Fine dining restaurants, such as Merienda, a restaurant in Edinburgh, are now accepting “social distancing deliveries”, where they bring award-winning cuisines to the customer’s doorstep. However, orders had to be made a day in advance, unlike fastfood. Home deliveries are unusual to Merienda, but they have to come up with ways to survive, as Yahoo details: 

"Delivering a meal in a foil container is not something I would normally consider but these are unusual times," Mickel says of the slump in business caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

"Business has been wiped out. We don't get bookings, we only get cancellations. So we have had to come up with a way of surviving and do things that we weren't prepared to do before," he told AFP.

Later in the day, the First Minister of the devolved government in Edinburgh, Nicola Sturgeon, announced there were 227 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Scotland, with three deaths.

Shortly before lunchtime, orders for roast salmon with lobster sauce, beef bourguignon and chicken chasseur with bottles wine to accompany have already come in.

Unlike fast-food, orders need to be made a day in advance and the service is for people who want to stock up with "a few meals at one time".

Assistant chef Robbie Probert says the challenge is making sure meals prepared by the restaurant, arrive looking as mouth-watering as they would in the restaurant.

"It is about making things simple for people," Probert says.

image via Yahoo

A lot of shops are ordered to close down due to the COVID-19 outbreak. In California, to everyone’s surprise, cannabis shops are still open. California governor Gavin Newsom deemed these marijuana dispensaries are “essential services” that should remain open, along with pharmacies and food stores. The Huffington Post has more details: 

Popular dispensary MedMen, which operates 33 stores in nine states including 12 in California, says it is operating with modified hours, but all stores remain open (except for one in Monterey Bay, Calif. which is closed due to local jurisdiction).

“As of now, we have been deemed an essential business in the markets that have established protocol,” Christian Langbein, the company’s spokesperson says. “We are closely following recent guidelines released by each state and local jurisdiction, plus that of the CDC and the WHO in the best interest of our customers and employees and have adopted the recommended safety protocol.”

image via wikimedia commons

Twitter user wastelandwolf’s pet bird, Toto, is perched on Nintendo Switch, singing along to the music of Animal Crossing as wastelandwolf plays Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Make sure to tell Toto that he did a good job after you watched the video! The pet bird fell asleep on the gaming console after singing along, so he really did his best! 

Toto has been trying to sing along to the animal crossing music all afternoon pls tell him he’s doing a good job pic.twitter.com/VWP2Yfbz5z

— 𝐣𝐨𝐡𝐧𝐧𝐲 ☆ (@wastelandwolff) March 21, 2020

image via Twitter

In ancient times, people didn't understand that birds migrate through the seasons. They just knew that some species disappeared and then popped up again in a different part of the year. Some written accounts hold some rather fanciful explanations for that, including the origin of the barnacle goose, which grew from floating logs. Gerald of Wales wrote, in the 12th century,

There are likewise here many birds called barnacles, which nature produces in a wonderful manner, out of her ordinary course. They resemble the marsh-geese, but are smaller. Being at first, gummy excrescences from pine-beams floating on the waters, and then enclosed in shells to secure their free growth, they hang by their beaks, like seaweeds attached to the timber. Being in progress of time well covered with feathers, they either fall into the water or take their flight in the free air, their nourishment and growth being supplied, while they are bred in this very unaccountable and curious manner, from the juices of the wood in the sea-water. I have often seen with my own eyes more than a thousand minute embryos of birds of this species on the seashore, hanging from one piece of timber, covered with shells, and, already formed. No eggs are laid by these birds after copulation, as is the case with birds in general; the hen never sits on eggs to hatch them; in no corner of the world are they seen either to pair or to build nests.

This turned out to be very convenient for the Catholic Church, as the barnacle goose could be classified as something other than meat, and therefore eaten during certain fasts. Learn about the barnacle goose and the real story behind it at Amusing Planet.

Taiwan Premier Su Tseng and the Taiwan government is taking a very different approach in how it advises its citizens. Instead of punishing its people for fear based impulse purchases, it is encouraging them to buy as much as their panicked heart desires.

Writing on his Facebook page late on Thursday (March 19) in a post entitled "Buy as much as possible, there's plenty of goods", Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang said it was the ideal opportunity to buy more Taiwanese products in a boon for the economy.

