It's over seven feet tall, so it would stand out in your office or living room, even if it wasn't a life-size zebra silently playing one of the largest instruments in a brass band.

Andre Robolobavich (I gather that he also goes by the name Rob Hudson--it's a bit confusing) is a British taxidermist of great skill and imagination. Much of his work is for sale at Chiswick Auctions. They often share a common theme: animals making music. These once-living sculptures are wonderfully unsettling.

-via Nag on the Lake | Photo: Chiswick Options

As you sojourn through the fifty states of the union, where shall you stop for pizza? Pizza styles are a personal preference. There are some that I find generally unpalatable, but David Landsel of Food & Wine has done his best to accommodate different tastes in his catalog of the best pizza in each state.

Pictured above is a lobster-topped pizza from Via 313, which Landsel says is the best in Texas. Here, he has made a common geographic error. Via 313 isn't in Texas--it's in Austin.

-via Marginal Revolution | Photo: Via 313

The Barcelona-based digital design studio Six N. Five worked with industrial designer Arthur de Menenzes to take three common computer error messages, such as the Blue Screen of Death, and turn them into chairs. I'd hesitate to use one as a computer desk chair, lest I jinx my computer.

With a wingspan of 385 feet, the Roc (named for the legendary gigantic birds) can carry up to 275 tons of cargo. Specifically, it's supposed to carry rockets high into the air, then launch those rockets into orbit. On Thursday, Stratolaunch, the company which produced the Roc, completed its second test flight. Space.com reports:

Roc reached a maximum altitude of 14,000 feet (4,267 m) and a top speed of 199 mph (320 kph) during Thursday's test flight, which Stratolaunch deemed a success. [...]

Stratolaunch is developing its own family of hypersonic vehicles, including a reusable 28-foot-long (8.5 m) craft called Talon-A, which will be the first to fly with Roc. But that won't happen for a while yet; Roc needs to make a number of additional solo flights first, company representatives said today. 

If all goes according to plan, the first drop tests with Roc and a Talon-A test article will occur early next year. An expendable version of Talon-A will reach hypersonic speeds later in 2022, and the first flight with the reusable Talon-A variant will follow in 2023, said Stratolaunch chief technology officer Daniel Millman.

-via Nag on the Lake

Notable..!!!!👏👏 falto el fósforo no mas... pic.twitter.com/fxGj07cDRQ

— osvaldo vega patriota 🇨🇱 (@Osvaldo04110700) April 29, 2021

A gang of robbers in Chile had the perfect plan. They had trained and prepared for the moment when they would leap out of a van and rob someone at a gas station temporarily distracted by a common task: pumping gas.

Alas, they experienced a major failure in the victim selection process. Or, perhaps, they had simply chosen the wrong venue for this type of robbery. You see, a person holding an active gasoline pump is armed.

This reminds me of an old, golden line:

. . . better a pointed stick and a furious anger than a death ray and the soul of a rabbit.

-via Boing Boing

These women in Nepal appear to be running over a wavy surface. Is it liquified soil? It is vegetation on the surface of water? Snopes has not reached a conclusion, but proposes a few possibilities, including a "lawn blister" or bubble of water just below the topsoil.

In the meantime, I agree with Just-Call-Me-Sepp:

What should do you with any extra Cadbury Creme Eggs around your home? If, for some unknowable reason, you have not eaten all of them, Difford's Guide, a cocktail website, suggests making a drink.

It's a quite complex process. You'll need a week to properly season the ingredients, which include vanilla vodka, Licor 43 liqueur, white creme de cacao, Advocaat liquer, half-and-half, a vanilla pod, and, of course a creme egg.

-via In Love with Drinks

Instagram user In Love with Drinks offers this Last Word cocktail. This gin drink began in 1915 at the Detroit Athletic Club. It was popular during the Prohibition Era, then fell into obscurity until its revival last decade. To make one, you will need equal parts of gin, Chartreuse liqueur, lime juice, and maraschino liqueur. Drink and clear your mind of questions.

