A total of 3,888 identified casualties are buried in the British Commonwealth’s Ramleh War Cemetery. But one grave attracts a disproportionate share of visitors. It belongs to Private Harry Potter, number 5251351 in the Worcestershire Regiment. pic.twitter.com/NLcYk9Vqgj

— Atlas Obscura (@atlasobscura) August 6, 2018

I've read only the first novel in J.K. Rowling's generation-defining story, but I take it that Harry dies at the end. Otherwise, why would this grave exist?

A better interpretation is that a real person also named Harry Potter died. The Commonwealth military cemetery at Ramlah, Israel contains 3,888 interments, including Private Harry Potter. This Harry Potter joined the British Army at the age of 16 according to the official webpage of the Worcester Regiment, in which Potter served. He was deployed to British Palestine, where he drove trucks and earned the nickname "Crash Harry." In 1939, Arab guerillas ambushed a convoy that Potter was in. He was killed in action and buried nearby.

Private Potter's grave has become a tourist attraction since news reports about his grave in 2010. But he's actually one of at least thirteen Harry Potters buried in located war graves around the world.

-via Amusing Planet

Jake Carlini is an inventor attuned with the needs of the modern world. When 21st Century challenges emerge, he develops practical solutions for them.

In the past, he's made a reliable snorkel apparatus that allows him to run a mile underwater, a functional sword out of gym socks, and a jet-powered longboard. These are necessary technologies for modern life, but we can and shall, thanks to Carlini, achieve even greater heights.

Carlini has, through painstaking labor and experimentation, made functional roller skates out of four tiny bicycles. They're skatecycles and they're amazing. In this video, we see how he ushered in a new dawn of transportation.

-via The Awesomer

I know that it doesn't look like a pillow, but it's designed to function as one. The crew of Sora News 24 found a strange product on Amazon and insisted on trying it. This invention is called the "Practical Model Pendulum Neck Stretcher Comfortable Sleep Pillow / Revolutionary Sleep Pillow With Your Own Head Weight for Comfortable Sleep."

Pillows are supposed to provide a place to rest your head during sleep. You can think of this invention as a hammock for your head. The straps wrap around your head and keep it suspended a couple inches off the ground with a tripod.

In addition to keeping your head off the ground, it's supposed to stretch your neck. So it's a lot like this device that Barney Fife used on The Andy Griffith Show to increase his height:

When death comes to families, there is often a need to clean out homes quickly. This can be challenging for families in mourning, so they may hire professionals to do the job. In Japan, there's a growing industry of people who respectfully and efficiently pack up a deceased person's possessions for storage, sale, or disposal. It's called ihinseiri.

Anne Allison, a professor of anthropology at Duke University, has studied the cultures of death in Japan for many years. She describes the ihinseiri industry at LitHub.

Animism is foundational in Japanese culture. There is, as a result, attachment to and attribution of meaning to physical objects owned by deceased people. Ihinseiri workers are not simply laborers who work as movers, but professional mourners who sort and arrange possessions in emotionally and spiritually sensitive ways.

Ihinseiri firms can move quickly after someone has died, but it's also possible to hire them before someone has passed on. As a client is preparing for the final journey, s/he can hire these companies to do much of the preliminary decluttering and packing before death. Dr. Allison was able to shadow some of these workers on the job. She described the activity "as if a gentle dust buster had been programmed to silently, automatically empty the house."

-via Nag on the Lake | Image: Death Sweeper by Shou Kitagawa, a manga about people who clean up after death

The visual style—especially the human movements—of the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise is instantly recognizable. Autoescola Brasiliense chose well to release its latest ad to resemble Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. It shows the viewer playing a student who enrolls at this full-service driving school to learn how to operate motorbikes, cars, buses, and commercial trucks.

The actor is Matheus Senna, a bodybuilder and cosplayer. His Instagram page is filled with similar cosplays of Grand Theft Auto in real life. Ad director Anderson Mascarenhas perfectly executed this project with Senna’s help, making you feel like you’re really playing the game.

-via My Modern Met

In the classic TV series Exosquad, when humanity set about genetically engineering a slave race that would one day rise up in rebellion against them, they helpfully gave their slaves two opposing thumbs.

Thumbs are useful. They're pretty much the only reason we humans are in charge of this planet and not dolphins. So let's make best use of this advantage by doubling them.

Dani Clode and Tamar Makin of Cambridge University 3D printed a thumb that can be attached to a hand. The motor is strapped to the wrist and the battery on the upper arm. The controlling sensors are attached to big toes. So, if I understand this Guardian article correctly, twitch your toes to open and close the extra thumb.

At a recently science exhibition, Clode and Makin gave 600 people the chance to try it. 98% were able to figure out the control system within a minute, so this is clearly user-friendly technology.

-via Design Boom

You may have seen the viral photos of a casket decorated with an M&M candy theme. It's real and the story behind it is deeply heartwarming.

Fox News reports that Mary Stocks Martin of Snowflake, Arizona died at the age of 86. She was a teacher for many years who signed her name "MSM" in cursive. Kids often mistook her signature for "M&M" and began giving her M&M candy. She gradually collected a lot of M&M paraphernalia and became known as "the M&M Lady".