"Taiwan is a kingdom of fruits, a kingdom of fisheries, and a big food-processing country. During the Wuhan pneumonia epidemic, as the economy was slowing down, of course the government encourages everyone to enthusiastically buy," he wrote.

Is Mr. Su attempting to use a little reverse psychology on his people? <wink> <wink> Maybe!

PHOTO: AFP

Via - Straits Times

Plastic is everywhere. We know that much. We can find it on land, on air, and on water. And it appears that it has already gone to places not yet reached and discovered by scientists. One example of this statement is this deep-sea crustacean, which already had plastic in its stomach when scientists discovered it. With this being the case, scientists then decide to name this creature after plastic — Eurythenes plasticus.

This newly discovered species lives some 22,637 feet underwater in the depths of the Mariana Trench. It’s a shrimp-like creature, and researchers have so far found only one of these crustaceans with plastic inside its stomach. This was still concerning enough, however, that the team decided to incorporate “plastic” into the species’ name. This is the inaugural moment plastic joined the taxonomic ranks of biological classification.

“We decided on the name Eurythenes plasticus as we wanted to highlight the fact that we need to take immediate action to stop the deluge of plastic waste into our oceans,” said Alan Jamieson, the head of the research mission to discover the species, in a World Wildlife Fund statement.

More details about this creature over at Gizmodo.

(Image Credit: Gizmodo)

At first glance, Frozen 2 might seem to be a perfect movie. But when we look deeper into what we see and hear in the movie, we find that it has a lot of flaws in the songs, the animation, the storytelling, and even the two logos presented in the first 48 seconds of the film! CinemaSins lists the many things wrong about Frozen 2.

What are your thoughts about this one? Do you think that there are more mistakes not included in this video?

(Video Credit: CinemaSins/ YouTube)

The dreaded coronavirus has already forced many of us to stay at our own respective homes. For weeks now, many places around the world have already been locked down, and physical contact with other people is highly discouraged, as we are to practice social distancing. With this being the case, many of us now take refuge in the Internet. It has, at least temporarily, now become our main method of communicating with each other. And, because of this, the Internet has seen much activity recently, and maybe this is a good thing.

… Twitter is more active, and judging by the number of inane fights I've read through in the past few days, Facebook is too. Reddit has reported a 20 to 50 percent surge in usage on some subreddits.

As we find ourselves more online—at the moment, less out of desire than out of actual, desperate need—there are upsides in the way we're using the internet to connect. In the past week, I've never seen so many of my friends making videos on Instagram, whether it's while cooking, dancing, doing makeup, or talking about whatever; I opened the app yesterday to an unprecedented number of people I follow doing Instagram Lives at once. People are even blogging again: the Blogger-hosted Indoor Voices is a new platform for posting just about anything and with its submissions open to anyone, and We Are Food Bloggers Now is reminiscent of food blogs before food blogs seemed like a launchpad to book deals.

Bettina Makalintal compares this recent surge of Internet activity to the days when the Internet was fun. Check out her article over at Vice.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

The Chino Valley Unified School District (CVUSD) Choral Festival in San Bernardino County, California, was canceled, but the Chino Hills High School Chamber Singers still wanted to sing. So they coordinated a performance on YouTube, with each member singing from their homes. It's lovely.

This arrangement is the one made famous by the late Israel Kamakawiwoʻole. His version has been featured in many movies, TV shows, and ads, but the reason it always makes me tear up is because it accompanied the death of the ER character Mark Green.

-via the A.V. Club

When James Bedford died in 1967, his body became the first to be frozen in hopes of resurrection someday when medical science had advanced enough to save him. That was over 50 years ago, and the company that froze him eventually went bankrupt, as did other early cryonics firms.

As to what happened with these early companies, the big issue, beyond equipment failures and faulty procedures resulting in accidental thawing, was that they relied on friends and family of the deceased to make regular payments to keep the bodies nice and frozen. Should the deceased’s loved ones choose to cool on making such payments, which almost universally happened rather quickly, their “mostly dead” loved ones would then be allowed to warm and become all-dead. Although interestingly in at least one company’s case, they were found in 1979 to have thawed, some intentionally others accidentally, 17 of the 18 bodies they were storing without notifying anyone… Naturally, lawsuits ensued, but the company was bankrupt at that point.

In other cases, once the bodies were accidentally thawed or payments ceased, the companies simply notified the deceased’s next of kin, transferring the bodies to them for disposal like you would any other body.

