Redditor /u/reddituser0346 shares photos of ice cream treats being sold at a movie theater in Australia. The carefully shaped ice cream held in place by a chocolate shell resembles the facehugger stage of the xenomorph's life cycle. So it's as dangerous as much of that continent's wildlife.
The original poster suggests eating the ice cream after first mounting it in the mouth of the famous Dune sandworm popcorn bucket.
-via Totally Gourmet
Etsy seller Lisbanoe Leather Craft in the UK offers precisely rendered leather goods, including this impressively realistic backpack that looks like the shell of a tortoise. The preparation, she says, is "very labor intensive", taking four weeks of work for each backpack. But the result is an astonishingly detailed work of painted leather.
The Associated Press reports that a men's prison in northeastern Ohio recently offered a 5-course gourmet meal to 60 selected guests. All of the food was prepared and served by prisoners who are training for culinary careers after their release. Many of the ingredients were grown in the prison's on-site garden.
This is a project of EDWINS, a gourmet restaurant and culinary school in Cleveland which organizes culinary classes in hundreds of prisons around the United States. Graduates are able to leave prison with the skills and certifications necessary to land jobs in the food service industry.
-via Nag on the Lake
BBC News passes along a story from Italian news sources about a foiled home burglary. The would-be thief broke into a house in Rome and was looting the place when he was distracted by a copy of The Gods at Six O'Clock, which is a retelling of Homer's Illiad from the perspective of the Greek gods by Giovanni Nucci.
The burglar was reading the book when the homeowner woke up and discovered the break-in. The thief fled, but was caught by police.
When author Nucci learned of this event, he offered to send a copy of his novel to the thief so that he could finish reading it.
-via Dylan O'Sullivan
A press release from the sheriff's office of Santa Barbara County, California describes how a woman tracked down two people who were regularly stealing her mail.
The unnamed woman suspected that her mail was being stolen, so she mailed herself a package that included an AirTag tracking device. When that package was stolen, she located the AirTag's signal and called the police. The sheriff's deputies then found the device in the home of two suspects, who also had mail allegedly stolen from a dozen other people.
Police arrested the couple for a variety of fraud-related criminal allegations.
-via Instapundit | Photo: Wikimedia user KKPCW
So cute 😂
— The Best (@ThebestFigen) August 24, 2024
pic.twitter.com/uiyNuF76ue
TikTok user Lance Marwood finds that his infant son absolutely loves the sound of packing tape being unrolled. It's a punchline that requires no preparation or set up. Just let it rip and he has a guaranteed hit with the audience who keeps coming back for more repetitions of the same gag.
In another video, Marwood describes the incident that led to the discovery of the funniest non-fatal joke in the world. It's the sort of childhood delight that only comes with good luck and investing a lot of time in being a father, waiting patiently for the magical moments.
2024: People wanting to be a #Brat during #BratSummer
— LBJ Library (@LBJLibrary) August 23, 2024
1966: pic.twitter.com/ssYBWBR4tI
The Johnson Presidential Library is hip, cool, and relevant, as demonstrated by this How Do You Do, Fellow Kids? post.
I affirm that we are having a brat summer here at the sprawling Neatorama corporate campus. But what does that mean? Urban Dictionary says that it's a season which celebrates a "hot yet trashy" feminine aesthetic inspired by the work of musician Charli xcx. I don't think that's what young Susan Gibson had in mind when she sent her brief appeal to the President in 1966.
-via Lyndon Baines Johnson (parody account)
Think of the Tour de Donut of Troy, Ohio as a race that combines competitive eating and bike racing. It's the chessboxing of the bicycle world.
Competitors race their bikes to a sequence of participating donut shops. Each donut eaten along the way, with a maximum of three donuts per stop, deducts five minutes of ride time. The person with the lowest time at the end wins. About half of participants forego eating any donuts at all.
The course lengths vary, ranging from 9.72 miles for casual competitors to 58.5 miles for ultimate athletes.
