We've already seen a Sharknado cake, but what makes these cupcakes special is the use of blue cotton candy to represent the tornado. It really gives it that whispy, fast-spinning feel that is precisely what makes a Sharknado so deadly.

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This clever little guy in Kobe, Japan, throws his ball in upstream, and catches it downstream …over and over and over! -via Daily Picks and Flicks

Sally Coburn has been hoping that her dead husband would send her a message from beyond, and last Wednesday night, he did just that ... with a potato.

"I was just frying up some onions and potatoes," she told The Huffington Post. "I reached in the bag and the last potato was shaped like a heart." [...]

"I know it was a sign from him," she said. "I had been missing him. He died on May 13th and I've had that bag of potatoes for 2-and-a-half months. I reached in the bag and it was the very last one."

So, why was Sally so convinced that the heart-shaped potato was from her man? "He was from Alabama," she said. "He was raised on potatoes."

That has got our heart spuddering! David Moye of The Huffington Post has the story (Photo: NWF Daily News)

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The llama in this video by Vermont Grand View Farm is adorable, especially at 1:42, when he literally hops around the sheep, gathering them up for...well, no discernible reason. They're in a fenced enclosure. But being cute is reason enough.

-via Daily of the Day

Wolvenion by Donnie

Bello, Bub! We don't know whether this strange creature - a mash up of the loveable Minion with the irascible Wolverine by French artist Donnie - is more fearsome or cute. Perhaps it is fearsomely cute.

Anyhow, check out Donnie's official webpage, Facebook and Behance page then visit his NeatoShop page to buy the shirts! Your purchase helps support indie artist as well as this blog.

More Minion mash-up by Donnie:

Super Minion Bros	Dark Minion	The Legend of Minlink	Minion Ball Z

View more designs by Donnie | 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!

Brick Foam Prop

Is the truth of a situation hitting you like a ton of bricks? Lighten the load with the Brick Foam Prop from the NeatoShop. This fantastic oversized stress ball is great for squeezing, tossing, and dropping. 

The Brick Foam Prop is made of light weight squeezable foam and designed to look like a life-size brick. This item is handcrafted by local artisans and no two are exactly alike. The Brick Foam Prop is not a toy.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Gag Gifts & Pranks. 

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The UNESCO World Heritage Centre has named 19 more places as World Heritage sites. Pictured here is the view from Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel, Germany. The Grand Cascade waterworks flowing down the front embankment were designed in 1689 and are powered by hydro-pneumatic devices. See the castle itself, and plenty of pictures of four other beautiful new World Heritage sites at Atlas Obscura. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user fanglan)

Still need a salty snack after quenching your thirst with the Pepsi Cheetos John discovered yesterday? Then up your Frito Lays fix with some bacon Doritos also available in Japan, as photographed by Redditor Oki_Mike.

Link Via Food Beast

This is a great design concept for fans of The Legend of Zelda video game franchise. Christian Griffin's rings show the musical notation for popular themes from those games. This one, for example, shows the "Song of Storms."

Link -via it8bit

Almost 50 years ago, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in a shockingly public shooting in Dallas. Lee Harvey Oswald was taken into custody and then shot dead himself by Jack Ruby. Oswald's body is buried in the Shannon Rose Hill Cemetery in Ft. Worth, with only his last name on a stone marker. Cemetery employees do not give out the location of the grave to people who inquire. But many know where it is, and even the grave gives fodder to conspiracy theorists.

For the last 15 years, this curious name has vexed the obsessive assassination buffs who make regular pilgrimages to the Oswald plot here in Fort Worth. That is because a pinkish granite marker suddenly appeared beside the assassin’s grave sometime in 1997. And all it said was Nick Beef.

In their quest to make sense of a national catastrophe — to find a narrative more acceptable than that of one gunman, acting alone — some theorists have tried to divine meaning in a name that, more than anything else, evokes a private eye who specializes in agricultural intrigue. It added another question to their already exhausting list. Who was Nick Beef?

The New York Times found out who Nick Beef is, and the story has nothing to do with conspiracies of any kind. However, it is an interesting story of how events conspired to bring a puzzling marker to the gravesite. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Texican Chick)

Deep in the forest, at the base of the giant camphor tree, sleeps Mexican film director Guillermo del Toro. He is, according to legend, the "keeper of the film studio". Brazilian artist Giovanna drew this illustration of the mythical Del Toro from the anime classic My Neighbor Totoro.

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If you can't wait for Breaking Bad to start tonight, then enjoy Bob Odenkirk breaking down a few real terrible lawyer ads. He also discusses how he could improve his "Better call Saul!" ads on the show.

Via The Consumerist

There are 600 million housecats in the world -give or take a few- making them the most popular pet worldwide. It wasn't always so. How did the world become so cat-obsessed? Cats as we know them are descended from the African wildcat Felis sylvestris, shown here. It doesn't look so different from a housecat, except for those dangerous-looking fangs.

There’s a very similar saying among researchers that dogs were domesticated, but cats domesticated themselves.

