Elegant. Useful. And unique. Those are the words that perfectly describe this Wisdom Tree Bookshelf by Bookniture. Now, people can have a designated place for the books that they are currently reading, so they won’t misplace said books ever again. Now if that’s not useful, then I don’t know what is.

This bookshelf is available for pre-order for only $69, while the item’s shipping will be made available in August of this year.

Cool!

(Image Credit: Bookniture/ Technabob)

This single sheet of paper contains common questions regarding pregnancy, like whether it is okay to have children after 35. However, the answers written on this paper are not what you might expect, but they still are informative.

Image via The Language Nerds on Facebook

Marc Pettersen’s Here’s Another Story lets spectators view street murals from a different perspective. Specifically, in the world of virtual reality (VR). The project uses a VR phone app to allow viewers to see the public art bloom into animation. Pettersen’s mix of outdoor and virtual events is part of the  International Festival of Arts and Ideas, as New Haven Independent details: 

“I’m always looking at new types of art and technology and seeing how it can work it together,” said Pettersen, a digital artist who works with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). He went to school for traditional, hand-drawn animation and has moved steadily into computer and VR animation ever since. He’s now a youth mentor at YOUmedia, a maker space at the Hartford Public Library, where he teaches students how to use VR, AR and 3D printing.

As his starting point, Pettersen used the existing public art in Ninth Square — much of it created just this year during the pandemic. Pettersen created his pieces using a VR headset and hand controllers, which allowed him to create, manipulate, and augment the images in the murals in front of him. Virtual reality and the creative tools used to work in it, he said, are inching ever closer to being fully immersive. “If I made a virtual sculpture, I could walk all the way around it.”

Image via New Haven Independent 

Ken Fritz spent 30 long years building the best stereo system in the world. The efforts Fritz made included adding a cavernous, veritable concert hall to his house to accommodate custom-made speaker towers.The new addition to his home was designed for the optimal dispersion of sound. Open Culture has more details:  

Much of Fritz’s system is custom-made, most elaborately notably its three-armed, 1,500-pound “Frankenstein turntable.” How much did it cost asks his son Scott? “I’ve seen turntables that sell for $100,00, $120,000, and they’re nowhere near as complicated and as involved as this,” he says. But to the true audiophile, every investment is worth it, whether of money, time, or effort. For “once it’s built, if you don’t like it, if doesn’t work, you’re stuck with it. You just lie to yourself: ‘It sounds good.'” Fritz’s music room stands as a testament to his determination not to lie to himself — as well as to his love of music and will to give that love a concrete form.

There is also a documentary on Fritz’ audiophilia journey, which you can watch here. 

image via Unsplash

Don’t mistake them for artworks! Since I can’t really go outside to travel and relax, I find myself scrolling through endless Pinterest and Unsplash tags of different landscapes. If you’re in the mood to gawk at beautiful aerial photos, this Bored Panda compilation of Gábor Nagy’s pictures is not only pleasing to look at, but it also shows us a surreal perspective of nature. Check the full compilation here. 

Image via Bored Panda 

Star Trek introduced us to three-dimensional chess, which is actually playable in some variants. There are other ways to play chess, often increasing the complexity of the game. But game designer Doctor Popular went in the other direction by placing all of the pieces on a single strip of sixteen spaces.

Nonetheless, it's not simplistic like a game of tic-tac-toe. You can download the rules and a gameboard for free here.

The latest from filmmaker Fabrice Mathieu (previously at Neatorama), The End is a tribute to the lost year of 2020, an experimental montage made using looping gifs from classic films. It's set to the tune "My Fault" by Ennio Morricone, which you might recall from the spaghetti Western My Name is Nobody. At first it seems like a simple mashup of similar images, but it takes us from waiting to coping methods to confusion to panic to despair as it goes along. Watch it once for the mood, then again to see how many movies you can identify.  -via Laughing Squid 

Where do you go when you want to get away from the pressure of the rat race? Yes, but what if you already live in Tahiti? The 18th-century chiefs of Tahiti took their downtime at Teti’aroa, a lush atoll 30 miles to the north.

The emerging story confirms Teti’aroa was the vacation spot for the royal family of Te Porionu’u. But the islets also served other functions: Leaders from other islands and their delegations convened there for rituals and negotiations. The youngest members of chiefly families also partook in ritual fattening, or ha’apori, on the atoll: They holed up in dwellings, out of the sun, and fed on a high-calorie fermented paste of breadfruit and coconut water. After weeks they would emerge, looking plum royal: pale and fat.

Ongoing research also shows that Teti’aroa has been a prized destination for native Polynesians much longer than thought—probably ever since the archipelago’s largest islands, Tahiti and Moorea, were first settled, some 900 years ago.

The modern era is no different, as wealthy people in the know book vacations at the single resort on Teti’aroa. There are also intense efforts to conserve the ecosystem of the atoll and document its rich history. Read about Teti’aroa at Atlas Obscura. 

The Irish elk (Megaloceros giganteus), which died out about 8,000 years ago, sported the largest antlers of any animal ever. Their antlers could be as big as 12 feet across- and they regrew those antlers every year! Males of the species were about the size of an Alaskan moose, while females were somewhat smaller and did not grow antlers.  

