Every day, inventor Simone Giertz is making the world a better place. She's finding ways to automate the tedious tasks that distract us from more important domains of life, such as watching cat videos.

In the past, she's automated brushing your teeth, eating breakfast, slapping yourself awake, chopping vegetables, and putting on lipstick.

Now Giertz is addressing another pressing need: for mysterious reasons, you have been invited to a social function. You daringly leave your home to experience the company of other human beings. During this ordeal, other people periodically clap their hands, cuing you that it's time to put down your smartphone and do likewise.

It's very annoying. And, if you have soft hands from your indoor labors, then it's also painful after a while.

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For her Applause Machine, Giertz took salad tongs from her kitchen and placed two plastic right hands (sorry, southpaws) over them. With a spring and an oval gear between them, the machine claps when she flips a switch. Thanks to her Arduino controller, she can adjust the clapping speed to express variously sarcasm or vigorous approval.

Wine Enthusiast offers this luxurious fire extinguisher of perfect vintage. It's a Bordeaux that will extinguish the fire in your mouth and your kitchen. The completely functional fire extinguisher measures a foot tall and comes in a deceptively ornate wine bottle-like container. When there's an actual fire in your home and you're desperately searching for a way to put it out, remember: look for the Château la Falque.

-via Dude I Want That

(Photo: Kars Alfrink)

Sheesh, did something die in here? No, but we're more likely to think that strangers rather than friends in close proximity smell badly.

Researchers at St. Andrews University asked students to assess sweaty t-shirts, one of which was labeled with St. Andrews University, another which was labeled with a rival school, and one with no label. The participants tended to rate the shirt from their tribal group--that is, their own university--as less stinky. Tom Jacobs explains in the Pacific Standard:

The key result: Participants whose identity as a St. Andrews student was made salient "went to wash their hands more quickly, and used more soap," after smelling a shirt with either their rival's logo or no logo.

They rushed to the hand sanitizing station after smelling the shirt with the rival school's logo, getting there in three and one-half seconds (on average). In contrast, those who smelled a shirt with their own school's logo ambled over; it took about six seconds. It seems they were significantly less bothered by the stink.

These results make sense from an evolutionary perspective in that members of a prehistoric tribe couldn't collaborate very easily if they found one another revolting. "Groups involve not only a gathering of minds, but also of sweaty, smelly, tactile bodies," the researchers note. "It is impossible to work with people if you cannot stand their physical presence."

-via Debby Witt

She promises to finish what he started, but she's thinking of a savage battle above the sands of Tatooine. Cosplayer Ashleigh of Lost Weasley Child offers this mashup of Princess Leia's iconic slave outfit from Return of the Jedi and Kylo Ren from The Force Awakens.

As the movie Demolition Man teaches us, eventually all restaurants will be Taco Bells--even the most luxurious. Cassie and Daniel are just 16 years ahead of schedule.

For their Valentine's Day dinner, they dressed formally and plated their food with china, crystal, custom-printed menus, and fine silverware.

Daniel explained to Obsev how they pulled off this romantic scene in such a non-traditional setting:

“We’ve been together for five years now and we’re always looking for new ways to celebrate being together,” Daniel told Obsev.  “With Valentine’s Day coming up, we did what any couple did and thought up a bunch of ideas that we’d either already done or just didn’t feel right.  She finally threw up her hands and jokingly said, ‘Let’s just go to Taco Bell!’ As soon as she said it, I knew we had to make it happen.”

The Taco Bell night out only came together with the help of the staff, who, Daniel said, were “really accommodating” and even “cleaned off a prime window side table and dimmed the lights a bit to set the mood.”

You can see more photos of their fine dining here.

-via First We Feast

With great hair comes great responsibility and Instagram member Jordan Glindmyer has come through for us with this mohawk that looks like the crest of Spider-Man. He's one of many top-end hairstylists who are participating in the #superpoplocks hashtag on Instagram. In it, you can see hair recreations of the world's finest superheroes and supervillains by the world's finest stylists. Here are some of the best:

(Photo of a double bacon cheesburger, but not this particular Double Bacon Cheeseburger, via Flickr member Hungry Dudes)

The resident of London was born as Simon Smith, but as Bruce Wayne became Batman, so did Simon Smith become Double Bacon Cheeseburger. That name is more than just a new legal appellation, but an expression of his inner identity, which is presumably greasy and delicious. The Evening Standard reports on him and other recent name changes in the UK:

He told the Sunday People: “A name is the least important part of your personality. It’s given to you by someone else.”

