Rana Levy is not only a student majoring in physics and mathematics, she's also the owner of Daedra Jewelry. Under that name she creates these lovely, crystal adorned rings, lockets and necklaces inspired by Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Elder Scrolls and The Hobbit. The metals have an antique look and are embellished with ornate detail.
Visit Levy's online store to check out her selection of beautiful baubles.
Via Design Taxi | Images: Rana Levy / Daedra Jewelry
Avengers fan and owner of Laser Gadgets Patrick Priebe has fashioned an Iron Man glove equipped with lasers, sound effects and other fun gizmos. The glove has two lasers and a launcher that ejects small “shells.” The blue laser packs a punch, with the ability to burn wood and pop balloons in an instant. The red laser also pops balloons and generally looks cool, red and lasery. Neatorama! See the video above for Priebe's demonstration. -Via Daily Dot
The lengths some nutty people will travel out of spite and vengeance is amazing. This AskReddit thread posed the question “What was the most f*cked up thing your ex did after you broke up?” and got some interesting answers.
Here are some psychotic highlights (rather, lowlights):
LovesEwoks: "My ex took a title loan on my vehicle. We were married, so he went to the DMV, requested a new title with his name added. Apparently, that is fully legal until divorce is finalized. That fu**er went to the title loan company and took a loan against the clear title. He never made a payment. I didn’t find out until it was getting towed away."
Jehuy: "We agreed that she’d collect her stuff from “our” place when we broke, without me being there. I arrived later that evening to find two gas valves opened, so I guess I’m lucky I didn’t light a cigarette.
Edit: No, I did not call the cops. How would I prove it anyway? At that point, I was just glad she was out of there and out of my life. And still am. So I decided to ignore it and not sound like a lunatic wailing at a police officer about a murderous girlfriend. Believe me, at this point we'd been through enough. Think I saw her once at a glance, at McDonalds; alas, not fat."
prattastic: "Put me on the mailing and call list for every church group she could find. For two months my phone was blowing up with calls from churches and evangelicals, they wanted money, they wanted to send me bibles and pamphlets. The ones that had my address did send me bibles and pamphlets. Took a lot of patient explaining, and occasionally some frustrated yelling to get myself removed from everything."
TrueEnt: "Not me but a neighbor. The couple got divorced and she got the house in the settlement. Only the house and the immediate house lot, not the surrounding land, that went to the husband.
The first thing he did was sell all the lumber off the rest of the land. She went from living in a nice forest to living in a clear cut. He wasn’t done yet! Once the trees were gone he sold off the topsoil, then the gravel under that. By the time he was done her house was on a hill overlooking a barren landscape reminiscent of the lunar surface. This was years ago and the place is still hideous. Here's a Google Street View of the house. https://i.imgur.com/Y6EM5ox.jpg"
Ah, those Redditors. Even if you suspect a story is a figment of someone's overactive imagination, generally it's still a good story. Read more breakup antics here. Feeling bold? Share any of your bad breakup stories in the comments.
Via Uproxx | Image: Jennifer Pahlka
The Chinese Ministry of Culture announced Thursday that the government and police will join forces to stop the popular practice of hiring strippers for funerals to entice more mourners to attend. After pictures circulated online of a funeral in the city of Handan in which a dancer took off her bra with children in the audience, the Ministry of Culture denounced the behavior as obscene and warned that a crackdown would follow. To flex their muscle on the issue, they revealed that after the Handan funeral, the people responsible for hiring the dancers were fined 70,000 yuan (approximately $11,300 USD).
The Chinese believe that one measure of the deceased is the number of people who show up at their funeral. As a result, large, flashy funeral processions that look more like parades with music, bands and dancers (as in the screen shot above) are common. Hiring exotic dancers and strippers for funerals is also popular in Taiwan, which is where the video footage below was shot by National Geographic.
Read more on the topic at the Wall Street Journal.
