The moon is one of landscape photographer Zach Cooley's favorite subjects. Last October, he nailed his timing when capturing a shot of the moon passing through the opening of a natural arch. With humans resting on the edge, it looks like the eye of a god.
John Farrier's Blog Posts
cheers pic.twitter.com/pVFNfVXHUY
— Food (@fooduz) November 28, 2020
At your office Christmas party, you may find that you don't have enough plates to serve everyone cake. So, once you have drunk all of the wine, just slip the upended glasses over the cake to slice off a piece. Then you can spoon it into your mouth. Or just be the first person to grab a chunk of cake with your hands, which is my usual approach.
-via Born in Space
Are you heading to the airport for some holiday travel? Impress your fellow travelers with your refined sense of fashion with this purse by Etsy seller ConcaveOblivion. It's available in a variety of leather colors and finishes. The timer, which looks delightfully realistic, has a secret compartment that you'll need if people keep staring at your handbag.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that all music is improved with the inclusion of bagpipes. Yet, until I heard of it today, I did not know that prudent jazz musicians have adopted the pipes.
This is Gunhild Carling, a performer of many talents. She is most famous for her work with the trumpet (or 3 trumpets simultaneously). In this 2014 performance in New York City, she works her magic with bagpipes. Her actual piping begins at the 1:04 mark.
For another treat, watch Carling playing "Happy" by Pharrell Williams while switching between ten different instruments.
-via Super Punch
Frank L. Koralewsky (1872-1941), a German-born American metalsmith, made this amazing lock that tells the fairy tale of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves." It's made of iron, gold, silver, and bronze. The lock won Korwalewsky a gold metal at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915. It's now the property of the Art Institute of Chicago.
-via Nag on the Lake | Photo: Art Institute of Chicago
Spam brings joy to our hearts, stomachs, and now our ears. The Spamp Man, a mysterious engineer in Liverpool, UK invented several different versions of this musical feast. What does this Spam-canned guitar amplifier do? Spamp Man explains:
SPICE adjusts the gain prior to the distortion stage.
HEAT adjusts the post distortion signal level going on to your amp or following effects.
The SPICE and HEAT controls have a detente at 50% to help with location when you are not looking or it is dark.
CHILLED no distortion, just the warm tone of JFET amplification.
FRIED a subtle application of even harmonics for a warm fuzz.
GRILLED blends in odd harmonics for a meatier, overdrive sound.
It sounds delicious!
-via The Awesomer
Every year, the people of Halifax, Nova Scotia, send a grand tree to be erected in Boston Common. Why? It's an annual act of gratitude for disaster relief provided to the Canadian city of Halifax over a century ago.
It's December 6, 1917. Canada has been at war for three and a half years. The United States has been an ally in that war for several months. There is a feeling of fraternity between the two nations. That feeling would be strengthened that day and soon afterward.
A French ship packed with explosives blew up in the city's harbor. It was a catastrophic explosion that killed 1,963 people, injured 9,000, and destroyed much of the city. Then a blizzard struck the beleaguered city.
As the Twitter feed for Canadian armed forces in the US describes, the outpouring of help from Americans was huge and immediately. A US warship, the USS Tacoma, immediately steamed to Halifax. The people of Massachusetts raised nearly $2 million in relief funding within an hour and sent a train with doctors and nurses twelve hours after the blast. In a single day, the Maine National Guard established a hospital in Halifax. This American help continued for several months.
Halifax was and remains grateful for what Americans did during the disaster. And so, every year, they cut down a good tree and send it to Boston as an ongoing way to say "Thank you, America."
-via Nag on the Lake | Photo: Canadian Forces in the US
Last week, a strange metal object reminiscent of the monoliths from the book and movie 2001 appeared in a Utah desert. Its origin and purpose were unknown to local humans who investigated.
