Lately, your waifu has been pestering you about your long-term future together. She wants a ring, if for no other reason than to show it off to her friends.

You should give her what she wants by doing what this man in Japan did. He collected his fingernail clippings for a year. Then he ground them into a fine powder, baked the powder, then compressed the resulting glob into a black gemstone.

Good luck and may you have many blissful years together!

-via David Burge

6-year old Ethan Haus and his dog, Remington, got lost while playing outside their home near Elk River, Minnesota. Law enforcement officers and 600 volunteers began searching for him as night fell.

Among them was Steve Fines, a commercial drone operator. He used one of his drones equipped with a heat sensor to search for the child from the sky. Fines found the boy lying in a cornfield with his dog as the night temperature dropped to 30°F. ABC News reports:

Ethan was seen, with his dog Remington, around 1:50 a.m. Wednesday lying down in a cornfield a little more than a mile east of his home, Sheriff Joel Brott said in a statement.

When first responders reached Ethan, he was cold but otherwise in good health, according to Brott.

-via Instapundit

If you visit an old-fashioned pub, you may see a metal or wooden rail along at ankle height around the bar. These rails emerged by the late Nineteenth Century. Why did they become popular? Wayne Curtis of the magazine Inbibe explains that they were footrests that encouraged drinkers to relax while standing, and therefore buy more drinks:

Foot rails are both altruistic and mercenary. They’re altruistic because they’re installed for the comfort of the drinker. They’re mercenary because the more comfortable drinkers are, the more they’ll spend. A modest investment in a foot rail can evidently lead to a pleasing return.

Turns out, humans aren’t really designed to stand for long periods with feet flat on the floor. This contributes to stress on the spine, and you can feel it in your lower back. A foot rail allows us to redistribute the load on our feet—first one foot, then the other—and alter the tilt of our spines. “Bartenders were probably the first ergonomics experts on the planet,” write the authors of Deskbound, a 2016 book about the hazards of the sedentary life. “A standing-height drinking table that you can lean on, with a place to rest your foot? Genius.”

But brief lunchtime visits to bars faded away as a common practice, and so did this piece of furniture designed to facilitate standing:

Foot rails faded in importance for a simple reason: The workingman’s saloon, where one knocked back a shot or two and then quickly returned to work, were replaced by bars where people lingered. “Belly up to the bar” was not a facile metaphor, but a reasonably exact description of what one did. Then barkeeps found that if they added stools, people would linger and order more. (See: “mercenary.”) Today, the foot rail persists in a feral fashion, sometimes inconveniently. The legs of bar stools bump into them; the feet of customers can get entangled when dethroning, especially if tipsy.

This is an interesting hypothesis. But I'd like to suggest another. While composing this blog post, I selected the above photo, which describes the brass sheet in front of the foot rail as a "spit trough". Googling around led me to learn that some bars used to have troughs where customers could spit or pee without leaving their chosen spot. Sam Sessa wrote in 2010 for the Baltimore Sun that:

If the pub was packed full of people and you were lucky enough to have a spot at the bar, you weren't going to want to risk losing it by walking to the bathroom. But when nature calls, sooner or later, you have to pick up the phone.

What to do?

To solve the problem, bars began installing impromptu urinals underneath the bars. They were stainless steal troughs with a faucet at one end and a drain at the other. That way, the beer could go in one end and out the other at the same time.

-via VA Viper | Photo: Thirteen of Clubs

Since 1990, Andy Gregg has made unique and luxury pieces of furniture out of old motorcycle and bicycle parts. He takes wheels, tires, pipes, and handlebars and turns them into tables, chairs, and couches.

Gregg feels a mission to give new life to old trash. He explained to Eluxe magazine that:

I’m glad that environmentally friendly materials have been growing in popularity, and there are many designers like me who think some trash is just too good for the garbage. I am trying to make playful, modern, sometimes even elegant pieces from bike parts. Sometimes I also use train and automobile windows for tabletops, or surplus automotive seat-belt webbing for seating upholstery.

This is Peggy. She works at a library. She smiles.

We librarians smile a lot. We're taught to. We're supposed to be friendly and welcoming, no matter what you crazy patrons do. Although we disapprove of you (yes, even you), we never, ever show it.

At librarians' professional conferences, we informally share crazy patron stories. And now Peggy Goforth of the Madison County Public Library in North Carolina has one to top them all. From the Citizen-Times newspaper:

“Another patron kept noticing the bag and she told us she was going to have to leave because a man’s got a bag with a snake in it,” the library’s interim director and administrative manager. The woman, Goforth remembered, spoke in the singular. “She said, ‘A snake.’”

There was not a singular snake, but, in fact, plural snakes. Many plural snakes:

After approaching the card-carrying library patron, Goforth asked him about the bag. “He said, ‘My pets are harmless. Here, let me show you.’ And he poured them all out on the front desk. They just wriggled everywhere.” [...]

"He probably had a dozen snakes in that bag. They were all different kinds. He had pythons and boas and he was just very proud of his snakes. He had to pick each one up, tell me their names and how long he had them. It was almost like listening to a person talk about their children.”

A dozen snakes.

Dumped right on Peggy's service desk.

