Love Hultén, an artist in Gothenburg, Sweden made this goovy audio and visual experience that combines retro styling with new technologies. It’s a Delton8 drum and sampler synthesizer in a case fit for the 70s and combined with ferrofluid display. A ferrofluid that is attracted to magnetic pull. This combination uses either BurnSlap FAV ferrofluid sound-reactive system or something very similar. Either way, the ferrofluid acts like a living lava lamp that dances to the controls on the synthesizer panel.

This seems like a project that could be scaled up far beyond this portable unit to a grand audio and visual symphonic ecstasy.

-via David Thompson

The rocking theme song for the 80s action show The A-Team is really energizing. This creation by composers Mike Post and Pete Carpenter is arguably the greatest television theme song every written. Media personality Al Roker likes to play it when he wakes up in the morning to boost his energy for the day.

The show was dubbed into French. Producers changed the theme song a bit to make it upbeat and added lyrics about the organization called "L'Agence Tous Risques" -- "The All Risks Team." You can read the complete lyrics at Digital Spy. They sync well with the music.

-via Super Punch

Rain Noe of Core77 shows us an unusual tool. Can you guess what it's for? The answer is below the fold.

Tumblr user mousemilf shares an endearing story of a holiday invented by her father. She grew up celebrating "Big Sandwich Night" -- a day when the entire family made a huge sandwich and ate it together:

I can see how this event could become popular. We need community, especially in-person community.

For a few years, my daughters and I celebrated Derpy Day, which is a brony holiday in which people bake muffins together in honor of Derpy, a minor character on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. The girls eventually figured out that no one else at their school celebrated this particular holiday.

Does your family celebrate any unique holidays?

-via Glenn Reynolds

Atlas Obscura introduces us to a unique drive-through restaurant in the Netherlands. It began when Jan and Birgitte van den Elzen built up a successful strawberry greenhouse facility in the town of Uden. They looked for innovative ways to sell their fruit, including vending machines. Those vending machines are still present, but during peak strawberry season, which is from March to September, visitors to the Aardeien Drive-In can also purchase strawberry foods at the drive-through window.

These dishes include strawberry waffles, chocolate-dipped strawberries, strawberry shakes, strawberry smoothies, strawberry jam, and strawberries with whipped cream. Who's up for a yummy roadtrip to the Netherlands?

Photo: Aardeien Drive-In

pic.twitter.com/md9trSGpLe

— summer 🖕 (@salesforcechild) May 29, 2023

Summer Emerald, who goes by the online pseudonym of salesforcechild, is preparing to be a mother to children who are mentally and emotionally healthy and prepared for the challenges of the future. This means looking back to before our children were distracted by non-stop screentime and processed artificial foods. In this video, with the help of AI-generated art, Emerald describes how she will cultivate her children into confident adults.

Emerald is an artist with a surreal and symbolist bent, as you can see from her paintings and videos, which include depictions of various parasites that she has successfully expelled from her body. This is what happens when the human psyche is ready for the next stage of evolutionary development.

-via David Burge

🧀 Canadian 🇨🇦 Delaney Irving won’t remember much of winning the Woman’s race at #cheeserolling.

After being knocked out on her way down, she was unconscious for a period of time but told us it was all worth it.

⚠️ WARNING: Contains graphic images pic.twitter.com/yxwk0YaGUE

— Greatest Hits Radio Gloucester (@GHRGloucester) May 29, 2023

For at least two hundred years, people in Gloucester, UK have been chasing wheels of cheese down Cooper's Hill. One slope of that hill is quite steep for 200 yards. In this traditional sport, a wheel of Double Gloucester cheese is rolled down the hill. After a one-second head start, the runners pursue it, often by just rolling down the hill. It is, perhaps, the purest of sports as it requires courage, stamina, and agility.

Yesterday, Delaney Irving won after arriving at the finish line first. But her tumble down the hill knocked her unconscious. The Guardian reports that she didn't even know that she had won until she woke up after the race in a medical care tent.

-via Dave Barry

In Greek mythology, the god Prometheus surreptitiously gave the gift of fire to humanity, thus sparking civilization and upsetting his fellow gods for altering the power differential between themselves and we lowly mortals. As punishment, he was chained to a rock for eternity. An eagle ate his liver, which continuously regenerated, thus sparing him from death but not agony.

The French makers of these liver pills from the 1930s imply that Prometheus would have benefited from their product. It's a rather brutal celebrity endorsement and classicist Edith Hall of Durham University, who shares this image on Twitter, says that she can think of a better advertising strategy.

