Redditor /u/CornishShaman shares this photo of their library's beautiful new storytime chair. It's a custom sculpture commissioned specifically for Penzance, a town in Cornwall.

Free Range Designs, a Welsh furniture workshop created by Paul Bullen, composed it. Although the craftsmen there produce other pieces of furniture, their unique storytelling chairs have attracted the most attention.

The Penzance Library is in Cornwall, so its chair reflects the deep well that is Cornish folklore. Featured prominently are the Mermaid of Zennor, the Giant of Marazion, local pixies, and, of course, the Pirates of Penzance. The fish are pilchards (Sardinia pilchardus), a herring species that has been fished in Cornwall for centuries.

Lord Vinheteiro is a Brazilian musician who originally trained on the piano but is now must famous for his performances on rubber chickens.

In the past, we've seen him play a piano with a typewriter and perform "Flight of the Bumblebees" while using only one finger. After his rubber chicken performances rose to popular acclaim, we highlighted his rubbery renditions of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

In this funny video, his lordship explains how he goes about turning rubber chickens to be musically prcise instruments. He says, "True music does not depend on the instrument, but on the seriousness with which we approach it."

-via The Awesomer

Southeastern Texas is alligator country. They are both numerous and bitey. Gator Country is the name of a wildlife rescue organization that specializes in protecting these modern-day dinosaurs and showing them to adventurous tourists.

KHOU 11 News reports that an employee named Kat recently graduated from McNeese State University across the border in Louisiana. She arranged for a photoshoot with Laura Obelsbee Photography which showed the happy graduate snuggling with her favorite animals.

-via Jonathan Kentrick

BagelFest is an annual competition of bagel baking. The Wall Street Journal reports that 2,000 competitors converged at Citi Field in New York City to see which bakery produced the best example of this iconic bread of New Yorker cuisine.

A Texan bakery won, of course.

Starship Bagel is a small chain of bagel-centered restaurants in the Dallas area. The bagel pictured above is dubbed the Millennium Falcon. It has tomato, avocado, alfalfa sprouts, pickled red onions, red pepper, and your choice of schmear.

The WSJ article examines in depth how a bagel can be defined and how that definition has changed over time. There is a great deal of innovation in bagel development in recent years, of which the Millennium Falcon is only one example.

-via Instapundit | Photo: Starship Bagel

Ulla-Stina Wikander is a Swedish fabric artist who images a world filled with vibrant colors and delightful textures brought about by embroidery.

When I taught my kids how to drive, I made then watch The Dukes of Hazzard so that they would know how to locate suitable topography for car jumps.

Why? Well, this is why.

Fox 11 News reports that sheriff's deputies in Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin chased a suspect who was out on bond for car theft. During his automotive flight, he departed the bounds of the earth as he hit an embankment and passed over another car perpendicular to his path of travel.

You can see the full video here.

The car, lacking the structural integrity of the fictional 1969 Dodge Charger of fame, did not do well upon its descent from the heavens. The suspect proceeded on foot until tased and subdued.

-via ABC News

One redditor jokes that it's the "I wasn't asking" version of the toilet plunger.

Redditor /u/brewstah saw this plunger at a hardware store in Osterville, Massachussets. Why was it made this way? There's speculation that it's to prevent a customer from walking off with it, although I think that a used plunger is an item unlikely to be stolen.

My guess is that the employees had to assemble a plunger on short notice and grabbed an available handle. In this case, it was a broom handle.

-via David Thompson

Kate, an artist in Odesa, Ukraine, creates marvels of stained glass which she sells on her Etsy store called Sea Stained Glass. She has not yet said if she will sell her latest creation: a functional cap made of stained glass.

As you can see from this video, it's quite wearable. Although a bit heavy, it's comfortable--in large part because Kate shaped it for her head specifically. She mentions that the visor is good alternative to sunglasses (which she doesn't like) because it shades her eyes without resting on her face.

Zillow Gone Wild introduces us to this lovely old firehouse that is now on the market for a large family that wants a lot of open space. It has four bedrooms and four bathrooms spread over 3,105 square feet.

Here's a scene from the Fairfield Branch of the Henrico Public Library system in Virginia. A 2022 issue of American Libraries (the flagship publication of the American Library Association) describes this clever computer station created to help caregivers of young children tend to their computer needs while keeping their kids out of trouble.

Library Director Barbara Weedman saw the need for furniture like a child's computer station, but adult sized. Shannon Wray designed the desk, which debuted when this branch library opened in 2019. A mother with a child promptly sat down at this station, intuitively understanding what the playpen was for.

-via @WolfofX | Photo: Chris Cunningham

That win was because I was a row behind the popes seat pic.twitter.com/4JTS2PwkFK

— Julian (@Its_Apache) May 13, 2026

Pope Leo XIV, born as American citizen* Robert Francis Prevost, grew up in the Chicago area and therefore is a devoted fan of the White Sox baseball team--even performing the traditional chant while in full papal regalia.

In 2005, Prevost attended Game 1 of the World Series. He was recorded on camera doing so, thus we can know precisely which seat at Rate Field he sat in. The venue has marked the location.

-via Mallory Palmeri

*Whether he is now is apparently a fascinatingly complex legal question.

Ray Bradbury, a lifelong advocate for free speech, published his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 in 1953 out of material he had developed for a couple of years prior. It depicts a society in which books are illegal and "firemen" are not people who put out fires, but people who burn books. The novel was an enormous success at its outset and remains popular to this day.

That prompt success at publication led Bradbury to issue a 200-copy special edition made with asbestos covers--thus making them resistant to burning--and autographed.

Copies are quite rare. This one on eBay is priced at $45,000.

-via reddit

Redditor /u/tylerthecreativemode shares photos of a little free library in Berkeley, California. Most little free libraries are single boxes, often shaped like buildings. But this is an entire little free library system with multiple branches. I count eight boxes with books. Some redditors are dubbing it the Little Free Library of Congress or the Little Free Great Library of Alexandria.

The official LFL map shows numerous locations in Berkeley--apparently a city with a love for this community practice. The cozy, goblincore style is offers a welcoming ambiance.

Some ideas, such as Leonardo da Vinci's helicopter, are ahead of their time in that it would not be possible for da Vinci to construct a functional model. But what ideas are behind their time? This is to ask: which technologies could have arrived earlier because their prerequisites were already present?

Brian Potter, an engineer, asserts that the Wright brothers' flyer could have been constructed the late 1880s instead of 1903. The constituent technologies for the turbojet, which first appeared in 1937, were known in the 1920s.

Much depends on how one defines "plausible" and the risks that inventors are willing to take. Japanese physician Hanaoka Seishū (1760-1935) was the first surgeon in the world to use general anesthesia in 1804--four decades before it was used in the West--but blinded his wife and crippled his mother while trying to get the dosage right.

-via Marginal Revolution

Mike Matthews founded Grandma Stand in 2012 to honor is grandmother, Eileen Wilkinson, who had a lot of wisdom to share. He built an outdoor stand and set it up in public places in New York City. There, Grandma Eileen listened and chatted with passersby.

Grandma Eileen passed away in 2018 at 101 years old. Matthews took down the stand. But in 2024, he decided to re-establish the stand new new grandmas staffing it.

Matthews now has 20 volunteer grandmothers participating in New York City, as well as 20 other locations around the United States.

The Grandma Stand project is the subject of a new documentary that you can watch on PBS.

-via Kottke