This whimsical store appeared in downtown Pittsburgh on November 18th. The sign on the door says the owners are on vacation, but that just covers the fact that this is an art installation by Toby Atticus Fraley.
The installation is part of the "Pop Up Pittsburgh" project designed to brighten vacant storefronts in downtown Pittsburgh. Along with a warmly lit inviting interior there are also a couple of animatronic robots giving some movement and interest to the installation. It will have a year long run at 210 6th St.
See lots more pictures and read about the fictional repair shop's services at the "business" website. Link -Thanks, Toby!
Oskar the kitten may have been born blind, but things are looking up for him! Watch him in his new home, discovering what toys are for. We saw a slightly older Oskar in a video last month, playing with the wind from a hair dryer. That turned out to be a copy of the original video (now corrected) which did not explain that Oskar is blind. -via I Am Bored
These two siblings found a toy on the floor and made appropriate use of it! The WWE would find themselves some stiff competition if this were to catch on. -via Buzzfeed
This project combines three of my favorite things: Star Wars, LEGO, and puns. What else could you ask for? See more pictures in builder Lino M's photo stream. Link -via @johncfarrier
The Cleveland AAF (American Advertising Federation) challenged ad agencies to a competition to make a castle of canned goods. The object was to draw attention to the needs of local food banks. The canned goods used would later go to the Cleveland Foodbank, along with a donation from the Cleveland AAF. Melamed Riley used nearly 400 cans and built a facsimile of their local White Castle hamburger outlet and named it "Crave-A-Lot." It has lights and even a drive-through! Their castle won first place. Link-Thanks, Rachel!
Randall Munroe at xkcd put together a chart about money, so massive that you'll have to enlarge a few times just to read it. The statistics cover what things cost, what people earn, business profits, taxes, government spending, utilities, war, and more. The amounts of money for each are laid out in blocks for comparison. That's a lot of blocks. What is shown here, as compressed as it is, is just a portion. Link -via Boing Boing
Take a stroll down memory lane to the time you were young and video games were the reason you dashed home from school. How many of these 20 games did you play on your NES, SNES, or Genesis? See them all in their original animated glory at Unreality magazine. Link
The elderly women who dive for seafood off the island of Jeju, Korea, are called haenyo, which means "sea women." They are carrying on a century-old tradition that began when women realized they could bring home the seafood without paying the taxes that would be levied on men in the same profession. It is a declining way of life, which explains why the remaining haenyo are elderly. Read more about them and see more photos at Kuriositas. Link
This Twaggie was illustrated from a Tweet from @jwalkonthemoon. Surely I'm not the only one to notice this looks strangely like a TARDIS, which would of course attract many people! Link
The species Metasepia Pfefferi is commonly called the flamboyant cuttlefish. Not only is it colorful, it "walks" along the bottom of the sea between Malaysia and Australia. According to a rather dry scientific description at Wikipedia, the color changes are a complex form of camouflage, used either to blend in with the cuttlefish's background or to warn away predators. The cuttlefish's flesh is poisonous, making it only one of three known toxic cephalopods. -via the Presurfer
It was almost a year ago that we introduced you to the remixed movie concepts of Sean Hartter. Since then, he's expanded the collection to 120 movie posters! It was hard to decide which poster I like best, but I would stand in line to see either of these two films. Maybe you'd prefer Ving Rhames in Mad Max or maybe The Halloween Chainsaw Massacre or Tim Curry as The Joker. Some posters are slightly NSFW. Link
Juan-Diego was inspired by colors to write a song. The result is both cute and funny. Who knew a guy getting hit with a pie had so many colors? -Thanks, Juan!
We showed you the night lights that Jason Hull (jayfish) makes out of vintage cameras. He has since opened an Etsy store, although the inventory is a little thin so far. But you can make your own! Hull has also posted the process for converting old flash cameras into night lights at Instructables. Link
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
How straight-laced were the Pilgrims? They tried to be, but you know how it goes. A shoe gets unbuckled, a bonnet becomes unlaced, and suddenly your hormones go into overdrive. The next thing you know, your horn of plenty hath spilled forth with wicked abundance.
Pretty much everything we "know" about the Pilgrims is untrue. Our modern-day image of the stern, clean-living, God-fearing residents of Plymouth Colony is largely mythical. It's an illusion that took shape in the nineteenth century, as some overzealous American attempted to construct an official, more respectable history of our growing nation. Historians cannot even determine exactly how many of the approximately 100 passengers on the Mayflower were Puritans and how many were just leaving to find better lives away from the gripping poverty that plagued England at the time. It is generally believed there were more of the latter than the former.
First off, they never referred to themselves or thought of themselves as "the Pilgrims." The term "pilgrim" was reserved for Muslims making the pilgrimage to Mecca. The Pilgrims referred to themselves as "the Saints" or "the Separatists." They also referred to themselves as "Old Planters" or "Old Comers." Draw your own conclusions from that. The name "the Pilgrims," as we call them today, caught on around the time of the American Revolution. Yes, they were notorious beer drinkers. They weren't even headed for Massachusetts; they aimed for Georgia or a place further south, because of the milder weather. One of the reasons they ended up in Massachusetts in the first place was the lack of beer. According to one of the diaries of a Mayflower passenger, "We could not take time for further search ...our victuals being much spent, especially our beer."
One of the first structures built when they landed was a common brewery for the colonists. Many of the Pilgrims were brewers, this being done primarily in the home at the time. While we don't have the details about their private lives, we do know that by 1636, the colonists had a published set of rules that listed capital offenses. Among them were sodomy, rape, buggery, and some cases of adultery. So they were certainly concerned with sex, if not necessarily always having it.
However, court records from the colony indicate that sex-related crimes were common transgressions. Fornication, which was defined as sex outside of marriage, was a frequently committed crime, one that often resulted in a fine. Sometimes the evidence of a conviction was solely of the birth of a child in the early months of a marriage.
The only recorded execution for a sex crime occurred in 1642, when 17-year-old Thomas Granger was convicted of buggery. The young man had engaged in unfortunate, intimate relations with some local sheep, and he paid the ultimate price for it. Less severe penalties (relatively speaking), often consisted of whippings. And like Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter, adulterers were sometimes required to wear the capital letters "AD" on their clothing. No, the Pilgrims weren't exactly saints. But they definitely took their sins seriously!
