Bob Barker, the famous host of the game show The Price is Right, has departed from us for the great showcase in the sky. He was 99 years old. As the joke circulating the internet goes, he managed to get as close as possible to 100 without going over.

He leaves behind a legacy of thousands of episodes aired over 35 years. Some of those episodes were quite creative. Here's a 1978 scene that is an extended and detailed parody of the first Star Wars film. Announcer Johnny Olson explains that they had a limited production budget, but the set designers, costumers, and actors nonetheless did a fine adaptation of the science fiction classic.

-via Super Punch

Curated an art show and concert in a laundromat yesterday 🫧🧼

6 artists featured works on the walls alongside guitar & marimba. People did laundry too

Here’s an amazing set by Fool_0f_Ideas (Jesse Garcia), the artist emi.mbg hanging work (photo by Jorge), and guests mingling pic.twitter.com/BhzDK6YkJ0

— Danielle Baskin (@djbaskin) August 25, 2023

Entrepreneur and visionary Danielle Baskin is very much worth a follow on Twitter. She's consistently innovative in business and the arts as she brings delightful weirdness to her beloved San Francisco.

In the past, we've seen her watermark her own face to protect herself from undesired photos, create a dating app for sailors trapped inside the Suez Canal, invent a completely offline Zoom meeting experience, and host an art show on her city's public trains.

Baskin's most recent project flows from that final vein. She staged an offbeat art show and concert inside a functional laundromat while that business was in full operation.

Incredible performance by this gentleman
by u/notajock in toptalent

This unknown man hasn't reached the superstardom that he deserves, but the people of the internet can make that happen! Watch him shuffle-dance with a precise rhythm while playing his guitar at the same time and never missing a note.

Various redditors are noticing that the gentleman has an unique physical advantage: unusually long fingers. Perhaps this helps him keep his grip on the neck of the guitar while maintaining precise control over the fretboard.

-via Born in Space

The Pudding is a unique website that you should regularly visit (after your hourly check-ins at Neatorama, of course). There's fresh and novel content that informs and entertains readers in clever ways.

This clock, for example, plays music that varies with the time. At 9:13 in the morning, it plays 9:13, a song by the metal band No Murder No Moustache. The song refers to the 1966 Aberfan mining disaster that killed 144 people, most of them children.

It is a work in progress. Some times, such as 9:26, appear and no song titles. Perhaps some enterprising musicians might fill these gaps.

-via Kottke

The Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks is a legendary (and historically fictitious) exchange of letters between Ottoman Sultan Mehmet IV and warlord Ivan Sirko, the leader of a band of Cossack peoples who lived in what is now Ukraine.

The story goes that in 1672, the Sultan demanded the submission of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to his rule. The grandeur of the Sultan contrasts sharply with crudeness of Sirko's reply. It makes for good reading, especially out loud.

Letters Live is an ongoing theater program which has famous actors reading famous letters. On this particular evening, Peter Capaldi, who is noted for his work on Doctor Who, and Matt Berry, who starred on The IT Crowd, offer a lively performance of the letters.

Content warning: foul language.

-via Laughing Squid

The great Paul Di Filippo of Weird Universe mines the digital bowels of the US Patent Office for bizarre, wonderful, and wonderfully bizarre inventions that never quite made it to mass production. Today, he shares with us this unusual device granted a patent in 1942.

Inventor Benjamin L. Dorsey calls his device the "antiholdup cashier's cage." It appears to be a sealed chamber accessible through a locking revolving door. The cashier controls entry and exit. If a bank robber is able to persuade the cashier to part with money, s/he may not escape with it until the cashier unlocks the chamber.

What are the possible drawbacks? Well, a trapped robber might go all Rorschach on the cashier (NSFW).

Tシャツをパタパタする装置を作りました。 pic.twitter.com/Jq1Rpr0T9T

— カズヤシバタ(KAZUYA SHIBATA) (@seevua) August 14, 2023

It's been a few months since I've seen a daily high temperature under 100°F. I need to cool down and Kazuya Shibata has a solution to my problem. Well, one of them.

You can flap your shirt with your hand, but this exercise itself gets tiring and no one should exercise in this heat. So Shibata made this Arduino-controlled device that hooks onto the front of his pants. A magnet holds the shirt front in place and lever arms push the shirt back and forth. This is the sort of forward-thinking leadership that we need in technology today.

-via Massimo

If your baby cries near you, do you instantly recognize the sound and respond? Even if you do, there's a chance that a crocodile will reach your baby before you do.

