Fire up the old excavator because it's time for the bowling league to meet. Bolt a couple car seats onto a piece of sheet metal, such as an old car hood, then swing for the pins. That's how the good people of Chase, Michigan get in their winter fun.
What I can't figure out from the video is how the release mechanism works. How is the strap released under control?
-via Geekologie
Jafar the snake is shedding his skin, which makes a melodious popping sound as the skin sloughs off. It's quite pleasant, actually.
What is truly horrifying is the entire Instagram channel of Jafar's human, @pacinthesink. Having a pet snake is kind of cool.
Having pet cobras is bizarre. And, if I understand the videos correctly, @pacinthesink allows his/her cobras to roam the house uncaged. This is something that I would not do, but I am, I suppose, a timid soul.
-via Twisted Sifter
Feeling short on energon? Having trouble transforming for action? Researchers at the University of Naples (Italy, not Florida) found that zapping penises with specific sound waves while providing pharmaceutical supplements was more effective at providing erections than the drug treatments alone. The Daily Mail reports:
Overall, the combined approach of tadalafil and LiESWT at 2,400 pulses gave 'significant advantage' compared to those who only had tadalafil, the researchers said.
Writing in the Asian Journal of Andrology, the authors shockwave therapy is believed to stimulate pathways that encourage growth factors.
A growth factor is a natural substance in the body which helps with healing and cell growth.
This, Dr Verze and colleagues said, may regenerate nerve fibres and blood vessels in the penis, improving blood flow.
-via Dave Barry | Image: Hasbro
Brian Carroll of Macomb Township, Michigan loves selling cars. When he was laid off last year, he found a way to stay in that business from the other side of the transaction. He'll buy a car for you, completing all of the paperwork and interactions at car dealerships. Just tell him what you want and he'll deliver a new car to you. The Detroit Free Press explains how his new business works:
Then a guy called wanting a car. Carroll said he didn’t work at the dealership anymore. And the buyer said he didn’t care. Carroll decided then he would go solo. Not as the usual car “broker,” who tends to charge a direct fee to shoppers, but as a car “concierge” who planned to charge customers $0. He would work on commission.
After all, he figured, fewer people have time to go to dealerships and people like the idea of enhanced personal service. He would ride a trend of changing consumer expectations in the automotive industry, not by choice but by necessity. All by word of mouth.
Very busy people can appreciate it:
Ferndale Fire Sgt. Miles Bracali had his 2020 Chevy Silverado delivered to the firehouse.
“For somebody like me who works 24-hour shifts and has an active lifestyle outside the job, with young kids active in sports and school, I don’t always have a day to look at vehicles or another day to sign paperwork,” said Bracali, 50, of Waterford. “I start at 8 a.m. and I get off work at 8 a.m. If we’re running fire calls or medical calls all night, I’m not going to want to sit in dealerships. I want to go home and go to bed.”
-via Marginal Revolution | Photo of Sgt. Bracali by Mandi Wright, Detroit Free Press
According to statistics that are dubious but are also, more importantly, interesting, pizza-related injuries in the United States have more than doubled in the past two years. ABC 14 News in Denver reports:
Whether it was induced by falling upstairs though carrying a supply or an individual slashing a finger with a pizza cutter, there have been no less than 3,800 visits to the ER two years in the past linked to the tasty Italian foodstuff. That determine compares to 2,300 accidents in 2017.
The figures appear from professional medical company service provider Babylon Overall health in honor of Countrywide Pizza Day on Sunday Feb. 9. The 2018 figures mark the highest amount of accidents given that the enterprise began counting them.
The corporation analyzed information from the Nationwide Electronic Injuries Surveillance Method, which is run by the US Consumer Product or service Basic safety Commission.
Findings had been dependent on professional medical documents from an extrapolated sample of 100 emergency departments across the place in which the word “pizza” was bundled in doctors’ notes.
If you do insist on eating pizza, do so safely by following the four rules of pizza safety:
-via Debby Witt | Photo: Jeremy Keith
J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series is available in over 80 languages, including Latin and Gaelic. Two years ago, Yiddish enthusiasts, funded in part by a Swedish government program to promote minority languages, launched an effort to render the entire series into that endangered language.
It proved to be a great challenge because the translators had to find ways of rendering Rowling's word plays in ways that were both faithful to the authorial intent but also meaningful in Yiddish. Tablet magazine describes their efforts:
But Rowling didn’t just coin names, she coined many magical terms and concepts, and each of these required its own Yiddish rendering. Translating Quidditch, the fictional aerial sport played on broomsticks in which participants fire a ball through hoops to score points, posed its own challenge. “I could’ve just called it Quidditch [in Yiddish transliteration], but meh, we could do better than that,” Viswanath said. He cast about for something more authentically Yiddish. Inspiration struck when he “remembered that there’s this saying, ‘az got vil, sheest a bezem,’ which means, ‘if God wants, a broom shoots,’ and which possibly refers to somebody who’s impotent, or maybe to a gun.” And so, “shees-bezem”—or “shoot-broom”—was born. Along similar lines, rather than merely transliterate the name of the small flying “golden snitch,” whose capture ends a Quidditch match, Viswanath dubbed it the “goldene flaterl,” or “golden butterfly,” as butterflies are a common motif in Jewish and Yiddish folklore. By riffing off Yiddish sayings and symbols in this way, Viswanath hopes “people will feel the Yiddishe taam [taste].”
-via Instapundit | Photo: Warner Bros.
David Ambarzumjan, an artist in Germany, will paint a detailed landscape, then brush across the middle of it. On that brushstroke, he paints a glimpse of that same scene from the past or the future. A city thus becomes a wilderness, or vice versa.
