Love those addictive Bloomin' Onions from Outback Steakhouse but feel like a fatty eating a whole one by yourself? Then try making this little baby ones with pearl onions...just try not to eat 40 of them all at once.

Link

You get only one crayon, but it's the only one you'll need. Mark McCall and Richard Dorey, who are designers in the UK, made a coloring book that brings in the darkness. You can view sample pages at the link.

Link -via Hi-Fructose Magazine

Social Games by ntesign

It's a muttation eat muttation in the world of social media, so india artist ntesign wish that may the odds be ever in your favor. Visit out ntesign's Facebook page, then head on over to his NeatoShop page for more neat designs: Link

The Ring Bearer	Retro Park	Kobayashi Cups	Back to Reality

View more designs by ntesign | More Funny T-shirts

Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop, earn generous royalties, and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

What do you think is going on here? The most logical explanation is that a time traveler has created a paradox by returning to our present from five different points in time. I would guess that five versions of the person are inside the house watching Back to the Future. Redditor jraevis posted this picture of the shenanigans in his neighborhood. If you go see the full-size picture, you'll see the sign says "DeLorean Parking Only." Link

Not only does this pup know how to keep cool, he also knows that it's critical to protect his master's prized possessions from intruders. Only those who are worthy can take a brewski.

Link Via That's Nerdalicious

Are Sonya Clark's shoes made of pennies and copper sheets comfortable? Probably not. But in a past, they'd be considered so cool. Clark explains why she likes to work with copper:

I relate to the color of the metal because it is the color of my skin. In anthroposophical medicine, copper alleviates poor memory. By using copper, I reconnect with my ancestry and reawaken lost memories of cultural identity. Metaphysically, the redness of the metal is said to reflect lineage. Copper veins are likened to the blood of the earth, the blood of our mothers, and therefore heritage.

Link -via Lustik

(YouTube link)

If any of nature's creatures can get organized, it's ants. In this video marking the World Wildlife Fund's 50th anniversary, leafcutter ants were given leaves that were already cut by a laser into protest signs! The ants, of course, march with their signs to protest the destruction of the rain forests. The ad was made by BBDO Düsseldorf for the WWF. -via Laughing Squid

Eat them before they eat you! To their misfortune, Rhiannon made these Piranha Plants too tasty for their own good. The heads are made of compressed dark chocolate and raspberry cupcakes and the bases from brownies. You can find her full recipe at the link.

Link-via it8bit

Jackalope Mini Squishable

Have you been hunting high and low for the elusive jackalope? It turns out that this dangerously cute mythical creature has been lurking the dark aisles of the NeatoShop warehouse. Capture a Jackalope Mini Squishable for yourself today and experience how frighteningly cuddly a jackalope can be.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Plush Toys. 

Link

Think that memories are in the brain? New research says that may not be exactly true -at least for flatworms. The planarian is fascinating in that it has the ability to regrow body parts when you cut it into pieces -it will even grow a new head if you cut it off! If that's not freakish enough, experiments show that a newly-regrown head can have some knowledge the earlier head learned. Experiments had been don on planarian heads decades ago, with inconsistent results. Tal Shomrat and Michael Levin at Tufts University returned to this idea with state-of-the-art planarian training methods and computerized testing methods. They trained the worms to overcome their distaste of light and rough surfaces to reach food. After two weeks, the trained planarians went straight to the food, unlike a control group of untrained worms.

The worms were relieved of their heads. The scientists made certain that no bit of brain survived. Then, after the worm stumps had painstakingly re-headed themselves, the planarians went back into the testing chamber.

The memory wasn't there right away. But Levin and Shomrat found that if they gave all the worms one quick training session before testing, worms who'd previously been familiarized with rough petri dishes reached the food significantly faster than the other worms. The training session "basically allowed the worms to refresh their memory of what they had learned before decapitation," Levin says. In other words, their memories had survived the loss and regrowth of their heads.

Levin doesn't know how to explain this. He says epigenetics may play a role—modifications to an organism's DNA that dial certain genes up or down—"but this alone doesn't begin to explain it."

Read more at Inkfish. Link -via Not Exactly Rocket Science

(Image credit: Shomrat and Levin)

If you can't make it to Comic Con this year, or just don't want to be around hundreds of sweaty, stinky nerds for a whole weekend straight, then live out the action without any of the smells thanks to the new Comic Con Star Stalker game for iPhone and iPad.

Link

In 1874, Cincinnati, Ohio built a huge main library. This architectural marvel remained in use until 1955. Can you imagine wandering from tier to tier of the stacks in the main hall? Or looking through the stereoscope at photographs?

