The US Postal Service vows that "neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." But we must look to its rival UPS for video evidence to this effect.
Last January, Walt Gorczowski recorded footage of a UPS driver going the extra mile to get a package up to Gorczowski's house. He describes the incident:
Last week we had an ice storm. My driveway was smooth, wet ice... super slippery. I heard the UPS truck pull up so I opened the garage and told him to just leave the package at the sidewalk and I'd figure out a way to get it, but he insisted on getting it to me. Above and beyond... this guy is awesome.
Yule log videos are helpful if you don't have a fireplace but would still like to experience the sights and sounds of a warming fire. We've seen cat internet star Lil Bub and Nick Offerman make their own soothing videos. Now it's time for Luke and Anakin Skywalker to get into the action. This video by Benjamin Apple loops the funeral scene from Return of the Jedi for five hours.
Twitter user Schadenfreudelish calls it a "Baby Yodarita". Just add two black cherries for eyes, two lime wedges for ears, and tie a napkin around the stem for a robe. Intoxicating it is.
How should you wrap your cat so that she or he fits neatly under the Christmas tree, ready to be opened in the morning? Anne Holdren provides this helpful instructional video.
She also provides an alternate version in which the person wrapping the cat (the same cat) is a hunky shirtless firefighter. I asked my wife which one I should post and she just glared at me. So I'm going with the first one.
Nota bene: not all cats will approve of being wrapped and may resist quite vigorously.
Christmas Island, Australia, is home to about 1,800 people and, annually, 50 million migrating red crabs. They swarm across the island, including on the roads. Local resident Chris Bray would like to avoid crushing them as he drives, so he built these wedges and mounted them in front of the wheels of his SUV. Traveller reports:
"I made a prototype two years ago and tested it last year. After making a few tweaks and improvements, the latest version was finished a week and a half ago," Mr Bray said. "If you can imagine little horseshoes on the front of the tyre, these work to lightly bump the crabs out of harm's way."
You can watch a video of the crab mobile in action at Traveller.
What is unclear is whether the Taiwanese online retailer is hoping to convince toilet seat customers to buy a Switch or Switch customers to buy a toilet seat. Nintendo Life reports:
A Taiwanese retailer has decided that the best way to flog Nintendo Switch systems is to chuck in a smart toilet seat - you know, for those lengthy play sessions. According to Chinese Nintendo, the bundles' names translate to "Sit well full-length" for the original Switch model, and "Loneliness Eliminator" for the Switch Lite. Truly inspiring.
With the pace of gaming technology, this won't even be an issue within a year or two, as most toilet seats will be gaming consoles anyway.
7-year old Sean was visiting a zoo in Ireland with his family. The hungry tiger decided it was lunchtime and didn't notice the glass barrier. He lunged at Sean, much to the amusement of Rob, his father. The New York Post quotes the father:
Fortunately, Sean “reacted pretty calm,” Rob told Storyful. However, the dad adds that his other son “ran like the clappers” — UK slang for “very fast.”
I'm muddling the headline a bit because there's quite a lot of unpack. Michael Siegrist and Angela Bearth, professors at a university in Switzerland, polled people in eight European countries and asked them if they would like to live in a world without chemical substances. Ilya Somin writes at Reason:
A recent study published in Nature Chemistry finds that 39 percent of respondents in eight European countries say they "agree" with the statement that "I would like to live in a world where chemical substances don't exist." Another 39 percent say the "slightly agree" or "slightly disagree" with this statement. Similarly, 40% say "they do everything I can to avoid contact with chemical substances in my daily life."
As the study's authors—Swiss academics Michael Siegrist and Angela Bearth—point out, such "chemophobia reflects stunning scientific ignorance, because human life would be virtually impossible without chemicals. Indeed, pretty much everything we use or touch is a chemical or combination of chemicals.
So it's even worse than we thought! The chemicals are everywhere!
For several years, when I've conducted one-shot information literacy classes at my library, I've done a cold open in which I pull up the hilarious DHMO.org website and launch into a fast-paced and hopefully terrifying rant about the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide.
That's water.
