The “creeper” is one of the many enemies that spawn in the Minecraft world. The green creature is very sneaky, and a player might not notice its presence while playing the game, as the creeper silently roams the map.

When near the player, the creeper then makes a hissing sound (which the player hears). It will then glow, and then finally explode, leaving a large crater where it stood. The creeper is one of the most iconic hostile mobs in the video game. It is so iconic, that a parody song about it was made.

If you’re a fan of Minecraft, you’ll surely love this $19.99 Minecraft Creeper Lamp.

This 4″ cube accent lamp runs on a couple of AAA batteries, and switches on and off with a tap on its head. It also makes that sSSSsss BOOM! sound when you switch it on. It’s made from bio-degradable plastic, which is eco-friendly, but won’t produce gunpowder no matter how hard you try.

Thankfully, no one will be blown into smithereens when turning on this lamp.

(Image Credit: Technabob)

Because the coronavirus has no known cure as of the moment, countries think of ways to battle the dreaded virus. There are countries that have declared lockdowns in certain areas of their territories (if not all of their territories), while there are others who try to create a vaccine against the virus. Other than these two rather obvious choices, there exists another option that we can choose in fighting the virus, and that is herd immunity.

If the virus keeps spreading, eventually so many people will have been infected and (if they survive) become immune that the outbreak will fizzle out on its own as the germ finds it harder and harder to find a susceptible host. This phenomenon is known as herd immunity.

Of course, the first thought that will come into our minds is that this approach is too dangerous, as many will get sick, and probably die in the process.

But provided that this will really be the consequence, can we be assured that this will work? Will herd immunity be effective against the coronavirus?

Find out the answer over at Technology Review.

(Image Credit: geralt/ Pixabay)

Due to the continuing spread of the coronavirus across the globe, many companies have now asked their employees to work from home instead of showing up physically at the office. We know, however, that working from home can be a pain in the butt. After all, it’s home, and home is where we can rest and chill: a safe haven. I believe that some of us would prefer to stay at the office to work so as not to bring work at home. But now that we’re in this situation, what can you do to stay productive even when working at home? Alice Boyce gives us some tips on how to do just that.

See her full article over at Psychology Today.

(Image Credit: quinntheislander/ Pixabay)

Paleontologists have now found the oldest modern bird skull ever, and if this tidbit does not yet excite you, perhaps what you will learn about this bird will. Since this bird predates the split between ducks, chickens, and turkeys, it has traits of all the three birds mentioned. It is, in other words, a 3-in-1 bird, and for these characteristics, let us aptly call this bird the turducken.

“This is an incredibly informative specimen,” says Amy Balanoff, a paleontologist at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, who wasn’t involved in the work. Whereas the earliest birds, like the 150-million-year old Archaeopteryx, look very different from today’s, the new fossil has clear characteristics of modern land and waterfowl, perhaps offering a glimpse of their common ancestor…

[...]

The scan revealed a complete skull of what looked like a modern bird. The bones in the top and the back of the head closely resemble those of modern ducks, whereas the face and beak have unfused bones, as seen in today’s chickens and turkeys. “You can play this game all day: ‘Oh, it’s a duck! No, it’s a chicken!’” Field says.

More details about this over at Science Magazine.

(Image Credit: Phillip Krzeminski)

Most toys for kids nowadays are made out of plastic. And since we already know the many negative effects of plastic in the environment, the animals (and even ourselves, too), we know that this already is bad news.

One of the most popular toys for kids today are Lego bricks. But these same Lego bricks could also be one of the most infamous pollutants in the near future.

New research has found those classic Lego bricks take between 100 and 1,300 years to fully disintegrate at sea, depending on variations in the plastic's composition and the marine weathering it experiences.

[...]

"It is specifically designed to be played with and handled, so it may not be especially surprising that despite potentially being in the sea for decades it isn't significantly worn down. However, the full extent of its durability was even a surprise to us."

[...]

While weathered blocks from the beach showed various degrees of weakening, yellowing, blunting, fracturing and fouling, researchers were surprised to find the toys largely intact.

(Image Credit: Turner et al., Environmental Pollution, 2020/ Science Alert)

On the off chance that you don't have enough interest in watching The Rise of Skywalker again soon enough to pay for it, but you'd be interested in the extras available on the home release, io9 has you covered. Their staff watched the two-hour making-of documentary and the featurettes that accompany the package, and gleaned a list of trivia you may be interested in. Among those tidbits, I learned about composer John Williams' cameo appearance.  

John Williams’ cameo on Kijimi, as a bartender outside Babu Frik’s droid shop, was Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy’s idea. Williams was originally unsure about it but his wife convinced him.

In quite possibly the best Easter egg in the entire documentary, or maybe the Star Wars saga as a whole, every piece of seemingly random crap that populates the space where Williams’ character is standing represents one of the 51 films for which he’s been Oscar-nominated. Below are just a few of them...

See those pictures and a lot more trivia about The Rise of Skywalker at io9.

While US and Australia hoard toilet paper, the French are hoarding something a little more edible. They are stockpiling bread. Apparently access to fresh baguettes is so important to the French people, bakeries have been deemed an essential-service business and are allowed to remain open despite strict social distancing regulations.

"We've seen people come in who want to buy 50 baguettes at a time. There's something like a psychosis in some people."

Mr Labbe said there need be no concern over supply, even as some bakers have taken to placing a limit on sales per client.

"We have flour, yeast and salt. There is no problem to produce bread."

Let's all pray for the health of everyone, especially those who provide essential services. Long live the baguette!

