Christi VanSyckle of Car & Driver magazine learned about and then entered the Pittsburgh Parallel Parking Championship. Dan Leber founded this annual contest in recollection of watching his mother expertly slip the family car into parallel parking spots.

The contest rules are precisely calibrated to handicap cars by length, although all must slide into a standard 20-foot long space bounded by two of Leber's own cars. Scores are a combination of speed and precision. Each contestant maneuvers until shouting "Done!" to mark completion.

The winner this year was Ephorm, who is pictured above. VanSyckle placed 25th among 183 contestants, which isn't bad for a first timer.

-via Instapundit | Photo: Pittsburgh Parallel Parking Championship

Fit to Survive is a YouTuber and maker of custom survival gear for everyday carry. Years ago, he restored a few Swiss Army knives and realized that he could improve upon their designs. He modified them in practical and sometimes fanciful ways.

I'm not sure which category this particular knife fits. A crossbow is not a standard tool that folds out of a knife case. But this tool is so precisely engineered and machined that it's functional as a weapon under unusual circumstances. With a carbon fiber bolt, it's able to puncture a soda can.

I wonder if it would be possible to add a ghost ring sight to improve accuracy of fire.

-via The Awesomer

Over a week ago, an impressive team of thieves broke into the Louvre in Paris and stole approximately $100 million worth of jewelry belonging to either the House of Bourbon or the House of Napoleon depending upon your preferred candidate for the French throne. Two of the alleged thieves have been captured.

Despite this outcome, it was an impressive caper. The team used a German-built Böcker Agilo ladder truck. Böcker is making good use of this free publicity to advertise its now most famous product. The company now shares ads in English and German promoting the truck's speed and the low volume of its motor.

As the 292nd Rule of Acquisition says, "Only a fool passes up a business opportunity."

-via Super Punch

X user G. Gordon Lady shared this photo of a woman in costume for Halloween. She thinks that the woman is dressed as a traffic cone. But other denizens of X think that it's actually the logo for the VLC media player:

I think that this second interpretation is probably correct, especially given that the woman uses black sleeves to mimic the background of the app.

Redditor /u/joross31 is getting ready for Halloween. She's a master chef is ready to deliver visually stunning foods for her guests.

These yolks of these deviled eggs are shaped with a food mold and tinted red with gel coloring. The egg whites became egg blacks with charcoal onion ash mix. Joross31 then packed the assembled eggs around dry ice for the spooky visual effect you see here.

YouTuber Luís César N. Giestas, a product designer and teacher in Lisbon, experimented with making coffee accessories with coffee grounds.

He began by gathering coffee grounds from eighteen nations that produce them. These 15 pounds of coffee grounds he curiously identified as a year's supply. As a binding agent, he composed a mixture of water, honey, and agar. This mixture and the coffee formed a soft mass which he pressed into molds for a cup and a saucer.

Giestas then dried his cup and saucer for a week until they became firm. He made pour-over coffee and served it in this literal cup of coffee.  The structure proved remarkably stable and survived boiling water.

At the conclusion of his experiment, Giestas broke up the coffee cup, melted it, and then used the mass to form a flower pot. What belongs in this flower pot? A coffee plant, of course!

-via David Thompson

Wildlife photographer Paul Joynson-Hicks founded the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards in 2015. They've proven to be a huge hit and a favorite of Neatorama readers. They serve a good cause, too, as the annual project raises money for wildlife conservation efforts--fully 10% of the program's net revenue.

You can view a gallery of the finalists here. They include Allison Tuck's contribution titled "Now Which Direction Is My Nest?" I'd like to tell the bird that we're laughing with her, but not at her, but we know that wouldn't be true.

Browse the gallery for scenes of romance, play, and happy accidents.

-via Gizmodo

Visit the little US Post Office in the town of Hoolehua on the Hawaiian island of Molokai and you can mail an entire coconut as is. The US Postal Service informs us that the practice began in 1991 when the then-postmaster came up with the idea as a way to visitors and residents to share with friends around the world an unusual bit of Molokai culture.

