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NEW: San Francisco has erected a statue of a woman with no clothes on which will be greeting visitors in front of the Ferry Building.

The 45-foot-tall statue was installed to "jazz up downtown" according to CBS News.

One worker was seen doing a "surgical procedure" on the… pic.twitter.com/QjxhbiYEpn

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 10, 2025

Marco Cochrane is an American artist most famous for his enormous metal sculptures of nude women. He recently installed a 45-foot tall piece in San Francisco titled "R-Evolution." It represents "feminine strength and liberation." An access port at the base of the torso allows access to the interior.

Online humor creators Jess & Quinn illustrate in a few seconds why Microsoft Word can be so frustrating.

I use Word every day. It's not actually this bad if you understand how a page is structured. But it's not MS Publisher and is clunky if you're trying to use it that way. Anyway, leave the furniture alone unless your house is equipped with an undo button.

-via Physics Geek

The appropriately named shop Irregular Choice provides unusual shoes and accessories for people that want to stand out in a crowd. One of its dominant themes is the Monopoly board game. Perhaps the flashiest of all of its Monopoly shoes is this pair that resembles the squares with six-sided dice as the heels and single dollar bills as bows.

This pair is currently out of stock, but there are other Monopoly items available, including handbags and boots. Although they are pricey, buying them is how you show that you are a high-rolling tycoon on his way to breaking your competition by building hotels in Boardwalk.

-via Toxel

Dubois & Fils of Le Locle, Switzerland crafted an automaton watch around the year 1810.pic.twitter.com/lLSnJlUMwE

— 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐮𝐧𝐤 𝐓𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐬 (@Steampunk_T) April 6, 2025

Sotheby's auction house once offered this amazing watch and automaton for sale. Dating back to 1810, the carefully preserved antique depicts an acrobat balancing on a tightrope while a woman plays a lute and a man plays a lyre. An internal cylinder plays a sequence of 33 notes.

It also tells the time.

DuBois et Fils (DuBois and Sons), a Swiss luxury watchmaker, produced the treasure. That firm is still in business. This watch is one of several similar devices that it made.

STS 3D is a robotics and software design firm that, as a modern Prometheus, is advancing everyday technologies beyond the finite imaginations of other product designers. Its crew most recently teamed up with YouTuber Plumber John (John Ward) to design and build a dishwasher that is far more powerful and faster than any other dishwasher available in the home.

My dishwasher's long cycle is almost four hours long. This massively overpowered dishwasher, in contrast, will transform your dishes within a handful of seconds. You won't even recognize your dishes after a single brief cycle through the most vigorous dishwasher ever assembled.

Do you remember ice tennis? It's tennis placed on skates on an ice rink. Ice football is similar in that it is American football* except played on an ice rink. No, the players aren't wearing skates. They're wearing shoes instead of skates and hockey gear in addition to football helmets.

A 2024 article in the Huron Daily Tribune describes this innovative sport that is popular in Germany. The gameplay is thrilling as the athletes battle on the frozen gridiron, but also comical as they fall and slide on the ice easily.

-via Washington's Ghost

*Maybe in Europe they call it soccer. I don't know.

Starting in the 1960s, Richard Scarry set a standard for the adult world in his Busytown books. These manuals taught children what to expect when they became independent, working adults in the world outside of their homes.

We thus grew up anticipating that animals would transport themselves across town in vehicles befitting their habits and interests, such as the cheese car (really a cheese passenger van due to the number of mice that could fit within it).

It is only now, though, that the cheese car is a reality. Illustrator Jess Fink produced this lifesize toy vehicle that provides local mice with their transportation needs.

-via Super Punch

The Soviet Union had, on a small scale, a domestic production of video and arcade games. Tetris, is, of course, the most famous Soviet video game, if not the most successful cultural export of the Soviet Union. Many of these games are playable at the Museum of Soviet Video Games, which has locations in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

This particular arcade game tested players' strength. It simulates the motion of pulling up turnips and takes its inspiration from a Russian folktale about an entire family harvesting an especially massive turnip.

You can see photos of other Soviet arcade games at this 2019 post from the Arcade Blogger.