Science reports the results of a recent study conducted at a zoo in Morocco that houses over 300 Nile crocodiles. The scientists set up speakers around the enclosure and played sounds that baby primates, including human babies, make. Many crocodiles responded to the sounds by homing in on their sources. They were especially inclined to engage in urgent hunting if they heard human babies crying. Some crocodiles even bit the speakers in their feeding frenzy.

Why? The researchers speculate that human babies are likely to begin crying if dropped in the water and thus signal to crocodiles that easy prey has appeared.

The scientists also asked humans around the enclosure to evaluate whether the sounds represented crying babies. The crocodiles were generally better able to detect babies in distress than the humans.

But the humans, to their credit, did not respond to the sounds of crying babies with hunting and feeding behaviors. That's probably a good thing.

-via Bowser | Photo: Daryl Mitchell

What's it like to get a doctoral degree? Or, to be more precise, what's it like to try to get a doctoral degree? Mianzhi Wang, a graduate of a doctoral program in electrical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, created a text-base simulation game that shows you. Make good choices, but be aware that your time and money are finite resources that must be used prudently.

It is not a Kobayashi Maru game, which was my expectation. You can definitely win and I did so on my first try.

The game is designed to reflect the norms of STEM fields. It would be interesting to try a similar game for the humanities, which would, of course, end in poverty even if successful.

-via Book of Joe

A 15-foot-tall statue of the head of the Sopranos family greets passengers at a train station in southeastern Lithuania. https://t.co/vR4kYSGoJL

— Atlas Obscura (@atlasobscura) July 31, 2023

In a famous scene in The Sopranos, Tony Soprano, wearing slippers, boxer shorts, an undershirt, and a bathrobe, waddles out of his home to pick up the morning newspaper left in front of his house.

Now the people of Vilnius, Lithuania can reflect on the majesty of this moment whenever they take a train. This is the right and proper order of things.

Why does this monumental sculpture of Tony Soprano grace this particular train station? Atlas Obscura explains that Lithuanian artist Donatas Jankauskas made it in 2009 for a show appropriately called "Unexpected Places." Jankauskas is noted for his playful use of pop culture figures. After traveling extensively, the 15-foot tall statue found its final home at a train station in the city where Jankauskas first conceived of the premise.

The above image is a particular street in the village of Bauné in western France. The presence of the many painted lines is entirely intentional. Mayor Jean-Charles Prono explains to Euro News that the speed limit is 20 KPH, but drivers frequently reach speeds of 50 KPH. The idea is to make it difficult for drivers to figure out where they're supposed to drive, thus forcing them to slow down.

Some residents are not fond of this paint scheme and say that it makes pedestrian travel more dangerous rather than less. The mayor says that this is not a final design. It was an emergency measure to provide an immediate response to the danger.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Alerte Info Trafic 49

Major League Baseball has a formal and precise definition of a home run that includes all possible means of accomplishing the goal. It's not necessary for the batter to hit the ball over the fence. But, practically speaking, this is almost always how the batter is able to score.

A baseball field is a precisely laid out area, but the fence that separates it from the stands is not. That obstacle varies from stadium to stadium. The Washington Post has a helpful tool that lets us compare the fence lines of different stadia. Pictured above is Minute Maid Park in Houston and Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.

-via Flowing Data

The company and its product are both named 18 Wheels. Unlike its counterparts with tracks or large pneumatic tires, this design from Finland uses 18 small solid wheels, each of which is independently powered with its own motor on flexible suspension arms. Together, they're able to traverse high obstacles, including ones 8 inches high, without losing speed.

The designers mean for it to be environmentally friendly, which is why the unit is made of recycled materials and electrically powered.

18 Wheels unveiled its prototype last year and, according to this video, had planned to demonstrate an improved model this summer.

-via The Awesomer

ViralHog shares this compilation of footage from security cameras around one home in Gardena, California. The resident had ordered a package from Amazon and a delivery driver dutifully brought it. The order had come with specific delivery instructions: the driver was welcome to go for a swim if s/he wished to.

It apparently didn't take long for the driver, sweating in the hot summer sun, to make a decision about the offer. He emptied his pockets onto a handy table and executed a clean dive into the pool. Then he went straight back to work, presumably while soaking wet, but also cool.

Most library job descriptions include the term "and other duties as assigned" and we librarians often share jokes based on real-life experiences about what that generic statement can include.

The public library system of Arapahoe County, Colorado offers a position that includes that caveat (more or less), but is based upon a core duty seldom found in library services positions: barista.

Yes, some public libraries have in-house cafes or even bars, but these are usually separated from the conventional library services end of the business. This job posting is not for a barista who works in a library, but a person who offers paraprofessional library services and makes coffee.

A master's degree in library science is not required, so it is not, strictly speaking, a librarian position. But the detailed list of job requirements includes core library services.

-via Jessamyn West