I think that it's fair to say that John Locke (1632-1704) is better known for his contributions to philosophy than to the culinary arts. This English Enlightenment philosopher is famous in modern times for advancing liberal* politics and an empiricist approach to epistemology.
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Feline brave: A Mississippi man says his cat helped prevent a home robbery. Bandit the cat meowed and clawed at owner Fred Everitt's arms to wake him when at least two people tried to break in. “You hear of guard dogs,” said Everitt. “This is a guard cat.” https://t.co/k4CCoPU3rH
— AP Oddities (@AP_Oddities) August 3, 2022
Bandit lives with her human, Fred Everitt, in Tupelo, Mississippi. At about 2:30 AM on July 25, Bandit began loudly meowing in the kitchen. Then she ran to Everitt's bed, pulled the comforter off of him, and clawed at his arms.
Everitt woke up to investigate what was going wrong. That's when he saw two men just outside his back door. One had a handgun and the other had a crowbar. Everitt immediately retrieved his own gun. By the time he returned to the door, the two men had fled.
Bandit, despite her name, demonstrated a deep aversion to thievery and loyalty to her human. Everitt attributes his safety to her quick thinking.
Did we just build the best toy ever? pic.twitter.com/vej6T9bZNX
— ActionMovieDad (@ActionMovieKid) August 2, 2022
In my home, we have a whiteboard that we use as a running shopping list. One of my daughters occasionally writes "flamethrower" on it as a joke (I think). I've never gotten her one because they're horrifically expensive, but now I may have an option courtesty of Action Movie Dad.
Daniel Hashimoto is a highly skilled digital effects artist. He uses his abilities to place his own children in tense, action-packed movie scenes. He also adds raptors to movies because raptors are always cool.
For his latest project, Hashimoto attached a tube of light, fire-colored fabric to a leafblower. The result is a flamethrower that the kids will enjoy without causing too much property damage.
Gastro Obscura introduces us to the Cheese Zombie, which is a sandwich native to Yakima, Washington. The origin story, according to a 2013 article in the Yakima Herald-Republic, is that a cook at a local public school cafteria invented it in the late 1950s.
Which cook created the sandwich depends on who you talk to, as there are multiple claimants to the honor. But all of the stories say that a school received a huge excess of government-provided cheese. It was too much cheese to use productively in the normal menu, so the cook invented what would become known as the Cheese Zombie.
To make a batch of Cheese Zombies, lay out slices of cheese between two sheets of dough, then slice into individual squares. Brush the top with melted butter and then bake.
The result was so delicious that schools and restaurants in Yakima continue to make it to this day. It's especially popular to eat Cheese Zombies on Halloween for reasons that remain a mystery to me. Perhaps it's because of the spooky name.
The Čierny Hron Railway is a historical railway that operated between 1908 and 1982 in Slovakia. It was originally built to support logging operations in the Carpathian Mountains but was later provided passenger service. In 1992, it was reopened for tourists who want to experience a bygone age of rail travel.
Modern passengers get to experience a slow, scenic ride through a forest and, if they time the ride carefully, a quick view of a soccer match. That's because a soccer stadium was built around the original line and the train passes through it.
As you can see, the players don't stop just because there's a train on the field.
-via Art Nouveau Deco
The welbike- a British motorcycle fitted in an air drop canister for use during WWII. pic.twitter.com/pDukGVIhrJ
— Lost in history (@lostinhist0ry) August 1, 2022
During World War II, Britain wanted to ensure that its special forces troops who parachuted behind enemy lines had the ability to travel quickly away from the drop zones and to their mission destinations. In The Famous James Military Lightweight, motorcycle historian Peter Miller explains that the folded-up Welbike motorcycle had to fit inside a 15-inch wide drop container and weigh only 70 pounds. A trained soldier could get it working within 11 seconds.
The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was eventually dissatisifed with the utility of the Welbike, but it soon became popular with airborne troops and saw use during Operation Market Garden in 1944. Various British firms produced 3,853 Welbikes. One is on display at the Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.
Arnhildur Pálmadóttir hails from Iceland, a nation that is volcanically active and has plentiful sources of low-viscosity lava. It's an abundant natural resource on an island nation with otherwise limited natural resources.
So, Fast Company reports, Pálmadóttir proposes digging precise trenches out of soil in lava fields so that when eruptions happen, the lava flows into these channels to form walls and foundations. When the lava cools, construction workers can remove the soil to expose the cooled and solid volcanic rock.
At this point, the project is speculative since it's expensive and predicting volcanic eruptions is an imprecise science. But with sufficient funding, Pálmadóttir may be able to test her idea at the Krafla vocano system in the northeastern region of Iceland.
-via Weird Universe | Photo: Arnhildur Pálmadóttir
WW2 RAF uniform buttons that become a compass for soldiers left behind enemy lines pic.twitter.com/OmyoB3YZC1
— Lost in history (@lostinhist0ry) July 28, 2022
This tiny button is actually a compass. During World War II, Royal Air Force crews were often equipped with these buttons in their uniforms. If they were shot down at night and needed to figure out their directions, they could remove the buttons and balance them to on pins and see which way the buttons turned.