As a name, Irish elk is a double misnomer. The animal thrived in Ireland but was not exclusively Irish, ranging across Europe to western Siberia for some 400,000 years during the Pleistocene. Nor was it an elk; it was a giant deer, with no relation to the European elk (Alces alces) or North American elk (Cervus canadensis). The evolution of its most striking feature was driven by sexual selection; no survival advantages derived from such enormous antlers. “It was all about impressing the females,” says Adrian Lister, a paleobiologist at the Natural History Museum in London, England, and a leading expert on the species.

The prevailing theory for some time was that those antlers eventually grew to be so big that they disabled the animal, but scientists now have better ideas as to why the Irish elk went extinct. Read what we've learned about the Irish elk at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Smithsonian Institution)

An unassuming house in a regular residential area of Melbourne is home to a most unusual collection, one of the world’s largest collections of objects related to Mona Lisa. She would really appreciate a chance to share her very uncommon knowledge which she has painstakingly acquired over many years of putting together this amazing collection.

To you, the puppy above is cute. To the bald eagle, it's a snack. That's a problem because bald eagle populations have surged in recent years due to conversation efforts, as well the generalized awesomeness of the country that the bald eagle represents. To improve their dogs' chances of staying safe from hungry bald eagles, some owners dress their dogs in armored vests, such as the CoyoteVest pictured above. The Wall Street Journal (sorry, it's paywalled) reports:

"Eagles are strong enough to carry a 12-pound salmon, so a four-pound dog is nothing," says Mark Robokoff, owner of AK Bark pet shop in Anchorage. His shop sells CoyoteVest, a protective jacket covered in Kevlar and spikes, intended to protect small pets from coyotes. Mr. Robokoff immediately recognized its potential in a state with an estimated 30,000 bald eagles. The vest is topped with bright red nylon whiskers that he says scare off the birds from above.

-via Super Punch | Photo: CoyoteVest

Is your visual processor glitching? Maybe, but it's more likely that you're just looking at someone wearing new jeans from Leje, a fashion house in Paris. This company is all about contrasts:

Straight-Curve, Oriental-Western, Decomposition-Conjunction, Masculine-Feminine, Subculture-Luxury, etc.

The brand demonstrates the charming “disparities” between these elements and the harmony hidden within the contrast.

Hence the pants that are cut and resewn at jarring angles. For a mere $528, you can have pants like these!

-via Dave Barry

I saw the term "alien zombies" in the title and thought it weird. In a fictional story, there is no need to make aliens into zombies because aliens can be as weird and dangerous as the plot needs them to be without bring the zombie trope into it. But then I read the article, which has a lot of examples of space zombies, many that I've seen. In TV, it's a way of introducing a new concept into a series that already takes place in space. In standalone films, it's a way of explaining how zombies happen: a novel microbe infection from space. But there are practical reasons, too.   

The appeal of putting a zombie in a spaceship for a TV show is easy to see. Zombies are a cool and instantly recognisable monster. Spaceships are a cool and instantly recognisable setting. What’s more, while your production values may vary, zombies on a spaceship is a pretty damn cheap concept to realise on screen. Zombies are just however many extras you can afford with some gory make-up. All you need for a spaceship is some suitably set-dressed corridors and maybe a couple of exterior model shots if you’re feeling swish.

And as with the zombie apocalypse genre as a whole, the audience instantly and instinctively understands “the rules” of a zombie story, allowing you to focus on your characters and the solutions they come up with.

However, there are problems with making a classic zombie movie work in space. Den of Geek takes a look at the concept, how it's been done before, and how it clashes with our expectations of a zombie story.  -via Digg

Kevin Kohler, known on the internet as The Backyard Scientist, thinks that kids these days have become too soft in part because toys have become far less dangerous. They're also so boring! So Kohler gathered his friends and modified the toys to explode or reach dangerously high speeds.

Although Kohler doesn't attach razor blades so the snapping alligator game as the YouTube thumbnail implies, he does give the toy the snapping power of a spring-loaded rat trap. He and his friends also start fires inside a garage, which you should not try at home if you've been hoarding gasoline lately.

-via The Awesomer

Dexter Kruger, at 111 years old (you read that right), is Australia's oldest living man. His advice for a long life? Eat chicken brains! The retired cattle rancher told Australian Broadcasting Corp. in an interview that the weekly poultry delicacy has contributed to his longevity:  

“Chicken brains. You know, chickens have a head. And in there, there’s a brain. And they are delicious little things,” Kruger said. “There’s only one little bite.”

Kruger’s 74-year-old son Greg credits his father’s simple Outback lifestyle for his long life.

Nursing home manger Melanie Calvert said Kruger, who is writing his autobiography, was “probably one of the sharpest residents here.”

“His memory is amazing for a 111-year-old,” Calvert said.

John Taylor, a founder of The Australian Book of Records, confirmed that Kruger had become the oldest-ever Australian man.

The oldest-ever verified Australian was Christina Cook, who died in 2002 aged 114 years and 148 days.

Image via AP News