The state Bureau of Land Management now reports that the monolith has inexplicably vanished without a trace. In a Facebook post, the BLM makes it clear that it wants nothing to do with the possibly alien object:
The BLM did not remove the structure which is considered private property. We do not investigate crimes involving private property which are handled by the local sheriff’s office.
-via Instapundit | Photo: Utah Bureau of Land Management
Redditor jonny00490 heated, shaped, and then glued the cable of a Nintendo controller into the shape of Pac-Man and his nemesis Blinky. It looks like a simple craft, but took a long time to perfect:
I did it in lots of small stages. Warm the cable a bit so it can more easily be bent into a rough shape and let cool, then I glued it down in prob 2 inch sections.. glue takes 24hrs to harden fully so I'd weigh that section down then come back for the next bit. That's why it took so long.
#TheSuiteLifeOfNoah #funnykid 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/jPko5CTeCs
— Blair Monique Walker (@Blairmonique) November 22, 2020
Like many of us, preschooler Noah is working from home. He's had to set up a home office that allows him to work without being disturbed by noisy family members. His mom, Blair Monique Walker, found that office inside a cabinet. It becomes necessary for him to be firm about his work time and shoo her out.
-via Born in Space
Get it? It's a challah loaf shaped like a turkey.
Twitter user Joshua H. Pollack, if I understand him correctly, makes a challurkey every year, gradually improving his craft.
Professionally, Pollack is "a leading expert on nuclear and missile proliferation, focusing on Northeast Asia." So it follows that baking is his side gig.
-via Super Punch
In the front is an urchin with a fedora at a rakish tilt. Bringing up the rear is a friend wearing a pork pie hat. It's trendy among aquarists (people who maintain aquaria) to dress up sea urchins as fashionable dandies. All that's necessary to look right is a 3D printed hat (although you may need additional clothing before going outside). Sea urchins habitually cover themselves with objects to protect themselves from predators and excess light, so they'll gladly take the hats.
One hobbyist named riosouza describes his own 3D printed urchin hats:
After seen my sea urchins carrying snail shells, rocks on their back I decide to read more about it.
Studies reviewed the possible reasons would be to protect themselves against predators and/or full-spectrum light source, mainly against UV rays.
Then I decided to do a quick design for a 3d printed hat, and for my surprise they absolutely love it.
Since I replace the rocks and shells from their back with the hats, they never let it go, and I was astonished to see they moving the hats towards the light source. Which leads me to the conclusion they certainly use it against excessive UV rays.
-via My Modern Met | Photo: /u/VanillaBean5813
Joy Huang is a master of every tool in the kitchen, but she specializes in breads. Her sourdough loaves can be particularly inventive, such as this Thanksgiving-appropriate loaf shaped like a turkey.
In Act 3, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, the amusing but vile Sir Toby Belch refers to a sheet of paper that "were big enough for the bed of Ware in England . . . ." This is a reference to the Bed of Ware, an enormous bed that was a tourist attraction in England during Shakespeare's day and remains so today.
Ware is a village north of London. An inn there commissioned the construction of and housed this enormous bed. It's now housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where it continues to attract visitors, although you're no longer allowed to sleep in it. Amusing Planet describes the bed:
One of the most famous piece of furniture in history, this spectacular four-poster bed measures ten feet by eleven feet, and is reportedly large enough for four couples to lie side by side without touching each other. [...]
Unfortunately, the bed has been greatly vandalized and defaced by guests, possibly by amorous couples who had spent a night on the bed and found obliged to carve their initials into the wood with a penknife or another sharp object. Some applied red wax seals to mark their night on the bed.
The bed stayed in Ware for nearly three centuries, passing around several inns before it moved to Hoddesdon in 1870 and became a bank holiday attraction during the boom in rail travel.
| Photo: veronikab
Sad and Useless calls its gallery the World's Greatest Gallery of Dogs Standing on Mushrooms, but I think that Laesa Baby and the other puppies are actually standing on polypores. They're remarkably sturdy and cute (the shelf fungi and the dogs, respectively).
-via Design You Trust | Photo: unknown
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