Some of these buttons were on jackets, but this one was on a trouser fly. The Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity explains that dots marked on the buttons provided a marker that would point north. Doreen Galvin writes in Arts to Intelligence that the Germans eventually discovered the nature of these buttons, so RAF designers switched the direction of the indicator dots.
Sure, it's not unusual for business owners to find wallets and other personal possessions left behind by customers. But it is unusual to find that a lost wallet belongs to someone famous. In this case, the owners of the Fruit Barn--a roadside fruit stand in Gilroy, California--found that the wallet bore the identification of William Shatner.
ABC News 7 (warning: self-starting audio) reports that the 91-year old actor had visited the Fruit Barn, browsed a bit, and left with chilled cherries and corn. Employees who were too young to know Shatner found a wallet in the corn bin and took it to their boss, Gary Tognetti.
Of course, mere enlisted ranks like Tognetti can't just call up the Captain. So local police contacted Shatner and mailed the wallet back to him. The Captain tweeted out his thanks:
I would like to thank Gary and Natalie of B&T Farms @TfarmsB for their extreme honesty in returning my lost wallet. They are obviously good citizens. I would also like to thank Officer Mark Tarasco and Sergeant John Ballard from the@GilroyPD My best, Bill
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) July 26, 2022
-via Dave Barry | Photo: Keith McDuffee
I say "semi" because the Hanna-Barbera Television Company never explicitly said that George Jetson, the main character in the 1960s cartoon The Jetsons, was born on July 31, 2022. But one scene seems to imply it.
The Today Show lays out the fan theory: in a particular episode that aired in 1962, a doctor says that George should live to be a 150 years old. George happily affirms that he has another 110 years ahead of him, meaning that he is 40 years old. According the dates provided by the promotional materials released by Hanna-Barbera at the time of the show's premier, that means that George will be born on July 31, 2022.
-via Dave Barry
In 2006, artist and graphic designer Julian Montague wrote an astonishingly comprehensive and thoughtful guide to abandoned or stolen shopping carts in Buffalo, New York. His The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification is not necessarily useful, but it is an impressively sophisticated book inspired by wildlife identification guidebooks.
As soon as I saw the cover of this book on Twitter, I knew that I had to read it. So I ordered it through interlibrary loan.
In the center of this photo is Jake Manna, a solar panel installer. The Washington Post reports that he was working in the Buttermilk Bay neighborhood of Plymouth, Massachusetts when he saw a woman running through the streets, asking if anyone had seen her daughter. The child is 5 years old and has autism.
Manna immediately joined the local search and effort. He decided to search nearby woods. After encountering a closed trail, he hiked for 10 to 15 minutes before arriving at a marsh. The missing girl was playing in the water. Manna called to her, but she ignored him and continued to walk deeper into the mud and water.
Manna went in after her, which was tricky because the mud sucked at his feet like quicksand. After reaching the girl, he carried her out of the water and back home.
Then he went back to work. After all, he had a job to do. When police arrived on the scene, they tracked Manna down at his jobsite.
Police and the town government have honored Manna, saying that he likely saved the child from drowning in the marsh.
-via Althouse | Photo: Plymouth Police Department
Michelle Ko, a chef in Vancouver, makes adorably cute foods. They're so kawaii that you may hesitate to actually eat them--but only for a brief moment.
Inspired by this pizza bear illustration by Abby and Bear, Ko decided to turn the fantasy into a reality. She used a yeast dough, which she shaped into the teddy bear. After painting it with tomato sauce, she briefly baked it, then added sliced mozzarella, one of which served as the muzzle, and sliced tomatoes. After baking a second time, Ko used piping to create a cute face.
You can find her dough recipe at the end of the video.
-via Azalea Fairy
Veks Van Hillick, a tattoo artist in Toulouse, France, creates dynamic images that change as the body moves. His knee and elbow tattoo images are astonishingly haunting works of surreal art because they present different scenes as the joints fold and unfold. This knee tattoo, for example, transforms a cute fish into a monstrosity from the abyss ready to devour any passerby that thinks it is harmless.
He works primarily in black ink alone, which adds to the terror of his creatures. They are reminiscent of the works of manga artist Junji Ito with merged and supernaturally altered bodies. You can find more of Van Hillik's work on his Instagram page.
-via My Modern Met
Xie Yuke is always a bridesmaid and never a bride, but that’s intentional. She’s a professional bridesmaid—one of many in an emerging market in China. Sixth Tone, a Chinese government-owned news website, describes this growing industry and Xie’s story.
Xie has worked at 40 weddings during the past two years. She’s typically paid about $74-296 per wedding, where she pretends to be a close friend of the bride while helping the wedding party change clothes and entertain the guests.
Groomsmen can get jobs, too, at companies that hire out bridesmaids and groomsmen for couples who want grand spectacles for weddings. Xie met her boyfriend at such a wedding where he was working as a best man to the groom. They’re planning their own wedding, where they hope to have 24 fellow professionals working the event.
-via Marginal Revolution | Photo: Xie Yuke
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