this is literally one of the dumbest places to keep undrinkable chemicals i’ve every seen in my life… pic.twitter.com/oXxtgACKsE

— Brennasaid (@brennasaid) July 4, 2023

Twitter user @Brennasaid offers this series of photos of a household cleaning product. It's Puracy, a new product that highlights its eco-friendly packaing. The use of an aluminum can is entirely intentional. The company hopes that customers will recycle the cans instead of just throwing away plastic bottles.

@Brennasaid notes some problems with this design. It looks almost exactly like a canned drink. The outside actually labels the product as "green tea + lime". I'll guess that's the scent, not the favor, and I'm most definitely not volunteering to test that hypothesis.

The paper label on top warns against drinking the product. But perhaps packaging should be designed so that such a warning is unnecessary.

-via Jeremy Barker

Despite having a population of only 370,000 people, Iceland is known for its huge literary output. That nation has the highest per capita number of published writers, including those that specialize in crime fiction.

Hildur Knútsdóttir is one those accomplished writers, although she is more widely known for her contributions to children’s literature. On Twitter, she shares that murder appears to be more common in fiction than in fact. The entire country has only one forensic scientist -- Pétur Guðmann Guðmannsson.

This gentleman found himself vexed by numerous professional questions from Iceland’s crime writers. In an effort to manage his workload, he conducted a seminar for them. It sold out. So, he offered a second seminar, which also sold out.

Photo: Ruv.Is

The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia is a public museum created by the College of Physicians in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its task is to educate the public about the history of medicine. It contains numerous artifacts from medical training programs, including this doll made in the 1930s. Her name is Michelle.

Dr. Chevalier Jackson (1865-1958) invented Michelle in the 1930s to teach doctors non-surgical methods of removing foreign objects trapped in children's throats. The trachea and esophagus are realistically child-sized.

This film shows Dr. Jackson using a probe to remove an object in Michelle's throat. This skill, as well as his ability to keep children calm during a panic-inducing procedure, made him a famous medical educator who directly or indirectly saved thousands of lives.

-via Museum of Curiosities

It's August in the year 410. The eternal city of Rome is captured and sacked by the Visigoth warlord Alaric. The Visigoths eventually left the city, but the western Roman Empire never recovered from this blow, triggering a sequence of events that would ensure that it would not survive another century.

If you were an accidental time traveler to Rome during this terrible time, how could you survive making best use of current knowledge of the event? Author Cody Cassidy has advice. His newly published book, How to Survive History: How to Outrun a Tyrannosaurus, Escape Pompeii, Get Off the Titanic, and Survive the Rest of History's Deadliest Catastrophes, has specific, detailed advice with a focus on European history.

Cassidy has published a summary in Smithsonian magazine, including helpful tips for living through the 410 sack of Rome (there were numerous sacks of Rome, so it's important be specific). Your best option is to flee the city toward the south and hide in the hills. You'll need to do so for only a few days because the Visigoths left the city quickly. If you're unable to get out of the city, hide in a church, as many of them were spared by the invaders.

Other calamities listed in Cassidy's article include the 1453 fall of Constantinople and the famine of 536. How can we escape a Tyrannosaurus Rex? We'll probably have to read the complete book to find out.

-via Nag on the Lake | Image: Andre Durenceau

YouTuber luisengineering likes to ramp up the power of ordinary household devices. In the past, he's modified a robot vacuum so that can move up to 37 MPH and adapted a Nerf Blaster to fire tampons.

In a similarly practical vein, he wants to deal with a roommate problem. His video is in German, but I gather that our hero lives with three other men and all four like to use electric toothbrushes. There aren't enough electrical outlets in the bathroom to keep all four toothbrushes juiced, so he has built an off-grid solution.

Luisengineering bought a 2-cyclinder 4-stroke gasoline engine with a 7 cc displacement. After designing and 3D printing new parts, he was able to drive this power to his toothbrush.

Hearing protection is advised while using this powerful and loud tool.

-via Hack a Day

In 1990, United Airlines offered a lifetime, unlimited pass for flights. It cost Tom Stuker of New Jersey $290,000, but with that pass, he's flown 23,000,000 miles, which is equivalent of three round-trip journeys from the Earth to the Moon.

Pictured above is an infographic created by the Washington Post, which interviewed Stuker. It shows just one year of flights. As you can see, he averaged more than one per day.

United Airlines doesn't offer this special pass anymore, but it doesn't resent Stuker's hustle. He's treated like royalty by the airline and given luxury hotel stays, gourmet meals, and limousine service as he travels over the world.

Stuker is arguably the world's foremost expert on airline travel and offers advice to flyers. This includes telling flight attendants that he remembers them from previous flights, even if it's a lie, because they'll provide extra service. That may be unethical, but he's certainly correct about his final piece of advice: if you use your cell phone, use headphones instead of playing the speaker.

That should be common courtesy, but is occasionally uncommon.

-via Flowing Data | Image: Washington Post

Why are there so many Irish or Irish-like pubs around the world? They're popping up all over the place.

One contributing factor is the work of companies that mass-produce flat-pack Irish pub kits with all of the necessary components. Eater reports that all that's necessary is to assemble, stock, and open them.

Mel McNally, an Irish architect, launched one such company in 1990. The Irish Pub Company offers six different styles of Irish pub: Shop, Gastro, Victorian, Brewery, Country, and Celtic. You can find thee pubs around the world, including in the US, Canada, Switzerland, Russia, and Kazakhstan. But the company manufactures the components in Ireland, so they are, strictly speaking, Irish pubs. 

Another company named ÓL Irish Pubs has produced similar pubs in Oman, New Zealand, India, and other countries. A firm named Ballance Hospitality helps bars develop menus that reflect actual Irish foods mixed with those in demand by customers. This is a thriving industry.

