National borders are artificial constructs that you can't see from above. However, they are important to people who live in those countries, and are carefully surveyed by cartographers. They are marked with signs, survey markers, and sometimes fences. Many are also supervised by border guards and immigration officials. But when national borders are also natural features of the earth, like rivers, oceans, or mountain ridges, they can sometimes move. This brings us to the glacier that covers the peaks of the Alps. The border between Switzerland and Italy runs over the highest ridge of the Alps, and the glacier underneath is moving. This is cause for concern, as you can imagine. It's a special concern for businesses, such as ski resorts, that can change nationality without moving at all. Vox tells us the history of the Swiss-Italian glacial border and what's to become of it as climate change melts the glacier.

One part of figure skating that you don't see that much of on TV is the part where a skater's fans will throw things onto the ice after a performance. At one time, it was customary to throw flowers on the ice, but that left a lot of debris that had to be cleaned up, and in 2001 the US banned flowers from rinks because of security concerns after 9/11. But fans found another way to show their adoration- by throwing stuffed animal toys on the ice. Skaters talked to NBC Sports about the gifts they've had thrown at them, which sometimes require an army of sweepers to collect. Michelle Kwan had a full skating outfit thrown once -and it fit her! Elvis Stojko and Patrick Chan have seen lingerie thrown on the ice. Stojko got a bra once with a name and phone number attached. Debi Thomas once got a Domino's pizza. And of course, there are the stuffed animals.

What happens to all those toys? For international competitions, shipping them all home is out of the question, so skaters pick and choose what to keep, while the rest are given away. Michelle Kwan once threw a stuffed animal on the rink for a skater she admired before she became famous. Now she still has a great number of stuffed toys still stored at her parents' home, but believes they may be too old to give away. Read about the toys and the stranger items thrown at figure skaters at NBC.  -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Luu)

We've been graced with a few songs by The Kiffness where he turns cat noises into music here and at Supa Fluffy. We've also seen TikTok chains where people add onto existing videos until it's a full orchestra. In this video, TikTokers started with a Kiffness video in which an angry cat has already been autotuned, but changed the song to something you'll recognize. These TikTok chains can go in many directions, but this particular collaboration is an earworm. The third vocalist (second rapper) has some NSFW lyrics. -via Fark

The question from AskReddit was, "Teachers of Reddit, what was the worst thing you had to confiscate from a student?" The post got more than 10,000 comments. Some of the stories shared were pretty funny.

I had to confiscate a sea bass from a student who had brought it in to use in the playground at break time...he was walking around slapping people in the face with it and challenging them to a duel..

-FearlessPressure3

The bass in that story was dead, but live animals made the list several times: cats, dogs, fish, and this.

When I taught grade 2 a kid managed to bring a live wild badger in a box. It promply escaped and we had to evacuate while animal control was called. The kid's parents had no idea how he caught a badger, and he never told us where he got it.

-Leprechan_Sushi

Of course, there are stories of dangerous items like guns and ammo, a tattoo machine, and a 6-year-old with a broken bottle to be used as a weapon. One kid brought his baby sister to school without his parents noticing. You can read the best 30 stories in a ranked list at Bored Panda.

(Image credit: Flickr user John Campbell)

It's been more than five years since we introduced you to Tania Hennessy’s page called Doughnut Kitten. It's a cute and relaxing look at a kitten riding a frosted doughnut along a path of rainbows. You can't get any sweeter than that! It's good for meditation or for a smile anytime you need it. It's a project from Tania Hennessy, an artist and photographer in Vancouver who fosters kittens for VOKRA (the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association). The kitten in the doughnut was one of her foster kittens. His name is Spaghetti.



Spaghetti was a member of the litter Hennessy called the pasta kittens. You won't be surprised to learn that the other kittens were named Orzo, Tortellini, Penne, and Macaroni. Spaghetti is the one on Hennessy's shoulder.


Hennessy tells us about the photoshoot that became Doughnut Kitten.

He’s sitting in a 3D printed doughnut prop which is attached to a set we built to lock it into exactly the right place. There was even a space under the prop that hid a little pillow for maximum kitten comfort.
During auditions, our adorable models would drift off to sleep in the prop, make playful silly faces, and photobomb each other as we attempted to get them to look at the camera with all kinds of toys, treats, and weird sounds.

That led to some wonderful outtakes!



