🥫 This is what an American food section looks like in a grocery store in Ireland. Well, to be fair, the Irish food section at my local grocery store is jus that box of Lucky Charms.

🤣 2022 got you down already? If you need a laugh, check out the Best News Bloopers of 2021.

🎬 These completely made-up Star Trek episodes are better than the real episodes!

📷 Best selfie ever: Man takes selfie with a snowy owl.

🌎 Tired of the view outside your window? Here's how to make a fake window with LED screen to display live views from around the world.

Photo: u/yozzeralloy

🐇 Follow the White Rabbit and take the red pill!

From the NeatoShop: Save up to 20% off all 😂 Funny T-Shirts and Cute & Kawaii T-Shirts

More neat stories from our new sites: Pictojam, Laughosaurus, Pop Culturista, Supa Fluffy and Homes & Hues. Please check 'em out!

You might have noticed that there are fewer diet sodas in stores. This is not a supply chain issue (at least not in most places) but a production decision. While manufacturers are making and selling less diet soda, they are producing more "zero sugar" sodas. What's the difference? Mainly the words.

The word "diet" technically only means what one consumes, but consumers are used to "diet" meaning fewer calories so that you can lose weight. It has a connotation of a poor self-image and a regimen of deprivation. Who wants that? Younger consumers (i.e. Millennials) prefer to "eat healthier" instead of going on a diet. Less sugar is a draw for them, even if the same artificial sweeteners are used.

So is there a difference between "diet" sodas and "zero sugar" sodas? The ingredients may vary slightly, and some people consider zero sugar brands to more closely resemble the original sugary soda. The actual difference between Diet Coke and Coke Zero is explained here. Read about the shift in consumer preferences and the labels that cater to them at All Recipes. -via Digg

(Image credit: Ben Schumin)

Modern hospitals are designed to use the latest technology and systems for providing top-notch health care efficiently to as many people as possible. In the US, those systems assume short stays and unlimited resources. Those assumptions do not always translate well to other parts of the world. The country of Rwanda has been busy growing and modernizing since the genocidal war of 1994, and in 2008 was ready to build new hospitals. However, existing hospitals built with Western architectural designs were not working, and a new approach was needed.

Many hospital patients in Rwanda battle tuberculosis and other highly communicable diseases. They were spreading antibiotic-resistant microbes to each other while waiting to be seen. Ventilation systems used in Western hospitals were prone to breaking down, repairs are hard to come by, and they were often disabled to save power costs. Another problem was isolated inpatients in closed rooms with few staff members and even fewer monitoring devices.

To tackle these problems, architect Michael Murphy looked back in time, to Florence Nightingale's writings on how hospitals should work. He incorporated many of her ideas into the design of a new hospital in Butaro, which is now being copied across the country. Read how hospital design can be adapted for local conditions at Fast Company.

Recycling is good, but re-using items instead of manufacturing new things is even better for the environment. Mannequins are made of fiberglass, which won't decompose and is notoriously difficult to recycle. Roz Edwards sort of fell into the business of putting mannequins back into use in one way or another. The ones that are useable are refurbished and sold or rented. Others go into a mountain of fake body parts where people can take as much as they can in 15 minutes for £75. They not only go back to the fashion industry, but are used in movies and music videos, art projects, and holiday decorations. Oh yeah, and then there are those folks who put one in their car to discourage dangerous people from approaching (which is good) and to use the carpool lane (which is bad). Even totally ruined mannequins are good for a scary Halloween tour! It's creepy and crazy, but Edwards' project Mannakin has turned out to be a viable business. Tom Scott shows us how the weirdness works.

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A post shared by Anokhi Mehndi by Kiran (@anokhimehndi)

I keep my Instagram follows pared down to a short list so that I make best use of my social media browsing time. @AnokhiMehndi in the West Midlands of the UK is definitely worth following. She's one of the stars of Henna Instagram and this video is an example of why.

