It's hard enough to keep up with an ever-growing list of passwords with increasingly complex requirements. How would a medieval peasant manage? Alasdair Beckett-King, a comedian and screenwriter, suggests an answer: poorly.
-via Laughing Squid
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Do you see Sigmund Freud in this image? The boatman forms his right eye and the woman's hair his left eye.
This fantastic portrait from a fever dream is by Ukrainian artist Oleg Shupliak. He offers up reverent and mysterious images of great artists, thinkers, and writers.
I'm especially taken with Shupliak's portraits of artists inspired by the styles of those artists. You can see so much of Starry Night in this depiction of Van Gogh.
A monitor lizard in Nakhon Pathom, Thailand crawled out of a canal and strolled into a 7-Eleven. Although interested in the small grocery selection, he mostly made a mess and left without paying. Narumpa Tangsin, the customer who recorded this video, described the startling experience:
He said, "I only stopped at the shop to buy some food and then saw the huge monitor lizard inside. I wanted to buy a drink but the animal was too close to the drinks aisle."
He continued, "They're dangerous animals, especially when they're angry, so I stayed back and recorded it on my phone. I guess that shops have everything, even for lizards."
-via Marilyn Bellamy
In the final months of the Soviet Union's existence, filmmakers there produced a TV adaptation of Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings. After all copies had been lost for thirty years, one recently resurfaced and has been uploaded to YouTube.
While browsing through a mail order catalog for small, precision tools, I ran across a listing for a "gourd saw." It appears to be a handheld stiff-bladed jigsaw. The seller describes it as one used by gourd artists for cutting into gourds.
Such specialized tools can often have multiple uses. The chop saw that I use for cutting stained glass zinc came is sometimes called an "arrow saw" because it's frequently used by people who make their own arrows.
Cats can feel an array of emotions shared by humans. But, despite what animal behaviorists say, I'm convinced that guilt is not among them.
A dog in Russia grabbed the reporter's microphone and ran away during a live broadcast pic.twitter.com/R1T8VZ5Kpt
— Ali Özkök (@Ozkok_A) April 2, 2021
This video from Mir TV in Russia appears to depict reporter Nadezhda Serezhkina wrestling a Golden Retriever for control of her microphone. The show host cut away from the technical difficulties.
Later, the program revealed that Serezhkina and the dog were able to reconcile their differences, as humans and dogs should.
-via Super Punch
Technabob introduces us to the Concours d'Lemons, which is a series of car shows featuring the ugliest and most ridiculous car mods. Its Instagram page is filled with creative delights such as this Volvo station wagon converted into a Super Star Destroyer. It represents a greater emphasis on crew safety by the Galactic Empire.
The shipbuilders in the UK sold it last year, warning potential buyers that many features were not yet fully functional:
Chase down Rebel scum and tame Princess leia in this somewhat to scale Galactic Empire Destroyer. Featuring functional Turbo Lasers and Hyperdrive (disclaimer sub warp engine non fucntional)
The ship sustained a direct hit from a X Wing to one of the Shield domes and some hits to the general body from an asteroid field.
The librarian in me finds mutilating books deeply unsettling. But if a book is already damaged, why not put its corpse to a good use? Perhaps Inès Mélia, an artist in Paris, agrees. She turns old books into classy tissue boxes that would look elegant in any home.
-via Messy Nessy Chic
Lamanna's Bakery in Toronto is famous for its preposterously huge slices of pizza. But the bakers don't stop there. What toppings belong on a pizza? The bakers are willing to try anything, and the results are clever and beautiful, such as this pizza inspired by Homer Simpson's favorite donut.
Food artist ent.co_mam used pastry dough and neatly cut hot dogs to make edible versions of the walking brooms from Disney's Fantasia.
These brooms are less menacing than the ones that the sorcerer's apprentice foolishly created.
The Mespilus germanica was known as the "open-arse" due to its shape, resembling an anus opening to extrude its contents. Although extremely rare today, this fruit was loved in Medieval Europe, in part because it bloomed during the winter. Thus it was one of the few sources of sugar available to eat during the winter. But Europeans didn't eat it right away. The medlar, as the fruit is called today, becomes edible only after it has rotted for a few weeks. BBC describes this lost, beloved foodway:
When they're first picked, medlars are greenish brown and resemble oddly-shaped onions or alien-looking persimmons. If they're eaten straight away, they can make you violently ill – one 18th Century doctor and botanist said that they cause diarrhoea. But if you put them in a crate of sawdust or straw and forget about them for several weeks, they gradually darken and their hard, astringent flesh softens to the consistency of a baked apple.
The exact chemical mechanism involved remains elusive, but broadly, enzymes in the fruit break down complex carbohydrates into simple sugars such as fructose and glucose, and it becomes richer in malic acid – the main culprit behind the sour taste of other fruits such as apples. Meanwhile, harsh tannins, which contribute to the bitter astringency of younger red wines, and antioxidants such as ascorbic acid (Vitamin C), are depleted.
-via Kottke | Photo: Solange Cabe
The police who staff this station comment:
If you do drink and drive, please be so kind to hand yourselves in like this chap.
The suspect delivered himself directly to (but, fortunately, not through) the front door of the police station in Northwich, Cheshire, UK early on Saturday morning. It looks like he slipped through those poles in a non-lethal manner.
-via Dave Barry | Photo: Northwich Police
Curious about the menu item, redditor Vozembouch69 asked the waiter at the restaurant in Žilina, Slovakia for "Pizza Americana." This was the result. It is deeply offensive and correct (aside from the absence of a Bud Light).
In the background is a more tempting pizza with Niva blue cheese.
What "American foods" have you encountered around the world?
Maik, a sous chef in Bremen, Germany, wants a sauce to be evenly and elegantly spread across the center of a plate. So he sets a fidget spinner in motion to splatter the sauce perfectly. How clever!
-via Gastro Obscura
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