Kitten Lady Gets Married Among Rescue Animals



When two kitten advocates love each other very much, they end up volunteering to rescue them. They might also end up getting married.

Hannah Shaw, also known as Kitten Lady, recently married her longtime love Andrew Marttila with an animal themed wedding. The ceremony was outdoors at Farm Animal Refuge in San Diego. When they announced the wedding on Instagram, their friends speculated on how odd it would be to see them in fancy clothing. They cleaned up quite well, and it was a lovely ceremony, officiated by a veterinarian

The bride and groom were chill about what could go wrong when farm animals are incorporated into a wedding, and so any deviation from the script was considered just more of the fun. A pig served as the ring bearer. Instead of the traditional bouquet toss, they had a watermelon toss, which the pigs quite enjoyed. The centerpieces were fed to the animals after the wedding. But the big moment was when Hannah presented Andrew with a very special gift basket filled with calico kittens! A good time was had by all.   

You'll find more wedding pictures at Instagram.

And in case you are wondering, the father of the bride was there, and in fact sang a song at the reception, which you can see in the next-to last image in this gallery.


Who's Been Cutting My Baby's Hair?

Breez Harley has a toddler son named Lander who has long hair. But the front has been getting shorter! Has someone been cutting the child's hair? Her boyfriend denied it was him. The boy doesn't normally interact with anyone else without his parents around. But he's definitely been sporting bangs lately, and his hair seems to get a little shorter day by day. He's starting to look like he's got a mullet, although the front is quite uneven. Has Lander been playing with scissors? Or is it something more sinister? They finally figured out what was happening, but you won't guess the real story.

You can watch the video at reddit if you want to be surprised or at TikTok if you don't care about spoilers in the tags and comments.

(Image credit: Breez Harley)


What It's Like to Work on a Body Farm

A body farm is a research facility where scientists study dead bodies in a controlled environment. It may sound gruesome, but this is crucial research in archaeology, crime investigation, and environmental studies. Hayley Mickleburgh is a forensic archaeologist studying buried bodies to determine who they were and how they died. Her current research is in mass graves, because that information can be very important to determine what happened after wars are fought.

In an interview at Vice, Mickleburgh explains what a body farm is, the importance of her work, and some of the things she does. For example, she investigates how bacteria from the environment interacts with the bacteria from one or more decomposing bodies to determine how long they've been buried, what killed them, and who they are. Even the soil covering a grave can be evidence of a crime. She also talks about the people who volunteer their bodies for this work after they die, and why she's willing to do the same.  -via Damn Interesting


Engineer Builds Square Wheels for a Bicycle--Then Rides It!

Engineer and YouTuber The Q builds many novel and remarkably high-performing machines, most often with bicycles. Recently, we featured his bike tires made out of tennis balls. Those might work well in an off-road environment where punctures are likely.

So might these wheels, which are square. Or, more precisely, these are treads that rotate around a square frame. Inspired by the polyhedral tires in low-resolution video game graphics, he made this tread-bike that is surprisingly functional. I'm especially impressed with how The Q was able to transfer power from the bike pedals to the tread gears on the back wheel.

-via Laughing Squid


Tom Scott Flies a Small Japanese Hovercraft



You can imagine Tom Scott going to Japan with a long list of things he'd like to try so he can show us what we're missing. Hideyasu Ito bought a leaf blower just because it was on sale. He didn't even need to blow leaves. But it was there later on when he thought about building a hovercraft, not for profit or for clicks, but just to see if he could do it. So Ito kept at it, improving his hovercraft through several iterations at his Micro Hovercraft Laboratory founded just for this kind of project. His latest versions look like a bicycle mounted on a pontoon boat. It's a steerable bouncy castle, sort of. Cool toy, bro! And he was nice enough to let Tom try it out.

Tom noted at YouTube that this is his last video from Japan. Any guesses on where he might go next?


A Patent for Getting "Fresh" Air from a Sewer Pipe

Toilets are connected to vent pipes, which connect with outside air. These allow for gravity to work properly in flushing a toilet and they keep swamp gasses out of your house. They can also be an emergency source of air. In 1982, William O. Holmes patented a hose device that would allow you to snake the hose through the toilet trap and breathe the air from the vent pipe.