Her post doesn't explain exactly why this piece sparkles, but I gather that incorporating glitter into henna dye is a thriving practice. Here are the sparkly arms of @Bharathi Sanghani_Mendhi, who is an accomplished bridal henna artist in her own right.

Just look what you can do with an oscillating fan and some household junk! Well, maybe not you, exactly, but someone did, and we are trying to figure out why. This might be an art installation of some kind, or it might be someone's lockdown project. While the idea of automating the fun of blowing bubbles seems a bit sad, this weird machine is mesmerizing to watch. The YouTube page has no information and no comments, but they titled this video "Delicate balance." However, nothing is really balanced; it's all held together by clothespins and clamps and weighted to the ground by a cinder block. So.... nothing about it makes any sense at all. This is what the internet was made for. -via reddit

New Year's Day is sometimes called Public Domain Day. We librarians make special note of it because certain works lose copyright protection and thus become easier to share with patrons. Starting this year, many famous works of literature are now in the public domain, including A.A. Milne's classic work of children's literature Winnie-the-Pooh.

What else is now in the public domain? Book Riot lists many famous works, including The Sun Also Rises by Earnest Hemingway, My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather, and The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by Lawrence of Arabia.

Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain mentions these books and also sound recordings, including classic jazz recordings, as well as movies, such as Moana (the 1926 Samoan documentary) and Rudolph Valentino's The Son of the Sheik.

Take a look and see what you'd like to add to your personal collections.

Photo: Sheila Sund

Redditor /u/minecolas1 brings this interesting photo to our attention. Why does this grocery store offer standard sliced bread loaves sliced horizontally instead of vertically?

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A post shared by Isa Bou (@feedingmyfriendkim)

Redditor /u/Phantom_Wapiti offers an answer. A popular Quebecois dish at Christmastime is a pain sandwich. That makes a little more sense when you learn that "pain" is the French word for bread. This food consists of various deli mixes, such as egg salad, chopped ham, or chicken salad, layered between slices of bread arranged like a layer cake. Cream cheese is the most common "frosting". Chop off a slice and serve it with a fork.

Dhaka muslin was made in Bengal, now Bangladesh, for thousands of years. This fabric was so fine, light, and transparent that it was considered a national treasure. Around 200 years ago, it revolutionized fashion in Europe, as stylish women such as Joséphine Bonaparte and Jane Austen ditched their heavy, wide dresses in favor of the Empire-style muslin chemise, which could be scandalously thin. Dhaka muslin was made by skilled artisans in a 16-step process taken on seperately by villages around the city of Dhaka. The cotton fibers used were so fine that thread counts of 800 to 1200 per square inch could be achieved and the muslin would still appear diaphanously thin. But it's been 100 years now since Dhaka muslin was produced this way. The British Empire killed the industry, artisans turned to other fabrics, and the unique cotton plant that produced the fiber went extinct. An effort is being made to reproduce Dhaka muslin, but they're not quite there yet. Read about Dhaka muslin and what happened to it at BBC Future. -via Nag on the Lake

The point where the Fahrenheit and Centigrade temperature scales meet is -40. Once you get that cold,  a degree here or there makes little difference because you do not want to be out in it. Winter is a lot colder than that in Yakutsk, Russia, the coldest city in the world. The lowest temperature ever recorded in Yakutsk was −64.4 °C (−83.9 °F). It also has the distinction of being the city with the greatest temperature differential, because the short summers can be quite warm. Yakutsk is where cold weather is a way of life for most of the year. If your car isn't in a heated garage, you leave it running all the time. You learn early how to dress for the weather. And when you want to impress people, you do some crazy experiments to show how fast things will freeze.

Kiun B has a bunch of videos about living in Yakutsk, the cold weather, and her Sakha culture.

This is the logo for the Cleveland Browns football team. It is a football helmet; everyone can see that. But if you cropped it in a certain way, as Fox Sports did for the Christmas Day game against Green Bay, you lose that context and it looks like something else.