-via Gastro Obscura

This is a 1990 Daihatsu fire truck. It's not a toy or a model, but built for its stated purpose. It's also adorable. Owner Todd Lappin has named his new friend "Kiri". You can see Kiri on the streets of San Francisco. Although Kiri is not affiliated with the San Francisco Fire Department, it's fully functional and can fight fires. SFist reports:

"I imported Kiri directly from Japan with a local importer I got to know," Lappin tells the paper. "Essentially it was retired by the town, went through the auction system. It sold for almost nothing, because who wants a 30-year-old tiny fire truck?" [...]

Lappin had some experience importing a Japanese car previously, and after he got to know the ins and outs of the process, he decided to seek out something cooler and more unique for San Francisco, as a whim. Enter Kiri, which served a volunteer fire department in Kirigamine, Japan for about 30 years, and came to SF about five months into the pandemic. The truck is made to navigate hills and narrow streets, and it's never had its own water tank — it has a pump that relies on suction, so you just need to park it next to a pond and drop a hose in, and you're good to fight a fire.

-via Super Punch | Photo: Kiri the Japanese Fire Truck

In the Hero's Journey narrative structure developed by mythologist Joseph Campbell, the hero, who is often an ordinary person (and thus demonstrating, in egalitarian fashion, the latent ability of all people) who accepts a call to adventure.

In today's retelling of the great story at the heart of the human journey is Gareth Wild, a video producer in London. The challenge that reached out of our collective unconscious into his life was to park in every single slot in the parking lot of his neighborhood grocery store.

Arthur needed Excalibur. Moses needed his staff. Gareth Wild needed Google Sheets.

You might get the impression that these shoes and cars were designed at the same time, but they're just coincidences. Niek Pulles, a graphic designer from the Netherlands, found perfect matches between many cars, both stock and custom, and shoes. He calls his project SNEACARS. You can view more works in this series on his Instagram page.

The stonefish is the world's most venomous fish. It's dangerous even by the ambitious standards of Australian wildlife. Its body has 13 spines through which it can inject venom into its prey. The fish usually lie peacefully on the bottom of shallow waters in northern Australia. Don't step on them.

A kayaker spotted one clinging to her paddle while she was out for a jaunt. It mercifully permitted the humans to leave its territory alive. About the stonefish venom, the Queensland Museum informs us:

The pain is immediate, excruciating and may last for many days. Muscular paralysis, breathing difficulties, shock, and sometimes heart failure and death can ensue.

To prevent stonefish stings, sturdy footwear should be worn on reef flats, or while wading on soft-bottom substrates adjacent to rocky or weedy areas. An antivenene for stonefish stings has been developed. In the event of a sting, the victim should leave the water, apply first aid and seek medical attention as soon as possible.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Jennifer Taylor

Street artist JPS spotted the perfect form for the battery. The concrete post in Triefenstein, Germany has just the right dimensions for a scaled-up cylindrical battery. He quipps:

hopefully I don’t get charged

-via Street Art Utopia

Typewriter Collector's entire YouTube channel is worth browsing, as it's filled with lovingly restored and often strange typewriters. This particular one is Toshibia BW-1182 from the 1940s. The horizontal cylinder contains Chinese, Japanese, and English characters. YouTube commenter amontoval describes the arrangement:

They're arranged phonetically by most common "on-yomi" (or kun-yomi in some cases) according to the kana syllabary (many homophones, of course). Can't see the whole circumference of the cylinder but at about 0:30 it's clear that the order doubles back at the ring of mathematical symbols. Red characters help parse the readings. Last character to left of equal sign can be pronounced "kin" (exert) and the first character in next row "gin" (silver), then "ku" (suffer) in red followed by "kuu" (sky, empty), "kuma" (bear), "kun" (teachings, meaning [also the kun in kun-yomi]), "gun" (group), then "kei" (system) in red followed many, homophones of "kei". It's the same order in which (mostly compounded character) words in a normal Japanese monolingual dictionary for Japanese speakers would appear.

-via Nag on the Lake

Twitter user Hurt CoPain has a refrigerator that has a screen. It's probably one of those internet of things things. Anyway, such a screen (paired with a camera inside) lets you see inside without opening the door. It also allows for much pranking if you have Hurt CoPain's photoshop skills.

-via My Modern Met