In Act 3, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, the amusing but vile Sir Toby Belch refers to a sheet of paper that "were big enough for the bed of Ware in England . . . ." This is a reference to the Bed of Ware, an enormous bed that was a tourist attraction in England during Shakespeare's day and remains so today.

Ware is a village north of London. An inn there commissioned the construction of and housed this enormous bed. It's now housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where it continues to attract visitors, although you're no longer allowed to sleep in it. Amusing Planet describes the bed:

One of the most famous piece of furniture in history, this spectacular four-poster bed measures ten feet by eleven feet, and is reportedly large enough for four couples to lie side by side without touching each other. [...]

Unfortunately, the bed has been greatly vandalized and defaced by guests, possibly by amorous couples who had spent a night on the bed and found obliged to carve their initials into the wood with a penknife or another sharp object. Some applied red wax seals to mark their night on the bed.

The bed stayed in Ware for nearly three centuries, passing around several inns before it moved to Hoddesdon in 1870 and became a bank holiday attraction during the boom in rail travel.

| Photo: veronikab

Sad and Useless calls its gallery the World's Greatest Gallery of Dogs Standing on Mushrooms, but I think that Laesa Baby and the other puppies are actually standing on polypores. They're remarkably sturdy and cute (the shelf fungi and the dogs, respectively).

-via Design You Trust | Photo: unknown

CORRECTION 11/25/20: Arthur C. Clarke wrote the screenplay and the novel more or less simultaneously.

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The Stanley Kubrick film 2001 (and the Arthur C. Clark novels on which it was based) has a scene in which early hominids encounter an alien artifact dubbed a monolith. This encounter induces a leap forward in human evolution.

We are now at the cusp of a similar revolution. The crew of a helicopter for the Utah Department of Public Safety spotted a metallic monolith in a rural area. They landed to investigate. KSL TV News reports:

“One of the biologists is the one who spotted it and we just happened to fly directly over the top of it,” said pilot Bret Hutchings. “He was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, turn around, turn around!’ And I was like, ‘what.’ And he’s like, ‘There’s this thing back there – we’ve got to go look at it!’” [...]

“I’d say it’s probably between 10 and 12 feet-high,” Hutchings said. “We were kind of joking around that if one of us suddenly disappears, then the rest of us make a run for it.”

Hutchings said it didn’t look like it was dropped into the ground from above. It was firmly planted there.

The DPS employees took several photos and videos of this haunting encounter.

-via Gizmodo

Every year, redditor lockstocks85 makes a custom menorah in preparation for Hanukkah. This year, a Batman action figure serves as the base. He jokes that he should make a dreidel out of Clayface.

Making a new and pun-inspired menorah is a tradition for lockstocks85. Last year, his project was the Menorcah in which, presumably, the whale oil lasts eight days.

Oddity Central introduces us to chả rươi, a popular street food in Vietnam. This omelet dish is high in protein because the principle ingredient is palolo sand worms (a species distinct from the sandworms of Arrakis). These marine segmented worms can be caught at sea or raised on farms. Then they are prepared into spicy dishes:

Before being added to the chả rươi omelet, the sand worms have to be boiled to remove their tentacles and fishy smell. The latter is also combatted by the zesty tangerine peel and all the herbs. Still, the taste of sand worm can be too much for some people, so over time a less hardcore version of chả rươi emerged, one which contains more pork than worms. But for true chả rươi fans, the original, more expensive version is the only real option.

In this video, the food vlogger Sonny Side travels to Hanoi and helps prepare a worm pancake. It looks good, but I prefer my gagh to still be wiggling.

Photo: Viethavvh

The Indian Express reports that this baby elephant in Chang Mai, Thailand snuck out of bed during the night to snack on sugarcane. When caught by humans passing by, he tried his best to conceal himself. The only concealment he could find was a light pole. It failed to hide him from millions of charmed humans on the internet.

-via The Mary Sue | Photo: วีรวัฒน์ พรหมเมือง

(They Can Talk/Jimmy Craig)

Fluffy has forgotten why he and Charlie got a human in the first place: to work for them. The human should not be engaging in personal business while on the clock. If she is venturing into the kitchen to do something other than feed the cats, it should be addressed during the next performance review.

