Anyone can blow on a deer call. But it takes a master hunter to precisely imitate a stag and thereby summon him from concealment into the sights of the hunter's rifle.

Deer calling is a revered tradition in Germany. Last Friday, the best deer callers gathered in Dortmund. Wearing their traditional hunting garb, they carefully blew into ox horns, snail shells, the dried stems of giant hogweed, and glass cylinders.

When played precisely, the sounds resemble either an old stag searching for a mate, a dominant stag calling to his harem of does, and combat between two rutting stags. The sounds are charmingly melodious.

-via Dave Barry

What would daily life be like if your name was Donald Trump? There's a man in the White House who can answer that question, but there's also a guy in Alabama with the same name.

The Associated Press talked to men who are named Donald Trump, William J. Clinton, Abraham Lincoln, and Grover Cleveland. Sometimes these men get freebies at hotels and restaurants. Sometimes they get mail from federal inmates asking for pardons.

The experience can have a real impact on daily interactions. Abraham Lincoln notes that he has to make good first impressions because his name is so memorable. People don't forget meeting him for the first time.

This is Dixon's Chili Parlor in Kansas City, Missouri. The menu is simple: chili. You can have that chili in a variety of ways and there are a few other alternative items to choose from. But since founder Vergne Dixon established it in 1919, people have flocked to to the dry chili cooked with beans. Dixon wanted no distractions for customers eating his chili, so he forbade smoking, ketchup, and newspapers in his restaurant.

Harry Truman was among Dixon's fans. He frequented it for decades and, in 1950, ate there while President. Truman and Dixon corresponded about the visit and, after Dixon's death, his family sent Truman a tub of chili every year for his birthday.

Dixon's Chili Parlor is 1 of 12 favorite restaurants of US Presidents listed by The Takeout. Other Presidents on the list include George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Jimmy Carter.

The penny-farthing went out of fashion in the 1880s, despite the efforts of some modern people to revive the traditional bicycle. Perhaps Greg Mitchell's variant, pictured above, will re-establish it.

Motorcycle News reports that Mitchell is an engineer in Swindon, UK. His "Super-Farthing" is built with a Yamaha R6 sportbike. He machined 420 parts from scrap steel to convert the motorcycle into this high-rise vehicle.

Note the rear stabilizers. Initially, Mitchell built these to lift up and out of the way, but he found the bike too difficult to maneuver without them. So it's functionally a lifted quadricycle. Mitchell has taken it up to speeds of 50 MPH.

-via Oddity Central

The Modern Novel is a website curated by Mia Couto consisting of lists and descriptions of literary fiction by apparently every nation on earth, as well as many non-independent regions. Cuoto considers all fictional works of literary value from the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries.

It's fun to browse. For example, what authors are from Liechtenstein? Perhaps the most famous author of literary fiction from the tiny principality is Jens Dittmar, who wrote Sterben Kann Jeder. This title translates as Anyone Can Die. A summary is here.

Liechtenstein is--mostly--an independent nation. Chukotka, which is the westernmost part of Russia, is not. But this sparsely-inhabited region claims the author Yuri Rytkheu, who wrote the 1970 novel A Dream in Polar Fog.

Explore The Modern Novel. Do you see any surprises or are inspired to read some listed works?

-via Marginal Revolution | Image: Amazon

Ceci n'est pas une perceuse.

WOTC News tells us about Sylvester Franklin, a man in Savannah, Georgia, who ordered a drill from the online store AliExpress, a subsidiary of AliBaba, which is the "Amazon of China." Instead he received a photo of a drill. Frankllin also ordered a pressure washer and received a bit driver.

AliExpress has so far refused to refund his money. WOTC News reports that the company has a reputation for poor customer service, such as providing fake tracking numbers, as well as a history of counterfeiting.

-via Derek Guy

Ben Ashton is a British artist who is classically trained as a realistic painter. He can perfectly render portraits in the style of Old Masters and reflecting the highest standards of the Academic tradition.

Then he adds a twist. His images are not digital renderings with glitches, but are actually painted to look like that.

