This is super cursed and also the funniest goddamn thing I’ve seen all week pic.twitter.com/OOAblOwomM
— JR (@USofJR) February 24, 2021
How do you fry an egg? It's a great mystery. So in trying times like this one, summon an unholy monster from the depths of Hell to teach you. The modern urban legend Slender Man, who reaches toward you from the dim light of your peripheral vision, is an excellent chef, despite his cumbersome arms.
-via Super Punch
Woofbowl, a food truck in New York City, offers visually appealing foods for non-human consumption. Trot up to the side window to order your favorite snacks or ask your two-legs to do it for you. The gourmet menu includes non-alcoholic beer, hamburgers, and goat milk donuts.
Last year, Washington Business Journal interviewed Ron and Solo Holloway, the founders and owners of Woofbowl. Solo described the origin of this novel business:
For most millennials, our dogs are our kids. Therefore, I made all of our dogs’ meals and treats. One day, I was just exhausted and I said to Ron, it would be nice if I could just buy it and not have to make everything myself. He simply said to me with a smile, “Then make it a business.” Necessity is the mother of all inventions. Since the day I met Ron, he had the entrepreneurial spirit; he can be very persuasive. And the more I felt discouraged at work, the more Woofbowl became a reality.
-via Laughing Squid | Photo: Woofbowl
Beef Wellington is a British dish consisting of a steak wrapped with mushrooms duxelles and a pastry shell. Legend holds that it was named to honor Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington and vanquisher of Napoleon Bonaparte. Cooking one is difficult and thus commonly a challenge among cooking hobbyists and culinary students.
It had never occurred to me before I saw these photos, but beef Wellington is a pastry dish. So should not the fine arts of a pastry chef be applied to its shell? That's what chef Anthony Rush at Restaurant Siena in Honolulu does. The results are stunning.
What could possibly go wrong? Absolutely everything in this commercial for Etisalat, a telecommunications company. Helsinki-based filmmaker Nalle Sjoblad made this ad titled Moonwalk.
It makes no obvious sense at all. Why is it called Moonwalk? How does it promote Etisalat's services? Why are the people featured in 1 minute and 9 seconds of video making so many poor life choices?
I don't know the answers to any of these questions, but I want to watch this commercial over and over again.
-via Colossal
British YouTuber Tom Scott takes his audience on tours of strange places, events, and historical relics. Every video is an adventure in new knowledge.
Scott, like a lot of Britons, is in lockdown. So he can't travel widely, especially to indoor locations. He has run out of ideas that he can carry out while still in lockdown.
So Scott asked the AI program GPT-3 to create titles for videos based on his previous work, as well as a complete script for one of them. At the 5:32 mark, he reads a completely fictitious script given to him by GPT-3 about a Russian utopia built in Yorkshire by Nineteenth Century eccentrics.
Artificial intelligence is increasingly providing content creation, management, and curation tasks. Our own resident AI, a program called "Miss Cellania" does an excellent job of automatically searching for neat content and posting it here. We should expect to see similar AI encroachments in the future.
-via The Awesomer
Gizmodo introduces us to the Maxus Life Home V90 Villa, a Chinese-made van RV. It's vertically huge over a tiny footprint. The second story (please lower before driving) has a dining area and a balcony.
There is snow on the ground here in Texas. But, I have heard, it also snows elsewhere. So it is hard to know precisely where this video was recorded. The man featured acts very Texan, so we shall claim him as our own.
True story: a few nights ago, when the heaviest of the snowfall was upon us, my wife commented that it was odd that one of our neighbors, who is prone to shoot off fireworks at seemingly random moments, had not decided that a record-braking blizzard was not the perfect moment for a fireworks show. 30 seconds later, the fireworks started. Because Texas.
-via Born in Space
In the 1991 horror film The Silence of the Lambs, Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb is a serial killer who captures, mutilates, and murders his victims in grotesque methods. His home was Hell on Earth. Soon, you'll be able to stay there!
Chris Rowan, a theater professional, has purchased the house outside of Pittsburgh used for the movie. He plans to open it to guests as a bed and breakfast. The New York Post reports:
Rowan won’t have to do much to restore the four-bedroom, one-bathroom house to its horror glory — the home outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, already has many of its original features, including its old-fashioned wallpaper, hardwood floors, pocket doors and dark wood trim. And the exterior of the three-story house is the same yellowish-red brick with a wraparound porch as seen in the movie.
