instructions from the box, and Dolly's Favorite Banana Puddin' Cake, which is a souped up version of the Banana cake mix, in which you add pudding and bananas to make it taste like Southern-style banana pudding. Why you would want to do this instead of just making banana pudding is your own business. -via Mental Floss


Hilarious Medieval Animal Art



We've had a lot of fun in the past with medieval bestiaries, full of inaccurate depictions of animals. This was a result of world travelers who brought stories back to Europe of the amazing animals they encountered. Artists tried to recreate these animals from their descriptions, but were not all that successful. Those travelers could have been inadequate describers, or the animals they spoke of could have just been so far out of the artists' experience that they couldn't do the subject justice. If a witness had actually tried to sketch out the creatures they'd seen, the artist's finished product may have been more accurate, but for some reason, that wasn't a thing. As it was, medieval artists always seemed to start with a dog and add features they were told about, at least for land animals. For sea creatures, they started with a fish and added what they were told.

But that's not all that's going on in this video. We also learn about some weird myths these exotic creatures became burdened with. Who knew you could distract a tiger mother with a mirror? Or that pelican babies ate their parents? -via Laughing Squid


Wipe Your Hard Drive, Please

A simple delete is not going to cut it, sorry! 

If you’re planning to give away or sell your computer to another person, make sure to not just erase all your files and reset your operating system. Wipe that computer’s hard drive clean. Not literally of course. Fully clearing your hard drive assures that your deleted files can not be recovered at all. PC Magazine lists different methods one can utilize to clear all the files in your hard drive for good. Check the full article here. 

Image credit: benjamin lehman


High School Students Build Houses For Those In Need

Students from Roxbury High School's Structural Design and Fabrication in New Jersey are building homes for families who are in need. In collaboration with Morris Habitat for Humanity, this group of students will build a house on the grounds of their high school. The finished home will not remain on the school grounds permanently but will be relocated to a nearby neighborhood after its construction. 

Image credit: abc7


First Trailer For Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio Is Released

Movie fans and enthusiasts rejoice! The first trailer for Mexican writer/director Guillermo del Toro’s newest project has been released. 

The trailer is a sneak peek for the Netflix original film Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio and features amazing stop-motion sequences and Ewan McGregor voicing Sebastian J. Cricket, a character who introduces the viewers to the classic tale.  The filmmaker has labeled this version of the tale as a “brutalist fable,” which is already promising. Check the full clip of the trailer here! 

image credit: Netflix


Top Clever Comebacks On The Internet

The Internet is a great source for all the interesting and weird conversations between people from all over the globe. We get the odd conversations that jump from one topic to another and end up having a completely different conclusion, which are funny in some cases; and then we also find the clever comebacks. The kind of interactions on the web that just makes you feel like, ‘Wow, that person just roasted the hell out of that person.’ Buzzfeed lists the top clever comebacks and quips on the Internet– check the rest of them here. 

Image credit: laptitudee on Reddit


Can You Beat Mario Kart Using Only Voice Commands?

Your throat will get hurt after playing if you do so. Or your brain will hurt trying to set the entire thing up so that the game can actually accept voice commands. Since I do not have the time and energy (also the money to buy the game) to actually attempt this at home –and maybe you too, let’s all just vicariously live through KickThePJ’s attempts at winning in Mario Kart via talking. Or screaming. I’ll admit, it’s a good challenge for gamers out there!


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