Yes, this was a response to COVID-19, but it's a pretty good idea anyway, right? In addition to keeping bar patrons at least 6 feet apart, it also provides a measure of safety to intoxicated people moving around. The New York Post reports that, Fish Tales, a bar in Ocean City, Maryland, thinks that these tables will allow it to open to more than just takeout customers.

-via Dave Barry

Search Google Shopping for office chair. The first search result is for Wayfair's Seat of Death Grim Reaper Throne Armchair. It's perfect for modern office design, especially for cubicle drones who aspire to rise into management.

It's plastic, so not an actual throne of skulls. That's what you get once you're actually in management, not before. And you have to build it yourself.

If this style doesn't match your own, then continue browsing Google Shopping until you get to this object. I can well imagine the snickering designer trying to sell the design to a furniture company as a practical joke.

-via Super Punch

Art show producer Svetlana Dvoretsky had planned to make her immersive Van Gogh exhibit a walk-through experience through massive digital projections. Then the pandemic came. Now she and her colleagues making it available to the people of Toronto from the safety of their cars. The project is called "Gogh by Car." The CBC describes it:

Art lovers will drive into the 4,000 square foot downtown industrial space and will stay inside their vehicles. It's quite a change from the original concept, which permitted 700 people to walk inside the space at a time.

The drive-in, the first of its kind in a post-pandemic era, will allow 14 vehicles per time slot. Visitors will park, turn off their engines and watch a 35-minute show while remaining inside their cars.

The exhibit opens on June 18.

-via Marginal Revolution | Image: Gogh by Car

Last week Filipino journalist Doris Bigornia tried to conduct a live TV interview from her home. She was distracted when her two kitties began brawling in the background. She appears to say in Tagalog, "Children! There are rules in the studio!" They don't care. They want to become internet famous.

-via Althouse

Looking at Yatzil Elizalde's tattoos can be disorienting. This Mexican artist layers duplicate images on each other, creating a dizzying result. She tells My Modern Met that she sometimes feels that way when she inks them:

I go crazy just thinking that when starting to follow a line, it is almost impossible to get to the end without ending up dizzy along the way.

Only a portion of Elizalde's work uses this visual effect, but almost all of it uses precise, black and white dots and lines, which you can view on her Instagram page.

Jake Lambert, a comedian, writes on Twitter that he, his girlfriend, and their cat have been trapped in quarantine for two months. It's a bit much on their kitty, so the girlfriend very thoughtfully made an art gallery for him to visit.

The photos show famous works of art with cats added. Everything is at cat eye (yes, singular) level. There's even a rope barrier and signs for visitors.

So you've been bitten by a snake. You need to act quickly. There's a hippopotamus over there. You know what to do.

Pedanius Dioscorides, a physician who lived in Roman-ruled Greece in the first century AD, was a pioneer in the field of pharmacology. He listed hippopotamus testicles as a treatment for snakebites.

Dioscorides's comprehensive pharmacology guidebook, De Materia Medica, was basically an early version of the Physician's Desk Reference. It was used in Europe well into the 1800s. I am unable to find an English translation, but there is a brief description of the testicular usage in historian John M. Riddle's 2011 book about the ancient doctor.

Note: if hippo testicles aren't available, Dioscorides also suggests beaver castoreum and weasel meat. You have options.

-via Aelfred the Great | Photo: Mertie

Well, actually, it's not Artoo. This is R9-D9, the local housekeeping droid. He's often confused with his far more famous cousin, which causes him much consternation.

Still, he's impressive in his own way, too. Unlike Artoo, he doesn't serve drinks or save the galaxy. But he does vacuum and mop the floor. Matthew Scott Hunter made him out of a knock-off Roomba, a trashcan, and an assortment of household items. R9 really makes all of those sound effects and rotates his head realistically. He's an excellent piece of household engineering.

-via Geekologie

Life imitated art because Wile E. Coyote once again failed to catch his prey.

Michael Bogan, a zoologist at the University of Arizona, captured this video in Tuscon on May 9. CBS News (auto-start video) reports that the coyote was curiously lacking any fine equipment from the Acme Corporation, such as the anvils that are commonly used to capture roadrunners.

