As a professional climatologist, Brian Brettschneider thinks a lot about the weather. What does it mean to have "good weather"? One element, Brettschneider thinks, is a pleasant temperature of 70ºF.
If you'd like to spend an entire year at that temperature without making use of heating or air conditioning, then he's got the perfect road trip for you. On every day of this 9,125-mile journey, the average high is 70ºF. It takes you through 30 states of the contiguous United States.
(Photo: Mitvergneugen)
Pop Up City tells us that the Hühnerhof der Motte, an urban farm in Hamburg, Germany, has been operating for 30 years. To make its farm-to-table shipping process even faster, it added an egg vending machine. Eggs from the free-range chickens that live there are put inside for customers who want to enjoy the taste of extremely fresh eggs, even in the middle of a major city. Just slide in €2 for 6 eggs.
My 7-year old calls a landline phone as a "Grammy phone" because that's what her grandmother owns. That phones could not always show cartoons and operate games makes her jaw drop open.
These millennials aren't that young, but they didn't grow up with rotary phones, cassette tape players, record players, and mechanical alarm clocks. Their grandparents, though, did. In this video from Elite Daily, the older folks teach their grandkids how to operate these sophisticated gadgets.
-via Huffington Post
It's called a "doofnado." Urban Dictionary says that doof is an Australian slang term for an outdoor rave in the countryside. When the electronic music is blasting at a doof, even the weather can't help but feel the energy and respond.
A dust whirlwind appeared at the Earthcore festival in Pyalong, Victoria. Olivier Bonenfant captured this incredible footage of it forming in the middle of the party. Concertgoers got their kicks by running in and out of it. It looks like fun! The festival organizers were very thoughtful for arranging it.
-via Stuff
(Photo: Wellcome Images)
We have to act quickly! This person fell into the river and has drowned. But there's still time to save him. First, pull down his pants. Then insert this tube into his bottom. Next, light a cigar. Now pump the bellows!
According to Eighteenth Century British medicine, that it was possible to revive a person who had stopped breathing by blowing tobacco smoke up his rectum. Emergency enema kits like these were the defibrillators of the day: essential lifesaving tools designed by medical professionals. Ella Morton of Atlas Obscura writes:
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, was still centuries away from common usage. Instead of pumping the chest or giving mouth-to-mouth to a drowning victim—a practice that prominent British doctor William Hunter called "vulgar" in 1776—rescuers employed a variety of other dubious methods when attempting to revive those with waterlogged lungs. Rubbing the skin, inflating the lungs via a tube inserted into the trachea, and bloodletting were among the approaches. The most creative technique, however, was rectal tobacco insufflation—piping smoke into the unconscious person’s intestines via a bellows inserted in the anus.
Occasionally the process worked. The medical journal The Lancet repeats a story from 1746:
A man's wife was pulled from the water apparently dead. Amid much conflicting advice, a passing sailor proffered his pipe and instructed the husband to insert the stem into his wife's rectum, cover the bowl with a piece of perforated paper, and ‘blow hard.’ Miraculously, the woman revived.
On the other side of the aquarium glass is a fresh dog tail. In fact, it's so fresh that it's still attached to the dog!
The penguin makes several passes, but is unable to reach the dog with his beak. The dog, long domesticated, has forgotten that he is the prey of penguins in the wild. He is dangerously unaware of his surroundings.
-via Gifsboom
(Photo: Comic Book Resources)
George Barris was rightfully known as the king of custom cars. When television and movie programs needed a uniquely styled vehicle, they knew to call Barris. Over his career spanning several decades, Barris became famous for building the 1966 Batmobile, the Munsters’ car, and KITT from Knight Rider.
Barris died on November 5 at the age of 89. His funeral on Saturday at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles was a truly grand spectacle. You can see photos of it at the Los Angeles Times. His coffin was no exception to the parade of astonishing customs. It’s modeled to resemble Barris’s most famous car: the Batmobile from the 1960s television show Batman.
-via Nerd Bastards
Salavat Fidai is an artist in Ufa, Russia. Among other media, he paints tiny images on pumpkin seeds. He features famous works of art, such as the above version of Van Gogh’s Starry Night, as well as characters from pop culture, such as the Star Wars characters below.
Here’s a time-lapse video showing how Fidai made the Starry Night seed. With a nearly microscopic brush, he applies layers of paint from the background to the foreground.
(Photos: Thanko)
Some people are born slackers. Everyone else, though, has to learn that skill through determined and sustained effort.
Technology can help. In the past, we’ve seen padded napping desks, desk with built-in beds, emergency nap kits, and padded helmets designed specifically for sleeping at work.
