When I bought my first adult bike two years ago, I gritted my teeth and settled on a Huffy Cranbook. It was good enough, since it had a single gear, coaster brakes, an upright rider position, and the capacity to take cargo racks.

At the time, I didn't know that omafeits existed. Omafiet is the Dutch word for "grandma bike." The YouTuber Not Just Bikes explains how they are magnificently designed for practical, everyday use.

The omafeit has everything my Huffy does and so much more: a complete chain guard, a step-through frame, a coat guard, a heavy-duty cargo rack, a frame lock, and a dynamo for a headlight. The omafeit is a simple, rugged assembly of steel parts that's ideal for everyday transportation.

That's why I think it would also be an ideal vehicle for a post-apocalyptic lifestyle. There's no point in owning a vehicle that requires frequent maintenance or specialized parts. It's not as energy efficient as a road bike, but it's more efficient than a fancy bike that you have to walk away from because a gear slipped and the underdwellers have caught your scent.

So be practical and get an omafeit.

-via Laughing Squid

First We Feast passes along this excellent idea for Thanksgiving. Yes, the dinner event itself is important. But friends and relatives may be staying much longer, so a more informal snacking option can be helpful. A charcuterie board with a selection of meats, cheeses, and fruits can keep your guests occupied while you labor in the kitchen.

To impress your visitors, make little roses out of circular slices of salami. The top of a wine glass offers a workspace and mold. Layer the slices in concentric circles until they meet at the top. Then carefully flip your glass over to present a pork flower.

Unless you are celebrating INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY or are just sloppy at typing, you use upper case and lower case letters more or less according to standardized rules when writing or typing in the English language.

Historically speaking, though, this is a fairly modern invention. Many languages do not use different cases, including languages that use varieties of the Latin alphabet. Why? YouTuber The Generalist Papers explains in a recent video.

The origin of the difference lies in whether Romans were writing Latin on stone or paper. Modern Latin alphabet letters can be found in ancient Roman inscriptions, but what we call lower case letters began in how Latin was written with ink on parchment.

Later, during the Carolingian Renaissance (that's the reign of Charlemagne and his immediate successors), monks began copying manuscripts using large block letters at the beginnings of passages. When Italian Renaissance scholars discovered these different writing styles, they adopted them, believing incorrectly that they were proper Roman writings, not debased medieval writing systems.

But The Generalist Papers is just getting started. He takes us on to the physical arrangement of printing presses and then to fairly recent standardization of capitalization rules by English grammarians. English written civilization then culminated in the publication of the novel Shatnerquake.

The last bit is more of my opinion than that of The Generalist Papers, but I think it's intellectually sound.

-via Laughing Squid

It's not just a video that dogs can respond to. The DogPhone system allows dogs to initiate a video phone call with their human by squeezing a soft toy.

Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, a professor of "Animal-Computer Interaction" at the University of Glasgow, developed the DogPhone with the assistance of Zach, her black labrador retriever. When Zach squeezes the ball, the dog's laptop triggers a video call to her. When Hirskyj-Douglas calls Zach, a ringing tone informs him that he has an incoming call. If he squeezes the ball, the call opens.

Hirskyj-Douglas explains to The Guardian that her goal for the DogPhone is to create a technology that animals can control. Animals, she argues, should have choices about how they interact with humans.

-via Dave Barry

How would you make a modern street corner look like it was from in 1930? To find out, Insider talked to Rena DeAngelo, a master set designer who works at Eclectic/Encore Props. This company provides props and scene design for television and movie productions for many historical pieces that you've seen, such as West Side Story. 

DeAngelo has astonishingly detailed expertise in her field, addressing every visual aspect of a historical scene. It's a lot more than just finding the right cars for an era. The license plates on those cars are essential, too. The signs around a city are important, but DeAngelo also ensures that the materials used to create those signs and the fonts used on them are historically accurate. Watch and learn how much thought goes into the creation of scene that may last for only seconds on the screen.

-via Nag on the Lake

Mark Felton Productions is one of my favorite YouTube channels. Felton is a military historian who produces many videos describing little known events or aspects of military history, especially the World Wars. Among my favorites are his descriptions of the British plan to use atom bombs against Japan and what the Allies did with the bodies of executed Nazi war criminals.

In this video, Felton describes Thailand's contribution to World War I in Europe. Eager to prove to the great powers that Thailand was a modern nation, King Vajiravudh ordered the assembly of a military expeditionary force to France to participate in the final stages of the war, followed by the occupation of a portion of western Germany after the armistice.

Legit medieval unit of measurement: the ass-load. pic.twitter.com/hytzNQiEIp

— Dr. Renée Trilling (@ReneeTrilling) November 16, 2021

Dr. Renée Trilling is a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her teaching and research emphases are in medieval English literature, so it is no coincidence that she discovered this passage in Natural Materials of the Holy Land and the Visual Translation of Place, 500-1500, a scholarly anthology published in 2017. Her photo is from p. 119 of Dr. Lucy Donkin's contribution titled "Earth from Elsewhere: Burial in Terra Sancta beyond the Holy Land."

Donkin's passage here relates to the movement of dirt from the grave of Saint Peter by Saint Lolan, an 11th Century Scottish bishop. That's a long haul from Rome, but four well-built asses were up to the charge. 