Get your future Starfleet Academy cadet ready to take the helm with this rocker by Etsy seller GandGRockers. I agree that the old Constitution-class cruisers may be obsolete, but they're a more comfortable ride than a Defiant-class escort.
This rocker design also comes in a pretty painted version in the original light grey of the pre-refit NCC-1701.
Are you missing a beautiful ring with Elvish words inscribed into the inside and outside? It's absolutely precious. Once you hold it, you never really want to let it go.
That's why police in North Yorkshire, UK are thoughtfully seeking out the owner, who no doubt dearly misses it. BBC News reports:
North Yorkshire Police seemed unaware of the JRR Tolkien connection when they shared photos of the "distinctive silver ring" on Facebook. [...]
Facebook users responded telling police they needed to follow in the footsteps of Frodo Baggins and destroy the ring.
"The ring was made in the fires of Mount Doom, only there can it be unmade," one Facebook user said.
"The ring must be taken deep into Mordor and cast back into the fiery chasm from whence it came. One of you must do this."
Nonsense! The ring is the property of Lord Sauron, who will no doubt handsomely reward anyone who ensures its return to him.
-via Geekologie
If you're making a phone call about a specific topic and need to get down to business, then you can complete your call while standing up.
But if you're fishing for the latest, um, news about life in the neighborhood and have some to share, then it might take some time. You'll need to sit down and get comfortable. That's why furniture makers produced "gossip benches" during the first half of the Twentieth Century.
[The object on the right side of the photo is, believe it or not, a telephone. Since I just had to explain that to my kids, I figured that I might need to so here, too.]
The Design Elements, an antiques magazine, describes the development of this furniture concept:
Many home builders began incorporating a small shelf in a wall of the house, usually in a hallway, where the phone could reside. It was then only a matter of time before some enterprising person saw the need to create a unique and functional piece of furniture made specifically for the telephone, as well to accommodate the user as he or talked to friends and family.
With a place for the phone on top and a shelf or drawer for the telephone book, telephone tables, also known as gossip benches, became very popular [...]
I don't think that I've ever seen a gossip bench, but my grandmother's house had a nook built into the kitchen for a phone, a stack of telephone books, and a stool. There was work to be done on the farm, so gossip had to be completed expeditiously.
Image: Toscano
You want to get close to the other person--who may possibly be of the opposite sex--in order to a have a intimate conversation. But you don't want to get too intimate--so much so that people ask questions about the boundaries of your relationship.
The answer to this problem developed two hundred years ago by European furniture designers was the conversation chair. Messy Nessy Chic describes its long history, which continues to this day:
Conceived in 19th century France, the basic setup consists of two seats conjoined in a serpentine shape, allowing the sitters to discreetly have a conversation. Without a table creating distance between them, they’re able to speak more intimately and quietly, while also preventing too much physical contact by virtue of a shared armrest cleverly doubling as an elegant barrier of sorts.
This suited Victorians very well. Budding courtships of the era often unfolded with the close supervision of parents or chaperones and so the conversation chair effectively became a popular feature of the household for pushing a matched couple in the right direction, while still keeping it all very PG-13.
I don't think that I have ever seen a conversation chair in person, but it may have inspired this 1991 satirical commercial on Saturday Night Live.
Image: 1st Dibs
Sure, you can get a custom license plate that spells out words to show how unique and stylish you are. But only in Vermont will a poop emoji an option for trend-setters.
We may see that someday if the Vermont state government passes a bill which would make that state the first in the nation to permit emojis on its license plates. USA Today reports:
The bill, proposed by state Rep. Rebecca White, says symbols could be added “in addition to the distinctive number assigned by the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles or the numerals and letters selected by the registered owner of a vehicle as a vanity 12 plate." [...]
It’s unclear which emoji are included in the proposition, but the most popular emoji, in general, are the face with tears of joy, the red heart, the smiling face and the rolling on the floor laughing face, according to the Unicode Consortium, which sets the international standards for characters, including emoji.
-via Aaron Starmer | Photo: Dick Mansfield
Never get drunk with friends. But if you do, make sure you never pass out, especially if there are cameras nearby.
An Australian gentleman describes the incident:
My mate had been out in the sun all day decided to have a snooze so the other lads stacked the giant Jenga on his head and he didn't wake up he sat there for at least half an hour with the game perched upon his noggin.
-via Geekologie
Beetle grubs are an excellent source of nutrition, but a lot of people are squeamish about eating them. I don't know why. This one has strawberry and lemon flavors and is mixed with a lemon meringue.
Katherine Dey of @DeviantCakes made this cake that is somewhat larger than life size. The adult Hercules beetle can grow up to seven inches long, making it one of the largest insects in the world. The cake, which shows the beetle in its larval stage, is as adorable as the actual animal.
-via Super Punch
Santiago Terrasas, a Shoshoni martial artist and kinesiologist who lives outside of Reno, Nevada, will happily take you down with a meat cleaver. For 40 minutes, he'll whack at you with the sharp edge, livening up the blood flowing in your body. Eugene S. Robinson describes the experience in Ozy:
“Well, ultimately, our body wants to breathe,” says the 41-year-old Terrases. “So I want to improve the flow of blood, spread those blood vessels, open up the muscles and push the pain out.” A statement that could easily have been attributed to at least a half-dozen serial killers. [...]
“There are more things under heaven on Earth than in our books of science,” says surgeon Dr. Steve Ballinger quoting Hamlet. “But I’ve had four massages with razor-sharp instruments and it seems like it works 50 percent of the time. Usually if the cleaver is cold, it’s like an ice massage. Or maybe it scares you into a neuro reset.”
Terrasas charges $3 a minute, but will soon raise that price due to increased demand for his services. So make an appointment while you can still afford it.
-via Nag on the Lake | Image: Kasia Robinson
