Itaru Sasaki's cousin died of cancer. Sasaki struggled with the loss. To help him move through the grief, he purchased an old phone booth and added a rotary phone. That's what you in the garden pictured above. Sasaki can, when he needs to, pick up the phone and speak as though he's communicating with is departed cousin.

Thus began the Wind Phone movement. There are at least 551 around the world, including 386 in the United States. Many are in spaces open to the public. You may be able to find one near your home using these interactive maps.

-via Atlas Obscura | Photo: Matthew Komatsu

Dancer and physicist Sofia Papa is the 2026 winner of Science magazine's annual Dance Your PhD competition (previously at Neatorama). Her choreographed production number titled "Piezodance" illustrates piezoelectricity, the electric charge that accumulates in solid materials under stress. Papa began studying physics in high school because she liked how the science relates to art. She is now defending her dissertation “Piezoelectric Polymer Materials for Printed Wearable Ultrasound Transducers” at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies’s Biorobotics Institute in Pisa, Italy.  

There are winners in the categories of physics, biology, chemistry, social sciences, and a new category this year for artificial intelligence research. I particularly enjoyed the winner in chemistry, Dina Haddad of the University of Cambridge, who rapped about a new method of detecting cancer cells in urine by using magnetic nanoparticles to capture DNA. It's a complex test, but would be so much easier on patients than biopsies. Her song and dance titled "Magnetic Flow" features pole dancers and toilets.  



You can see the winners in all the categories at Science. -via Ars Technica 

(Image credit: MissHissss) 

Cat lovers know that house cats can be very particular about a Place To Exist. They can turn themselves into liquid in order to fit in some small and often forbidden spot like a dish left on the counter or the trash bin, like Smudge shown above. They will reject a new cat bed in order to sleep in the box it came in. They will hide in inaccessible places like the back of the refrigerator or behind the books in a bookcase. Or where they can blend into the background. 

(Image credit: timftw360) 

This cat was lost until he yelled out his location. Cats are also very susceptible to traps laid by humans, like a circle drawn on the floor, a half-full suitcase, or a tempting but very small box. See dozens of cats photographed in places they shouldn't be in a gallery at Bored Panda. 

Geckos decided they were going to be different from all other lizards by developing specialized features that gave them a leg up in the survival business. These include eyes that can see in low light so they can hunt at night, hydrophobic skin so they don't catch their death of cold, and strangely detachable tails, not to mention feet that have velcro on the ends. 

Most of those powers required some explanation of physics, which geckos have mastered. It's no wonder they are often studied by scientists. These studies include putting geckos in a wind tunnel, which may seem cruel, but it's also quite funny, and the geckos didn't seem to come out any worse for wear. Ze Frank gives geckos his usual "education with some snarky giggles" treatment in the latest video in his True Facts series. At least he doesn't obsess on the animal's sex life in this installment.

NASA's Artemus II mission, the first of the Artemus lunar program to carry a crew, is scheduled for launch at 6:45 this evening, weather permitting. You can follow the progress of the launch at NASA or YouTube. 

This historic launch in the program to take us back to the moon reminds us of the Apollo program that made Neil Armstrong the first man to step onto the moon back in in 1969. But three years before that, Armstrong almost died during his first space flight aboard the Gemini 8 mission. The Smithsonian Institution has acquired rare photos of Armstrong and astronaut David Scott on their return to an unplanned location way ahead of schedule. The calm that Armstrong showed on that day helped solidify his later assignment to the Apollo 11 lunar mission. Read that story and see the pictures at Smithsonian magazine. -via Damn Interesting  

(Cropped image credit: Ron McQueeney/Ohio History Connection) 

Time is often thought of as the fourth dimension. Once an object has length, width, and depth, it also exists over time. We talk about time, well, all the time, but since we operate in the here and now, we often use three-dimensional language. If you speak English, you probably know that the future is ahead and the past is behind us. Timelines go from the past on the left to the present (and sometimes the future) on the right. Whether the future is looking up or looking down has nothing to do with when or how fast it comes. 

But that isn't always the case. If your first language is something besides English, you may think of the flow of time differently, and use different words for its direction. Since time is the fourth dimension, it honestly has no 3D "direction" at all. Yet we adapt language to communicate the concept anyway. There's no "right" way to do this, outside of being aware of the time orientation of the person you're talking to. Dr. Erica Brozovsky explains how some other cultures talk about the flow of time.     

School buses have been transporting precious cargo in America for over 100 years. They look like bright yellow storage containers flowing through city streets and rural roads twice a day for 180 days out of the year. They are honestly more like tanks, with layers and layers of safety structures. The early wooden coaches gave way to all-metal buses introduced in 1932, and the look hasn't changed much since then. But throughout the years since, more and more changes we can't even see have made school buses safer than ever (for the kids inside, at least). 