-via Rebecca B

In Shakepeare's Twelfth Night, the insuffrable Malvolio reads from a letter stating that "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon 'em." Let us count this woman among the second category, for she must have labored for many years to achieve such facial athleticism. Let us hope that she is able to display her skills to even more demanding music, such as "Flight of the Bumblebee."

This video comes courtesy of the mysterious blogger Born in Space, who comments that everyone has a secret talent. What is yours? I share this woman's ability, although I need fishing hooks and line to do it properly.

Manfred Steiner grew up in Austria and attended medical school there before immigrating to the United States. He went on to become America's leading clinical hematologist while acquiring a second doctorate in biochemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Steiner eventually taught hematology at the medical schools of Brown University and the University of North Carolina.

As he approached retirement in his seventies, he contemplated following an old dream. As a young medical student, he had been fascinated by quantum physics, but had been unable to devote time to it. In retirement, Steiner was able to return to the passion of his youth. NPR reports that, at the ripe age of 89, Steiner has successfully defended his dissertation titled "Corrections to the Geometrical Interpretation of Bosonization." He now plans to publish that dissertation and continue his research.

-via My Modern Met | Photo: Nick Dentamaro/Brown University

The Right Honourable Jacinda Ardena, who serves as the Queen's Prime Minister of New Zealand, has weighty responsibilities as the head of a national government.

She is also a mother of Neve, a three-year old girl.

NBC News reports that on Monday, Ms. Ardena was delivering a national address through livestream about the state of the coronavirus pandemic in her country and her government's response to it. It was past Neve's bedtime, but she was having none of that. During the livestream, Neve interrupted the Prime Minister not once, but twice in an effort to overthrow the tyrannical shackles of the bedtime mandate.

During the second rebellion, Neve protested that her mother, like all politicians, is too long-winded when at the (virtual) podium. Ms. Ardena's mother, then visiting Premier House, the official residence of the Prime Minister, returned Neve to her bed.

-via Marilyn Bellamy

Most modern humans have at least one chin. Some of us are blessed with multiple chins. But only one actually has a solid bone structure behind it. Why?

Cosmos reports on a recent article published by Robert Franciscus in the Journal of Anatomy looking at evolutionary history of chins. One popular theory among physical anthropologists has been chins provide support to chewing as humans age and eat harder foods. But Franciscus and his colleagues found that longitudinal studies of bone growth in chins did not support this hypothesis.

What they propose instead is that human chins became prominent when early humans had higher levels of testosterone, which impacts bone growth, especially in the skull. As humans' aggressive behavior and testosterone levels dropped off, hormonal changes caused this large bone in the front of the human face to become sharper and angular--a chin.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Andrex99

Ray Chen, a master violist, was recently performing Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Seattle Symphony in Benaroya Hall. During his solo, the E-string on Chen’s violin snapped.

He doesn’t stop playing, though. First, he signals the conductor that he has a problem. Then, in a smooth motion, at a good break in the music, he swaps instruments with the concertmaster (which, I gather, is a title for the first violinist). The concertmaster then swaps with the second chair next to him, who swaps with the fourth chair. Meanwhile, Chen is powering up with his borrowed instrument.

-via Twisted Sifter

ABC Store Clerk: I'll need to see some age verification.

Me: AT&T was the only telephone company. They owned the phone in my house and rented it to us. You dialed a number with an actual dial that turned and made a series of clicks by...

Clerk: Here's your package. Please go. https://t.co/DG5RRhUsYU

— Kwisatz Haterade (@jason0x21) November 6, 2021

Celebrity librarian Jessamyn West introduced me to a new meme on Twitter. Imagine that you're trying to buy alcohol and the liquor store clerk wants to verify that you are at least 21 years old. Aside from showing your state ID card, what could you say that would definitely date you?

Elastigirl, one of the main characters from Pixar's The Incredibles movie franchise has notably wide hips and a muscular behind. Or, at least, certain especially attentive people noticed this while watching the movie.

Personally, I watch The Incredibles for the plot.

Elastigirl is not alone. Like the mother from Dexter's Laboratory, she has "Hartman Hips." YouTuber fullcomma explains that this is artistically necessary and, in fact, tasteful.

Animators must reasonably convey the differences between sexually mature and immature bodies. Elastigirl, a middle aged mom, is precisely the former. Violet Parr, a teenage girl, is definitely the latter. The two must be differentiated.

Animators could give Elastigirl large breasts, but a very busty character would likely be seen as sexualized in our culture and thus inappropriate for a children's cartoon. Giving her wide hips, on the other hand, expresses that she is a full grown woman without arousing purient interests by viewers. Thus the audience can enjoy the film for the storytelling alone.

-via Twisted Sifter

He’s tall, mysterious, and a great listener. He’s a bit scary, which a lot people find hot. It’s no wonder that this woman fell in love with the 12-foot tall skeleton from Home Depot.

Anthony DiMieri’s short film “My New Boyfriend” tells the story of a young woman played by Chiara Gerek. After living for several years in New York City, she’s dated all sorts of men, but can’t find anyone serious—and anyone she wants to be serious about. Then she met the 12-foot skeleton from Home Depot and her life changed.

-via Laughing Squid

In other news: read an interview with Lance Allen, the product executive at Home Depot who invented the 12-foot tall skeleton.

-via Amanda Brennan