For movie fans, though, the house will prove to be a fixer-upper:
But the most important renovation will be the infamous well in the basement where Hollywood’s original psychopathic B&B, played by Levine, traps his victims.
Filmmakers shot the basement well scenes off-site — the house doesn’t actually have a creepy hole in the ground — but the new owner reportedly plans to add one to give guests the full Buffalo Bill experience.
-via David Burge | Photo: Realtor.com
Instructables member Jade Pullen made this amazing globe that turns on and off live radio broadcasts around the world based on how the globe is physically oriented. It's a whole world filled with many different voices available with the flick of a finger. Sometimes, Pullen writes, the experience of using RadioGlobe is quite jarring:
Part of the magic is the the tension between familiarity and the unfamiliarity: It's both shocking how many radio stations play Western pop music, but then with a turn of the jog wheel, you find an alternatives (in the same location) - and you navigate from Boosh FM's Drum & Bass, to listening to a native dialect of New Zealand. [...]
News is another revelation - it's all too easy to lapse into thinking my 'international' news is 'the benchmark'. I found myself listening to the same global updates on COVID-19, but rather than my usual BBC News, I heard a local DJ discussing it in a chat radio station in South Africa - framing things in, frankly, a more gritty take... It's certainly different to what I'm used to, and that's the point.
-via Laughing Squid
The vast majority of work by Mike Batz, an erotic artist, is not for suitable for Neatorama, but his inspired underpants design is a notable exception. He applies the inherent roominess of the croc shoe to the anatomical requirements for male clothing. On hot days, the ventilation is an added bonus.
It has been unexpectedly rough this week here in Texas. We're not set up with the infrastructure necessary to easily endure sub-freezing temperatures for several consecutive days.
It has been especially difficult for the sea turtles who live off the south Texas coast. But Sea Turtle, Inc., a conservation organization, along with many volunteers, nonetheless managed to pull 3,500 turtles out of freezing waters off South Padre Island. KXAN News reports on how the rescuers have been trying to find suitable space anywhere for the turtles:
Sea Turtle Inc. was using the South Padre Island Convention Center to shelter the turtles as they work to rescue as many as possible.
The Beach Resort at South Padre Island will be taking in some of the turtles, due to space issues at the Convention Center.
“We will house the turtles in our indoor water park and the conference room.” said Natin Kasan, owner of Beach Resort.
My mom is retired, & she spends her winters volunteering at a sea turtle rescue center in south Texas. The cold snap is stunning the local turtles & they’re doing a lot of rescues. She sent me this photo today of the back of her Subaru. It’s *literally* turtles all the way down. pic.twitter.com/xaDRNjLDoQ
— Lara (@lara_hand) February 15, 2021
On a temporary basis, the human heroes are putting the turtles anywhere that isn't filled with freezing water.
-via Marilyn Terrell | Photo (top): Sea Turtle, Inc.
When the TARDIS is ready for s crossover episode, she heads straight for the Star Wars universe. Here she is portrayed by Tinker Bre as Princess Leia in her slave outfit from Return of the Jedi. Sometimes she poses with her husband, who dresses as a Eleventh Doctor Han Solo.
Well, yes: the first question would be "Why would anyone do this?" Let us set that aside now and instead ponder "How would anyone do this?" For the answer, we consult the nail artists at Nail Sunny in St. Petersburg, Russia (and growing internationally to other cities). At Nail Sunny, you can get a very pretty set of nails or you can get an attention-grabbing work of art applied to your fingers.
Core 77 introduces us to the snow roller, an old piece of technology that was used to clear roads before diesel-powered snowplows roamed the streets, hunting for powdery prey. Snow rollers were often weighted with stones to pack down the snow. This particular images dates to 1930 in Maine, so such machines exist within living memory.
A fully-functional one still exists, thanks to the restoration work of craftsmen associated with the Bartlett Historical Society in New Hampshire. You can find process photos and descriptions of this amazing reconstruction here.
This morning, I greeted the dense blanket of snow in Texas with a bike ride. The snow did not make for easy travel. Perhaps this product called reTyre might help. The company of the same name, which is based in Norway, makes snow treads that zip onto bike tires.
You start with a base tire which has half of the zipper. Then you can add one of three different treads for ice, snow, and, I think, mud.
-via Toxel