Link -via Erik Kwakkel

(Photos: Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County)

(YouTube link)

Gertie Cleary of Elmsdale, Nova Scotia, saw a raven perched on her fence with porcupine quills stuck in its face. The overly-friendly juvenile raven had a run-in with a porcupine, then made a better choice to let the woman get close. Cleary, wisely wearing gloves, did what she had to do.

The bird, clearly in pain, waited for Cleary to get each one of the quills out. Cleary says she didn’t think twice about helping the animal in distress.

“It reminded me of a child with a splinter and when you pull a splinter out, they holler and screech and pull their hand away,” says Cleary.

Once the quills were out, Cleary carried the bird to her daughter’s house, where she fed him dog food and water.

She let the raven, named Wilfred by the Cleary family, outside the next day, and he hung around for a while before flying off. Let's just hope the bird learned his lesson about porcupines. Link  -via Arbroath

British designer Alice Kim created pregnancy vests that contain living plants. She did this "to open people’s minds to think about plants similar to babies and give them the treatment they deserve."

Some people aren't sure what to think when they see one.

Link -via Lustik

Personally, I'm a big fan of open seating at a wedding, but for those who want go with assigned seating, the Periodic Table of Tables is certainly a clever way to tell your guests where they should find their seat. Image by Vis Photography.

Link

During the days of slavery in America, there were plenty of people willing to risk their lives for freedom. Many did escape, many were caught, and many died, but there are a few stories of schemes that were so unbelievable that they not only worked, but went down in history. I particularly liked the story of Lewis Williams, who was arrested in Cincinnati for escaping from Kentucky. Williams was taken before a judge for an extradition hearing.

And they would have gotten away with it, too, if the leader of the black community in Cincinnati hadn't been a stone-cold badass by the name of Reverend William Troy. No sooner had he heard about the arrest than he was dreaming up a plan so insane that no one would see it coming.

As luck would have it, Troy knew another young man who bore a striking resemblance to Williams. And he also knew that some white people have famously questionable skills in the field of advanced telling black people apart. So when Troy heard that Williams had been seized, he made sure that a crowd of his fellow abolitionists rushed over and packed into the courtroom. Then they simply waited until everyone else was distracted by a dramatic legal argument, at which point Williams and his double quickly switched places and Williams crawled out the door on his hands and knees, hidden behind a wall of hilariously large old-timey women's skirts.

But that's not the end of the story, because he later had to escape from a safe house with another audacious scheme. Read his story and those of four others at Cracked. Link

Food Replicator is a blog devoted to replicating foods that appear on Star Trek. This is Rokeg blood pie, a Klingon dish occasionally mentioned on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. It's a bit much for the human digestive tract, but this black pudding is pretty close to the Klingon original. You can find the full recipe at the link.

Link

Image: Stephen Pakbaz

Stephen Pakbaz has worked on the actual Mars Curiosity rover, so designing it in LEGO is probably a cinch for the mechanical engineer:

"I combined this first-hand experience with my Lego hobby to create a Lego model that was as faithful to the actual rover as possible in terms of accuracy, details and mechanical function," says designer Stephen Pakbaz, a mechanical engineer who worked on Curiosity at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The model has a working suspension system, an articulated arm and a poseable mast for recreating your favourite events in Curiosity's ongoing mission.

Now, LEGO has approved the release of the official Mars Curiosity Rover LEGO set. Ain't that awesome?

Lisa Grossman of NewScientist has the story: Link

We have only a few days to wait until the glorious return of the Twinkie! That's just enough time to do the prep work to duplicate Beth Klosterboer's amazing Snack Cake Stingers. You'll need modeling chocolate, food coloring, Nutella and a few food art tools. You can see her process photos at the link.

Link

Silk Flower Headband 

Do you feel like something large and pretty is missing from your outfit? Perhaps you suffer from a severe lack of flower power. Not to worry, the Silk Flower Headband from the NeatoShop is here to help. This fantastic headband features a ginormous 9" silk flower.    

The Silk Flower Headband is available in Peacock Blue and Fuchsia. It makes a wonderful bad hair day accessory.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fun Headgear. 

Link

Jon Negroni has a theory about Pixar films. They are all part of the same universe, connected to each other. This goes way beyond seeing a character from one movie in the background of another (often as a toy). This is a unified theory he explains in a timeline. The first Pixar event in the timeline is the movie Brave, which explains the origin of animals and inanimate objects that talk. He explains that and then goes on.

Centuries later, the animals from Brave that have been experimented on by the witch have interbred, creating a large-scale population of animals slowly gaining personification and intelligence on their own.