Increasingly, though, I find that I can't lead with this shtick because the students already know what dihydrogen monoxide is or have already seen the website. That's an unscientific sample without even casual methodological rigor, but it's encouraging.
Did your child express skepticism of the existence of Santa at an early age? She or he could be on track to get a doctorate degree. The Telegraph reports that research conducted by the University of Exeter in the UK shows that educational attainment correlates with doubts about Santa or, as they call him in the UK, Father Christmas:
The data revealed that children who leave secondary school with no qualifications are more likely to have believed in Father Christmas for longer.
By contrast, those who do not pass any exams are more likely to have continued believing when they were eight years and eight months - eight months longer than average.
Meanwhile, children who went on to get a doctorate were likely to have stopped believing earlier, on average at around seven years and seven months old.
YouTuber LGND in Tampa, Florida tried to pull a prank on Aria, his young daughter. He offered her a banana as a Christmas present. An older child might have been upset at such a cheap present, but Aria was delighted. She could only squeal happily as she unwrapped the best banana ever.
Ira Pashkevych, an embroidery artist in Ukraine, magnificently re-creates iconic paintings in thread. Her stitchwork resembles the original brushwork in precise detail. Pashkevych tells My Modern Met that she takes all of the time necessary to replicate the source painting correctly:
Embroidery is a “slow craft” and Pashkevych is not shy about how long it can take to finish a stitched piece. Much of her handiwork is meant to be worn. She creates brooches featuring landscape paintings and portraits that are stitched to felt and then finished with a swivel clasp to secure on your favorite sweater. “The complexity and execution time of a brooch can vary greatly,” Pashkevych explains. “A simple brooch usually takes five hours.” She worked on her popular Starry Night brooch for a week in order to capture all of its swirling details.
When Dr. David L. Goldstein of the California Institute of Technology began his book States of Matter, he desired that readers be fully aware of the risks they were undertaking. Ludwig Boltzmann and Paul Ehrenfest met unpleasant ends. It is indeed "wise to approach the subject cautiously."
Note that Dr, Goldstein is, at 80, still alive. Statistical mechanics has not killed him yet.
Dero, a bicycle rack manufacturer in Minneapolis, designed the FixIt. This is a bicycle repair station designed to be open to the public whenever needed. To facilitate simple repairs for people without the necessary tools, the FixIt allows a bicyclist to hang a bike in the air while using tools which are attached with steel cables. An optional air pump is also available.
The tools include Allen wrenches, metric wrenches, tire levers, and screwdrivers. If a bicyclist is unsure how to use them, s/he can just scan the QR code to find a general bike repair manual online. You can watch a demonstration video here.
The website includes an interactive map (keep scrolling down) of FixIt locations. There's one near me, so I may check it out soon. I don't have a hanging rack for my bike, so it could come in handy.
In Qatar, falcons serve important roles as pets, family icons, and racing athletes. Falcon owners prize them dearly, so when one is sick, it goes to the Souq Waqif Falcon Hospital in Doha. It's a luxurious and technologically advanced veterinary hospital that spares no expense for falcon care. Tariq Panja of the New York Times talked to Dr. Prasoon Ibrahim, a molecular biologist on staff who, even after 8 years of working at the hospital, still marvels at its facilities:
“In my lab, I saw a gene sequencer for the first time,” he said, his eyes widening.
Set over multiple floors, the facility, subsidized by Qatar’s ruler, treats about 150 falcons a day. Most of the birds come for checkups after being bought in the many shops selling falcons nearby, or to have what staff members nonchalantly describe as a mani-pedi, the falcon equivalent of a manicure in which its beak and talons are sharpened while under general anesthesia. Others arrive to have radio transmitters and GPS devices fitted so their owners can keep track of the expensive birds when they take them out to hunt. The devices are typically attached to tail feathers, though some require invasive implantation surgery.
The most serious work — orthopedic surgery to mend broken bones that in the wild would mean certain death — takes place in an inpatient unit housed on another floor.
Emily Williams, a wildlife ecologist in Alaska, needs to get to work. She's got a novel excuse, although one I wouldn't try here in Texas. Her SUV has become a moose's salt lick. The moose appreciates her sacrifice.
