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

Baby bottles are capped with plastic nipples that only vaguely resemble the real thing. Usually babies accept this alternative to human nipples and feed. But Fast Company reports that startup company Emulait thinks that it can provide a better alternative.

Plastic nipples commonly have just a single hole perforating the top, unlike the more porous human nipple. Emulait's design more closely resembles milk ducts--an approach that the company calls "biomimetic." The plastic nipples themselves come in one of five shapes that reflect the five major shapes that a study of 1,000 scanned nipples determined the most common.

Five different colors are available to reflect different skin tones and the bottles themselves are available in a variety of shapes that reflect actual human breasts.

The end result is a bottle feeding experience that, Emulait speculates, will be more successful because it closely replicates natural breastfeeding.

Photo: Emulait

Daredevil repair workers can worm their way out the access hatch, loop ropes over the apex and rappel down the monument. https://t.co/1SBpfmCMDd

— Atlas Obscura (@atlasobscura) February 24, 2023

The Washington Monument measures 555 feet and 5.125 inches tall. When it was finished in 1884, it was the tallest building on Earth.

Scaffolding was used to slowly bring the design erect, jutting into the sky over the city likewise named in George Washington's honor. Then the scaffolding was removed.

So how do people access the top of the structure when it's necessary to do maintenance? When an earthquake struck the D.C. area in 2011, master climbers rappelled down the monument, not up it. They started from a door hidden at the top.

Atlas Obscura tells us that the door is on the eastern side of the monument, which faces the Capitol building. From the photos, I'd estimate that it's about 18 inches across.

Leaving aside electric pencil sharpeners, how do these machines work? The simplest modern pencil sharpner, in which you twist the pencil, uses what I've learned is called a manual prism. If you turn a crank, then you're usually operating helical blades to grind off graphite and wood.

This pencil sharpener from the 1890s is quite different. As far as I can tell, the machine positions the pencil against a grinding plate at just the right angle. YouTuber Resuce and Restore brought this antique back into service. It's one of several fascinating old pencil sharpeners illustrated in a playlist.

-via Steampunk Tendencies

Phil Vance says that he is "an artist obsessed with process, pattern and rhythm." In his works, we read the rhythm of words, including those that are spoken, sung, and written. 

Here is Winston Churchill, a statesman, soldier, and writer. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 thanks to his vast corpus of written works. By changing the colors of Churchill's words, Vance creates a vibrant portrait of this giant of the Twentieth Century.

This wonderfully weird video is circulating the internet. It's been attributed to the Soviet Union and it definitely has a late Soviet vibe to it. YouTuber Doktor Uzo dates it so the 1990s and, since the USSR lasted until 1991, I suppose that it's possible. But the electronic music emits an 80s feel.

Office ladies in professional clothing and heels pump up the volume and the energy with a light aerobic workout. They smile with delight at the prospect of increased rations if they keep the charade going well enough for it to become someone else's problem. Keep dancing!

-via Rebecca Baumann

I really want this character developed into a full story--even if it lasts only one issue before the people of the city decide to kill Trolley Man.

Daniel Murrell of Danby Draws imagines a hero that you wouldn't want to summon without fully thinking through the implications. We'll need a team of ethicists to at least inform us of the consequences of our choices.

But once we have summoned Trolley Man, how do we choose a sacrifice? Random chance? Perhaps only nefarious criminals? Or should being sacrificed be the responsibility of the person who called our hero to the scene?

-via Super Punch