The spice must flow--and it does through the dough in this beautiful loaf by Chris-Rachael Oseland, the internet's Kitchen Overlord. Building upon her previous successes cooking Dune-themed foods, Chris-Rachael has called a big one. Again, it is the legend.
The teeth, which can be fashioned into razor-sharp crysknives, are made of almonds. After baking and some decorative painting, the sleeper awakened to find a feast that will change the face of Arrakis. Bless his coming and his going. May his passage through your digestive tract change the world.
LEGO expert Jeremy Moody has spent the past year developing a comprehensive chart of every color present in LEGO bricks. That's 182 shades that Moody has painstakingly arranged and labeled. You can see a larger version of the image here.
Moody includes the metallic tints, translucent pieces, and glow-in-the-dark pieces. It's an indispensable reference guide for LEGO enthusiasts.
Elephants can be beautiful and majestic, but they're also a nuisance when they trample crops. That's a problem in eastern Africa. Zoologist Lucy King developed a novel solution.
Elephants are afraid of bees because stings inside their trunks are very painful. When they hear bees, they run away. So King invented this fence that consists of a long string of wire with beehives every 10 meters. When elephants hit the wire, they rile up the bees, who leave their hives to swarm and attack. The sound of the bees drives away the intruding elephants. Edible Geography describes what is sometimes called the "honey fence":
A pilot honey fence in 2009 proved successful, deterring all but one bull elephant, and The Elephant and Bees Project has since spread to sites across Africa. Neville Sheldrick of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust told Africa Geographic that nearby farmers are sure the fence is working: “When I visit they proudly walk me around showing me the footprints of elephants that have walked up to and along the fence in several locations before turning back towards the park.”
By encircling a village with a cordon of hives, the village’s crops are protected, the elephants steered away from potential conflict, and, adds Carr-Hartley, “the farmers are able to garner some revenue from the harvesting of honey.” The result of truly delightful example of interspecies landscape engineering, jars of “Eleephant-friendly” honey are for sale at The Elephant and Bees Research Centre in Tsavo, Kenya.
This amazing object is called Emergence Lab. Thomas Medicus, an artist in Austria, designed it to illustrate how seemingly random objects constitute larger orders hidden in plain sight.
The block of acrylic consists of 216 strips. The interior sides are painted in layers with silicone oil. The figures are painted to block their opposites. When the arrangement is seen at from just the right perspective, clarity rises from confusion.
He knows if you're been bad or good, but no one cares. No one will listen. He can help, but like Cassandra in Greek mythology, no one believes him. This is Santa's curse. All he can do now is leave a lump of coal in the police chief's stocking as a punishment.
Need to be held and cuddled? That'll be $60 an hour.
Not everyone has the option of voluntary human physical contact. Sometimes, it's necessary to pay for it.
In 2012, we mentioned a woman who offered to cuddle strangers for money. Since then, she's received a lot of competition. There's been a boom in the cuddling industry. RentAFriend alone offers 523,876 people who will do the job for an average rate of $23 an hour--and much higher if you want quality. Olga Oksman describes the development of this essential service in The Atlantic:
At Snuggle Buddies, most of Becky Rodrigues’s clients are a mix of single and married men in their 40s and 50s. She also sees some younger men, who are in their 20s and usually have religious backgrounds that made them feel shameful about human touch. Rodrigues thinks that she sees so few women coming in because women are more likely to believe that affection “isn’t real if you have to pay for it.” She thinks that women have an easier time satisfying their need for physical touch from friends, because it’s more socially acceptable than for men.
There are more options than just cuddling for cash. You can also hire a friend. Oksman talked to Esme Seraifel, a professional friend, about why there is demand for her services:
Esme Seraifiel, another friend I talked to, has some guesses as to why people these days are eager to pay for companionship. She thinks that digital interactions have given people a taste of what it’s like to be able to craft clever responses and upload only the most flattering photos, which makes interactions in person seem less comfortable by comparison. In this context, the idea of a risk-free, on-demand friend can seem very appealing. Indeed, Christie has told me that she has never met anyone who hoped to be friends outside of the service. Clients, she says, are looking for a friendship that they can dictate all the terms of—where and when they meet, or if they ever meet again.
Atreyu, the great hero of the movie The Neverending Story (and the first half of the novel) rides a magnificent stallion named Artax. In his long journey to find a solution to the Nothing consuming Fantasia, the pair crosses the Swamp of Sadness. There, Artax dies in a haunting scene that almost breaks Atreyu.