Why would you ever want to do that? It's an emergency device in the event of a fire. Toilet air could be smelly, but the concentrations of noxious gasses are pretty low, and it beats being disabled by smoke inhalation. Still, it seems that the better alternative would be to leave the building entirely. I suppose this invention was targeted at large buildings where people may be trapped from escape, and the fire is less deadly than the smoke where you happen to be. -via Nag on the Lake


The Curious Phenomenon of Asparagus Pee Smell

If you've ever eaten asparagus and soon noticed a terrible smell when you urinate, you can blame asparagusic acid. That's the simple explanation, but there's a lot more to it. Dr. Daniel Whitehead is a chemistry professor at Clemson University, and somewhat of an expert in bad smells. His research involves fighting against them, so the sacrifice may be worth it. He explains why asparagusic acid is potent- it contains a double dose of sulphur. Sulphur is what makes skunks smell the way they do, and rotten eggs, and roadkill, and all manner of things that aren't good for us. Yet asparagus doesn't smell that way until our bodies break down the asparagusic acid into its sulphuric components.  

But maybe asparagus doesn't affect your urine that way. Or maybe it does, but you can't smell it. Both these conditions are are in the minority, and you wouldn't know which you fit into unless you lived with someone who could smell it, or looked for those genes in a genetic test. You get the feeling that the people that fall into these different categories should be plottable on a Venn diagram, but they really have no relation to each other and can appear in any combination. I have no idea what category I would fit into because I don't like asparagus and have no interest in eating it to find out. Find out more than you ever thought you needed to know about asparagus and urine at Serious Eats.

(Image credit: H. Zell)


The City That Fell Into the Sea

In the late 13th century, the town of Dunwich in Suffolk, UK, was as big as London, with about 10,000 residents. It was near the North Sea, not quite on the shore, but then the shore moved. Dunwich had eighteen stone churches, chapels, and monasteries. But that was before the sea storms of 1288 and 1328 began a calamitous progression of the sea, which drew closer and carved away the foundations of those ancient buildings. It took 600 years for the sea to eat away at the town, and in 1922, the last of the ruins fell into the ocean.   

While England was powerless in stopping the undermining of Dunwich, many people documented its demise, although with varying accuracy. Residents moved inland one by one, although some held out for as long as possible. In an exercise in wishful thinking, some signed long-term leases and others donated inheritances to the doomed churches. Tax records show that in 1674, only 95 houses were occupied. When the last remnant of All Saints’ Church fell in 1922, it took the remains of its graveyard with it, as bones of the long dead were uncovered and swept out to sea along with the last vestige of Dunwich. Read about the city that fell off a cliff at the Public Domain Review. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Joseph Mallord William Turner)


Giant Flamingo Sees You as a Shrimp



If you haven't been to the Tampa International Airport in the last year, let me introduce you to Phoebe the Flamingo. This clever piece of art gives us a 40-foot-tall flamingo in one one story by putting you, the viewer, under water! The installation by artist Matthew Mazzotta is titled HOME. Only the bird's head, neck, and legs are visible. The rest of the body is implied by a shimmering reflective ceiling that throws dappled lighting underneath and acts as the surface of the water. That perspective makes people the size of the shrimp that flamingos feed on. But there's no danger here. The floor around the sculpture even has warning bumps to help blind people avoid walking into it.



In late 2022, the airport launched a contest to name the flamingo. So many people participated that the procedure was extended, but early this year, Phoebe emerged as the winner. Bryan M, who first submitted the name, received free airline flights for his efforts. He says the name Phoebe is a play on the flamingo's genus Phoenicopterus.  -via reddit


Apple "Find My iPhone" Glitch Leads People to One Man's Home, Over and Over Again

iPhones have a handy feature called "Find My iPhone." If you lose your device, you can ping the location from a computer or another phone so that you can track it down.

That's not working out for Scott Schuster of Richmond, Texas. There's a weird glitch in the app that is leading many people to his house, where Find My iPhone has told them that their phones are presently located. This has led to heated confrontations at all hours of the day and night with strangers who think that Schuster has stolen their phones.

