— osvaldo vega patriota 🇨🇱 (@Osvaldo04110700) April 29, 2021
A gang of robbers in Chile had the perfect plan. They had trained and prepared for the moment when they would leap out of a van and rob someone at a gas station temporarily distracted by a common task: pumping gas.
Alas, they experienced a major failure in the victim selection process. Or, perhaps, they had simply chosen the wrong venue for this type of robbery. You see, a person holding an active gasoline pump is armed.
These women in Nepal appear to be running over a wavy surface. Is it liquified soil? It is vegetation on the surface of water? Snopes has not reached a conclusion, but proposes a few possibilities, including a "lawn blister" or bubble of water just below the topsoil.
What should do you with any extra Cadbury Creme Eggs around your home? If, for some unknowable reason, you have not eaten all of them, Difford's Guide, a cocktail website, suggests making a drink.
It's a quite complex process. You'll need a week to properly season the ingredients, which include vanilla vodka, Licor 43 liqueur, white creme de cacao, Advocaat liquer, half-and-half, a vanilla pod, and, of course a creme egg.
Instagram user In Love with Drinks offers this Last Word cocktail. This gin drink began in 1915 at the Detroit Athletic Club. It was popular during the Prohibition Era, then fell into obscurity until its revival last decade. To make one, you will need equal parts of gin, Chartreuse liqueur, lime juice, and maraschino liqueur. Drink and clear your mind of questions.
This is a 1990 Daihatsu fire truck. It's not a toy or a model, but built for its stated purpose. It's also adorable. Owner Todd Lappin has named his new friend "Kiri". You can see Kiri on the streets of San Francisco. Although Kiri is not affiliated with the San Francisco Fire Department, it's fully functional and can fight fires. SFist reports:
"I imported Kiri directly from Japan with a local importer I got to know," Lappin tells the paper. "Essentially it was retired by the town, went through the auction system. It sold for almost nothing, because who wants a 30-year-old tiny fire truck?" [...]
Lappin had some experience importing a Japanese car previously, and after he got to know the ins and outs of the process, he decided to seek out something cooler and more unique for San Francisco, as a whim. Enter Kiri, which served a volunteer fire department in Kirigamine, Japan for about 30 years, and came to SF about five months into the pandemic. The truck is made to navigate hills and narrow streets, and it's never had its own water tank — it has a pump that relies on suction, so you just need to park it next to a pond and drop a hose in, and you're good to fight a fire.
In the Hero's Journey narrative structure developed by mythologist Joseph Campbell, the hero, who is often an ordinary person (and thus demonstrating, in egalitarian fashion, the latent ability of all people) who accepts a call to adventure.
You might get the impression that these shoes and cars were designed at the same time, but they're just coincidences. Niek Pulles, a graphic designer from the Netherlands, found perfect matches between many cars, both stock and custom, and shoes. He calls his project SNEACARS. You can view more works in this series on his Instagram page.
The stonefish is the world's most venomous fish. It's dangerous even by the ambitious standards of Australian wildlife. Its body has 13 spines through which it can inject venom into its prey. The fish usually lie peacefully on the bottom of shallow waters in northern Australia. Don't step on them.
The pain is immediate, excruciating and may last for many days. Muscular paralysis, breathing difficulties, shock, and sometimes heart failure and death can ensue.
To prevent stonefish stings, sturdy footwear should be worn on reef flats, or while wading on soft-bottom substrates adjacent to rocky or weedy areas. An antivenene for stonefish stings has been developed. In the event of a sting, the victim should leave the water, apply first aid and seek medical attention as soon as possible.
Street artist JPS spotted the perfect form for the battery. The concrete post in Triefenstein, Germany has just the right dimensions for a scaled-up cylindrical battery. He quipps:
Typewriter Collector's entire YouTube channel is worth browsing, as it's filled with lovingly restored and often strange typewriters. This particular one is Toshibia BW-1182 from the 1940s. The horizontal cylinder contains Chinese, Japanese, and English characters. YouTube commenter amontoval describes the arrangement:
They're arranged phonetically by most common "on-yomi" (or kun-yomi in some cases) according to the kana syllabary (many homophones, of course). Can't see the whole circumference of the cylinder but at about 0:30 it's clear that the order doubles back at the ring of mathematical symbols. Red characters help parse the readings. Last character to left of equal sign can be pronounced "kin" (exert) and the first character in next row "gin" (silver), then "ku" (suffer) in red followed by "kuu" (sky, empty), "kuma" (bear), "kun" (teachings, meaning [also the kun in kun-yomi]), "gun" (group), then "kei" (system) in red followed many, homophones of "kei". It's the same order in which (mostly compounded character) words in a normal Japanese monolingual dictionary for Japanese speakers would appear.
Twitter user Hurt CoPain has a refrigerator that has a screen. It's probably one of those internet of things things. Anyway, such a screen (paired with a camera inside) lets you see inside without opening the door. It also allows for much pranking if you have Hurt CoPain's photoshop skills.
And, specifically, Angostura bitters. That's a particular type and brand of bitter liquor from Trinidad and Tobago. Bitters are liquors that are traditionally served as aids to digestion. Do they work? I don't know, but folk medicine traditions say that they do. That's the crux of our story today.
Nelsen's Hall, a bar on Washington Island in Lake Michigan, faced a serious problem during the Prohibition Era. Its primary means of doing business--serving alcohol--was now illegal. But it was legally permissible to offer liquor for medical purposes. Atlas Obscura describes how bar owner Tom Nelsen took advantage of this loophole:
“During Prohibition, Tom got a pharmaceutical license so he could legally sell bitters,” says Sarah Jaworski, whose parents have owned Nelsen’s since 1999. This loophole wasn’t quite the same as that used by doctors who prescribed alcohol during Prohibition. Rather, the bitters were classified as a “stomach tonic for medicinal purposes” instead of alcohol, meaning that a doctor’s prescription wasn’t required. “Medicinal tinctures are usually taken in smaller doses, but since Angostura bitters are 90 proof, he was able to legally sell it as a tincture,” she says. “He just sold it as shots.”
Tom’s tonic proved to be extremely popular among locals, many of whom apparently suffered from previously undiagnosed stomach ailments. In fact, customers who kept Nelsen’s open for the entirety of Prohibition are directly responsible for the pub being the oldest continuously-operating tavern in Wisconsin.
When Prohibition ended in 1933, Nelsen reopened all bar services. But a taste for bitters stuck with the locals. It continues to this day. Customers at Nelsen's Hall remain the largest consumers of Angostura bitters. Drinking a shot gains you entry into the Bitters Club. Custom dictates that you're not a true islander until you've had yours.
The bucket truck in Santa Rosa, California caught fire after the crane had already lifted a worker up. Now he unable to escape the fiery inferno except taking a long, dangerous jump to the ground.
That's when truck driver Efrain Zepeda sprang into action. He drove his truck next to the conflagration so that his trailer was positioned beneath the bucket. The trapped worker was then able to drop down to the top of the trailer and escape.
Here is the hero, Efrain Zepeda. Glory to his name and to his house.
Would you like to look like a dish scrubber? How about a bottle of floor cleaner or a can of mackerel? Then Felipe Cavieres, a fashion designer in Chile, has the perfect selection of clothes for your new look. You, too, can show the people around you that you have the fashion sense of a steel wool pad.
Food artist Manami Sasaki, who is internet famous for her elegant slices of decorated toast, says that:
I feel that breakfast, which wakes up our senses for the day, and shoes, which take us to the exciting world outside, have something in common . . .
Run, don't walk, to or with this sandwich to fuel you through the day. It's completely edible, vegetarian, and made with several different types of bread.