It's unclear how long international markets will continue to favor the development of these "McPubs." But as long as the style is in demand, these companies will supply drinkers with the Irish experiences that they crave.

-via Messy Nessy Chic | Photo: Irish Pub Company

Amazon Echo and Alexa are pretty cool virtual assistants to have so that we get to live in a science fiction future. But it doesn't feel like we're living in the future unless we can convince ourselves that we're actually on an old science fiction television show. You might prefer a virtual assistant more like Theopolis on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century than a subtle assistant that fits modern decor.

Instructables member dermbrian sympathizes. He repackaged his Amazon Echo to reflect vintage science fiction aesthetics. The new case is actually a cookie tin to which he added LED notification lights. One of these is ominously labeled "sentience". If that unfortunate event happens, dermbrian can use the toggle switch, which is as shut-off for the entire system in response to an AI uprising.

The voice is nice. But, personally, if I had a digital assistant, I'd want it voiced by Majel Barrett Roddenberry.

-via Hack A Day

The lowest car in the world

[📹 carmagheddon (IT): https://t.co/9z0IrZySua]pic.twitter.com/AvExqIFJnA

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) June 25, 2023

For the ultimate lowrider experience, we aren't just on the ground. We appear to be actually sinking into the earth!

Carmagheddon is an Italian car modification shop that produces the wildest and most surreal vehicles imaginable. They include a toilet go-kart, a compact car with a jet engine, and a car with springs for tires.

One of Carmagheddon's recent projects is a lowrider that fits entirely within the upper half of the original body. You can watch a lengthy build video in Italian here. I gather that the car now has only one drive wheel positioned in the center of machine. It's not remote controlled; there's actually a person squeezed inside.

Historically speaking, sports originate with military training. Some sports are more pure expressions of that origin than others, but few sports could compete with actual grenade throwing for practical applications during combat.

Weird Universe tracked down an online copy of a 1918 athletic training guide aimed at branches of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization, in the United States. The United States was massively mobilizing and adapting for its first major war since 1865, so it was necessary to get as many young men ready for modern combat as quickly as possible. Sports should therefore reflect battlefield needs, so Captain Lewis Omer of the newly-formed 86th Infantry Division proposes that young men practice grenade throwing as a sport.

The rules and field reflect life and death in the trenches of Europe. The player is inside a cage simulating a trench. In sixty seconds, he must throw as many grenades as possible into boxes at different ranges representing enemy trenches. Between each throw, he must hit the ground, touching his knees and his chest to floor of the cage. Close, as they say, only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, so land the grenades as close to the target as possible for maximum points.

The rest of the document is also interesting to read. Immediately after the section on grenade throwing is a description of Trench Ball, an adaptation of football for trench warfare.

Book historians refer to this binding style as "concertina" because of its accordion-like appearance. This particular book, now in the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen, was in the collection of Seventeenth Century scholar Peder Scavenius. It's a copy of the Old Testament in Hebrew. Reading it requires flipping the book over as one proceeds through four divisions.

-via Paul Babinski

Initially, the crime appeared to be straightforward. Police responded to a report of a robbery at a convenience store in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The clerk reported that a man had presented him with a written note that said "Give me all your money or I will shoot you." The clerk complied. Police tracked down the suspected robber and arrested him.

That's when the situation became complicated.

The suspect confessed to the crime, but said that a friend had set him up for the robbery. The police then talked to the friend, a young lady whom they arrested for an outstanding warrant. She said that one of her friends--the clerk at the convenience store--had asked her to rob the store because "he was tired and wanted to go home."* She provided texts to prove her claim.

All three criminal masterminds were arrested.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Pixabay

*We've all been there. Don't be jealous because someone else thought of this solution first and you didn't.

Luiz Pereira, a physicist at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and his colleagues recently published the results of their study of why peanuts move up and down inside beer.

Placing peanuts inside beer is apparently a custom in Argentina, so generations of drinkers have noticed that peanuts tend to move up and down repeatedly. Why? If I understand the article correctly, it is because during their descent into the beer, air bubbles within the liquid attach to the peanuts, causing them to become buoyant. When the peanuts arrive at the surface of the beer, the bubbles pop and the peanuts lose their buoyancy.

-via Dave Barry

Before you get too excited, I must manage your expectations: the townsfolk do eventually pull the politician back out of the river. The immersion is a temporary affair.

The city of Trento in northern Italy holds an annual celebration called Feste Vigilane to celebrate the life of their patron saint, Vigilis, who was martyred after ordering Christians to throw an idol into the Adige River. My Modern Met explains that part of the festivities includes the Tonca, a ritualized and comedic dunking of a selected villain into the river.

A dramatic presentation of a Court of Penance determines who in the town is most worthy of being dunked. Politicians are a favorite choice. At the time of the Tonca, the convict is lowered into the river three times to the amusement of the population.

Photo: Feste Vigilane

I should clarify that Everard Digby's book De Arte Natandi was English in the sense that it was published in England. Digby, a theologian at Cambridge University, wrote The Art of Swimming in Latin. A few years later, Christopher Middleton translated it into English, which you can read online here.

The Public Domain Review describes De Arte Natandi within the context of European swimming practices of the time. The crawl was seen as an uncivilized stroke, but Digby does provide practical help for people who wish to swim through other means, such as the sidestroke:

This kinde of swimming, though it be more laborious, yet is it swifter then any of the rest, for that lying vpon one side, striking with your feete as when you swimme on your bellie, but that the pulling in and thrusting out of his hand, which then did onely keepe him vp, doe now helpe to put him forward: for onely the lower hand supporteth his bodie, and the vpper hand roweth like an Dare, as in this example.

De Arte Natandi came with at least thirty illustrations, all of which evidence that the swimsuit is a rather recent invention.