Brisbane, Australia-based photographer Serenah Hodson captured her delightful series, aptly named "Dry Dog Wet Dog," in the most likely circumstance that a dog will throw anyone the Stink Eye. Not only are these normally fluffily coiffed pups all wet, but some of them appear to be a little miffed. And why not? To think that any human would interfere with their ripe doggy scent by giving them a bath, only then to make them sit still for a camera shoot? The incredible nerve! Hodson says of her series,
"Dry Dog Wet Dog came about with washing my own dogs. Their personalities change when they know it's bath time. So I decided to create a series of the different looks and not only personalities but the difference in look from groomed to wet. We get such great texture on the dog when the hair is wet. Some dogs look completely different when wet and this was the joy I wanted to capture."
See more of Serenah Hodson's adorable series here, and visit her website and Facebook page to follow her award-winning work.
Images: Serenah Hodson
Remember the disabled writer, F. Alexander, who lives at HOME in A Clockwork Orange? In a later scene with him, his musclebound assistant Julian is played by Darth Vader himself David Prowse, who was at the height of his bodybuilding involvement. Not only did Prowse have a role in the film, but he had the guts to stand up to Stanley Kubrick, which few actors ever did with the demanding and headstrong director.
Prowse took issue with the scene in which he had to carry the writer and his wheelchair around a corner and to the dinner table in one take. Kubrick, famous for being insistent on doing many takes of each scene in his films, had Prowse worried about the number of times he'd be expected to perform that feat of strength. Prowse approached Kubrick, arguing, "Your name is not 'one-take Kubrick' is it, you see?" Everyone on the set grew silent, thinking that was the premature end of Prowse's work on the film. Kubrick just laughed and told him not to worry. They got the shot in six takes, definitely a conservative effort on Kubrick's part.
Image: Warner Bros.
New father Buddy Crotty is already aware that the dark side of the force is strong with his baby Madison. No mantra nor rallying cry of the rebel alliance will calm this kid. Thus, Buddy knows the imitation this situation calls for, and it works like a charm. -Via The Daily What
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Isabella Mori, 50, is a resident of Vancouver, Canada, and she found the price of housing in her home town overwhelming. Unsurprising, since Vancouver has the second most unaffordable housing in the world. Her solution? Build her own home at a cost of only CAD $39,000 (USD $30,995).
The attractive, light-filled dwelling, which Mori calls "Thousand Crow," is equipped with well-planned features such as a fan to vent the cat litter box and a number of built-in, space-saving storage solutions.
See many more interesting pictures of Thousand Crow at Isabella Mori's Imgur post.
Via: Design Taxi | Images Credit: Isabella Mori
Grilled BBQ Chicken Quesadillas | Image and Recipe: The Chic Site
Those who like to cook know that high heat can make for wonderful delights, such as all things carmelized. When some foods are placed on the grill, sugary magic happens — particularly with fruits. One of my favorite sweet summer dishes is grilled peaches with cinnamon sugar and a little butter. I'm also a big fan of grilled pineapple. If you like grilled shish kebabs with pineapple, you know that the fruit has a more complex and delicious flavor when grilled.
This article lists 25 foods that are great on the grill. Take a look to get some good ideas before your next grilling session.
Grilled Banana S'mores | Image and Recipe: She Knows
These beautiful glassworks by Japanese artist Niyoko Ikuta play with the qualities of glass creatively mixed with geometric forms. Ikuta is recognized worldwide as a master of glass art and has collectors across the globe. Ikuta expounded on her work to the Victoria & Albert museum in London:
"I am captivated by the complexity of light as it reflects, refracts, and passes through broken cross sections of plate glass. In 1980 I began making artwork by laminating sheets of glass using adhesive and exposing the cross sections. My motifs are derived from feelings of gentleness and harshness, fear, limitless expansion experienced through contact with nature, images from music, ethnic conflict, the heart affected by joy and anger, and prayer. In creating my pieces it is like imagining an architectural space when viewing blueprints, deciding on an image by reading into the intentions of the architect, or imbuing a space with dynamic energy to bring it to life."