While not strictly true in terms of dogs (oh, I can go off on dog domestication do not get me started) this is pretty much on the money for cats. Humans didn’t grab cats and make them start hunting mice. In fact, that would be incredibly difficult, as wildcats are extremely shy. Cats simply heard the rodents squeaking around in whatever the ancient version of a silo was and went after them. And the humans certainly had no reason to discourage them (once they figured out what was going on, I presume- I imagine the first human opening a door and spotting a cat inside shrieking “THE MICE HAVE GROWN HUGE SAVE YOURSELF”)

Flight distance refers to the distance an animal is willing to let you approach it before it flees. African wildcats today have a pretty massive flight distance- you are extremely lucky if you see one before it spots you and jets. Those first cats attacking the mice in human granaries would have had a big disadvantage if they were running every time they spotted a human within thirty feet. So, they adapted. Their flight distance shrank from generation until eventually they were able to tolerate humans within feet of them. Think of the behavior of squirrels in suburban areas. They aren’t going to let you pick them up, exactly… but they’re definitely not afraid of you.

But this relationship underwent a big change when Egyptians went nuts about cats. Koryos at Newt in the Throat tells us the history of the domestic cat in an entertaining and understandable way, with lots of cute pictures. Link -via Metafilter

Forget Greek gods - geeks have all the power in today's digital world.

Every year, Habari Media of South Africa creates a custom calendar. This year, to celebrate the rise of the geeks, it has created a bespoke letterpressed calendar, featuring twelve prominent leaders in design, media, and advertising as "Geek Gods."

The circular calendar features lunar phases, a nod to the Greek lunar calendar, and a manual dial that can be moved to mark the date. The calendar disc is engraved with markings that emulate the stone engravings of Greek tablets, and the individual month cards are letterpressed with graphic art like what you'd find on an ancient Greek amphora.

Each month of the calendar features a "god" modeled after real media personality and his or her expertise. For example, March 2013 features Moti Grauman, "God of Analysis" who is the "critical judge of hits and click-throughs" and November features Alan Buck, "God of Strategy" who is a "Game Plan Logician" and "Online Media Tactician." (Yes, that makes the most sense to insiders, but you get the cleverness.)

Take a look:

Engraved detail

Letterpressed Cards

Letterpressed Plates

Various Month Cards - Illustrated by Dani Loureiro and Andrew Ringrose

View the rest over at SCAD

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YouTube user RideVictoria reminds us that "it only takes a minute" to help someone in need. That's it--the whole encounter is less than a minute long. The motorcyclist spotted a person in a mobility scooter. Her scooter was stuck and immobilized. He responded immediately in what he calls "how we do a drive-by in Canada."

-via Jalopnik

Lady Rainicorn Adventure Time Hooded Backpack

Are you looking for a backpack that can be your best friend and loyal companion as you head back to school? You need the Lady Rainicorn Adventure Time Hooded Back from the NeatoShop. This fantastic bag, with Lady Rainicorn design, comes complete with a hood that easily stows in a built-in storage compartment. Padded and adjustable straps make this stylish backpack easy to tote. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Bags & Totes. 

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How do you capture video of a pride of lions up close? You send in a robot! A little video robot that will remind you of Wall-E or a roomba moved among the lions, who treated it as a kind of cat toy. Enjoy a series of looping videos of many facets of a pride's life -click to the right to start the next video at National Geographic. Link -via Not Exactly Rocket Science

Need to bring alcoholic refreshments to that Star Wars-themed party? Obi Wine Kenobi, you're our only hope! Via That's Nerdalicious and reddit

The comment thread is full of puns for this painting of Walt and Jesse from Breaking Bad in the setting of Grant Wood's American Gothic by redditor milbo. Some of the best:

Jesse, we need to FARM
Raking Bad
Agriculture, bitch
I'm the one who crops.
I AM THE ONE WHO TILLS

The overall reception was so positive that the image is available to order as prints through Etsy. Link

Littlemissgt uploaded this adorable picture of Chewy's babies to I-Am-Bored last year, but I can't tell you which convention they were dressed up for. Personally though, I absolutely adore the fact that each one has different fur styles so they really look like wookiee brothers.

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Were you a jock, nerd, druggie, goth, or a plastic in high school? Students are often labeled by the crowd they hang with, or by their activities, or by their choice of fashion or music. Educational psychologist Bradford Brown has been studying adolescent social labels since the 1980s, and talks about how those terms have changed over time. For one thing, as schools get bigger, there are more labels.  

We also know that crowd labels in middle school differ from those in high school. Early in middle school, kids call each other names like “the runaround crowd,” “the door crowd,” “the skip rope crowd”—a map of concrete activities that go on at recess. But, Brown said, by the time they’re in high school, they use their relatively more mature brains to map their social worlds in more abstract terms. The result are true crowd labels—“jocks,” “punks,” “brainiacs”—that don’t refer to actual individuals in the lunchrooms and hallways, but to categories that teenagers carry in their heads. Using a crowd label as a kind of mental shorthand explains why idiosyncratic ones might not happen that often—the more generic the name, the more usable it is.

My high school was so small that we each had to wear more than one label. Read about the research into high school tribes and their labels at The Morning News. Link  -via Digg

Happy birthday to Harvey, a tortoise in the UK. His owner, redditor skaboodles, notes that his full name is Harvey Dent. He's named after the Batman villain Two-Face. So don't trust him, despite his festive and playful headgear.

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Love the soft shortbread cookie of Fig Newton but wish it contained delicious, delicious bacon filling rather than figs? Then check out these Pig Newtons by The Cupcake Project. Be sure you cut them in adorable pig shapes so everyone can enjoy how cute they are and what they are made of while snacking.

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Sean and Lynn recorded how they broke the news to his mom with a stunt in which Grandma had to find her "birthday present" hidden somewhere in the kitchen. The moment it registers is priceless! Bonus: Yakety Sax. -via Viral Viral Videos