I've just discovered the subreddit /r/TipOfMyFork. It's like /r/TipOfMyTongue (in real life, or the subreddit), but for food. Is there some sort of food that you can't identify? Can you describe a food, but don't know what it is? Submit it there for the suggestions from the hivemind.
One notable post on it from two years ago is this bizarre rounded, fluffy, steamy object from an unknown restaurant. What is it?
The consensus among commenters seems to be that it's a cow or sheep stomach that's turned inside out. The dish is attributed to Korea, Mongolia, or Inner Mongolia in China. I want to try it!
There's no need to check out, either from a human cashier or self-checkout.
The New York Times (paywalled article) reports that Amazon, which owns Whole Foods, debuted this new technology at a store in Washington, D.C. When you walk in the store, either scan a QR code with your phone or let a kiosk scan the palm of your hand. Then start shopping.
As you walk through the store, a vast array of cameras track all of your movements. When you put something in your cart, computers add it do your tally. When you're done shopping, walk out the door. Amazon will bill your account automatically. Appropriately, Amazon calls the system Just Walk Out.
Six-language coverage from #Kyiv with @AP_GMS. In this order: English, Luxembourgish, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German. pic.twitter.com/kyEg0aCCoT
How many languages can Philip Crowther of the Associated Press speak? At least six. We know this because he's recently reported on the war in Ukraine in English, Portuguese, French, German, Spanish, and Luxembourgish.
The last of these is not surprising once one learns that Crowther was born in Luxembourg to a German mother and a British father. He was raised and educated in Luxembourg, as well as the UK. His travels have taken him around the world, where he rounded out his linguistic versatility.
So as this compilation of his recent reporting shows, Crowther is a very useful person to have when a news organization needs to understand and deliver information about rapidly changing current events.
The Associated Press reports that Zurich, Switzerland, is opening a new jail and wants to make sure that everything is in order before the grand opening. So it's recruiting volunteers who would be willing to stay locked up for three days in March, living in cells and eating jail food just like real inmates. Participants will get to experience the regular prisoner intake process experience as the new staff trains to supervise real inmates.
Bear in mind that it is a simulation and not an actual jail experience. So attacking the biggest inmate in the yard on your first day is probably unnecessary.
Deadline reports that Paramount+, a streaming entertainment service operated by ViacomCBS, plans to release a feature-length film based on "Baby Shark".
Yes, "Baby Shark." That's the viral chidren's song that, at some point in the past few years, you have discovered yourself singing or humming. It's an earworm that torments the living over the age of five courtesy of the living below that age.
"Baby Shark" by Korean children's entertainment company Pinkfong became a viral hit in 2016. In January, it became the first YouTube video to reach over 10 billion views, thus establishing a Guinness World Record.
Last year, during the pandemic, many courts in the United States went virtual for procedural hearings. Judge Roy Ferguson of the 394th Judicial Circuit Court of Texas, known for his technical prowess, was able to navigate attorney Rod Ponton through Zoom settings when the lawyer couldn't turn off his kitten filter.
Last month, attorney Rae Leifest entered one of Judge Ferguson's Zoom court meetings with a faculty audio set up. He sounded like a chipmunk! Fortunately, the judge knew exactly how to fix it.
Redditor Ravi emphasizes that he is not from Australia. He's from Texas. But Australia is basically British Texas, so that's close enough.
Anyway, as an honorary Australian, he makes boomerangs, including an axe-shaped boomerang, a Batarang (Batman's throwing weapon), and a whistling boomerang. Perusing his Reddit profile is very educational. I learned that there are left and right-handed boomerangs.
Javi's most recent creation is this one shaped like a kangaroo. So it's a kangarang or a kangarooarang. I suppose that it could be used to hunt kangaroos in Australia, which would be appropriate, as that was one of the original purposes of the boomerang.
Israeli artist Vered Aharonovitch calls this disturbing masterpiece "The Cuckoo Clock". It's a complex, incredibly detailed automaton depicting a house of horrors filled with broken and insane people. Each member of the household has lost his grip in his own way.
Although there is no clock face, when the hour strikes, several characters parade outside of the house--just like the wooden cuckoo in the traditional clock. The man in the exercise wheel, though, never leaves his place, nor stops moving in his Sisyphean labors. When the Herzliya Museum exhibited this piece two years ago, the curators explained that it is the story of the relationship between a father and his daughter who are depicted at different stages in their relationship throghout the sculpture.
The hotel detective is a common figure in film noir and hard boiled detective stories from eighty years ago. Who are these people? What exactly does a hotel detective do? Professional travel writer Luke J. Spenser explores the history of this profession at Messy Nessy Chic.
Hotel detectives appeared in the United States by the 1870s. For Gilded Age America, travel opportunities proliferated and hotels boomed. Along with bellhops, cooks, maids, and clerks, hotel managers also hired security guards. These were commonly called "hotel detectives" or "house detectives."
Their primary role was to keep respectable hotels free from prostitutes and, worse, prostitutes who robbed their clients. In some cities, this was very much a full time job that required skills at blending in with the rest of the people at a hotel and spotting problematic characters early, then quietly removing such people from the hotel without causing disturbances. The good hotel detective was discreet in his work.
Other tasks included quieting down or removing drunkards. Solving murder mysteries was a far less common occurence, despite film noir stories. Read about their real adventures at Messy Nessy Chic.
Way easier than I thought - and it’s 100% pure bittersweet, no coatings. When you catch the light at the right angle, it’s mesmerizing. pic.twitter.com/HFi0K5IGSG
AI design genius and Renaissance woman Janelle Shane describes it as "holographic." I'm not sure if that is the correct term. At a bare minimum, it's shiny. I'm going with iridescent because of the visual effect as you change your perspective.