This is not the first time that the library staff has told a patron to remove their pets from the library. Or even the first snake:

Goforth said another man with a snake wrapped around his arm had been asked by staff to leave on multiple occasions. After walking back into the library, still with the snake on his arm, he tried to claim his pet was a "seeing-eye snake."

"I just looked at him," Goforth deadpanned. "He looked at me and said, 'I don't think that'll fly, will it.' And I said, 'I don't think so.' He said, "Well, I guess I should take my seeing eye snake back outside."

Anyway, after so many pets have entered the library, Library Director Peggy Goforth asked that the County Board of Commissioners change the rules to prohibit seeing-eye snakes and the like from entering:

Under the new rules, only service dogs “individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability” are allowed inside Madison County libraries. The policy specifically states that all other animal species are excluded, including animals used for “emotional support, well-being, comfort or companionship.”

Although I've never been caught bringing a snake into a library, a rule was created at a library that I worked at as a result of my actions.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Paul Moon/The News-Record & Sentinel

Andri Ragettli is a champion Swiss skier. He has lately been developing training routines inspired by parkour. Absolutely precise balance is necessary. Watch him achieve the impossible while just showing off by adding juggling into the mix.

Content warning: foul language at the end.

-via Geekologie

Matt Alt has thoroughly explored Japan, as he owns a business that translates and exports Japanese media to the US and Europe. Nonetheless--or, perhaps, we should say, as a result--he is frightened of what might result by turning this dial on to one of the two apparent on positions.

What do you think this dial controls?

-via Super Punch

In 1818, mathematicians George Camak and James Gaines were tasked with marking the border between Georgia and Tennessee. This was very difficult in an age long before GPS was invented. Atlas Obscura explains:

Without any modern tools or the zenith sector he requested at his disposal, Camak was forced to rely on inaccurate astronomical tables and the stars. Without those tools, Camak marked the 35th parallel about one mile south of its actual location.

A mile might not mean much, but a similar surveying error once resulted in the US building an expensive fort inside the borders of British Canada. Camak suspected that his astronomical tables were inaccurate, so he returned to the task eight years later and moved the marker.

That survey, though, was also wrong, and Camak's work resulted in a border dispute between the three states covering 68 square miles of land:

Over the years, several disputes have broken out among legislatures from Georgia and Tennessee over access to water in the Tennessee River. In 2007, the original stone maker was mysteriously stolen, it has since been replaced, however, it’s unclear what happened to the original marker .

You can visit the stone by following the directions provided by Atlas Obscura.

Photo: Kenj

Tutushka, a makeup artist from Nikolaev, Ukraine, specializes in lip makeup. She can turn your mouth into a living canvas that speaks of tropical beaches, vibrant fruits, and scenic vistas. Her designs pop out of the screen, drawing you into little stories. You can see more of her work on her Instagram page.

The band Doublewide Kings offers this hot and tasty custom guitar originally made by John Bolin of Bolin Guitars. A mere $6,500 will supersize your music.

The little details are nice, such as the golden arches painted onto the fretboard and the slogan "i'm lovin' it" written on the back. And it's completely playable, as you can see in this video:

-via Technabob

They don't blink, which is unfortunate. That would really ramp up the fright factor. But they do look a lot like humanoid eyes.

Not Quite Nigella was inspired to make these rhubarb pies after a conversation with a friend:

"I'm so hungry I'm going to eat someone's face off!" she said with madness in her eyes, while kneeling dangerously close to my face.

"How long have you been on this diet?" I asked.

"A day," she said solemnly.

If you're going on a face-eating diet, these pies should have a place on your menu.

-via Nag on the Lake

Hammered in Time of Shelton, Connecticut offers unique handmade bar furniture, such as stools, tables, and, most importantly, urinals. That's because your bodily beer processing unit moves expeditiously, providing you with an output that must be expended.

Each kegrinal is made of stainless steel and comes with built-in wall brackets. All of the sharp edges have been smoothed down so that you aren't injured while using the kegrinal.

-via Rain Noe's weekly design roast at Core 77, which should be on your regular reading list.

A pelican stepped into a fish and chips shop in Kiama, New South Wales, Australia. It waited in line. But the service was slow, so after briefly looking behind the counter, he explored the restaurant.

I don't understand why the parents of the little boy didn't pull him away from the bird. That's a wild animal, not a tame pet. To his credit, he had more sense that the woman who tried to pet the pelican.

-via Dave Barry

The Barbie Malibu Dreamhouse, as seen in Barbie lore and the TV show, is now a place where you can actually stay. Airbnb offers a luxury villa in Malibu, California which has been altered with lots of pink frilly Barbie accessories and amenities.

The Dreamhouse will be available only from October 27-28. It includes a pool with waterslide, a crafting room, and a home movie theater. Proceeds from the rental will go to the Barbie Dream Gap Project, which is a non-profit project that encourages girls to conquer self-limiting beliefs and fully pursue their ambitions.

-via Design Boom

The French design studio Exercise likes to find innovative takes on play and exercise. Their re-imagined games bring people together in novel ways.

Most recently, Exercise took on ping pong. It has developed unusual paddles that may make the game challenging for experienced players.

It also suggests that the table can change. The tables in the back of the above photo are the most interesting to me. They're set up for a 3-way ping pong battle. You can see more photos of this project at Design Boom.