The ancient Greeks believed that the internet was ruled by a collection of anthropomorphic gods. Depending upon your needs, you might offer prayers and sacrifices to different gods, seeking their favor and a fast wireless connection. Caldwell Tanner and Nathan Yaffe illustrated 13 of them and briefly described their purposes to lowly denizens of the let like us. You can find them all here.
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The boyfriend of Instructables member Rachel bought an ostrich egg. What should you do with such an unusual food? Make something fancy, of course! They boiled and deviled it. You can view more photos here.
We all want to be Luke Skywalker on the trench run in an X-wing starfighter. With each passing day, we're getting closer to making that dream a reality. Rodger Cleye made this 5-foot long model as a part of that ongoing effort.
It's made of PVC pipe which is why it looks hollow. That was necessary because anything more would have been too heavy for the 3 drone motors that make it airworthy. Check it out in action:
-via Hack A Day
(Photos: Cunard/James Morgan)
The RMS Queen Mary 2 is the largest ocean liner ever built. It's operated by the Cunard Line, under which it makes regular transatlantic voyages. It's 1,132 feet long, which is twice as long as the height of the Washington Monument.
The ship has a bulbous bow designed to help water flow smoothly over the hull. Naval architects developed this concept in the 1950s. Ideally, it reduces fuel consumption by 5%. On a massive ship like the Queen Mary 2, that's a lot of fuel.
Cunard worked with photographer James Morgan to take these amazing pictures of Kevin Osprey, the captain of the ship, standing on the bulbous bow while it peeked above the surface of the water. You can view more photos in the series at Twisted Sifter.
Action film star Jackie Chan just turned 60 years old. To mark the occasion, artist Hong Yi created this massive portrait of him consisting of bundles of chopsticks hanging at varied lengths. When viewed from the front, they look just like Chan, who is pictured on the left with the artist.
The video embedded below briefly shows how Hong made it. Even if you're not interested in that, you should at least watch the first part of it in which Jackie Chan makes a funny cameo.
-via Foodiggity
P.S. If the name Hong Yi is familiar to you, it may be because she's one of our favorite artists here at Neatorama. She makes amazing portraits out of unusual materials, such as socks, coffee stains, and paint splattered with a basketball.
I won't judge you.
It's a brutal world out there. We do what we can to get by the everyday agony of isolation from real human connections. Etsy seller Amy Brown explains why she made this body pillow:
Yes, it is 4 feet long. Made of super-soft orange fleece and filled with polyester fibers and bean bag filler, it is a huggable "body pillow" and molds to your embrace. The carrot tops are whisper soft, and at almost 2 feet long wrap them around yourself and pretend they belong to someone else.
Do you still long for the carrot that got away? Its earthy smell and soft, fluttery leaves? When you were together, you felt so grounded. It was a healthy relationship.
But now it is over.
It's too late for a Valentine's Day purchase. But it's not too late to acquire a coping mechanism to make the days pass a little bit easier since...
Well, since Carrot left.
-via Amanda Brennan
At What If?, webcomic artist Randall Munroe answers reader questions about scientific possibilities. He draws stick figures at xkcd, but he's also a scientist and roboticist. So he carefully thinks through reader questions using his considerable brain power.
Most recently, David Axel Kurtz asked him:
I just moved into a new apartment. It includes hot water but I have to pay the electric bill. So being a person on a budget ... what's the best way to use my free faucet to generate electricity?
Munroe proposes building a hydroelectric dam in the bathtub:
It would generate power, though not very much of it. The formula for power is pressure times flow rate.[1] Since bathtubs are pretty shallow, the pressure at the bottom isn't very high, so this works out to around two watts of power, or about 25 cents per month.
You can get more power if you increase the pressure of the water passing through the generator. To do this, you could increase the depth of the water. If you have two floors in your apartment, you could have the water column stretch from the second to the first floor, generating at least ten times the pressure and ten times the power.[2] In effect, the local authorities would be paying to pump the water up to your apartment, and you're getting some of that energy back when you let it flow back down.