There are two progressions: the progression of the animals and the progression of artificial intelligence. The events of the following movies set up a power struggle between humans, animals, and machines. The stage for all-out war in regards to animals is set by Ratatouille, Finding Nemo, and Up, in that order. Notice I left out A Bug’s Life, but I’ll explain why later.

The way he connects each Pixar film, from Cars to Up! to Monsters, Inc. will blow your mind …but not as much as how the end connects to the beginning. Read the whole theory at Negroni's blog. Link  -via Geekosystem

There's assigned seating in Toyota's custom SpongeBob SquarePants Highlander. It was displayed at the 2014 New York Auto Show. Yes, SpongeBob is driving. Would you rather let Patrick Star have the wheel?

At the link, you can view a photo of the SUV's exterior. It's a gloriously spongy yellow.

Link

(Photo: Patrick George)

You know, we don't say this often enough, but I feel so grateful to have the community of readers that we do here at Neatorama. I surf a lot of sites, looking for the best of the web to post here. I see comment sections of all kinds -some that are empty, others that are full of trolls, illiterates, and political nut cases. I see communities that appear to be all children, or all people who just want to fight. Then I come back here to Neatoramanauts who I feel like I know, who have varying intelligent opinions expressed in a matter-of-fact, non-threatening way, or puns, or encouragement, or personal stories, or extra information on a post. That makes me feel good. Thank you all for being a part of Neatorama! Here's a look at the things that happened this past week.

Eddie Deezen wrote about It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: Greatest Slapstick Comedy Ever?

Alex introduce us to Paolo Troilo's Amazing Fingerpainting.

The Forbidden Island came from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.

The Annals of Improbable Research contributed Canine Reactions to the Mona Lisa.

A Brief and Incomplete History of the Swimsuit was from mental_floss magazine.

Hy Conrad brought us another Whodunit, called The Crystal Vanishes.

This week's What Is It? game featured a gadget that turned out to be an old-fashioned crimper for can lids. After many serious and no-so-serious guesses, ladybugs finally had the correct answer. The funniest answer was from Randall, who said,

This is a clock unwinder. In Victorian time it was feared that a clock left wound over the new year eve would cause infertility. The first thing that Victorian men would do on the New Years day was get out of bed to wind and set the clock. THe would then go back to bed and test for infertility. As a result of this pratice the clock unwinder was considered a very risque' item great care was taken to keep it stored descreetly. You can still find them in secret cubbyholes under staircases in older homes, covered with dust, biding their time.

That's good for a t-shirt, too! See the answers to all the mystery items of the week at the What Is It? blog.

We had one featured pet over at Lifestyles of the Cute and Cuddly this week: her name is Zodi, and you can see her here snoozing in the car. Check out that sweet mustache! Send a picture of your pet to tips@neatorama.com to get them on as a featured pet, too!

The post that had the most comments was The Forbidden Island, followed by How to Make an Edible Strawberry Balloon from Strawberries, and for third place, there was a tie between Go to the Vogue Website and Enter the Konami Code and Which Is Better for Grilling: Charcoal or Gas?

The comment of the week was when humblehern suggested the perfect song to go with the Truck Stuck in the Mud post. The video is there for you to enjoy.  

The most popular post of the week by far was The Forbidden Island. Coming in second was US Air Force My Little Pony Patch Is Apparently Real, and Opposite Words came in third.

The most hearted post was The Forbidden Island. Then in second place was A Man and His Duck, with I've Never Related So Much to a Little Piglet in third.

Tied for the most emailed post of the week were The 10 Worst Car Features Ever Made and The Bacon Weave Elvis Sandwich. The Forbidden Island came in third.

All in all, The Forbidden Island was the standout post of the week. Thanks to everyone who passed the link around!

Have you been to Neatorama's Pinterest boards lately? Not only do we have items from Neatorama categorized for your interests, but also extra links from all over, sorted just so you can find what you're interested in -and you can follow each separately, like a custom-designed feed. Check it out!

If go to the NeatoShop quite a bit, you can save yourself some time when you just want to browse by first checking out the section of what's new, and also the section of what's on sale to get the latest and best bargains. If you haven't been there in a long time, you'll need to look at everything! If you're looking for something specific, the categories on the left should help you narrow the search. 

And as always, if you have any suggestions, feedback, kudos, complaints, or trouble with Neatorama, please let us know! It's our goal to bring you the best of what's neat on Neatorama.

If you know anything about Jay-Z, then you know he's got 99 problems, but a female certainly isn't one. As for what those problems are, a new Tumblr, probs99, is seeking to illustrate all of them so we can better relate with Beyonce's man.

The brilliant illustrations are created by Ali Graham.

Link Via Mashable