The image that was chosen for Doughnut Kitten has Spaghetti looking directly at the camera, so his eyes follow you when you look at him. The result is "a pastel frosted confection" that we can turn to when we need a kitten, a doughnut, or a rainbow. -Thanks, Tania!

CGP Grey is back after six months off to explain the interstate highway system to us. He lays out the plan of the grid as it was originally intended, which over time led to many oddities and exceptions. It makes sense in general, but the US is not completely sensical. The needs of urban areas clash with restrictions of land and geography -not to mention local politics- to give us some strange bits of roadway. Even if your city isn't mentioned, it's probably got something that doesn't quite adhere to the overall plan.

This information will definitely separate the generations. We got to five minutes in before I learned something I didn't already know, because I learned to drive while the interstate was still being constructed, and I drove all over the country using maps, landmarks, and dead reckoning. I have a daughter who is 40 years younger. She also drives all over the country, using nothing but GPS, and will never consult a map, much less learn how to orient herself by knowledge about highway systems. I hope she is never traveling when the electrical grid goes down. -via Digg

Last week's Sunday crossword puzzle in the New York Times was called Sci-Fi Showdown. It contained plenty of answers that were references to the worlds of Star Trek and Star Wars. The real kicker was the revealer clue, at 70-across. The puzzle isn't playing any favorites, as both Star Trek and Star Wars works! The beauty in the scheme is how the down clues work: they had to fit, use either franchise in the answer- meaning they had to be only one letter different, had to be correct with the same clue, and also work with the words going across them.

Trekkies, you’ll find TRAP, WRIST, PAYEES and LEAKED at 71-, 67-, 47- and 35-Down, making your crosses. Star Wars fans, you’ll get different entries that fit the same clues. “It’s a TRAP” can also be “it’s a WRAP”; a “body part that precedes ‘band’” can be a WRIST or a WAIST; “ones involved in a transaction” can be PAYEES or PAYERS; and “let out, in a way,” can be LEAKED or LEASED.

Whether you're a fan or Star Trek or Star Wars, or both, or neither, and even if you don't like crossword puzzles, this is pretty mind-blowing. Crossword constructor Stephen McCarthy gets the credit. If you aren't subscribed to the New York Times, you can find the entire puzzle revealed here. Note the 21-letter answers for 3 and 17 down.  -via Boing Boing

Robert and Samantha's 4-year-old daughter Aubrin Sage is an experienced snowboarder- she began when she was only 18 months old! She's also into dinosaurs. Her father rigged her up with a microphone for this video, so we get to hear her commentary as she shushes down the hill. It's adorable, and there are clues to her training, as this fearless child says "I won't fall, maybe I will, but that's okay, 'cause we all fall." And she ends the video with a great pun. Robert tells us how he taught Aubrin Sage to snowboard in this blog post. You can follow the tiniest snowboarder and her family at Instagram. -via Digg

We've posted a lot about the patent medicines of the 19th century, and now here's one that's different: not a scam, not addictive, and not poison -it's just odd. Atlas Obscura was looking for a Valentine subject, and found Valentine's Meat Juice.

In the fall of 1870, Mann S. Valentine II, who ran a dry goods store, saw his wife fall ill with digestive problems that doctors couldn't treat. So he spent weeks working on a tonic made of beef juice and egg whites. Mrs. Valentine couldn't eat solid food, so it provided her with the nutrients she needed, and she rallied. Valentine was so excited about his success that he made more, and started Valentine’s Meat Juice company. His tonic became quite popular, even without heroin or cocaine, or claims to be a cure-all. President James A. Garfield even used it after he was shot in 1881. In fact, the Valentine’s Meat Juice company stayed in business until 1986! Read the story of Valentine and his meat juice at Atlas Obscura.  

PS: Upon looking for the bottles for Sandyra, I also found this post with some interesting pictures of Valentine himself.

In 1876, James McNeill Whistler designed and painted an entire room around the image of peacocks. The homeowner hated it. Peacocks adorn the classic chenille bedspreads of the mid-20th century. Louis Comfort Tiffany designed the Peacock Doors at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago. Peacocks had legendary powers in the tales told of them, but it was simply their appearance that inspired the imagination. The image of a male peacock with those beautiful tail feathers has been a classic motif since the birds were first exported from India, but it was suddenly everywhere with the rise of Art Nouveau.

A true obsession with the peacock began in the British Arts and Crafts movement, then landed in France which birthed the Art Nouveaumovement. While the peacock left its mark on the gorgeous architecture, fabrics, jewelry, and furniture from that era, it never truly went away. Read about the Art Nouveau peacock and see lots of pictures at Messy Nessy Chic.