Christmas thoughts by Megan: At first I was like "WTF is that on the score bug for the Browns? A rabbit using a walker?" and then realized that the helmet blends into the background color. Though, rabbit using a walker is close maybe. *lifts glass* pic.twitter.com/kHRWtCADGt

— Megs (@YankeeMegs) December 25, 2021

The Browns’ logo looks like a chocolate bunny pushing a cart. I’m probably the only one who sees this. 🐇 🏈 pic.twitter.com/5QE8zsn5Wh

— David Tarkington (@davidtark) December 25, 2021

No, you weren't the only one who saw it. Far from it. It's definitely a bunny rabbit, but people are split on whether it is pushing a shopping cart or using a walker. The difference may have to do with one's experience with such devices. This is a prime example of pareidolia, when we see a familiar pattern in an image that is not necessarily there. In the Browns' logo, the cropping took away the most important element of a helmet- it's head shape. The helmet being the same color as the background doesn't help. What was left was a jumble that our brains needed to make sense of. See more of these Tweets at Design Taxi. -via Digg

(Top image credit: Erik Drost)

If you had "raining fish" on your 2021 Bingo card, you can check that one off. The City of Texarkana, Texas posted a notice on Facebook that residents aren't losing their minds; fish really did rain down on the town on Wednesday.

Animal rain is a phenomenon that occurs when small water animals like frogs, crabs, and small fish are swept up in waterspouts or drafts that occur on the surface of the earth. They are then rained down at the same time as the rain.

The post asked residents to leave pictures of any fish they found in the comments. There are over four hundreds comments. As you can imagine, a lot of them are jokes, but some show small fish, or fish parts, found in lawns around town.

We've seen phenomena like this before, when frogs, worms, snails, or other critters manage to fall from the sky. That time it rained meat in Kentucky was the strangest. For now, we can just take flying fish for what they are. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: The City of Texarkana, Texas)

The illusion shown above is called "The Phantom Queen." It took a lot of work to make it perfect, but that work paid off as the illusion by Matt Pritchard was crowned the Best Illusion of the Year in the annual contest held by the Neural Correlate Society. Check out the illusion that won second place below. Don't read the description until after you've seen the video.  



Michael A. Cohen of Amherst College/MIT created "The Changing Room Illusion" to illustrate how we don't notice changes if they are gradual enough. Yeah, like watching kids grow up.

Those who have been following this contest over the years may be surprised that Japanese mathematician Kokichi Sugihara did not win the top prize this year, as he has so many times before. Sugihara hasn't retired; one of his illusions made the top ten. You can see all the top ten finalists for the 2021 competition at the contest site. -via Gizmodo

Anytime you go to Twitter and see Betty White trending, you get a feeling in the pit of your stomach. Then you see that she's trending for something she said or because her birthday is coming up. But today the feeling was real. Betty White has passed away, just a few weeks before she would have turned 100 years old. White began her career in radio at a very young age, and became a television icon, starring in Hollywood on Television, Life with Elizabeth, The Betty White Show, Password (and other game shows), The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mama's Family, The Golden Girls, The Bold and the Beautiful, Boston Legal, and Hot in Cleveland, plus a host of other appearances. You can see a retrospective of her career in pictures here.

this betty white scene from golden girls still never fails to make me happy, 30+ years later. betty improvised most of the story and bea and rue couldn’t help but lose their composure and slip out of character. RIP to a comedy queen. pic.twitter.com/uQ0N9jTWE9

— joe (@jxeker) December 31, 2021

Tributes are popping up all over the web. Betty White was 99.

No one wants to hear about an engine failing when you're flying. What could possibly go wrong? But within the first minute of this video, we are assured that it's not all that serious. It's a good thing that commercial aircraft have two engines! Here they explain a little more about aircraft engines, but as far as the question in the title goes, it all depends on the aircraft. At least it can fly far enough to get to an airport and land. Now, if you're flying with a single-engine plane, you've got plenty to fret about if you lose an engine. -via Digg