As Alex is fond of reminding me, it is because of me and me alone that Neatorama has a virtual dress code. Pants are mandatory and said pants must "extend to at least the knees and not be skin-tight". The incident that led to the proclamation of this dress code could have been avoided if I had access to this custom application by YouTuber Everything Is Hacked.

He previously made a keyboard-like interface that can be controlled with facial expressions and, in fact, used it to make this particular Zoom modification. The application detects the area of your body below the waist and superimposes virtual pants upon it. You can change the color of your virtual pants but, the programmer stresses, you cannot turn sideways without the virtual pants virtually falling off.

As a backup plan, consider wearing pants and virtual pants during your work Zooms.

-via Born in Space

INCREDIBLE MOMENT: Boynton Beach police sent this video out in the hopes to honor the people who got out of the car to help the woman who had a medical episode while driving. https://t.co/5XDUhTg570 pic.twitter.com/2o6G9d6MJP

— WPBF 25 News (@WPBF25News) May 11, 2022

WPTV News reports that a driver in Boynton Beach, Florida, passed out while stopped at a busy intersection. The car kept rolling forward. Another driver noticed and jumped out of her own car in the middle of heavy traffic to try to stop it. More people joined her and surrounded the car at great risk to their own lives in an effort to stop it.

Eventually, they are able to smash open a window with a dumbbell, unlock the car doors, and get to the driver. Among these rescuers was a nurse who attended to the driver until firefighters arrived on the scene.

-via Marilyn Terrell

This is Victoria Island in Canada's arctic far north. It's the eighth largest island in the world. The island almost entirely uninhabited except for the town of Cambridge Bay because the weather is considered a bit chilly by Canadian standards.

There are many lakes on the island, most of which are unnamed, including this one.

Within this unnamed lake is an island.

On that island is a lake. And in that lake is an island, which measures about 4 acres in size.

So it's what Atlas Obscura calls a "third order island". Josh Calder discovered it on Google Maps in 2007. It's one of two such islands. The other is a volcanic caldera lake island in the Philippines.

This island has no name. I suggest that Canada name its third order island after George VI, the third King of Canada.

What do you think Canada should name this geographic oddity?

Images: Google Maps

Joe Porter is a master percussionist who teaches his art at the University of Lethbridge Music Conservatory in Alberta. He does orchestral work, but doesn't limit himself to that form, as he also plays Brazilian, Japanese, Tahitian, and Caribbean percussion instruments.

In this short video, he runs through a rapid succession of instruments with songs that you'll recognize. He plays a few bars from Metallica's "Enter Sandman" on the hammered dulcimer, Guns 'n' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine" on the steel pan, AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" on the slapophone, Metallica's "Master of Puppets" on the flairdrum, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Californication" on the vibraphone, and Iron Maiden's "The Trooper" on the marimba.

Check out Porter's YouTube channel for more percussion covers of music from The Avengers, Minecraft, Naruto, and Encanto.

-via The Awesomer

1歳4ヶ月
相撲デビュー✨#相撲 #相撲の街柏 #デビュー #柏力会#末っ子 pic.twitter.com/Zs2NhqHqaQ

— 永井 明慶 (@rien0514) April 5, 2022

Sora News 24 keeps us up to date on the latest news from the sumo world. A new, mysterious rising star is emerging in Kashiwa, a city on the outskirts of Tokyo. He's the 16-month old son of Akiyoshi Nagai, the chairman of the local sumo federation.

The toddler's father has clearly been training him aggressively from birth. He's grown up in the stable and has been studying these master athletes carefully even before he could walk.

Now that he can walk--sorta--the kid is ready to enter the ring. Watch has he throws his much larger opponent back with a single palm strike, tossing the huge man head over heels.

The Saudi General Authority for Statistics is running an ad gently asking people to stop inviting census takers into their homes for coffee and meals. pic.twitter.com/X7E5bKt9id

— ممنوع الوقوف على الأطلال (@WhiteShemagh) April 28, 2022

Saudi Arabia is famous for its hospitality. Guests must be treated very well and must never leave with an empty stomach.

This presents problems for census takers with the government's General Authority for Statistics. They need to collect information, then move on to the next house.

The news website Morroco News says that the agency created this ad to gently remind people that census takers are at work. They appreciate all offers of coffee and meals, but must keep on the go.

Redditor /u/Sensitive-Shoe2040 offers a translation of the dialog--if you really need one. The census taker's body language conveys enough of the story.

-via Super Punch

Candice Kloss, who is pictured above, has high standards for romance. If a man wants to date her, he needs to deliver the intellectual goods.

The Sun reports that Kloss has an IQ of 136, which puts her within the top 2% of the population. Her favorite topic is behavioral economics, but she's willing to talk about a wide variety of subjects.

Kloss works as a model, which leads some men to underestimate her intelligence. So as a screening tool, she gives a written IQ test on first dates. Candidates must score at least above average and prove through conversation to "be exceptionally smart in at least one subject."

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Candice Kloss

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Simone Giertz, a roboticist and general-purpose genius, introduces us to her latest and perhaps simplest invention: a Phillips-head screwdriver ring. This is handy, as one occasionally needs a Phillips head in one's daily adventures. It could also serve, I suppose, as an improvised weapon, as it adds a bit of spiciness to punches and backhand slaps.

Hopefully Giertz will also offer the ring with various sizes of Allen keys, as access to a common size could be helpful for some people.

Giertz notes that she shaved off the hair on her knuckles to make this video, so we should be grateful not only for her invention, but her sacrifices that she made to promote it.