-via @after_history

Would you eat escargot-flavored ice cream? It might be a good way to prepare for your stay in Paris.

The New York Post reports that EasyJet, a British discount airline, is offering snacks befitting the destinations of its travelers. Those traveling to Paris are served ice cream flavored with garlic and crystallized sugar made to resemble the texture of snail shells.

Travelers to Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Morocco also receive special "jet-lato" flavors. I would enjoy trying the ice cream made to taste like cacio e pepe, a cheese and pasta dish from Italy.

You can see a promotional video for the program on Instagram.

-via Dave Barry

It's time to class up this shindig. Yes, a champagne fountain is nice, but it's also expensive and does not defeat the ennui of the modern party scene. But a pickle fountain will make sure that people talk about your party for years to come.

Born in Space has a roundup of TikTok videos showing people setting up and enjoying pickle fountains at events. The spigots are helpful for those of us who prefer to drink  pickle juice straight from the source. If you insist on staying traditional, you can offer champagne glasses to your guests for this purpose. But don't be surprised if I just stick my whole head under a spigot and open it up.

-via Dave Barry

Hello, Antarctica.

Unlike previously anticipated, from 460 km above, it is only pure white, no human activity is visible. pic.twitter.com/i7JawFYzW2

— Chun (@satofishi) April 2, 2025

Chung Yang, a billionaire investor and, now, astronaut is leading a current a SpaceX private orbital mission. The Times reports that Chun and three companions have a polar orbit, passing both the north and south poles every 46 minutes in their Dragon capsule. They found Antarctica transcendentally beautiful.

The four-person crew is also conducting 22 scientific experiments focused on how the human body reacts to space travel. These experiments include the first-ever X-ray performed on a human in space.

-via Massimo

Which of Hayao Miyazaki's films is depicted above? Yes, it's Spirited Away!

The palette of a film's most dominant colors can help us recognize it, sometimes instantly. NYC-based illustrator and graphic designer Hyo Taek Kim has, in the past, attracted our attention for his color palettes of Star Wars and Disney films.

Kim has also created a poster depicting Studio Ghibli fims, including My Neighbor Totoro, Howl's Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke, The Wind Rises, Porco Rosso, Ponyo, Nausicaä, Castle in the Sky, and Kiki's Delivery Service.

-via Spoon & Tamago

It is a truth universally acknowledged that men, as a broad generalization, enjoy gazing upon the bosoms of fair maidens. Why is this so? One popular belief is that some cultures sexualize human breasts and thus impose lasvicious desire upon the breasts, whereas other cultures regard breasts as no more inherently sexual than any other part of the body.

Is this belief true? Michal Mikolaj Stefanczyk, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Wrocław, and his colleagues recently published an article in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior on the subject.

The scholars examined a tribe in Papua New Guinea for which female toplessness was the norm until recently. The found that men who grew up in times when most women were topless were as fascinated with breasts as men who grew up after toplessness became uncommon.

This evidence suggests that a male interest in breasts is innate and, The Times summarizes, not culturally driven. Yet it is also clear that further research of breasts is necessary and appropriate as a scientific endeavor.

-via Dave Barry | Image by Jimmy Johnson

Candace Hicks works primarily with fabric arts, notably embroidery on canvas. Her use of this long-established medium is highly innovative as we see in her faux composition notebooks.

They're not static images. You (or, better, a museum curator) can open them to reveal personal journals in fabric form.

What if Studio Ghibli directed Lord of the Rings?

I spent $250 in Kling credits and 9 hours re-editing the Fellowship trailer to bring that vision to life—and I’ll show you exactly how I did it 👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/IqUeBSH4H0

— PJ Ace (@PJaccetturo) March 27, 2025

The good people of X have, for the past two days, used ChatGPT to render famous photos and memes in the style of Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli films. This trend may have inspired AI filmmaker PJ Ace to use more sophisticated AI options to remake the trailer for The Fellowship of the Ring in the Ghibli style. It works quite well.

Miyazaki has not responded to this recent development, but he is on record as describing AI art as "an insult to life itself."