Image: Sekaiminzoku - via My Modern Met

Tired of making shiny mud balls, some (very patient) people of Japan have moved on to making balls from aluminum foil (YouTube link). Oooh, shiny!

Pray that they don't ever discover Baby Bell wax as a substrate.

Forget reading Dr. Seuss to your kids at bedtime! Rap it instead, just like rapper Win Nevaluze did with the words of There's a Wocket in My Pocket to the rap song "Walk It Talk It" by Migos feat. Drake.

Via ScatterBrain News.

Image: Fu, F., et al. ScienceRobotics 28 Mar 2018 Vol 3, issue 16, eaar8580

When we hear the word "robot," usually we think of a mechanical being made of metal and electronics - but that's not what a team of researchers at Southeast University in Nanjing, China, made. Instead of metal, they use a combination of heart muscle cells, hydrogels and colloidal crystals to create a biohybrid hydrogel structures that can move.

In the image above, the wings of the biohybrid butterfly flaps due to the rhythmic contractions of the heart muscle cells. Cool, huh?

I, for one, welcome our new soft robotic overlords.

Dozen Metal Roses by MetalRelic

NeatoShop artist Jeremy Werkheiser is one talented man - not only does he design cool T-shirts for his Taped Ape store, but he's also an expert welder. He's created these awesome metal roses from scrap metal.

Take a look at more of Jeremy's creations over at MetalRelic - Thanks Thomas!

Woohoo! I'm happy to announce that we have two very neat things going on right now for you guys: First, we're having a sitewide sale over at the NeatoShop. Save up to 20% off all T-shirts until Sunday, Oct 8. Need that perfect shirt for Halloween? We've got tons of awesome Horror T-shirts just for you.

Second, we're also having a T-shirt giveaway. It'll be the easiest you'll ever enter: all you have to do is tell us which shirt you'd like. Three random winners will be picked soon, so hurry up and enter:

October is here! This means that Halloween is just around the corner, and what better way to celebrate the most wonderful time of the year than with a neat T-shirt giveaway?

Here's how to enter:

1. Visit the NeatoShop and look for your favorite T-shirt. May we suggest the Horror T-Shirts Sci-Fi T-Shirts, and Fantasy T-Shirts categories? Don't forget, we're having a super awesome sale this week: get up to 20% off all T-shirts on the NeatoShop!

2. In the comment below, tell us your favorite T-shirt and the artist who designed it. Bonus entry if you tell us why you like the NeatoShop or Neatorama :)

3. That's it! There's no step 3.

One entry per person. Multiple entries will be disqualified. We'll pick three winners at random. The winners will be notified through our comment system below, so be sure to use a valid email address (and whitelist us - if you don't get the email because it's blocked by a spam filter, it's not our fault, mmkay?) Good luck, everyone!

PS Did you win our NeatoMail-exclusive Wednesday Wish List contest last week? Three lucky Neatoramanauts won T-shirts, and all they had to do was put some in their wish list. Be sure to subscribe to our email newsletter to be notified for the next one!

Update 10/11/17: We've picked the winners using the random number algorithm over at random.org - Congratulations to ladybugs, Mindy G, and Olivier P who won! Thank you for playing, everyone - catch us next time by subscribing to NeatoMail!

Woohoo! It's been a very long time since we had a NeatoShop Wish List Wednesday. It's a neat and super fun giveaway: all you have to do to enter is to put a few shirts into your wish list. We'll pick 3 people at random - and they'll each win a shirt each from their wish list.

Here's how to play:

1. Go to NeatoShop.com and take a look around. May we recommend the Funny T-Shirts and Science T-Shirts categories?

2. Pick at least 5 shirts that you'd like (there's no limit - you can pick as many as you want) and click on the "Wish List" link on sidebar of the product page:

3. In your Wish List (click the menu icon in the header, then select "My Wish List"), scroll down the page and copy the custom link. Then, paste that in the comment below. For example:

4. That's it! We'll pick 3 random winners and award them each one shirt from their wish lists.

One entry per person. Multiple entries will be disqualified. The winner will be notified through our comment system below, so be sure to use a valid email address. To ensure delivery of the notification email, whitelist @neatorama.com. Good luck, everyone!

Update 10/1/17 - We've picked the three lucky winners, using the random number algorithm over at random.org. Congratulations to Marnie P., Acacia D., and elbowyoyo who won this round! Thank you again for playing, everyone!