In the cartoon Adventure Time, Finn the Human acquired a sword made of grass. It was highly effective, but he couldn't put it down. The grass wrapped itself around his hand when he tried to do so. The sword turned out to be a trap set by the Grassy Wizard.
But Finn accepted this curse, saying, "You know what? I think I'm cool with that." He was willing to accept that he had a totally awesome blade always literally at hand.
DeviantART member tearatone made this prop version of Finn's sword. It's on sale at Etsy. He doesn't mention a curse, but he also doesn't say that it's not cursed. So be careful.
Lauren Davis of io9 has helpfully compiled a list of some of the most thought-provoking or outright nerdy webcomics currently being published. Among them is one my favorites: Zach Weinersmith's Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. His comics often go over my head, but not often enough that I get tired of reading them. Zach has a deep and broad knowledge of the natural sciences, philosophy, and literature.
I also recommend following him on Twitter, where you can often see his refreshing intellectual humility.
Another great comic on Lauren Davis's list is Abtruse Goose. The anonymous artist doesn't publish daily, but s/he always nails it. The art is simple, but the insights are often not.
In the comments, list and link to your own favorite webcomics--nerdy or not.
The band Postmodern Jukebox is noted for its excellent jazzy covers of definitely non-jazz songs. In the past, we've featured its versions of "Sweet Child O' Mine," "Royals," and "Get Lucky." It's back with this slow, soothing version of the introductory theme to Game of Thrones. The music is so relaxing and welcoming that you may easily forget what the show is about:
Take the fifty most murderous, duplicitous, treacherous, and violent people in the world...Now, put them in a room with one seat and make them play musical chairs to the death.
-via Nerd Approved
(Photo: William Warby)
Since 1933, the board game Monopoly has been the source of countless fights and arguments among friends and families. It's a great game. But most games need a bit of tweaking over time as players discover problems that reduce rather than exacerbate conflict. Accordingly, Hasbro, the company that owns Monopoly, has issued new rules. These rules are suggestions from players who have adapted the game to suit their own needs. Leanne Italie writes for the Associated Press:
The winning house rule for landing on Go means players get 400 Monopoly dollars instead of the official 200. As for Free Parking, official rules call for absolutely nothing to happen when a player lands there. Under the house rule, any taxes and fees collected are thrown into the middle for a lucky someone who lands on that corner square.
Rounding out the five winners are players must travel around the board one full time before they can begin buying properties, and collecting 500 bucks for rolling double ones.
What changes to the game would you make?
-via TYWKIWDBI
Gamebots, transform! 2 years ago, LEGO artist Julius von Brunk built Domaster, a Game Boy Transformer. He's continued to work in that theme, assembling Transformers that turn into practical devices for everyday entertainment. I mean, who really could find a regular use for a huge drill like Nosecone? Vantage, Ultra Hexacon, and Plasmashock could at least give you something fun to do with your time.
(Jacob Andrews/For Lack of a Better Comic)
We love optical illusions at Neatorama, especially those that leave you wondering how the artist/necromancer did it.
Now just turn out the lights to see this optical illusion get even cooler.
Jan Mráz is a street and tattoo artist in Prague. He’s inked some amazing designs at Bobek Tattoo in that city. He combines sharp lines, watercolor-like impressions, and pointillistic shading to create striking images. You can view more at his tattoo studio’s website.
-via Colossal
(Photo: zyphbear)
Making a left turn on a 2-way street in the United States can take a while. Those few extra seconds add up for a company like UPS, which operates 96,000 trucks. Since 2001, the company has closely examined how it can become more efficient. It found that left turns waste a lot of time sitting at stop lights. It would save gas to just make right turns.
So, in 2004, the company created a navigational program that would map driving routes with just right turns. It’s not only thrifty, but environmentally fiendly. Alex Mayyasi writes for Priceconomics:
As of 2012, the right turn rule combined with other improvements -- for the wow factor, UPS doesn't separate them out -- saved around 10 million gallons of gas and reduced emissions by the equivalent of taking 5,300 cars of the road for a year.
Mythbusters agrees. The television program tested UPS’s method and found that it worked.
-via VA Viper
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