Instagram user @g0nghua is a food artist who creates conceptual and inventive products at Who Eats Art. Her recent work includes experiments with tea eggs, which are a food originating in China. Boil an egg, crack it, then boil it again in tea to brew tea flavors into your egg.

@g0nghua says that her grandmother would disown her if she discovers that she's been doing this to pigeon eggs. I assume that she used molds to shape the semi-cooked eggs into dice. This was part of an exhibition of edible art that invited guests to sample the works on display.

-via Gastro Obscura

Shinichi Furuya is a researcher in the field of the physiology of musicians, as well as a pianist. He wants to optimize piano playing, driving pianists to their physical limits. Do do so, New Scientist reports, Furuya and his colleagues have developed a machine that can improve the finger speed of users.

The exoskeleton wraps around the hand and jerks each finger up to four times each second and moves them in motions specific to piano playing. When tested on pianists, a mere 30-minute session with the device substantially improved finger speed. Brain scans indicated that the pianists had greater motion control after this training.

-via David Thompson

Colorado has the highest lighthouse in the United States and this is a photo of it.

But wait--why does Colorado have a lighthouse at all? It's landlocked.

Well, the Frisco Bay lighthouse is located close to the Dillon Reservoir outside of Denver. The site has an elevation of 9,017 feet, thus making this structure, which is a mere 26 feet all, the highest lighthouse in the United States.

It's actually functional, not just a decoration, as it provides a beacon directing recreational boaters to the nearby marina. K99 News reports that it was built when the reservoir was constructed in the 1960s.

-via Terrible Maps | Photo: CodeJeffrey

Neodymium magnets are immensely powerful--so much so that getting one accidentally stuck up your nose may require a hospital visit.

Grant Slatton, a software engineer, used the magnetic force of a set of magnets to good effect to build a levitating bed. When the magnets are set in opposition to each other--five in the frame and five in the base--they can hold his bodyweight in the air.

The guidewires keep the bed hovering in the proper spot. The magnets, Slatton explains, must be very close to each other to maintain repulsion.

Slatton appreciates the fame the bed brought him when he first shared it on the internet in 2012. But he also notes that the bed wasn't particularly comfortable.

pic.twitter.com/MqHLzdcjCl

— Chase Businelle (@ChaseBusinelle) January 21, 2025

From Houston to Pensacola, the Gulf coast is experiencing rather unseasonable weather. But in the South, we just roll with it. This sentiment is especially true in southern Louisiana, which had its first blizzard warning in history.

Japan is rightly famous for its vending machines from which it is possible to purchase all needful things. The Swedish embassy in Tokyo decided to make use of this cultural niche by creating a vending machine that sells only Swedish products. Unseen Japan visited and photographed this wonder.

The correspondent found for sale Swedish branded teas and coffees, lingonberry jam, and canned surströmming, which is a variety of salted herring that Sweden is famous for. You can shop from it yourself in the Ikebukuro shopping district of Tokyo unless it is isekai'd.

I wonder why the sign is in English instead of Japanese or Swedish.

Food Nibbles is a British YouTuber who makes foods from unconventional sources. His playlists include foods from defunct restaurants, school lunches around the world, and the favorite foods of UK Prime Ministers.

I'm quite taken with the idea of eating foods from countries that no longer exist--at least as independent nations. First on the list is my own Texas, which was an independent republic before the United States joined it in 1845. Naturally, Food Nibbles made chicken fried steak.

For Yugoslavia, which collapsed in the early 1990s. To represent this temporarily unified nation of the south slavs, Food Nibbles selected pljeskavica, which is a beef dish.

-via Boing Boing

Self-surgery is not new. Most famously, a Soviet doctor performed his own appendectomy in 1962 because there was no one else available in Antarctica to do it.

Dr. Chen Wei-nong, though, performed a less time-sensitive operation: a vasectomy. Oddity Central tells us that this plastic surgeon in Taiwan performed his own vasectomy, recorded it, and then posted the video online. I can confirm that this video is indeed available, should you wish to watch it.

Although a vasectomy normally takes 15 minutes, Dr. Chen is not a urologist, so figuring out the procedure and completing it took him a full hour. He suggests that men seeking to follow his example instead have it performed by a urologist.