The world's largest treehouse was built by Horace Burgess in Crossville, Tennessee. We've featured it here before. The wooden structure burned to the ground in October of 2019, but Burgess was rather chill about the loss. See, the treehouse has quite a story behind it, and it wasn't the first time it had burned down.

“It was just evil,” says Burgess of the older treehouse he built and then razed back in the 1980s. There was “no good about it.” The house had ended up serving as Burgess’s hideaway for doing drugs, which he committed to quitting after the deaths of some friends. Trouble was, the house itself had become part of the habit. A voice came to Burgess, saying that he had to burn the house down if he was going to rebuild his life. And it wasn’t just any voice.

People typically think “you’re a little bit crazy when you say that God spoke to you,” Burgess admits, “but really he’s the one that tells us to put our pants on in the morning.” Looking back, Burgess says that burning that first treehouse down—on God’s advice—was “probably the most sane moment in my life.”

In 1993, Burgess set out building a new treehouse on the same spot, and kept building for the next dozen years, all by himself, with no blueprint or even a master plan. People came from all over the world to see it. Read the story of how the world's largest treehouse was built and then lost at Atlas Obscura.

Japanese artist Marina Fujiwara busies herself with "wasted creations" -- inventions that serve little to no practical purpose. For example, she made a pair of nunchaku that, when flipped into one armpit, take her body temperature.

For those of you working from home, she also has tools that will let you fake a Zoom loading error or, nonetheless, motivate you to keep working.

You can view more of Fujiwara's work on YouTube and Instagram.

-via Core77

A man was clearing out his deceased mother’s apartment in Manhattan when he found something gruesome. He found a decomposed human body in a chest freezer that was sealed with duct tape! The body appeared to have been stored for over a decade, according to investigators. An autopsy is planned, and authorities are investigating the incident. 

image via wikimedia commons

Asian giant hornets could establish themselves in the United States after being spotted in Washington state. These murder hornets can injure and worse, kill humans, and they wipe out bee hives. The Huffington Post has more details: 

“They’re like something out of a monster cartoon with this huge yellow-orange face,” Susan Cobey, a bee breeder with Washington State University’s Department of Entomology, said in an April news release from the university.

Though they aren’t usually aggressive to humans unless their nests are disturbed, their stings are venomous enough to kill someone who gets stung multiple times. According to the Times, the hornets kill up to 50 people a year in Japan and folks on the receiving end of the sting have compared it to the feeling of being speared by hot metal.

They’re also devastating to honey bee populations, wiping out hives and partially consuming the occupants. Last November, a beekeeper in Blaine, Washington, was shocked to discover thousands of his bees with their heads ripped off ― the murder hornet’s signature move.

image via wikimedia commons

In a new episode of “Chef Out Of Water,” Alexis is challenged to make a three course meal with power tools. Yes, you’ve read that right. Alexis is tasked to make meals with two saws, a drill, a heat gun, and a hammer. Watch the video to find out if she succeeds! I know I won’t!  

How did the girl step into the moving background and not fall? How did her body distort as she moved towards the moving background? It’s all thanks to French artist Francois Vogel using slit scan photography! 

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seagull girl . #distortion #slicetime #slitscan #spacetime #bird #fly #videoart #videoartist #newmedia #newmediaart #newmediaartist #digitalart #contemporaryart #contemporaryartist #digitalartist #digitalartwork #art #artist #artwork #animation #visualeffects

A post shared by Francois Vogel (@francois.vogel) on Apr 19, 2020 at 8:24am PDT

John Corcoran's story might be hard to imagine, especially as you read through Neatorama without pains, but his story is not unique. Indeed, it is a sobering reminder especially for parents and teachers to never give up on their kids and students' learning.

When I was a child I was told by my parents that I was a winner, and for the first six years of my life I believed what my parents had told me.

I was late in talking, but I went off to school with high hopes of learning to read like my sisters, and for the first year things were fine because there weren't many demands on us other than standing in the right line, sitting down, keeping our mouths shut and going to the bathroom on time.

And then in the second grade we were supposed to learn to read. But for me it wbout has like opening a Chinese newspaper and looking at it - I didn't understand what those lines were, and as a child of six, seven, eight years old I didn't know how to articulate the problem.

Do you know someone who might be struggling with the same thing?

Read more about his story, and how he overcame his fears and years of struggle, on BBC.