The program is called Post-A-Nut. Every year, this post office sends out about 3,000 coconuts, including 700 to addresses outside of the United States. The post office provides the coconuts and decorating materials for free. The customers do have to pay for postage, though, which results in the coconuts becoming covered with stamps.

-via The Takeout

In 2003, when Chilean television aired the original trilogy of Star Wars films, an inventive broadcast team digitally added commercials into the story so that characters appeared to reach for iced bottles of Cerveza Cristal brand beer at appropriate moments. A collection of these commercials went viral about a year and a half ago.

They inspired imitators within the Trekkie community, notably YouTuber VitaZed. You can find all five of them on his channel. My favorite is a pivotal scene above from Star Trek: First Contact in which Zefram Cochran hesitates during the launch of humanity's first warp-capable vessel.

-via Holodeck Four

It stands to reason that, if humanity should advance, it should grasp at every possible opportunity to gain knowledge and power. It is only by ambition that humanity can rise above fleshly constraints. This is the lesson of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus:

A sound magician is a mighty god:

Here, Faustus, tire thy brains to gain a deity.

The food blogger Seeded at the Table understands, hence the need to create marshmallow treats, but without the traditional puffed rice cereal. Nay, such glutinous confections must be structured around Flaming Hot Cheetos to blend the tart powdered cheese flavor with the sweetness of marshmallow.

-via @369sosa, who warns, "God will deal with you."

Yesterday marked the 959th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, which was the decisive battle of the Norman invasion of England. William the Bastard earned the sobriquet William the Conqueror when he defeated and killed King Harold Godwinson at Hastings.

The Norman yoke then fell upon the people of England. From a certain point of view, Harold Godwinson was the last legitimate King of England.

Internet rumor tells us that, every year, on the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, the Hastings Observer prints a notice of memorial to him.

-via the patriotic Frenchman Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry:

The Anglo will never forgive the Frenchman for teaching his ancestors how to speak civilized, not eat with his hands, use a toilet, etc. https://t.co/JSaEJiJ03n

— Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry (@pegobry_en) October 14, 2025

The Netty is quite small--just two rooms. But those rooms are luxurious and comfortable. This is what you would expect from an underground Victoria Era public toilet in the UK.

According to The Independent, the restroom in central Oxford was built in 1895 and closed in 2008. Up to two guests can stay in each of the two suites. You can see floor plans and photos here. Although there is no room service, there are restaurants on both sides of the street. Tourists have immediate access to the Ashmolean Museum of art and archaeology literally a few yards away.

-via Oddity Central

The keyboard? How quaint.

Personally, I'd rather go old school with this peripheral device inspired by rotary phones. Even the backspace key on the Gboard has been replaced with a rotating indicator!

Google's Japan division offers this innovative design. You can download the 3D files and firmware here and make your own. Everything rotates, including the users in the video promoting the product. Google is convinced that everything can rotate and should be rotated for maximum efficiency.

I'm 90% sure this is a joke but 100% sure it is an awesome development that could be useful under unusual or extreme conditions.

-via The Awesomer

I mean, technically, a regular clothes washing machine or even a dishwasher can be a human washing machine if it's suffiiently large and the bather is really committed to the project.

But this product concept by the blandly-named firm Science Co. Ltd. is designed to wash and dry a human in 15 minutes without risking the bather's life. Spoon & Tamago photographed it at a recent tech show in Osaka.

This product concept isn't just a vision of the future, but also a reflection of the past. It harkens viewers back to a similar product on display at a world's fair in 1970 in Osaka.

Like flying cars, we never got this retrofuturistic visions to become reality. We did get X, though.

-via Nag on the Lake

The bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus) is, in our time, found most commonly in Central Asia. But as recently as 70 to 130 years ago, the species could be found in southern Spain. These birds' nests in isolated, mountainous locations include man-made objects that the vultures found. They function as unintended time capsules. Smithsonian magazine reports that archaeologists have studied these materials in long-abandoned vulture nests.

Among the 200 human artifacts are a sandal that dates back 650 years, a crossbow bolt, a slingshot, and horse tack. Radiocarbon dating permits scientists to establish when these organic materials were produced.

-via David Thompson | Photos: David Ruh and Ecology, respectively