Schuster has contacted Apple about the problem. But, so far, they haven't responded.

-via Dave Barry


Would You Like to See a Snake Coming out of a Frog's Butt?

If the answer is no, well, then, you should have let me know 5 seconds ago. That would have been useful information back in that more innocent bygone age.

Stu McKenzie is a professional snake remover in--you guessed it--Australia. He also dabbles in removing other reptiles, such as monitor lizards, but he mostly deals with snakes.

Last month, he discovered this strange scene. What happened to the frog? His best guess is that the frog ate a dead snake--an extremely venomous Eastern Brown Snake--and was digestively processing it at the time that this photo was taken.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Sunshine Coast Snake Catchers


How and Why the Plant Kingdom Invented Caffeine



Adaptive plant evolution is amazing. Over time, some plants came up with an ingenious chemical that repelled over even killed insects that tried to eat the plant, yet had enough beneficial effects that in the right concentration, it encouraged bees to help with pollination. We call this chemical caffeine. When humans discovered it, we made darn sure that those plants flourished so we could continue to harvest the world's greatest molecule. How that addiction fueled colonization and shaped human history is a story for other posts. Caffeine is so popular that MinuteEarth designed a coffee mug around it, giving them a reason to explain how caffeine works in this ad.


A Glorious Gallery of Exceptional Easter Eggs



There are two main ways to approach Easter eggs. The first way is to look at it as a kid's activity, where they have fun dipping eggs in dyes and later go look for those eggs after you've hidden them in the yard. Then there are these people. They see eggs as an art medium, an opportunity for creative expression. Whether they use natural dyes, negative transfers, the scratch method, brush and paint, or the traditional Ukrainian pysanky method, their eggs are a feast for the eyes.  



While many are works of art, some are just plain clever and funny. Redditor samartypants once attended an egg decorating event and intended to decorate eggs as Hugh Hefner and a Playboy Bunny. But then they dropped and cracked the egg, forcing a reconsideration of the subject matter. What does a cracked egg remind you of? And this was the result.



And samartypants won the decorating competition. You can see 50 ranked examples of beautiful, clever, and amusing Easter egg designs in a roundup at Bored Panda. Take some as inspiration for your own egg decorating!


Don't Stop, We're Leavin'



The Passover Seder is a meal full of traditions that tell the story of the Hebrews' exodus from Egypt. In the internet age, we've also established the tradition of the Passover parody song that celebrate the exodus story to the tune of a hit song. We've posted many of those over the years from the group Six-13, like Chozen, Uptown Passover, A Lion King Passover, and A Billy Joel Passover. Aish did it with two songs in 2016.

Y-Studs is another all-male Jewish a cappella group. They got together in college at Yeshiva University in New York City and stayed together after graduation to go professional. In their new song, they boost the harmony of "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey to tell us what Passover is all about. Passover continues through the evening of April 13.


News from Star Wars Celebration: Three New Feature Films

Since The Rise of Skywalker in 2019, Disney and Lucasfilm have stepped back from feature films to concentrate on TV series, with varying results. But now they think they have their ducks in a row, and have told the participants at Star Wars Celebration in London that they have plans for three new films. It won't be a trilogy, but will span the vast timeline of the Jedi order long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away.

One film will be set 25,000 years before the events of the original Star Wars trilogy, when the very first Jedi harnessed the Force. Dawn of the Jedi will be directed by James Mangold, who recently directed Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Dave Filoni, who you know from The Mandalorian and The Clone Wars, will direct a film set in the time of The Mandalorian that deals with the conflict between the Imperial Remnant and the New Republic. It will wrap up several story lines from the TV shows The Mandalorian, the Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka.  

The other movie is, uh, a sequel to The Rise of Skywalker. Daisy Ridley will return as Ray Skywalker as she revives the Jedi order, 15 years after her previous adventures. The film will be directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who did Ms. Marvel. The script is from Peaky Blinders writer Steven Knight.

There are no projected release dates for these films, as far as we know. Star Wars Celebration Europe will continue through Monday.


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