These are all good if you want to sleep. But what if you don't want to sleep, but also not, you know, work. Rocket News 24 reports that the Japanese firm Thanko offers a brilliant new product called the Chin Rest Arm. It’s a adjustable clamp-mounted padded arm. You can use it to nap, if you wish. But you can also use it to just slouch, thus preserving precious energy for other, more important tasks once your shift ends.
(Images: Steven Holl)
The plan was an ambitious one. The Copenhagen Gate would provide a crossing between two skyscrapers at the mouth of one of Copenhagen’s harbors. People would be able to ride or walk across the glass-walled span while getting a glorious view of the city below.
Steven Holl, an American architect, first proposed the idea in 2008. Sadly, after much discussion among city planners and architects, the project has been cancelled.
Why would they cancel such an awesome idea? Although it looks cool, Copenhagen’s government figures that people won’t actually use it. It would be easier to ride around the harbor than to take a bike on two different elevators to access the crossing. The Guardian reports:
“It would be fun, and a landmark, but it would never be something that would be used every day,” said Klaus Bondam, formerly Copenhagen’s mayor for roads and the environment and now the chief executive of Cyklistforbundet, the Danish Cyclists’ Federation. “You wouldn’t want to cycle, get in a lift with your bike, get on your bike and then get in another lift on the other side. It would be quicker to cycle round the harbour.”
-via Dornob
(Photo: Rijksmuseum)
You’re at the Rijksmuseum, a world-renowned art and history museum in Amsterdam. Is it time to extend your selfie stick and take a picture of yourself?
The museum staff gently suggests that the answer is “no.” They want visitors to experience what they see in the museum instead of documenting their visits online. So the staff asks visitors to put away their cameras. Instead of taking pictures, visitors, who are given pencils and paper, should draw what they see. Like previous generations of artists, they should try to copy the famous works of art or even create their original pieces. You can see pictures from the museum’s efforts here.
-via Colossal
(The No Face t-shirt on sale at the NeatoShop)
Every few months, after watching more anime than is probably a good idea, I make viewing recommendations and ask Neatorama readers to suggest their own. Let's do it again!
When I first heard of School-Live, I didn't bother with it because, at only a glance, it looked like an insipid schoolgirl slice-of-life comedy.
Boy, was I wrong!
I'm glad that I took the advice of one of my students and watched School-Live. It's a brilliantly conceived and perfectly directed story. I don't want to say too much because it will give away the premise. But at the very end of the first episode, viewers realize something very important.
The main character, through whom we encounter the story, is an unreliable narrator. Her world is anything but happy and joyful.
The three lions are playing ball--just barely. In contrast with a fast-paced game of human soccer, the trio remain firmly affixed to the floor. To make it worse, the lion on the left appears to be gesturing for a substitution. He needs a breather.
-via Tastefully Offensive
Your life could serve as an inspiration for others. Or it could be a warning.
But no matter what you do, in even small ways, you can help other people find fulfilllment and joy. So go out and do good in the world today.
(Photo: Cameron Butler/Washington Post)
This is Devon "Bosco" Farr. He's a manager at BookPeople, an independent bookstore in Austin, Texas. Every day for the past year, Farr has eaten a taco.
He's part of an emerging trend among creative people. It can be hard to fit in artistic work while trying to earn a living and going about the other chores of normal life. In response, many artists, as a disciplinary practice, create a small object or perform an inventive task every day for an entire year.
We've already seen the fruits of this labor. Every day, Noah Scalin created a skull-themed piece of art. Stian Korntved Ruud made a wooden spoon. Tanaka Tatsuya made a miniature diorama. And there are many more. Gillian Brockell of the Washington Post talked to several artists engaging in 365 projects, including Lauren Rapp, who makes little chairs out of many different media:
For Rapp, it all started in December 2014 with a failed attempt to finish the “The Artist’s Way,” the 1992 self-help workbook that’s supposed to jump-start your creative side. Rapp, who was frustrated and barely getting by with freelance Web consulting gigs, had been meeting with friends to do the workbook, hoping accountability to a group would push her through to the end. Something, anything, to break the procrastination.
“We made it through three or four sessions,” she says, laughing . “And then, you know, people get busy. Life gets busy.”
The book encourages meditation, so after what ended up being the last group session, she sat for 10 minutes, “which to me can be an eternity.”
“And during the meditation, during my wandering thoughts, I just thought it would be cool to make a little chair for my bookshelf, for a decoration,” she recalls. “Then I thought, ‘Well, you’re supposed to be meditating, not thinking about this!’ ”
Eventually, Rapp realized that her way of mediating was to make chairs.
-via Marilyn Bellamy