Things have changed since then. Newer companies have financial setups that make them a little more stable. Read about the business of cryonics and what happened to James Bedford at Today I Found Out.

(Image credit: Dan)

What do you do when you're staying at home and practicing social distancing? Make a faux retro sitcom intro about staying at home and practicing social distancing! And the rest of us, who are staying at home and practicing social distancing can watch what others are doing to entertain us during our time staying at home and practicing social distancing. By the way, Eleanor Lawrence is not completely isolated. Her boyfriend Kieran Murray was behind the camera the whole time. -via reddit

Update: The pilot episode is out now!

Crises usually bring the bad out of people. Amidst the current coronavirus outbreak, we have seen people hoard sanitizing items while some sell them at a higher price. We’ve even seen people duke it out because of toilet paper. But the very same crises can also bring the good out of people.

Bored Panda shares to us 40 wholesome pictures amidst the outbreak, with most of them about people helping and cheering each other. Check it out over at the site.

(Image Credit: Bored Panda)

Over the past decade, the price of vegetables have been steadily increasing an average of 2% annually. Now that the coronavirus has spread across many countries, there is no doubt that the prices will increase more due to the aforementioned virus. And, chances are, you won’t find fresh foods in your local supermarket. So, when you come to a point where you can’t find fresh vegetables, what’s the best alternatives? The Conversation offers us three of the best alternatives to fresh vegetables. These are frozen, canned, and fermented vegetables, respectively.

More details about this over at the site.

(Image Credit: Sponchia/ Pixabay)

In a new issue of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the five-issue comic from Ryan Parrott, Simone di Meo, Alessio Zono, Walter Baiamonte, Igor Monti and Ed Dukeshire, the medieval turtles have been transformed into the Turtle Rangers to aid the Power Rangers in fighting against Rita and Shredder. As Power Rangers, the turtles donned masks and medieval weapons to aid them in the war to come. CBR.com has more details: 

Effectively, both teams swap places with Leonardo as the Blue Ranger instead of Billy, Raphael taking on Jason's Red Ranger duties, Michelangelo replacing Trini as the Yellow Ranger, Donatello becoming the Black Ranger instead of Zack and April taking Kimberly's place as the Pink Ranger.

When they face off against Wyldfyre (a giant pyro-kitten sent by Rita to New York), the Turtle Rangers level up their weaponry as well with April wielding a Power Bow and Raph rocking Power Sais. Leo has got Power Blades instead of swords, Donnie has a Power Staff, and Mikey has Power Nunchucks. They combine them to form the iconic Power Blaster that saves the day, with the public adoring them for their bravery.

Luckily, the Ninja Rangers help Tommy and Tyler break free from Karai at the same time. When they all meet up again, they get ready for their final battle against an army of combined Putties and Foot soldiers and a giant-size Bepop and Rocksteady as the crossover marches to its conclusion.

image via CBR.com

Found in the westernmost part of Canada is the Canadian territory of Yukon. Out of all the provinces and territories in Canada, this place has the smallest population, with only a little over 40,000 people. Found in this territory is the Takhini Hot Springs, which lies just outside Whitehorse, the capital city of Yukon.

For most of the year, visitors spend hours relaxing in the mineral-rich and odorless waters, which are privately owned by the company Takhini Hot Pools.

But when the winter months come, the hot springs become a heated battleground for the Hair Freezing Contest, the world’s only frozen-hairdo competition. In this contest, …

Participants dunk their heads underwater, emerge into the frigid air, and style their locks into stiff, eye-catching sculptures. Depending on one’s creativity and luck with the elements, the results range from frosty, mop-like tangles to dramatically manicured spikes.

“All this rising steam collects on your hair and freezes really quickly when it meets the cold air,” says Andrew Umbrich, co-owner of Takhini Hot Pools. “You can get good results within 15 minutes if it’s cold enough.”

It’s worth splitting hairs when deciding on a final look: Winners for this year’s contest, which opened last December and closed earlier this month, earn $2,000 (in Canadian dollars), free soaks, and a 12-punch pass for a new facility set to open this fall. Hair must be completely frozen—a feat best achieved when the air is 40 below zero. Once coiffed, entrants ring a wireless doorbell to notify a staff member to photograph them.

Well, what do you think?

(Image Credit: Takhini Hot Pools/ Atlas Obscura)