Pictured above is a Bernadoodle: a cross between a female Bernese Mountain Dog and a male Miniature Poodle. Sue Murphy recently delivered one from Colorado to a happy family in Boston. She's a professional pet deliverer. Murphy has been very busy during the pandemic at the behest people who want puppies, but don't want to risk traveling for them. For a price, Murphy takes the COVID-19 risks for them. The Wall Street Journal (sorry, it's a paywalled article) describes the work of these pet deliverers, including one named Lori Sheder:

"People were like contacting me almost every day," says Ms. Sheder. "I felt bad because I couldn't accommodate them."

She restarted service again this month, delivering a tea-cup Yorkshire terrier to LaGuardia. She works for the school board during the week and escorts puppies on the weekends.

Some flight nannies are former airline employees, who still get discounted airfares that help make the margins work out, according to Shane Hallman of Samantha, Ala.

Mr. Hallman, 44, got into the business after a battle with cancer, a truck accident that left him with 23 fractures and a divorce. Now he owns an 11-person operation delivering puppies–some by air, most by ground–for Crockett Doodles, a large breeder based in Greenville, S.C.

Although some pet deliveries come by air, others operate by ground. They often travel continuously from dog site to dog site:

Troy Nichols, co-owner of pet-delivery company in Micanopy, Fla., set out on a Saturday this month with an Italian greyhound in the back of his Dodge Grand Caravan, drove to Norman, Okla., and picked up an English bulldog puppy.

Then Mr. Nichols, 53, and his back-up driver shot south to Orange Grove, Texas, where he collected four Great Dane puppies before dropping the bulldog off with an excited family in Corpus Christi. A couple of Rottweiler pups were ready for him in Houston, as was a customer in Winnsboro, Texas, waiting on one of the Great Danes.

From there it was north to Kenefic, Okla., to get five mini Australian shepherds–four of them puppies–and to Elmore City, Okla., where a man surprised his kids with the Rottweiler babies.

-via Marginal Revolution | Photo: Pixabay

I love New York... pic.twitter.com/0z5uaf9iTO

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) November 17, 2020

Pizza Rat was (and maybe still is) a famous rat in New York City that was recorded dragging a slice of pizza down a flight of stairs in a subway station.

That was five years ago--a more innocent time. Jonothon Lyons, a theater professional, lifts our spirits by dressing up as Pizza Rat and dragging an enormous slice of fabric pizza around New York City. You can see Lyons's videos on his YouTube channel.

In an interview with Hyperallergic, Lyons describes the reactions that he encounters when he performs:

H: What’s your experience been like as a rat on the subway? What kind of reactions are you getting from people?

JL: People react with either joy, fear, or radical indifference. I’m just out there to have fun and make people smile, and I like that it’s a little mischievous, there’s definitely a little bit of a prankster going on, but I’m not there to aggravate anybody or get in anybody’s way. For the most part, people are really seeming to enjoy it. New York City is the world’s capital of live performance, and our doors have been shuttered since March, so we haven’t seen any theater — everything’s been virtual. I think this is having such a big response because I brought something out into the streets and into the subways that we only usually get to see up on a stage.

My favorite reaction is that of the man on the stairs in the above video. He nopes out of the encounter and walks away without giving Lyons another thought. This is New York: a man dressed as a rat dragging a pizza isn't even the weirdest thing he's seen that day.

-via Nag on the Lake

Jenga master /u/lamei walks away with the title of greatest Jenga warrior of all time. S/he stacked a fitting throne on top of this perfect assembly of 518 blocks.

The subreddit that hosts this masterpiece is the home of many other extraordinary works of Jenga engineering that seem to defy gravity. Take a few minutes to browse it and stare in wonder.