If your immediate answer is "to create the false impression that an impoverished country with a failed economic system is actually prosperous", you'd be correct. But the complete answer is more complicated.

Rakesh Krishnan Simha writes in a 2017 Russia Beyond article that in 1967, the Soviet government created the country's first and only advertising agency. The Soviet dictator Leonid Brezhnev ordered that this agency, the Eesti Reklaamfilm (ERF), focus on consumer goods. All Soviet companies must spend 1% of their revenue on advertising.

Many companies didn't produce consumer goods. But that didn't matter. They still had to spend a full percentage point of their revenues on advertising. So they often made up products and ads for these imaginary products. If these ads helped bolster the notion that the Soviet system actually worked for Soviet citizens, so much the better.

These video commercials became wildly popular with the Soviet people, who sought access to televisions in order to watch them. One of the most popular TV programs was a weekly 20-minute block of advertisements that aired every Saturday.

-via Amusing Planet

Ask a South Korean how hold s/he is, and you may get three different answers. It's not a straightforward question because there are three traditional ways of counting age in Korean culture and, for a society that grants respect partially on age, the final number is important.

The New York Times (paywalled article) says that one system, typically called "Korean age", declares that a person is a year old at birth, then begins counting with the calendar. So if a baby is born on December 31, then on January 1, he's 2 years old.

The second system is more commonly used throughout the world, including the United States: a person turns a year old a full year after his/her birth.

The third system begins with zero at birth and adds a year every January 1st.

The Times explains that some South Koreans would like to standardize aging to the second system, which would cause many people to get younger. This could be an unpopular move with Koreans who could lose status in age-based hierarchies.

-via Marginal Revolution | Photo: US Army Garrison Humphreys

Let's say that a Canadian astronaut traveling to the moon commits a crime, such as murder, extortion, or prostitution, can s/he face criminal charges in Canada upon returning to Earth?

Right now, the law is ambigious on that matter. Since Canada is participating in the US-led Lunar Gateway project to return to the moon and what I assume is Canada's practice of recruiting astronauts from its criminal underworld, it's prudent for Parliament to be prepared for the likelihood of crimes committed in space.

CBC reports that there is an amendment in the Budget Implementation Bill that says:

A Canadian crew member who, during a space flight, commits an act or omission outside Canada that if committed in Canada would constitute an indictable offence is deemed to have committed that act or omission in Canada.

The issue of crimes in space rose in 2019 when an American astronaut on the International Space Station was accused of illegally accessing bank records while in orbit. She was later cleared of the charge.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: ESA_events

#Japan - QR codes and cranes: Japan embraces modern cemeteries.
📸 @BEHROUZZZZ #AFP pic.twitter.com/uEKM8QVwS5

— AFP Photo (@AFPphoto) April 21, 2022

In a densely populated city like Tokyo (16,122 people per square mile), land must be used thoughtfully. A sprawling graveyard with plots for individual graves can be expensive. Japan has a solution. AFP describes a modern cemetery that takes up a floor of an office building. Vistors wait in individual mourning booths while a machine retrieves the ashes of the dead from storage and delivers them to the booth.

Facilities such as this one may, after 30 years, send the ashes to collective memorials far away from Tokyo. But these memorials are marked with QR codes for individual interred persons, which family members and monks use while praying for the departed.

Read more about these innovative burial solutions at AFP.

-via Super Punch

Walter Orthmann of Brusque, Brazil doesn't have to work at the age of 100, but he wants to. It gives him a sense of purpose. And he's carried that sense for the last 84 years at RenauView, a textile manufacturer. He's done so since he was 15 years old, when he started on the factory floor. Now he's a sales manager.

Reuters reports on Orthmann's secrets to longevity. Aside from a passion for productivity, Orthmann has paid close attention to his health for 60 years. He exercises daily and avoids junk foods. His methods have clearly worked well and have secured for him a Guinness World Record for the longest employment at one company.

-via Oddity Central | Photo: Guinness World Records

World War I was the first war in which submarines were used effectively on a large scale. German U-boats devastated British shipping in particular and the Royal Navy was keen to find new ways to destroy this new threat. In a 2006 issue of the International Journal of Naval History, David A.H. Wilson writes about efforts to use birds to locate and mark submarines.

The Royal Navy considered a variety of proposals involving seagulls landing on submarine periscopes. Seagulls have sharp vision and search out places to land while at sea. Inventor Thomas Mills advocated training seagulls or pigeons with a floating drone that would travel through the water, dispensing food at its top to bait seagulls. The machine is only a few feet long; it is not the same size as a submarine. But its elongated shape might encourage birds to associate submarine shapes with food.

Alas for Mr. Mills and other advocates for avian anti-submarine warfare, the Allied navies adopted other approaches to combating submarines, notably the newly-invented depth charge. The age of seagull warfare would not come yet.

-via Weird Universe | Photo: European Patent Office

It's a bit nippy out in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Although the temperature is above freezing now, it dipped below long enough that the city acquired quite a bit of snow.

These two enterprising lads understand the Ninth Rule of Acquisition: "Opportunity plus instinct equals profit." They walked around their neighborhood and with snow shovels and offered to shovel driveways for $20 each.

A Ring doorbell camera captured their plans when they approached one home. As the resident searches for money with which to pay the boys, they make plans for what they're going to do with their incoming fortune. Should they wait until they're 16 years old and buy a car? Yes, but which one? The smaller boy prudently suggests a Lamborghini.

Once paid, the boys get to work. Although they play a bit, they're also focused. As the Sixteenth Rule of Acquisition says, "A deal is a deal."

-via Dave Barry