It's a hot day out on the lake in Brazil. The fishermen brought beer to help keep themselves cool and hydrated. They generously share with one of their new friends--a fish that poked up out of the water for a drink.
-via Telegraph
John Farrier's Blog Posts
The sarlacc preferred to eat Jabba the Hutt raw. But Hutt flesh is a bit too tough for my taste, so I pefer this solution devised by Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin. She first created a paper stencil, which she used to create the outline. Then she created a bottom layer, added apple pieces, then the top. She cut and added Jabba's facial and body features, using egg white as a glue to hold them together. You can see more photos of these turnovers at Bored Panda.
-via Foodiggity
(Photo: Sandy Huffaker/Wall Street Journal)
Third-grader Andrew Calabrese of San Diego, California has Type 1 diabetes. Everywhere he goes, he carries with him a robotic pancreas to regulate his blood sugar.
Designs for these machines exist, but the Food and Drug Administraton won't approve them for manufacture. So Andrew's father, Jason Calabrese, built it himself. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Jason Calabrese, a software engineer, followed instructions that had been shared online to hack an old insulin pump so it could automatically dose the hormone in response to his son’s blood-sugar levels. Mr. Calabrese got the approval of Andrew’s doctor for his son to take the home-built device to school. […]
Initially, Mr. Calabrese worried about the safety of the do-it-yourself project. He built it over two months, and spent weeks testing. At first, he only tried it out on his son on weekends and at night. Once it performed well enough, he said it felt irresponsible not to use it on his 9-year-old son.
“Diabetes is dangerous anyway. Insulin is dangerous. I think what we are doing is actually improving that and lowering the risk,” Mr. Calabrese, 41, said.
Andrew's artificial pancreas is one of about 50 in the United States that individuals have built themselves.
-via Marginal Revolution
(Photo: Michel Colin)
Redditor Grimdotdotdot asks that question. Many people recount their travels around the world, encountering strangers who assumed that they were ignorant of their native languages. Here are some of the best responses.
its_meem_not_meh_meh describes two cab drivers in The Philippines:
Me and 2 other friends (one American, one German) were in rural town Philippines. We were getting out of a cab and unloading our bags when the cabbie's buddy pulls over next to us and they start chatting in the local language.
Buddy: "Whoa - foreigners! How much did you get off them?"
Cabbie: "Usual 80 pesos"
Buddy: "No way! I would have charged them at least double!"
Me: "I think 80 pesos is quite fair, don't you?"
His jaw dropped - and he awkwardly drove away.
I learned enough to get by, but I deliberately keep it to myself - just for moments like these.
(Photo: Cleveland Browns)
Elna Wright, 17, of Elyria, Ohio uses a wheelchair and is non-verbal due to heriditary spastic paraplegia. That didn't stop her from getting elected homecoming queen and making plans for prom night.
Unfortunately, her boyfriend died last fall. She had no date, so her parents asked for one on social media.
Cameron Erving, a member of the Cleveland Browns football team, showed up with a limousine bus. Elna got professional-grade hairstyling, flowers, and a dress donated for her special night. She had a blast. Fox 8 News (auto-start video) reports:
“I just wanted to come here for her,” Erving said. “Just being able to make her smile, that's the biggest thing. Everybody deserves happiness, so anything I can do to make this night as special as possible.”
Wright flashed a bright smile much of the night. Her parents said they expect it will be one of her best memories ever.
“She’s on top of the world right now,” Elna’s dad, Ebony Wright, said. “This means everything.”
-via Ace of Spades HQ
(Photo: Ali Jolie Marintzer)
Is this an omen? Or is it the ultimate promposal result?
Charlie Bator and Ali Marintzer of Wray, Colorado were photographed together before heading off to their high school prom. A tornado churned just 3 miles away in the background.
-via Ace of Spades HQ
This friendly humpback hung around the Knudson Cove Marina in Ketchikan, Alaska for a few days. He got very close while Cy Williams, a sport fishing guide, was recording. The whale breached within a few feet of him. It's an amazing sight!
-via Geekologie
Tomohiro Matsu, a prominent manga author, died on May 2. There was an outpouring of grief by those who knew him, especially those who worked with Matsu on his manga projects, many of which were adapted into animes.
Recently, his family conducted a kokubetsushiki, which is a viewing. People can visit his coffin and say goodbye before the deceased is cremated. Many artists who worked with Matsu took the opportunity to draw on the coffin images of the characters that he created and to write farewell messages.
Hiroshi Aizawa, an illustrator, took photos of the results and commented, "he wanted his send-off to be like a fun festival." It worked! You can see more pictures of the coffin at Rocket News 24.
Does someone at the bar look more attractive after you've had a bit too much to drink? Then you've been wearing beer goggles.
