No, you haven't stepped inside a cartoonist's notebook. This is Shirokuro, a high-end sushi restaurant in New York City. The unique facility bills itself as the opportunity to "dine in 2D."

The New York Post reports that Denver is preparing for an especially brutal endurance race. The Taco Bell 50K is a demanding test of not only cardiovascular fitness but also intestinal fortitude. Participants are required to stop at at least 9 of the 10 Taco Bells along the route and consume food. This is the eighth such competition and the rules (including banning the use of performance-enhancing drugs) make this race into the ultimate test of athleticism:

3. By the 4th stop, all entrants must have consumed at least one (1) Chalupa Supreme or one Crunchwrap Supreme (dietary restrictions will be allowed within reason).

4. By the 8th stop, all entrants must have consumed at least one (1) Burrito Supreme or one Nachos Bell Grande (dietary restrictions will be allowed within reason).

5. Finish under 11 hours.

6. Drinks do not count as food.

7. Entrants must keep all receipts and wrappers for confirmation of stupidity at the end of the run. [...]

11. No on-course Pepto, Alka Seltzer, Pepcid A/C, Mylanta will be allowed!

12. Additional "rules" may be added, amended, or changed to promote the intent of this run, which is to do something completely stupid.

What would be the optimal meal plan at Taco Bell to power through this run?

-via Jarvis Best

Århus, the second largest city in Denmark, lies on eastern side of the Jutland peninsula. Dating back to the Eighth Century AD, it is one of the oldest continuous settlements in the country.

The city leans into its Viking Era history. Atlas Obscura informs us that since 2019, some of the traffic lights in the city show axe and shield-bearing Norse warriors walking or standing still.

Photo: Atlas Obscura user Johan SWE

Kat Slota is an artist in New Brunswick. She specializes in pyrography, which is selectively and precisely burning wood with a hot point to create intricate designs. She does lot of portraits, still lives, and Christian images reminiscent of Baroque art.

Sometimes, though, her choice of material is delightfully novel. Above and below, for example, is an antique ironing board that is now made into a museum-quality art piece with a hunting scene.

Antonio Stradivari (1644?-1737) of Cremona in what is now northern Italy perfected the art of violin making, but did not limit himself to that instrument. As a master luthier, he also made guitars. The Sabionari guitar, which Stradivari made in 1679, is one of five such guitars that survive to the present time and the only one that remains playable.

In this video, Norwegian musician Rolf Lislevand draws forth musical perfection from this perfect instrument. As a specialist in Baroque instruments, he is uniquely qualified to play the Sabionari. He performs a piece by Santiago de Murcia (1673-1739), a Spanish composer.

-via Nag on the Lake

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University, like other world-class rare book libraries, has treasures that could sell for vast amounts of money if auctioned. But it also has an item that does not have to be sold to collect cash value.

In 1624, the Dutch city of Utrecht needed to raise cash to build a dike, so it sold bonds. These are perpetual bonds--ones that never mature. The owners can collect interest indefinitely. It's also a bearer bond, so whoever possesses it can claim the interest.

In 2003, NPR reported that Yale acquired such a bond dating to 1648 from the Utrecht water authority. Geert Rouwenorst, a finance professor at the university, took the bond to the Netherlands and collected 26 years of back interest. When the library curator went to the Netherlands in 2015 to collect the next payment, it amounted to the equivalent of $153 USD.

-via Austin Patrick Bishop

Francesco Feliziani, a furniture designer in Australia, departed from his designs using wood to compose a chair from a basketball hoop and backboard. The rope from the net provides cushioning for the seat consisting of the hoop. The backboard, when twisted and reshaped, serves as a suitable frame. He calls it the "AIR Chair."

As a conscientious hunter uses all parts of an animal that he slays, Feliziani used the entire structure, leaving nothing to waste. He needed only a few 3D printed connectors to make the chair function.

-via Toxel

Renato Casaro died yesterday at the ago of 89. This Italian artist became famous for composing movie posters that inspired film-goers. His works include the above heroic image for Conan the Barbarian, arguably one of the greatest films of the Twentieth Century. Similarly, he captured stories in single images for Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, David Lynch's Dune, and Wolfgang Peterson's The NeverEnding Story.