-via Dave Barry | Photo: Miami County Vistors' & Convention Bureau
If you grew up in the 90s and 00s--before smartphones were invented or at least became ubiquitous and we weren't online all of the time--there was a different vibe to life. I was an 80s kid, so I didn't have most of the shared experiences in this film directly. But I was definitely aware of them going on.
Filmmaker Nate Milton's short film Viewfinder is "a kaleidoscope of memories to remind us that we’re all living different facets of the same experience." The directing is perfect, as is the accompanying music by Buck St. Thomas that adds to the sense of timelessness.
-via Laughing Squid
Godzilla Minus One but it’s Cookie Monster. pic.twitter.com/K9Pur6kKZl
— Matthew Highton (@MattHighton) August 22, 2024
The historical drama Godzilla Minus One recounts the 1945-1947 struggle of postwar Japan against Godzilla. With very few military forces available let alone permitted, a handful of sailors gallantly stood between the monster, created as a result of US atomic testing, and the people of Japan.
The most famous scene in the film shows the climactic battle as Godzilla chases a decrepit minesweeper. This alternate version by filmmaker Matthew Highton replaces Godzilla with the more fearsome Cookie Monster.
You may recall previous work of Highton's that we have featured, such as his recreation of The Simpsons introduction and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer introduction with stock footage.
-via John A Konrad V
The Republic of Kiribati (pronounced "Kirr-ih-bass") is, by population, a very small nation with only 117,000 people. It consists of 33 islands, of which a third are inhabited, stretching across 2,400 miles of central Pacific Ocean near the equator and 1,300 miles along the International Date Line.
Kiribati became famous on the internet a few months ago for its unimaginative place naming practices. Yet it has another claim to fame, too. This both large and small nation is spread across four hemispheres: the northern, southern, eastern, and western. The CIA World Factbook identifies it as the only nation so endowed.
-via TYWIWDBI | Image: Google Maps
Do you remember Tuvix, the short-lived character from Star Trek: Voyager that was created in a transporter accident that combined Neelix and Tuvok? The Glissotar is the woodwind equivalent of Tuvix, except that Captain Janeway hasn't killed it yet.
Dániel Váczi and Tóbiás Terebessy spent almost a decade developing this unique instrument that, instead of holes along the shaft, has a continuous opening that is held open or closed with a strap. Insert an ordinary alto saxophone mouthpiece that you can play a vast variety of sounds and effects, including movement between notes, over two and a half octaves.
-via Laughing Squid
dvd butter pic.twitter.com/329UV3hehN
— Pablo Rochat (@PabloRochat) August 14, 2024
Do you remember the bouncing DVD logo? I see it often because I'm still building a DVD collection (physical media can't be disappeared from online sources). If it's been a while since you've seen it, you can step back in time to twenty years ago on this oddly comforting website.
Pablo Rochat, a Spanish conceptual artist, creative director, and Neatorama favorite, captured the essence of the old DVD experience by melting a pat of butter shaped like the DVD logo on a hot frying pan. It's a great source of warm, buttery nostalgia.
Bern, the capital of Switzerland, is nestled in a bend of the Aare River. During the summer months, this river becomes popular for watersports. Some people like to pack their belongings in a dry bag (wickelfisch) and float down a stretch that takes about 90 minutes of travel.
Last year, Business Insider reported that some workers use the river to commute to or from work. It only works one-way (sorry, but few rivers flow in a circle). Aside from the time that it takes to change clothes and pack one's belongings into a dry bag, this can be an efficient mode of transportation.
-via Marilyn Terrell
The character stares off screen at something that has captivated their attention. Often the expression is one of wonder and awe. It is always a turning point in the story.
This is the Spielberg Face--a film narrative technique that Steven Spielberg has richly developed over the course of the five decades of his career. In this video, filmmaker, critic, and educator Kevin B. Lee explores the development of the Spielberg Face.
It is not a technique that Spielberg actually invented, but it is one that he brought to the fore of his medium, especially in his 1977 science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. His much-maligned 2001 film A.I. demonstrates the fulfillment of the Face and, in his post-9/11 films, the subversion of it as the Face transforms from one of wonder to fear.
Watch this entire video as Lee explains how Spielberg has mastered the Face over the course of his career.
