(Photos: Jeremy Hall)

In 2008, it was possible to acquire in Japan real, licensed Cheetos that had been dipped in a strawberry flavored coating. And what was that coating made of? Let’s not ask questions that we don’t want answers to.

I can readily imagine eating them with a bowl of strawberry ice cream. Jeremy Hall, who took the two photos above, renders this verdict: “I feared for the worst, and thus wasn't disappointed when these turned out to be awful.” That’s a commendable attitude to take for both eating and dating.

These would have been a fine addition to our list of 12 Weird Cheetos Variants, particularly if made into Cheetos marshmallow treats.

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Shannon Hammer made a little top hat and handlebar mustache -for her snakes! First we see Sir Snowball, then Sir Sledge, both showing off their accoutrements. How did she get the hat and mustache to stay on? Peanut butter! -via Tastefully Offensive

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Danish brony Thomas Dambo built a huge wooden pony. He was rightfully proud of his craftsmanship. Then one night his neighbors got drunk and stole it. Thomas guessed who was responsible and went over to confront them. He recorded the entire encounter.

The confrontation gets physical at 2:20.

The worst part of this story is that the thief was a fellow brony who stole the pony to give to his girlfriend, who was also a brony (or a pegasister, depending on your preferred gendered nomenclature). Brony-on-brony crime does nothing but bring shame upon the community.

-via Yababoon

I don't know..I kind of understand what the birds are thinking. You could go to all that effort to poop on cars in Paris and Tokyo. But that's a lot of work. I think that Abstruse Goose is just taking it personally that they've chosen his car as their getaway destination.

It sure looks like someone Photoshopped their craft project onto a separate background, but this one is floating in space for real! The cute little dinosaur was made by hand by astronaut Karen Nyberg on the International Space Station. Nyberg has been living on the ISS for several months now, and unveiled her craft project on Pinterest. She took a sewing bag with fabric scraps up with her, but used found material for the toy. It is made from Russian food pouch liners with a discarded t-shirt for stuffing, Nyberg's three-year-old son Jack will have a truly distinctive souvenir of the time his mother stayed away so long.

The dino is most likely the first stuffed toy made in space, but it is not the only stuffed toy on the space station. Soyuz commander Fyodor Yurchikhin brought a white dog and cosmonaut Oleg Kotov arrived at the ISS on Wednesday with a small black cat. Russian crews traditionally hang toys from their control panel to indicate when they reach orbit -that's when the toys begin to float. Flight engineer Nyberg is expected to return to earth November 11th.   

-via Metafilter

(Image credit: Karen Nyberg/NASA)

Five quickie facts about playtpus:

1. Yes, the platypus is weird. As any grade schooler can tell you, it's one of three mammals that lay eggs (the other two are two species of echidnas. See also: 5 Fascinating Facts About Echidna)

2. Platypus is venomous. The male platypus has a venom spur in its ankles.

3. It can sense electrical fields. The platypus has electroreceptors in its bill that let it sense electrical fields that is useful to detect electrical currents generated by the muscle contractions of its prey.

4. There's no agreed plural of platypus in the English language. Is it platypuses? Platypi? Platypodes? Or just plain platypus. There's also no collective noun for platypus, and there hasn't been a need for one because platypus is a solitary animal. However, should the need arise, the Australian Platypus Conservancy - an authority on all things platypus as far as we're concerned, suggests a "paddle" of platypus.

5. A baby platypus is called a puggle (like what we call a baby echidna). And it looks ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE in fedoras! Two junior Agent Ps reporting for duty! (Yes, I know it's photoshopped ... but did you know it's a reference to this popular cartoon character?)

The blogger at Wait But Why went to North Korea as a tourist and gives his/her impressions. The post is full of black humor as it contrasts what is presented on the carefully orchestrated tour for foreigners with common knowledge of the way North Korea works.

If you merged the Soviet Union under Stalin with an ancient Chinese Empire, mixed in The Truman Show and then made the whole thing Holocaust-esque, you have modern day North Korea.

It's a dictatorship of the most extreme kind, a cult of personality beyond anything Stalin or Mao could have imagined, a country as closed off to the world and as secretive as they come, keeping both the outside world and its own people completely in the dark about one another—a true hermit kingdom.