Artax is developed in greater depth in the original novel, which I highly recommend. He's is 1 of 16 extraordinary horses of fantasy rounded up by Tor. Other great horses from the list include Brego, which was Aragorn's ride in The Lord of the Rings, and Swift Wind from She-Ra: Princess of Power.
Yes, people will cheer the death of Emperor Palpatine and the destruction of his brutal regime. But what they will remember is that, after the Empire collapsed and the Rebel Alliance assumed the responsibilites of government, they lost their jobs and inflation rose massively.
Dr. Zachary Feinstein, a financial engineer who teaches at Washington University in St. Louis, argues in a paper that the loss of the hugely expensive Death Stars and the fall of Palpatine's political and economic order would have induced a huge financial crisis that the new government would have been hard pressed to manage. Matthew Braga of Motherboard read the paper and discussed it with Feinstein. He writes:
According to Feinstein, the destruction of the Death Star caused a dramatic 12.9 percent drop in the Empire’s Gross Galactic Product overnight, averaged across a thousand simulations.
To come to this conclusion, Feinstein combined bits of information from the Star Wars canon and with historical data about the US economy to calculate the likely cost of the Death Star's construction (believe it or not, there’s a whole episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars on deregulating the Galactic Empire’s banks). He then used this cost to calibrate a model of the Galactic Empire's financial system and economic health prior to the Death Star's demise.
"We use these results to deduce the size and composition of a bailout necessary that the new rulers of the galaxy, i.e., the Rebel Alliance, would need to allocate to stave off a galaxy-wide financial crisis and economic depression," Feinstein wrote.
The last time that Mark Hamill, the actor who played Luke Skywalker, put on a stormtrooper armored suit, he snuck onto the Death Star, assaulted loyal officers of the Empire, and freed the traitor Leia Organa. Now he's back. But this time, Hamill is wearing the suit for a good purpose. He's raising money for the Star Wars charity A Force for Change.
In this video, Hamill walks around Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles while in disguise. He chats with passersby, asking if they're going to see Episode VII: The Force Awakens. He interacts with other cosplayers hanging around the Hollywood Walk of Fame, including Darth Vader and Iron Man.
Would you dare relax inside the gaping maw of a killer whale? Does the lure of the anglerfish draw you in to rest? It will be safe, because these are just hanging lounge chairs. Porky Hefer (a great name!) is a South African designer exhibiting his work, which includes these chairs, this week at the Design Miami show.
Hefer specializes in nesting chairs that swallow sitters whole. His Monstera Deliciosa line includes menacing beasts of the sea that create the appearance of danger.
People told Imgur member morihime that she should do something different with her hair. So she wove it into a braided beard worthy of a dwarven king. It is a most manly and robust beard--far more than I am capable of growing.
Last weekend, Officer Pittaluga of Kenton County, Kentucky collided with a deer while driving his cruiser. The car suffered minor damage, but the deer didn't. It picked itself up and ran off into the woods as fast as it could.
The police are using the video as a demonstration of how to handle a large animal car accident. Officer Pittaluga braked firmly and steered away from the deer while maintaining full control of the car.
Every human parent knows this experience. To your kid, bathtime is playtime. To mom and dad, it's a chore that needs to be done expeditiously, then crossed off the to-do list.
At The Hide in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, baby elephant wanted to wallow in his mud bath. Mommy elephant wanted to get washed and back on the move. Mommy elephant had to use the strength of her trunk to keep the baby on task.
Actor Nick Offerman is famous for being Nick Offerman. That's as it should be! After all, he's a very Nick Offermanish Nick Offerman.
He also played Ran Swanson on the TV show Parks and Recreation, where he served as the epitome of masculinity for a generation in desperate need of becoming more Nick Offermanish.
To get into the Nick Offerman spirit of the season, he sat by a fireplace for 45 minutes while sipping Laguvulin Single Malt Scotch Whisky. He never speaks a word, for to break the silence is to disturb perfection. This is his "Yule Log"--a meditative experience that both soothes and fortifies.
Some lucky Jawa is going to find this BB-8 droid be all set for retirement. Disney, the owner of Star Wars, and Kay Jewelers made this custom 4.5-inch tall model of the droid. It rolls in style with 18 carat gold and about 18 carats of diamonds. Building it took Kay Jewelers 600 hours of work.