-via Technabob

What do you taste like? You can find out by eating the Ouroboros Steak, which is a project by scientists and artists in US. After you take a cheek swab to collect cells, lab technicians use expired human blood to grow cell structures from your sample, creating meat that is, genetically, you. It's appropriately named after the ouroboros, a mythical snake that eats its own tail. Dezeen talked with designer Grace Knight and researcher Orkan Telhan about the project:

"Expired human blood is a waste material in the medical system and is cheaper and more sustainable than FBS, but culturally less-accepted. People think that eating oneself is cannibalism, which technically this is not," said Knight.

"Our design is scientifically and economically feasible but also ironic in many ways," Telhan added.

"We are not promoting 'eating ourselves' as a realistic solution that will fix humans' protein needs. We rather ask a question: what would be the sacrifices we need to make to be able to keep consuming meat at the pace that we are? In the future, who will be able to afford animal meat and who may have no other option than culturing meat from themselves?"

The DIY kit is not yet on the market and will probably be expensive. So perhaps it would be best saved for special occasions, such as birthday parties or anniversaries.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Dezeen

SoyaCincau reports that Kentucky Fried Chicken has deployed driverless food trucks in Shanghai. These autonomous vehicles let people purchase KFC food without having contact with other people, thus reducing the spread of COVID-19:

The unmanned vehicles were spotted in front of a metro station outside the city of Shanghai. From the looks of it, you can place an order on the screen and it accepts payment via QR-code. After payment is made, the door will open for you to collect your order.

Neolix, a Chinese firm that manufactures the trucks, is one of several companies in that nation that are finding commercially viable uses for autonomous vehicles. Forbes reports:

Roads connecting two of western China's biggest cities — -Chengdu and Chongqing — offer good prospects for autonomous vehicle-related companies and technology. The 200-plus kilometer distance between the two is appealing for self-driving trucks given currently available technology, said Lou Yuqiang, a vice president at Suzhou Plusgo Auto Technology. The company supplies integration technology for self-driving trucks. 

Neolix, a supplier of mini delivery vehicles for food sales, patrols and delivery, sees promise in urban areas, particularly Chengdu and Chongqing, says vice president Xu Qiyuan. The company is currently working with global food giants such as KFC and Pizza Hut to provide a “restaurant’ on wheels” service.

-via Super Punch | Photo: @shanghaineko

The Craigslist ad explains that the owner of this couch in New York City bought it with her then-boyfriend, who is now an ex-boyfriend. The new boyfriend hates it, so the couch has to go.

That story is fake. What is real is the couch. Pavia Burroughs, the artist who made the couch in 2011 for a senior thesis, sold the couch years ago. Still, every now and then, she sees a fake ad offering it for sale. This latest ad is apparently one of those fake ads. Burroughs tells Curbed:

“Mind you, I hand-sewed this couch, it was my first foray in upholstering, and I hand-carved his hoof out of walnut — walnut is very hard to carve — and so it went off into the world. Now, every few years, someone posts a fake ad for the couch online,” a state of affairs that Burroughs finds both odd and funny. “I can’t imagine it’s actually been traveling around the country as much as it says it has. I’ve seen it in Tennessee. I think I saw it in California. I see now it’s in New York.” 

-via Dave Barry

The Amori prefecture of northern Japan would like to draw attention to its vibrant fishing industry, so it published collectible trading cards starring muscle-bound fishermen holding up their catches. The government's goal is to attract more workers to fishing. Spoon & Tamago reports:

The cards have become a huge hit among the local community and beyond with kids trying to collect different cards while also vying for rare cards.

According to one article, the cards are entirely handmade by Noriaki Kimura, a 32-year old government employee who single-handedly goes around asking local fisherman for permission to take their photographs. He then brings the photos back to his office, designs the card, makes prints and then cuts them into trading card sizes.

Perhaps Neatorama should likewise publish and sell trading cards showing shirtless bloggers flexing their muscles.

Photos: Sankei

This dog thinks the man on tv is playing fetch with him 😭😭 pic.twitter.com/xhf0gp98Q0

— Theo Shantonas (@TheoShantonas) November 15, 2020

This viral video of unknown origin shows a dog that is fortunate to not actually be playing fetch with darts. Like any sensible person, he leaves fantasy and reality undifferentiated. Or, perhaps, his televised companion is playing "fake throw", as dog owners are prone to do.

-via Geekologie