Photos Courtesy of John Corcoran

Alan Lane is the artistic director of Slug Low, one of the UK’s most innovative theatre companies. With the current crisis, not only does he and his company try to find ways to stage epic community theatre shows, they have to make sure hundreds of people have the resources they need during the lockdown. BBC has more details: 

"Today we find ourselves with a Transit van full of crisps," he says on the phone from Leeds. "Which is amazing.

"But yesterday we didn't have any vegetables. And tomorrow we're not going to have any eggs.

"So constantly I'm on the phone doing deals. The other day, I swapped a load of tote bags that I got from the university for some face masks, which I split in half and swapped the other half for a lot of cream.

"It's constant creative thinking, constant problem solving."

Six weeks ago, Lane and his company Slung Low were asked by Leeds City Council to co-ordinate the community response in Holbeck and Beeston, meaning any requests for help from the 10,000 households in the area have been passed to them.

image via BBC

When I was a kid, I saw sci-fi movies as far future, like I won't get to see them happen in my lifetime. However, it seems that those who've read sci-fi comics from the 50's might see them come to life in the near future, all thanks to Plastique Fantastique's "isphere".

the designers taped 2 transparent hollow hemispheres together and cut a hole for the head. additional gadgets can give a unique touch to any isphere: it can have a sunshade, a mirrored layer, an integrated microphone, a speaker, or a snorkel. the isphere is a funny and serious object that stimulates how to approach this exceptional situation.

I honestly like it! Do you?

Photo and video by plastique fantastique

１００円ショップで買ってきた「ぷかぷかアヒル」７個を細かく切って針金でつないで全身が動く人形を作りました。 pic.twitter.com/aC0rvF3syw

— 安居 智博 (@kami_robo_yasui) February 21, 2020

Japanese people are known for their creativity, and rightly so! This time, an artist turned 7 rubber duckies into a superhero action figure.

Image credit: Tomohiro Yasui

There's a special surprise inside this cheesecake prepared by redditor cookingwithkatie: whole raspberry cream puffs! It's a dessert inside a dessert, so it's nearly a turducken version of cheesecake. This is apparently a no-bake cheesecake, which helps explain how the cream puffs stayed together so well.

Having a hard time calming down your kids and making them sleep? Classic FM compiles ten soothing classical music pieces for your kids. Just make sure that you don’t fall asleep before they do.

See the list over at the site.

(Image Credit: waldteufel78/ YouTube)

An unnamed woman is surprised by her colleagues when they bring a cake to her. As the three women brought the cake towards her, the people sang the Birthday Song. A guy then can be seen trying to put a blindfold on her, while the women gave way to him. Unfortunately, as the women who were lifting up the cake gave way for the guy, only one of the women was left holding the cake. Unable to support the cake with only one of her hands, the cake was then thrown sideways and almost fell on the floor.

Thankfully, the hero was there to save the cake. Using his godly reflexes, the guy was able to catch the cake safely in his hands, which surprised everyone at the party. His power was felt even outside our universe.

See the video over at Facebook.

(Image Credit: Legalize Memes/ Facebook)

When it comes to drinking alcohol, some of us get drunk easily, while some of us have a higher tolerance with alcohol. One of the main reasons for this is our genes. But genes are not only limited to us humans as they ar also in all living things. This means that some animals have a low tolerance for alcohol, while others have a high tolerance. A study reported at Biology Letters explains why mammals differ in their level of alcohol tolerance.

An elephant, a narwhal and a guinea pig walk into a bar. From there, things could get ugly.

All three might get drunk easily, according to a new survey of a gene involved in metabolizing alcohol. They’re among the creatures affected by 10 independent breakdowns of the ADH7 gene during the history of mammal evolution. Inheriting that dysfunctional gene might make it harder for their bodies to break down ethanol, says molecular anthropologist Mareike Janiak of the University of Calgary in Canada.

Check out the study over at ScienceNews.

(Image Credit: aiacPL/ Pixabay)

Nobody has ever really documented how koalas hydrate themselves. For all we know, they just stay in the treetops for a long time with the gum leaves that they love to eat, and still manage to stay hydrated from up there. So how do they do it? Through his paper published over at Ethology, a researcher from the University of Sydney shows how these marsupials get their water.

"For a long time, we thought koalas didn't need to drink much at all because they gained the majority of the water they need to survive in the gum leaves they feed on," said Dr Valentina Mella, in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences. "But now we have observed them licking water from tree trunks. This significantly alters our understanding of how koalas gain water in the wild. It is very exciting."

More details about this study over at EurekAlert.

(Image Credit: Photo by David Iliff. License: CC BY-SA 3.0/ Wikimedia Commons)