That's fine, but we're living in the future now. Reality is virtual and you can add a VR experience to your drunkenness with this slip-on VR headset called Bee-R-Goggles. They're like Google Cardboard, except with more regret.
Bee-R-Goggles is a mysterious project by advertising creative Joseph G. Davies. What is it? Davies writes:
Stay tuned for BEE-R Goggles, a virtual reality headset designed specially for beer lovers the world over to get immersed in their favourite beverage like never before.
-via NotCot
This extraordinary gaming mod is called the Painsaw. It looks like a blood-spattered chainsaw. It's also a completely playable version of the classic science fiction horror video game Doom.
George Merlocco made the Painsaw with a Pi Zero microcontroller and a toy chainsaw. He describes it:
The system powers up via a 4400mAh Li-Ion battery upon the flick of the main rocker switch. This effectively enables the Adafruit PowerBoost 1000 Charger which feeds that power to the Raspberry Pi Zero. Connected to the Pi Zero’s 40-pin GPIO header, is the Adafruit PiTFT 2.2” HAT which is the cutest 320×240 2.2” TFT LCD perfect for a scaled-down, bloody chainsaw.
Within the rest of the gutted chainsaw body there is a 4-port USB Hub which is connected to a USB OTG cable that plugs into the Pi Zero’s Micro USB host port. The ports on the hub are consumed by a USB nano-receiver for the wireless mouse and keyboard, the HDE XBOX360 USB wireless receiver (allows you to use a wireless X360 gamepad), and a USB soundcard which provides full system sound output to a tiny 1” driver that came with the chainsaw (for the original SFX).
The X360 USB receiver is within the body of the chainsaw, but there is a hole near the handle which gives access to the pairing button, so you can use any X360 controller. The Adafruit PowerBoost 1000 Charger is also positioned to allow for charging the battery via its Micro USB port, located the the bottom of the painsaw.
And, honestly, I'd be baffled, too.
This mysterious video shows a toad that has eaten a snake. The snake is a bit too large for it. A cat investigates the scene. The snake is far more concerned about the cat than the toad which has proven to be a threat.
-via Dangerous Minds
(Image: NBC)
Good news: you're not stuck in the friendzone.
Bad news: you're just an acquaintance.
Researchers gave a survey to 84 college students in the same class. It asked them to rate their relationships with each other on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 was "I don't know this person" and 5 was "One of my best friends." A rating of 3 or higher qualified as a friendship.
The authors found 1,353 instances of friendship. In 94% of those cases, the person denoting friendship said the other person would feel the same way.
But friendship wasn't reciprocated 94% of the time--just 53%. New York magazine comments:
Which makes sense — you probably wouldn’t call someone a friend, after all, unless you thought that definition was mutual. That’s why we have terms to capture more one-sided relationships, like friend crush or hey, I don’t really know her but I think she’s neat. Both of which, come to think of it, might have been better descriptors of a lot of the relationships in the study. In reality, only 53 percent of the friendships — a small, sad, oh honey number of them — were actually reciprocal.
-via Joe Carter
(Image: PBS)
How do the appraisers on the television program Antiques Roadshow know the value of the vast multitude of objects that they see? Well, sometimes they don't. They make mistakes, as appraiser Stephen L. Fletcher did when Alvin Barr brought in a clay jug covered with faces.
Fletcher dated the artifact to the mid-19th Century and likely from the mid-Atlantic states or the South. How much was it worth? About $30,000-50,000.
That would have delighted Betsy Soule, the woman who sculpted the piece in the 1970s for a high school art class. Hyperallergic reports:
Now a horse trainer, Soule had first heard about her onscreen handiwork from a friend who saw the episode in January, according to The Bulletin, and told her, “You’ve got to get on the internet and look up Antiques Roadshow; that weird pot you made is on there.”
Antiques Roadshow has since amended the estimate to $3,000-5,000, which is still impressive.
-via Nag on the Lake
(Image: BBC)
David Nash, an artist, owns land in rural northern Wales. In 1977, he began growing and shaping a circle of trees to form this structure. It's a living sculpture of 22 ash trees called Ash Dome.
1977 was a dark time. The Cold War threatened to turn hot. The British economy was in shambles. There was widespread environmental apocalypticism. The overall mood was one of pessimism. The world seemed dead or in dire threat of dying. So Nash made this living work of art as a reaction to these challenges. You can see more photos of it and a BBC video at Colossal.
Once upon a time, a hammock and a catamaran met in the lifejacket section of a sporting goods store. They dated, fell in love, got married, and had a child. This is that baby: the Hammocraft. $1,000 gets you a frame kit that you can attach to a pair of paddleboards. You can then hook on up to five hammocks.
Use it safely. The company warns:
We highly recommend against trying to float whitewater or rapids.
I hadn't thought of doing that before, but now I've got to try it! It's time to give the emergency room nurses a new story to share.
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