Shane followed these Instructables instructions by jellmeister, which use diffraction grating sheets to add the visual impact to chocolate. Shane explains that the texture of tempered chocolate is so fine that it can hold the sheets and permit diffraction with good lighting. Read her whole Twitter thread to see optics experiments with it.
The famed Nineteenth Century British author Charles Dickens produced a vast volume of words preserved for posterity to endure in English literature classes. Some of those words have only recently become accessible thanks to a crowdsourced decoding project which has broken the cipher that Dickens used for his private notes.
The Dickens Code project, led by Dr. Claire Wood of the University of Leicester, has deciphered the shorthand system that Dickens called brachygraphy. It was a great challenge because Dickens expanded and changed the system over time.
BBC News reports that the crucial break came from a draft of Dickens's so-called "Tavistock letter". The team of over a thousand volunteers discovered that it was a letter to an advertising manager at The Times newspaper. The surviving response from that manager led the codebreakers to discover Dickens's symbols for "Ascension Day", "advertisement", "refused", and "sent back." Now Dickens's secret shorthand is beginning to reveal itself.
Core77 introduces us to the KBT-100 toaster, an unusual kitchen appliance from the defunct company Modern Maid. It's for people who were very serious about their toast.
You see, you don't just slap it down on your countertop and plug it in. It slides into a hole in your kitchen wall (or bedroom wall--I'm not going to judge your private activities) and is hardwired into the household electrical system. Slide the drawer out to insert sliced bread or remove toast.
What's uncertain to me is if the hole was a custom size that would have to be cut into the drywall or if it could fit within a standard wall-hole that could be swapped out for other, more useful appliances, such as chocolate fondue fountains.
The United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, but the territory had been on the real estate market for a decade. Russia wasn't making money from it and, as a result of the Crimean War, Russia was also reassessing its overseas committments. The United States was a preferred buyer, but not the only customer that Russia was considering.
The Liechtensteiner Vaterland, the largest daily newspaper in the tiny Alpine nation, passes along an oral tradition within the ruling house of Liechtenstein. Prince Hans-Adam II, the current monarch, says that one of his predecessors spoke fluent Russian, had strong ties with the Tsars, and sponsored an institute in Vienna that focused on Russian and Slavic affairs. He was a special ambassador from the Austro-Hungarian Emperor to the Tsar in St. Petersburg.
At one point in conversation, the Tsar offered the personal sale of Alaska to the Prince, who was in a financial position to afford it.
There are no documents to support this oral tradition within the princely family, which Hans-Adam II blames on the destruction of documents during the revolutions and wars of Twentieth Century Russia.
Another problem that I see in the story is that Hans-Adam II attributes the incident to Prince Franz I, who was born in 1853. That makes him a bit young to be conducting such high level negotiations prior to 1867.
At its present borders, Alaska is 10,698 times the size of Liechtenstein. Can you imagine what it would be like today if the Prince of Liechtenstein had purchased it?
The Victoria Cross is the highest honor that a member of the British armed forces can receive. Since Queen Victoria instituted it in 1856, only 1,358 people have received this award for extreme gallantry in the midst of the enemy, witnessed by compatriots to who attest to the courage of the recipient.
Lieutenant Commander Gerard Roope of the Royal Navy is one such man honored by Britain. An article in the January 1, 2010 issue of magazine Military History (sorry, it's paywalled) describes the unusual circumstances of this award. It was the enemy commander who recommended that the British War Office award Roope with the Victoria Cross.
On April 7, 1940, Roope was in command of HMS Glowworm, a destroyer. He encountered a squadron of German vessels in the North Sea on their way to invade Norway. At the center of this formation was the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper.
Roope's Glowworm was massively outnumbered and outgunned. In keeping with the traditions of the Royal Navy, he nonetheless immediately attacked the enemy formation.
The German destroyers scattered and Glowworm was soon facing Admiral Hipper alone. Hipper's heavy guns delivered brutal blows to the much smaller British ship. Roope ordered his crew to throw up a smokescreen, which he used to feint a retreat. Then he turned and rammed the Hipper, doing great damage to the heavy cruiser.
The Glowworm began to sink. Roope ordered his crew to abandon ship, which they did. After Glowworm sank, Captain Helmuth Heye of the Hipper ordered his crew to pick up the survivors, rescuing 31 out of the total crew of 149 men. Captain Roope was not among them.
Captain Heye was so impressed with the intrepidity of Roope that he sent a message to the British War Office through the International Red Cross, urging them to award his foe with the Victoria Cross. Regulations required that at least three witnesses, preferably of high rank, attest to the courage of the honoree. In this case, the War Office decided to accept Captain Heye's testimony, as no British officers were available. In 1945, they postumously awarded Lieutenant Commander Gerard Roope with the Victoria Cross. You can read his citation here.
Grocery store pickup can be helpful, but Cookpad Mart, an online grocery retailer in Japan, offers an even more accomodating service. The company already provides delivery to lockers inside convenience stores. Now, Sora News 24 informs us, it's offering grocery pickup inside train stations.
This service is, so far, available at four stations of the East Japan Railway company. Customers can make an online cart and choose a station. Their groceries will be ready for them when they arrive at the pickup point in the selected station.
Think of what a great time saver this could be! People getting off of work could pick up food on the way home with only a brief detour inside a train station. I wonder if this could work in some American cities that have extensive rail networks.