If you live in Minnesota -or any northern state or Canada- the ultimate in backyard family fun is a skating rink. More and more people are dedicating an area of their yard to a winter rink. Still, that fun comes with maintenance concerns. Professional rinks use Zambonis to condition the ice, which are a bit expensive to use in a private backyard. But where there's a will, there's a way. Backyard rink owners are a creative bunch, and they've employed all sorts of methods to bring the ice on a homemade skating rink to pristine condition. These methods and gadgets are called "homebonis."

Rink-makers are famous for their homemade resurfacing contraptions, from PVC pipes and towels dragged behind buckets to tanks hauled on modified golf carts. Traff hooks three snow blowers together to clear his rink and invested in a military-grade water heater to make fresh coats of ice more robust.

But all home rinks share some universals: sun and warm temps are enemies; post-skate shoveling is a necessity, and late-night flooding is a mystical state.

"When you're out there at 10 o'clock and it's dark and the wind is still, you can hear everything from miles away," Greco said. "Then once you're done, you look at that perfect sheet for the morning and you're like, 'This is awesome.' "

Watch a homeboni in action.

Read more about backyard rinks and what folks go through to maintain them at the Star Tribune.   -via TYWKIWDBI

What you see above is a small portion of the Great Miracle Wisteria, which had been growing at Ashikaga Flower Park in Japan for 140 years. A wisteria vine can grow awfully big in that time! It's only one of many wisteria vines of all colors that grow in the park. The best time to see wisteria is mid-April to mid-May, but other flowers worth seeing bloom in other months. Yet even in winter, Ashikaga Flower Park is quite popular, as they replace the blossoms with millions of festive lights. In fact, most of the Instagram pictures tagged with Ashikaga Flower Park show the winter lights.  

Would you rather see a murmuration of starlings in Denmark? Frozen lake bubbles in Alberta? Glow worms in Alabama? A moonbow in Zimbabwe? Smithsonian has a rundown of natural phenomena worth traveling for all over the world, for a vacation that will help you commune with nature. Although I might save you some money by reminding you that you can also see a moonbow at Cumberland Falls State Park in Kentucky.

Daniel Solis created a whole new order of birds with the help of artificial intelligence. He fed images from old public domain bird illustrations from the Biodiversity Heritage Library into the program called LookingGlassAI 1.1. The results range from "you might believe this is a real bird" to "what kind of mess am I looking at?"

Only some of these images are named. Maybe Solis should consult with the weird Twitter account semi-plausible birds, which actually names birds that do not exist.

Illegal Eagle, seen here in its natural environment under witness protection pic.twitter.com/hovlrgrODH

— Daniel Solis, birds suddenly appear (@DanielSolis) January 31, 2022

See them all in this extensive, image-heavy Twitter Thread. The pictures will be easier to see at Threadreader. Don't stop scrolling when he says "That's it for tonight, y'all." The thread takes up the next day for quite a few more birds. Solis says he has hundreds of them! -via Metafilter

The earth exerts gravitational force on the moon all the time; otherwise, it would fly off into space. But if something were to go wrong with our moon's orbit, what would be the effect on earth? Kurzgesagt gives us the rundown, but starts off assuaging our fears over this by insisting that it's not going to happen. As if they know for sure. Okay, the moon's been there a long time already, so let's assume that it's not going to fall anytime soon.

The good news in this theoretical scenario is that it takes a year for the moon to fall. The bad news is that conditions on earth get horribly bad really fast. This fantasy is truly apocalyptic, but stay with it; there's a surprise ending. And the video isn't quite as long as it seems, because the last two minutes are an ad. -via Digg

Bored Panda unearthed an AskReddit post about the "most interesting, bizarre, offensive, surprising" things contains in wills. The original thread contained many stories about petty and vindictive wills and family secrets revealed, but also some rather funny bequests that are worth sharing. I got a laugh out of this one:

Not a Lawyer, but an aging woman my family knew left her house(large, and in a very affluent neighborhood) and estate to family friends for so long as her cats were alive and taken care of in said house. After they died, the house was to be sold and the remaining estate donated.

The weird thing is, it's been like 20 years and the cats are still alive.

Also, they've changed color.

Ahem. While there are still some entries that smack of revenge beyond the grave or just don't make any sense at all, the funniest replies managed to float to the top in a ranked list of weird bequests you'll surely get a kick out of.