Japanese rice paddy art is like paint-by-numbers, except that they use rice plant of various types and colors instead of paint. The result is a colorful field of rice with fantastic images.

Take a look at this neat video clip by Great Big Story about how the village of Inakadate turned their rice fields into a popular tourist attraction year after year.

(Thanks Eric Gonzalez!)

Image @sumokyokai

Even the best sumo wrestlers can't spend all his time in the dohyō. Sometimes they've just got to go out and (bend the tree branches down with their super strength so they can) smell the flowers.

Image: @Emilee Plaayer

When four-year-old Maelyn gets on the soccer team, her four parents are there to cheer her on. Wait - four parents? That's right.

Maelyn's mother and father are divorced, and both later remarried. But they're determined not to let that get in the way of parenting.

"Because of us, I will never believe co-parenting can't work," wrote Emilee Player (Maelyn's step-mom) in this viral Facebook post, "I know through experience it can work!"

People, especially the younger generations, don't write in cursive anymore (cursive handwriting isn't even being taught in some schools). That much is known.

But what caused the decline in cursive handwriting? Is it the pervasive use of computer keyboard (and now smartphone's texting)? Or is it something else ... like the rise of the ballpoint pen:

Sassoon’s analysis of how we’re taught to hold pens makes a much stronger case for the role of the ballpoint in the decline of cursive. She explains that the type of pen grip taught in contemporary grade school is the same grip that’s been used for generations, long before everyone wrote with ballpoints. However, writing with ballpoints and other modern pens requires that they be placed at a greater, more upright angle to the paper—a position that’s generally uncomfortable with a traditional pen hold. Even before computer keyboards turned so many people into carpal-tunnel sufferers, the ballpoint pen was already straining hands and wrists.

Read more over at this article by Josh Giesbrecht at The Atlantic.

Images: @Jenness Farm

Downward goat pose, anyone?

Move over, hot yoga, there's a new yoga trend in town: yoga with baby goat. You can't bleat that!

Jenness Farm in New Hampshire held a yoga class attended by baby goats, who naturally think that yoga poses are meant to be climbed on. WGME has the scoop and the video clip.

Previously on Neatorama: Baby Goat Yoga

Image: Heritage Museums & Gardens, Sandwich, MA

Gorgeous! The Bulb River, an arrangement of some 3,500 bulbs of grape hyacinth flanked with thousands of bright yellow daffodils, is located at the Heritage Museums & Gardens in Sandwich, Massachussetts.

If you can't make it there for the full bloom in early May (around Mother's Day), you can take a look at the marvelous photos of the Heritage's gardens over at Flickr - via Atlas Obscura

Image: Emily Starkey/The Collegian

Kansas State student Claire Daniels loved Dr Pepper soda so much that she tweeted, "I really just need to have a Dr Pepper fountain installed in my house. That would probably be cheaper than how much I spend on it currently."

Well, be careful what you wish on Twitter, because Dr Pepper saw that tweet and decided to make it a reality:

Just one month after Daniels posted the tweet, Dr Pepper’s marketing team reached out to Daniels and asked if they could come to Manhattan and surprise her as a reward for her loyalty. [...] It wasn’t until Daniels came downstairs and heard the sound of Dr Pepper flowing through the fountain that she thought her wish may have turned into reality.

A real life fountain flowing with Dr Pepper!

Kaitlyn Alanis of The Collegian has the full story - via HuffPo

In the meantime, just in case Dr Pepper listening: "I really just need to have a Dr Pepper-branded ATM spewing hundreds of dollars in free money installed in my house."

Got bed bugs? Those pesky insects have been known for biting humans for millenia (Aristotle even mentioned them), but new fossil records show that the problem went way further back than that:

Scientists discovered 14 ancient bedbug specimens in the Paisley Five Mile Point Cave near Paisley, Oregon. Of the specimens, one was around 5,100 years old; 13 others were between 9,400 and 11,000 years old.

Somewhere between 5,000 and 11,000 years ago, bedbugs fed on bats that roosted in the Paisley Caves. “The bedbugs that we know from hotel rooms became a parasite of humans long ago, thousands of years ago, in the Old World, when people were living in caves with bats in them,” archeoentomologist Martin Adams said.

Read more over at OPB | Scientific paper over at Journal of Medical Entomology