-via Dave Barry

The town of Gustavus, Alaska isn't accessible by road. If you want to go there, you have to travel by ship or plane. The 446 residents are at the end of a fragile supply chain that has been imperiled by the coronavirus pandemic. Fortunately, Toshua Parker, the owner of the only grocery store in town, bought a 96-foot long ship a few years ago to make sure that he could supply his customers.

Since the state shut down the ferry service, Parker has been making a weekly 7-hour trip to and from the Costco in the state capital of Juneau. He loads up his ship with groceries and resells them to his customers in Gustavus. The Hustle tells the story of his store, dubbed "Toshco":

“It’s an art form, not a science,” says Parker. “The town might have a 100-gallon swing in demand for milk from one week to the next without any explanation of why. One week, nobody wants whole milk; the next week, everyone wants 2%.”

Toshco employees have been on the phone nonstop, taking down special orders from Gustavus residents — everything from washing machines to baking powder.

Oftentimes, Parker maxes out on the rations Costco imposes at the store to protect against panic buying.

Parker has to be creative in order to keep Gustavus residents supplied:

“Thinking outside of the box [is] the secret to success,” says Parker’s father, Lee. “You start by brainstorming non-traditional sources — vendors that most folks may be surprised even have toilet paper in their inventory. Then you get on the phone and start calling everyone around the country until you find a place to buy a pallet. Some of Toshua’s finds are brilliant. And because of that, Toshco has TP when the rest of the world has empty shelves.”

-via Marginal Revolution | Photos: Sean Neilson

Chelsea, from the staff of the Seattle Public Library, rules over the known universe as its tyrant who controls and embodies the spice. She is Leto II Atreides, the God Emperor of Dune.

This cosplay is part of a cosplay challenge conducted by that public library system. It makes me ponder that I should do something similar for my own closed library. But as I work for an academic library, perhaps my colleagues and I should dress as subscription databases like JSTOR.

-via Super Punch

Would you like to drink a tapeworm?

Me, too!

The legendary blogger Minnesotastan of TYWKIWDBI introduces us to the tapeworm shot. The Tipsy Bartender says that you'll need vodka, black pepper, tabasco sauce, and mayonnaise. You could, I suppose, also add an actual tapeworm for realism. But I won't.

Matthew Cosman's kids are very lucky. They have a dad who built this professional-grade, museum-quality jungle gym just for them.

The dinosaur, modeled after an apatosaurus, rests on 12 tons of concrete. It measures 48 feet long and had to be moved into position by a crane. Cosman described the challenges involved:

The challenges aside from raw materials was, first of all, the space. I had to wait for the right window at our fab shop. Getting a gap in projects that allowed the space to the side. Then, once started, getting that done ASAP to get it out of the way. That was just the main dino—the rest was finished onsite at my home. All of the top structure and rope and add-ons. It takes time and dedication to the details.

You can see more photos of this amazing jungle gym under construction at Bored Panda.

-via Geekologie

Danielle Baskin, an entrepreneur, has a story that warms my Ferengi heart.

In a Twitter thread, Baskin says that, when she was 11 years old, she played Runescape. In the game, she set up shop in an area where new players spawned. She offered to train them in combat by fighting chickens. Their payment was to pick up the feathers from the dead chickens and give them to her.

Baskin then sold the feathers, marking them up 1000%, to archers who needed them for arrows. She would deliver the arrows to battle locations so that the archers wouldn't have to go shopping for them. She was paid with in-game currency. Sadly, at the time, that money was not convertible into real life currency.

Still, Baskin's arbitrage operation was a brilliant demonstration of the ninth Rule of Acquisition: "Opportunity plus instinct equals profit."

Andrew Higgins, a 10th-level mechanical engineering wizard, looked at the iconic eagle logo of the US Postal Service. He calculated that the physical properties of eagle in flight indicate an air speed of Mach 4.9, which is 3,760 miles per hour.

The Twitter thread continues with Higgins discussing the issue with other mages who have delved into the gnostic arcana of mathematics and physics. I assume that it's an intelligent discussion.

-via Super Punch