-via Super Punch

As Disco Stu of The Simpsons points out, disco music is only trending upward in popularity. So it's fitting that musicians of all sorts are getting with it to stay trendy with the young people.

Radio Télévision Suisse, a Swiss public broadcasting service, has created a YouTube playlist of "Swiss Covers"--traditional Swiss takes on more modern music. This playlist includes an organ performance of "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees. Vincent Thévenaz plays the pipes at the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre, a Calvinist church in Geneva.

As I watched the video, I noticed that Thévenaz wears unusual shoes. It appears that organ players often wear shoes made for the specific purpose of managing the many pedals on the instrument. He should probably change them, though, before hitting the floor of the discothèque.

-via The Awesomer

Cheung Chau is a small island off the coast of Hong Kong. Yahoo News reports that, prior to the pandemic, it would host an annual week-long festival to celebrate the Buddha's birthday. Now that the Chinese government has loosened COVID-related restrictions, that public celebration has resumed. The festivities include a contest to climb a 60-foot tall tower of buns.

As far as I can tell, the object of this competition is to climb to the top of tower and collect as many buns as possible within a minute.

You can see more photos of this festival at the New York Daily News.

-via Dave Barry

It's a good idea to be prepared for a variety of natural disasters that could suddenly strike your life, such as fires, floods, and glaciers. Are you at risk to experience an earthquake? If you live in the United States, consult this interactive map at CNN that compiles data from the US Geological Survey.

The lowest risk areas are marked in blue and the highest risk areas are marked in red. The entire West Coast and Alaska are obviously risky places, but so are the Big Island of Hawaii, the Ozarks, and the coast of South Carolina. Lubbock, Texas is, though completely safe and offers better barbeque.

-via Nag on the Lake

Perhaps you're looking for the perfect Fathers' Day Gift. Perhaps you want to reenact the Willem Dafoe film The Lighthouse with a friend. Either way, you have a great opportunity coming up. The Associated Press reports that the US government is selling four historic lighthouses.

The US Coast Guard (which asborbed the US Lighthouse Service in 1939) maintains aids to navigation that use technologies more modern than lighthouses and no longer has a use for these historic structures. But the General Services Administration wants to make sure that they are preserved. So the GSA is selling these buildings to local governments and non-profit organizations that will maintain them.

These lighthouses include the Cleveland Harbor West Pierhead Light, which offers a scenic view of the Cleveland skyline, which I assume is lovely, especially when the river is on fire. It's also accessible only by boat, offering a secure shelter in uncertain times.

The auction begins at the end of June, so start pulling up couch cushions for the money that you'll need.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Mtbangert

The New Indian Express describes a terrifying incident from the village of Pandarpadh in the Jashpur district of the state of Chhattisgarh. An 8-year old boy named Deepak was playing in the backyard of his home when a cobra wrapped itself around his arm and bit him. He tried to shake it off, but the snake remained firmly attached. Finally, he bit the snake twice.

The snake fell off Deepak and died. The boy's parents raced him to a medical facility, where he was treated with anti-venom drugs. Fortunately, it appears that the cobra engaged in a "dry bite"--a bite that injects no venom. The boy went home after a day.

-via Dave Barry | Unrelated photo by Keshav Mukund Kandhadai

Without gravity, the human body suffers atrophy in a variety of ways. To prepare for long term human travel through low or zero gravity environments, we humans need to know what to expect. Accordingly, the European Space Agency has recruited volunteers to spend 60 days in bed to simulate the effects of microgravity on the human body.

A press release describes the study. An experimental group of 12 people will lie in beds that are inverted at 6°. They must keep at least one shoulder in contact with their bed for 60 straight days. Eating, bathing, and toileting must be conducted with these constraints.

Another group of subjects in the study will have access to exercise bicycles which they will be able to use while still in bed. A third group will cycle while inside a centrifuge. Researchers say that they will compare the health of the participants at the end of the study in order to plan for future human missions beyond Earth.

What would you have to receive in order to be willing to participate in a study like this one?

-via Gizmodo | Photo: ESA

Guy Dupont, a computer programmer and tinkerer, received a request from a friend to develop pants that send the user a notification when the fly is down. This invention will hopefully save us needless embarrassment when we discover at the end of the day that our pants were open the whole time.

Dupont used hot glue and safety pins to attach a sensor to the fly, which he then wired to a microcontroller in his pocket. If the sensor detects that the fly is open, after a few seconds, the microcontroller pushes a notification to the Pushover app on Dupont's Android phone.

-via Hack A Day