Years before her death, she decided that she wanted to be buried in a casket that looked like an M&M and had one of her sons build it. Martin recently passed on and her family conducted an M&M-themed funeral. Those who attended marked her passing by dropping M&Ms on the casket and dressing in M&M t-shirts.

-via The Mary Sue | Images: Scott Roundtree

Tradition is apparently no longer important to modern Britons. Although they will keep the monarchy, they are throwing away one of the great customs associated with royalty: rubbing the monarch at his or her coronation with ambergris.

My headline is borrowed from IFL Science, which explains what's going on.

As King, Charles is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. His coronation on May 6 is, among other purposes, a religious ceremony. He will be annointed with sacred oil. This oil is made from olives from the Monastery of Mary Magdalene and the Monastery of the Ascension in Israel.

The anointing oil will not contain ambergris, which is a substance that originates in the intestines of sperm whales. Many nations ban the harvesting of ambergris as part of general bans on the exploitation of whales.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Wikimedia user Dan Marsh

Yes, we're familiar with robotic cameras that enter the human body rectally. But the new F3DB robot arm from the Medical Robotics Lab at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia can do much, much more.

The Daily Mail reports that the tip of the robot is equipped with a bioprinter that permits it to add biomaterials deep inside the body, effecting healing repairs. The length and rigidity of the arm is adjustable to suit the needs of particular procedures. It is partially controlled with artificial intelligence to provide an enhanced printing experience.

-via Dave Barry, who jokes "We were promised flying cars."

Image: UNSW Medical Robotics Lab

pic.twitter.com/9CrTLey9m8

— booteen (@booteen1) February 20, 2022

Roman Booteen is a Russian artist who specializes in carving images into coins. In past years, we've shown some of his works. Since then, he's really stepped up his game. This symbol-laden coin shares the story of Lilith, a figure in Jewish folklore. A counterpart to Eve, she converses with the serpent at the Wood of Life (Lignum Vitae). When a tiny button on the edge of the coin is pushed, Lilith moves her leg and a key pops out of the tree.

I can't tell what is written beneath the key when it falls out. Can you?

-via Massimo

Street Art Utopia introduces us to the work of Russian street artist @fruktyvrukty. Five years ago, during the Carte Blanche Fest in Ekaterinburg, Russia, he added what appear to be paper cutouts of ballet dancers performing pirouettes to rings of fungi growing on local trees.

Street Art Utopia tells us that this tree is in Moscow. Marilyn Monroe innocently experiences a "delicious" breeze in an iconic scene from the 1955 film The Seven Year Itch.

The old joke goes that, if you're walking with a friend or family member in the woods and are attacked by a bear, you don't have to outrun the bear.

You just have to outrun your friend.

So knock him over or smash his knee, then take off sprinting. The bear will eat your friend instead of you.

If you come across a bear, never push a slower friend down…even if you feel the friendship has run its course.⁣⁣

— National Park Service (@NatlParkService) February 28, 2023

The US National Park Service warns against this kind of thinking in a brief Twitter thread . . . but doesn't explain why.

Check in on the friendship before you head to the woods.

— National Park Service (@NatlParkService) February 28, 2023

In fact, the NPS has a limited grasp of relationship dynamics.

Let’s discuss. pic.twitter.com/9Kg7qpaKIm

— National Park Service (@NatlParkService) March 1, 2023

Photo: Denali National Park

Ally the Piper is a master of the ol' pipes and offers classic and modern performances with the world's most beautiful musical instrument. Everything, yes, everything sounds better when performed on bagpipes.

We can see that demonstrated quite well here. Ally does a cover of the iconic 1974 Lynyrd Skynyrd song "Freebird." She moves her fingers at incredible speed to keep up with the fast tempo of the song.

The results are all the more impressive considering how limited an instrument the bagpipes are. In an interview last year, Ally explained that one can play only nine notes with strict limits on sharps and flats.

-via Laughing Squid

If you take a spill while on your motorcycle, you don't have to break your knees and hips as you roll to a stop. Core77 tells us about airbag pants developed by two different companies. Both have a similar premise: a small container of compressed air, when triggered, instantly inflates bladders in these pants, providing shock protection against sudden impacts.

They also, in a manner that would bring a smile from Sir Mix-A-Lot, add some junk to your trunk. The Swedish firm Mo'cycle offers these jeans, which cost $499. Just wear them as ordinary jeans. When you mount your bike, attach the belt to the frame. A hard jerk on the belt triggers inflation.

Photos: Mo'cycle

Yes, in the past, we've looked at various inventions that allow challenged young men to experience simulated relationships. Those wondrous machines, though, did not require the assistance of another person.

This invention does require a second person to function properly. I'm sorry if this news brings you disappointment.

The South China Morning Post reports that the invention, who is named Jiang, developed his idea to allow him to be intimate with his long-distance girlfriend. Plug in paired smartphones and you can virtually smooch your partner with plastic lips that are close enough to resembling a human pair. Each one costs about $38.

Remote kissing device recently invented by a Chinese university student. The device is designed specifically for long-distance relationships and can mimic and transfer the kiss of a person to the "mouth on the other side" pic.twitter.com/G74PrjfHQA

— Levandov (@blabla112345) February 23, 2023

-via Marginal Revolution