See additional photographs of her work at Yufuku Gallery.
Via Colossal | Images Yufuku Gallery
When a young man impulsively flips off a rhesus macaque monkey, the monkey doesn't take it lightly. In fact, he jumps the guy, apparently just to let him know that he's fluent in international symbols. -Via Tastefully Offensive
Whoever says farm life is uneventful hasn't hung out with Don the Border Collie, who lives on a farm in Scotland with his human Tom Hamilton. Don had a wild adventure this morning, starting when he was riding on a mini tractor with Hamilton, who left it to tend to a lamb headed in the wrong direction.
Don hit the dashboard controls of the tractor and took off, crashing through a fence and cruising across one half of a busy highway before stopping in a grassy median. The photo of Don's joy ride, above, was captured by Traffic Scotland. Don was fine after his solo tractor race. Unsurprisingly, due to the characteristics of his breed, witnesses said Don remained calm.
Via Gawker | Images: Traffic Scotland
#M74 (N) J13-RTC due to dog taking control of tractor... nope, not joking. Farmer&police at scene,vehicle in central res. #maycausetailbacks
— Traffic Scotland (@trafficscotland) April 22, 2015Here is a pic of the dog from the tractor incident on the#M74. The dog is called Don and is a collie #inthedoghouse pic.twitter.com/ipBe5vUHpG
— Traffic Scotland (@trafficscotland) April 22, 2015
A man walking down the street to get himself a burger in the borough of Solihull, West Midlands, England nearly became broiled meat himself from fifteen-foot-high flames shooting out of a manhole. Shiraz Nawaz heard buzzing a few feet behind him and turned around, only to see black smoke followed by flames shooting up from an open manhole.
The quick-witted Shiraz warned his destination restaurant nearby to evacuate and turn off their gas line. Firemen extinguished the flames, which were caused by fire in an underground electrical box. Shiraz said,
“I’ve never seen anything like it, and I have been in the building trade. The guy in the shop grabbed me a couple of burgers after everything, so I guess it had a happy ending.”
Let no flames, high water or other disaster stand between a man and his burger. All ended well, indeed.
-Via Arbroath
In honor of Earth Day, check out this gorgeous footage of the Keukenhof (kitchen garden) in the Netherlands, which is the second largest flower garden in the world. Covering an area of 79 acres, the garden is in the town of Lisse, near Amsterdam. The drone flight view over these seemingly endless, neat rows of tulips, hyacinths and other bulb flowers is a mesmerizing visual splendor. Willem van Gogh, a relative of Vincent van Gogh, officially opened this 66th year of Keukenhof's display in commemoration of 2015 being the 125th year since Vincent's death. -Via The Presurfer
A brain surgeon was operating on a 26-year-old woman to remove what he thought was a brain tumor when he found an extremely rare circumstance: an embryonic twin, or "teratoma," lodged in her brain. The teratoma, complete with hair, teeth and bone, was the mysterious ailment causing Yamini Karanam trouble with reading- and general comprehension.
Karanam was working on a PhD at Indiana University when she noticed the comprehension problems. Frustrated by two doctors whose advice contradicted each other, she found her Los Angeles surgeon, Dr. Hrayr Shahinian, through independent research. Shahinian described his minimally invasive procedure to NBC Los Angeles,
"Unlike traditional brain surgery where you open the skull and use metal retractors and you bring a microscope to see in the depths of the brain, what we're doing is keyhole surgery."
The doctor conducts the surgery using fiber-optic technology with digital imagery. A small incision is made into the brain and an endoscope is inserted, which carefully scrapes away at the tumor.
Read more and see a video on this rare medical find, which Karanam jokingly calls her "evil twin," at NBC Los Angeles.
Via i09 | Screen shot via NBC Los Angeles/Skullbase Institute