At first, each state had their own standards for school buses, but in 1939 the engineering teams from each state got together to create national engineering and safety standards. Today, 26 million children ride nearly a half million school buses in America. While deaths and injuries still occur, the number is relatively very small and usually involve people outside the bus. Read how school buses got so safe at the Autopian. The article says it's about the three black stripes on the side, but it contains much more than that. -via Metafilter 

(Image credit: Die4kids) 

Most of us are aware, by adulthood, that silica gel is used as a desiccant, or a substance to keep the area around it dry. That's why you see them packed in with all kinds of new purchases, like shoes, pills, snack foods, and electronics. You don't want your stuff arriving moldy or rusted after it's been in a warehouse for a while. I live in a humid area, and sometimes save these packets, thinking they may be useful someday. Then I forget where I stash them, so they never reach a useful number. These little packets of silica gel beads always say "DO NOT EAT" as if they are poison.  

But what is silica gel, anyway? You may be surprised to learn that it has properties that make it useful in other applications besides absorbing humidity. A miracle material, indeed. And what's the worst that could happen if someone did eat it? After all, the warning looks a bit like a challenge to people who don't like to be ordered around.  

In 1988, the Oscar Mayer company offered this promotional item. It can still be found occasionally on auction sites. This pan flute is not the only wiener whistle that the company offered, but appears to be the only one capable of multiple tones. The back side of the label provides instructions for playing the enchanted tones of the company jingle.

This pan flute is certainly superior to the alternatives, as it offers a loop at one end so that the instrument can be hung around the neck with a lanyard or at the waist with a retracting belt reel. Always keep your wiener whistle handy for emergencies.

-via Geppetto San Martín

William Daniels's acting career is almost as old as television itself, since it began in 1943 with a variety show performance on the nascent NBC network. He continued acting on television, films, and on stage.

For my generation, Daniels is the voice of KITT from Knight Rider. For Millennials, he's Mr. Feeny on Boy Meets World. He's still active, recently playing the ghost of King Henry VI in a production of Richard III and appearing on Dancing with the Stars.

But I posit that Daniels's greatest accomplishment is his marriage. Daniels and his wife, actress Bonnie Bartlett, hold the record for the longest ever Hollywood marriage at 74 years.

Ed Harrington is one of our favorite artists. He's designed many of the t-shirts that we sell at the NeatoShop and we've showcased some of his simultaneously monstrous and subversively amusing artworks.

Recently, he designed the XenoFrog sculpture which is on display at the Bottleneck Gallery in Brooklyn. It shows our favorite amphibian Muppet in his most terrifying form: the Xenomorph from the Alien franchise. It's not easy being green, but it's even harder when humans are hunting you and your young.

Harrington is selling a limited run of these sculptures, including a glow-in-the-dark variant.

-via Gizmodo

Minnesota's own MinnesotaStan introduces us to "funeral bread" -- a social gathering food from Minnesota and North Dakota. The Star Tribune says that it consists of cinnamon bread coated with a layer of Cheez Whiz and topped with sliced green olives. Some variants use rye or pumpernickel, but these are corruptions of the tradition which is centered around the small town of Roseau close to the Canadian border.

The dish is commonly served at communal gatherings after church or at funerals, hence the name.

The above photo is by from a now-deleted reddit account. I'm at a loss as to why the redditor was forced to purge their account and flee into hiding.

Kate Wagner has been suffering from Long Covid and has barely posted anything new at McMansion Hell in the past year, but she's recovering and found a house that just had to be featured. This home in Illinois has a 10,000 square foot interior and is for sale for $2.5 million. This was obviously custom built to someone's dream vision of luxury living, and conforms to no known rules of architecture. The front entrance seems to be set at a 45-degree angle to the house, but another picture of the rear shows that other parts of the house jut out at odd angles, too. And just what are those columns supposed to be supporting? It's as if the designer demanded all the features they ever admired be included in one building. 

But the interior is just as insane. The rooms come in odd sizes and shapes that have no relation to what the space is for. There are ledges and angles and odd windows everywhere, all illuminated by cheap modern light fixtures. The furniture and art is just as weird, but those can be changed. Take a tour of this modern disaster at McMansion Hell. 

 

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Imagine you're Edward Teller and you've spent years of your life probing the mysteries of the atom and finally invented a nuclear bomb. That happened with the Manhattan Project, and resulted in two nuclear bombs that finally ended World War II. What then? The US and the Soviet Union developed more powerful bombs and large nuclear arsenals until the concept of mutually-assured destruction took hold. These bombs were so deadly that neither side could use them as weapons, since that would be suicide.

So what good are these very expensive bomb-splitting weapons if they can't be used in war? Maybe they could be used for infrastructure projects, like digging canals, opening up harbors, oil extraction, or maybe geothermal heat production. What could possibly go wrong? If you've ever wondered what all those underground nuclear tests in the 1960s were for, Kurzgesagt is glad to explain them to us. There's a promotional break from 4:49 to 5:56. The video ends at 11:56.

Part of the success of Costco is that visiting one is not just a shopping trip, but an experience. The food court is famous for its simple but very cheap fare, such as the $1.50 hot dog. Costco insists on being authentic to itself and not raising the price, despite inflation. Customers line up to participate in the slogan "I Got the Dog in Me," a reference to those hot dogs.

Now Costco is offering branded whiskey at a few warehouses in the DC area. Although the hot dog costs $1.50, the bottle of whiskey will set you back $85.99.

-via Aelfred the Great

Idea: Neatorama should offer branded whiskeys. I can suggest some innovative and unexpected flavors.