Deadline informs us that he retired in 1998 as digital composition replaced his hand-painted style, but Quentin Tarantino convinced him to take up his brush once again for the 2019 movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Casaro retired to his hometown of Treviso for his final years. Five years ago, a documentary was made about his life.

-via Daddy Warpig | Photo: Alessio Sbarbaro

Tiramisu, which means "pick me up" in Italian, may seem like an ancient treasure bestowed upon humanity in Promethean fashion. But acccording to the Academia Del Tiramisu, it dates back to the Nineteenth Century and originates in the city of Treviso in northeastern Italy. Allegedly it was served to the patrons of a bordello who used the dessert to invigorate their energies after exerting themselves.

Much can be done with the main ingredients of tiramisu--ladyfingers, whipped eggs, mascarpone, and powdered cocoa. There are enough options and so many world-class chefs passionate about tiramisu that there will be a Tiramisu World Cup from October 10 through 12 of this year in Treviso. Competitors are given the base ingredients and can prepare original or creative responses to this dessert.

-via My Modern Met | Photo: Tiramisu World Cup

Oddity Central tells us about Estância Silvânia, a cheese factory outside of São Paulo, Brazil. Camila Almeida developed a cheese that she calls "Taiada Silvania." This recipe adds to the mixture toasted Içá leafcutter ants, which are a local food staple. One food critic calls this novel cheese "Brazilian caviar." It flavor has "notes of almonds and chestnuts, a slight fennel flavor, and the unmistakable crunch of ants."

Estância Silvânia created the cheese to enter into the 2021 Mondial du Fromage  et de Produits Laitiers in Tours, France. It won the bronze medal in this international cheese competition and has attracted an international appeal.

Anything heavy built in Antarctica, unless it's on bare ground, will eventually sink into the ice. Germany's Neumayer Station III on the northern coast of Antarctica, built in 2009, sits on 16 hydraulic legs that keep the structure 6 meters off the ice.

It is necessary to periodically lift up a leg, shovel snow under it, and then lower the leg so that the station is not devoured by the icy abyss. Eventually, though, the station will fall off into the sea. The Alfred Wegener Institute explains that the ice sheet moves 40 centimeters toward the sea each year. Eventually, the section of ice on which the station rests will become an iceberg.

-via Massimo

I don't mean this specific fish; I mean the species. I don't know by which name this fellow prefers to be called.

The Boops boops has been known to the Ancient Greeks since at least the Fourth Century B.C. and was identified by the great taxonomer Carl Linneaus, who gave the species its Latin name, deriving it from the Greek for "ox-eyed". In English, it's most commonly called a bogue.

It lives in the eastern Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. Boops boops apparently good eating. At about a foot long, you probably need a few of them to make a meal.

-via Respectful Memes | Photo: Wikimedia user Roberto Pillon

Design Boom tells us about an amazingly dynamic sculpture at the Puy de Fou amusement park in Les Epesses, France. It's made by the engineering firm Leva that specializes in creating large-scale three-dimensional moving surfaces.

This castle animates with the face of Morgane, a villainess from Authurian legend, as actors fight in dramatic performances in front of awed crowds. The face covers 12 square meters of the tower and shifts with stone blocks moving forwards and backward. The movement is very fluid and, when matched with a voice, creates an almost magical impression that the audience has entered an age of sword and sorcery.

In a second season scene in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Dr. Pulaski mispronounces Data's name with a soft vowel in the first syllable.

There's actually some backstory in the exact pronunciation of Data's name. Slash Film explains that no one had determined how to pronounce Data before the first table-reading of a scene with Brent Spiner (Data) and Patrick Stewart (Jean-Luc Picard). Gene Roddenberry has present at this event.

Stewart pronounced Data with a hard vowel, which came as a surprise to Spiner. Roddenberry immediately accepted it as a canonical decision. Furthermore, he established that on Star Trek: The Next Generation, whichever actor says a name first determines its pronunciation.

-via reddit

Redditor /u/Yolka17 shares this photo from her neighborhood in Seattle, Washington. I'm not sure of the precise location of this Little Free Library--the directory indicates that these institutions are numerous in the city.

The design is from Eric Carle's classic picture book The Very Hungry Caterpillar. What happens to this caterpillar? In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf. When he hatched, he started looking for some books to read. With each passing day for a full week, he found more and more books to read at his local Little Free Library, which he devoured in his cocoon.