“Bacon Double Cheeseburger was the first name I came up with.”

The 33-year-old is one of a record-breaking 85,000 people who changed their name last year.

Others decided to name themselves over popular footballers like Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Man Utd star Wayne Rooney.

One couple called themselves Mr and Mrs Amazing, while a man preferred to be referred to as Bruce Wayne, the secret identity of Batman.

So now it will be necessary for the police to get a searchlight for not only the Bat-Signal, but also the Double Bacon Cheeseburger-Signal.

-via Debby Witt

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S.O.A.R. Dunk is a ministry team at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. The members perform amazing acrobatic feats with basketball equipment. Last week, the team demonstrated what they can do in a performance at Central Baptist Church in Portsmouth, Virginia.

In this phenomenal display of coordination and teamwork, seven members of the team jumped off a trampoline, handing off the basketball in midair, before dunking it at the end--and shattering the church's backboard.

Oops!

-via reddit

(Photo: Sophie Ryder)

This is artist Sophie Ryder and her sculpture titled The Kiss. It's 20 feet tall and has an interior gap of 6 feet, 4 inches tall.

The statue was located over a pathway at the Salisbury Cathedral in the UK. Officials recently moved it because it proved to be a menace. People found themselves innocently texting on their phones while walking when BAM!--the sculpture would leap in front of them, causing accidents.

You can see photos of The Kiss and a video of its relocation at The Telegraph.

-via Dave Barry

I've only recently discovered Anime Maru, a parody of anime news websites (of which, yes, there are a great many). It presents spoof articles in the style of The Onion that satirize anime and its fans. Yes, it's true that the great Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli invented anime to solve a desktop computer background shortage, so the KanColle background on my computer right now can be ultimately attributed to him.

Here's a sampling of other great Anime Maru articles, all of which skewer fandom accurately:

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The 2-year old girl and her mother were visiting a bank in Vicenza, Italy. The young girl got bored and went wandering. She found an open time-lock safe, went inside, and closed the door. The safe was made so that, once closed, it could not be re-opened for 40 minutes. 

Firefighters rushed to the scene. They used a hydraulic tool to break the safe open. The girl emerged scared, but unharmed 15 minutes later.

Considering how small the safe is, I wonder how she had enough air to breathe for that long.

-via Nothing to Do with Aborath

You can have more than just meat and cheese with your stuffed pasta. It can be a dessert, too! Caroline of the food blog Pinch Me I'm Eating shows us how to make a chocolate-flavored ravioli. It's filled with a white chocolate mascarpone filling inside a cocoa-infused dough. She drizzled it with whipped cream and raspberry sauce and garnized the dish with fresh raspberries. 

-via NotCot

Cute overload? No: cute apocalypse. Reddtior SwilliP posted this photo her son napping with her aunt's Chiweenie puppy--that's a cross between a Chihuahua and a Dachshund.

Here, you can see the boy cuddling with a kitten.

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The Tick became the Tick when . . . wait, how? The Tick's origin is mysterious. He simply appeared and went to work. He has a childlike mind and operates in an undetermined environment known simply as The City. Why?

That's because he is a child. That child was bitten by a tick and is slowly dying of Lyme disease. He's imagining that he's developing superpowers bestowed on him by the tick that bit him.

This is 1 of 10 dark and wacky fan theories that explain children's TV shows. Screen Rant describes them all, including the origin of SpongeBob SquarePants, who Inspector Gadget really is, and the unreality of Ash Ketchum's experiences in Pokémon.

-via Geek Tyrant

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The dog and his owner walked to the elevator at their apartment building in Springfield, Missouri. The man got on, but the dog didn't. Then the elevator doors closed around the dog's leash. The elevator began moving up, grabbing the leash and slamming the dog against the doors.

Thankfully, maintenance supervisor Brian Ussery was on the scene. He ran to the elevator, grabbed the dog, and broke his leash.

In what must have been an excruciatingly long minute, the dog's owner traveled to the fifth floor, then back down to the first floor to see if his dog was still alive. WGN reports:

Ussery said the dog's owner went to the fifth floor and was expecting the worst when he finally made it back to the first floor.

"The guy was freaking out. He didn't know what he was going to come back to," he said.

The dog's owner was extremely gracious and thanked Ussery for his quick actions. The dog was not injured.

-via Nothing to Do with Aborath