The "twenty things" are accompanied by links to videos taken during the tour, and photos and comics illustrating the points made. The writer totally oversimplifies the Korean War, which somewhat undermines the logical argument that North Koreans have it wrong, but otherwise it's an edifying account of one person's impressions of the country. Link -via reddit

(Photo: unknown)

I C3 geeks more attractive than you.

In the comments, give me your best Star Wars pick up lines. I'll put them to use tonight.

-via Knitqueer

(Image: Bridgeman Art Library)

Before ships had refrigerated morgues, it was common to bury the dead at sea. A sailor's body and weights would be sewed up inside a hammock. His mates would finish the task by sewing the last stitch through the dead man's nose--to be certain that he was really dead.

Here's a description provided by one sailor from his experiences in the 1960s:

The mate sent me down to assist the bo'sun to prepare and stitch up the corpse, as he said I would be unlikely to witness such an occurrence again. The bo'sun, a North Sea Chinaman (ie, he hailed from the Orkney Isles), was in his sixties and had performed the task several times before. He was a deft hand with the palm [leather glove] and needle used to sew the heavy canvas into a shroud around the body, and when he came to the final stitches around the face he pushed the large triangular-shaped needle right through the nose. I winced, and he looked up at me and said, "That's the law of the sea, the last stitch through the nose, if that don't wake him up I know he's dead."

Apparently, it was not uncommon for sailors or passengers to be mistakenly pronounced dead. This was the final test.

Link -via The Oddment Emporium

(Photo: Morris Animal Inn)

Has your pup picked up a few pounds? Well, in his defense, he has been working too many hours at the office and eating fast food because he doesn't have time to cook.

But that doesn't mean that he can't slim down. The Morris Animal Inn in Morristown, New Jersey can help. The staff has a program and all of the equipment necessary for the task. Stacey Stowe writes for the New York Times:

At the Morris Animal Inn in Morristown, N.J., where Lolita works out, the pools and treadmills are part of a 25,000-square-foot building surrounded by nature trails. Staff members in khakis and polo shirts lead dogs through exercises and reward them with yogurt vegetable parfaits.

You can watch a video of their fitness facilities at the link.

Link -via Smart News

The former owner of this treehouse had to be the most popular kid in town! It appears to be built better than a lot of family homes. We don't know exactly where this abandoned, Victorian-style treehouse is, but urbex photographer Drew Perlmutter took pictures from several vantage points to share with us, including the interior. It's a shame that it's no longer maintained for a child's use. The Spanish moss gives it an otherworldly feeling. See more pictures at HuffPo Home. Link -via Messy Nessy

(Image credit: Drew Perlmutter via Flickr)

Can't decide on a theme for your internet-worthy engagement portraits? Then just do them all! Jeff Grubb and his fiancee Stephanie did their own set of engagement pictures, using whatever clothing and props they could come up with and filling in the rest with Photoshop. The results are a lot of fun, because they reference many of their favorite movies. In case you didn't see all these movies, they are (from the top) Back to the Future, Ghost, The Shining, E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Grubb posted 21 images in all, with a lot more films represented. Link -via The Daily Dot

(Images credit: Jeffrey Grubb)

Mr. Lovenstein understands: if you're an introvert, you can't win. You could create a friend just like yourself, but you'd never get along.

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Six actors, Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig, have portrayed James Bond in feature films (David Niven also played Bond in Casino Royale in 1967, but many consider that film "unofficial").

Redditor g_noodle combined Bond portraits of the six actors into two "transition" Bonds, with the three "early" Bonds (Connery, Moore, Lazenby) on the left and the three "recent" Bonds (Dalton, Brosnan, and Craig) on the right. Then those two images were combined to achieve a final combination, which looks like an actor who would be considered perfect for the role.

Who does it look like to you? Clive Owen? George Clooney? Mel Gibson? I still see Sean Connery and Roger Moore in this picture. The various steps in the process are shown in a series at imgur. Link -via reddit

Don't eat that envelope! Tina of Sugar Bean Bakers put something precious inside. She baked them for a friend who will feel very excited, then disappointed when she realizes that they're not real. So it's cute, but also a vicious prank.

Link -via That's Nerdalicious!