Via- The Straits Times

Instagram user Etoni Mama is a master of kyaraben--the Japanese art of character-shaped foods. Her whole feed is fascinating, but I'm especially impressed by her creative use of eggs. Whether they're fried sunny side up, over easy, or boiled, her eggs look like memorable characters adding joy to your meal.

A new fossil has been identified and named Asteriornis maastrichtensis, but it's becoming known as the "wonderchicken." More than 66 million years old, it appears to be the oldest "crown" bird yet found, the ones modern birds are descended from.

Indeed, physical analysis of the Asteriornis fossil revealed a mixed set of features consistent with both modern landfowls (also known as gamefowls) and waterfowls—two distinct but closely related evolutionary orders. Together, landfowls and gamefowls fit snugly inside a clade called Galloanserae, a group that includes ducks, chickens, turkey, geese, pheasants, and partridges. Fascinatingly, Asteriornis had cranial features common to chickens and ducks, which suggests its evolutionary position is near to the last common ancestor of chickens and ducks, according to the research.

The explanation of why the wonderchicken is so important to the record of bird evolution is at Gizmodo.

(Image credit: Phillip Krzeminski)

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If this is well-liked I could see a Part II in the future.

A post shared by Matt Shirley (@mattsurelee) on Mar 17, 2020 at 1:12pm PDT

Matt Shirley makes graphs all the time, which you can follow at Instagram. Most of them are about the minutiae of everyday living, such as traffic, time management, food, working, etc. Lately, they've all turned to the main subject of the day, the coronavirus pandemic and how it affects us.



Some are informational, but most are just amusingly relatable. Continue reading for more, but be aware than some contain NSFW text.

Musicians such as Coldplay, Yungblud, and Keith Urban are live-streaming performances to help ease people’s boredom due to self-isolation. Coldplay’s Chris Martin played an impromptu set on Instagram Live, and Keith Urban went live with his wife, Nicole Kidman, in the background. Yungblud did an hour-long show from LA, which included a cooking segment and a drinking game, as BBC detailed: 

His concert was pulled together in just 72 hours, after his upcoming tour was postponed due to concerns about the spread of coronavirus.

The hour-long live-stream also included a cooking segment and a comedy drinking game featuring actress Bella Thorne and rapper Machine Gun Kelly (the beer they chose was, of course, Corona).

The star said he wanted to "give people a bit of positivity, laughter, and emotion" in the midst of the coronavirus epidemic, but it also helped him stay positive.

"Having the opportunity to connect with fans taken away from me wasn't gonna be an option," he told Vulture. "It's a time to not give up and think out of the box - out of bad situations and despair comes incredible art, no matter what form that may be."

image via BBC

There are a lot of ways to combat loneliness and boredom while people are on lockdown, and are forced to stay inside their homes for the time being. People easily unwind when they’re having fun with others, and even amidst the quarantine, a whole neighborhood was able to have fun together! Twitter user leonardocarella shared a video of a neighborhood in Italy singing. It seems that distance isn’t a problem when you’re having fun!

image screenshot via Twitter

Steam has broken its own record of players using the platform. A peak count of 19,728,027 people are using the service, which broke the record of 18,801,944. The number of people on Steam isn’t a big surprise, given with the current situation of the world (COVID-19 outbreak). Most people now have time to visit the platform and play games, as IGN detailed:  

Unsurprisingly, this also means that some of Steam’s (and owner Valve’s) most popular games have also set new concurrent players records. Valve’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (also known as CS:GO) managed to peak at 1,007,062 players, while DOTA 2 peaked at 694,829. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has peaked at 525,462 players, while Rainbow Six Siege and Grand Theft Auto Online bring up the rear.

image via wikimedia commons

North Carolina-based graphic designer, illustrator, and web designer Matthew Burt reimagined Disney princesses as modern career women. He put them into professions based on their characters. From Snow White as a leading psychologist to Rapunzel as a neurologist, Burt wanted to show the princesses as strong women, as Insider detailed: 

"The Disney princesses have grown to be more than just characters in a movie. They have become icons in modern culture and to many people, they are a source of inspiration," Burt told INSIDER.

"I wanted to create something that others might look up to," he continued. "It's important to show the princesses as strong women because of that influential role they have in society. Everyone should have something that inspires them — especially girls who may want to pursue a career in a traditionally male-dominated field."

image via Insider

Matthew Brooks is a collector of old soap. He also manages the creation of new toiletry products, but his penchant for vintage soaps started when he was very young. A tour of an old Victorian home showed him how the scent of the vintage soap used there lent an air of authenticity and nostalgia to the past.

In many ways, the soap I seek could be described as mundane. I seek the brands which were once very commonplace, but which are now really very difficult to find. There was a category of soap called ‘household’, which encompassed the sort of all-purpose soaps sold in large, long lasting bars, which could be used for washing clothes and general cleaning, amongst a plethora of other uses. These soaps (which were made of natural materials such a coconut oil, tallow and pine resin) started to be replaced by washing powders and synthetic detergents in the 1950s, to the extent that there are now no existent consumer brands left in Great Britain. My key outlook therefore is for old packets of once famous brands, such as Lifebuoy, Fairy, Sunlight etc, and of these I have been lucky to find specimens which are over 100 years old. I find them in a great many different places, from friends moving into old houses and discovering forgotten packets scurried away under kitchen sinks, to rummaging through London’s many hardware shops looking for old stock at the back of shelves (it is alarming what you can find in such places!).

Read an interview with Brooks, in which he explains how soap led the world in branding, how the graphic design of the packages has changed, and how colonialism scattered the different brands of soap. Check out some of his collection at Soap Journal at Instagram, in which each entry tells the soap's history. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Wellcome Images)