Neatorama

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• The Incredible Physics of Ants
• Man Beats World Record For Largest Video Game Collection
• As It Turns Out, Christmas Tinner Is Real
• Wisconsin Is Using Cheese To Thaw Icy Roads
• Kittens Study Physics
• Cool It Water Bottle
• A Geektastic Christmas Wedding Proposal
• Michelangelo's Grocery List
• Surreal Short Film - Stanley Pickle
• Maple Pecan Cupcakes With Buttermilk Pancakes On Top
• 38 Bizarre Items Dropped on New Year's Eve
• Neatolinks: Just Try to Castrate A Hippo, We Dare You
• The Lion King - Cute Kitten Version
• This Week at Neatorama

The Incredible Physics of Ants Posted: 29 Dec 2013 04:00 AM PST (YouTube link) Are ants solid, or a fluid? Ants clinging together in a ball act differently from an individual insect. Banded together, they change their nature. Ants are now being studied by physicists, namely Zhongyang Liu and David Hu of the Georgia Institute of Technology. To flow, they moved around, rearranging themselves in the group, acting like a thick fluid. When the aggregation struggled to keep its shape, the ants clung to each other, acting like an elastic solid — rubber for example. The research could have practical implications, Dr. Hu said, for self-assembling robots, which build themselves out of smaller bits and for self-healing materials. Read more about the research at The New york Times. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Man Beats World Record For Largest Video Game Collection Posted: 29 Dec 2013 02:00 AM PST Most gamers keep their games just long enough to beat them, but those archivists of digital entertainment who treat video games like Pokemon and gotta catch em all take their collecting very seriously. Recently the Guinness World Record for largest video game collection was broken by Michael Thomasson who, according to The Associated Press, has a whopping 10,607 titles in his museum quality collection, beating the previous record holder by nearly 2,000 titles. The funny thing is Michael never has time to play his games since he’s always so busy with work, and he’s already sold his collection twice in his life- first to pay for a Sega Genesis when it was the new hotness, then later in life to pay for his wedding. Via Destructoid

As It Turns Out, Christmas Tinner Is Real Posted: 29 Dec 2013 12:00 AM PST (Video Link) We first told you about Christmas Tinner at the beginning of the month and then we found it fit in well with our list of 12 crazy Christmas foods. Originally, we suspected it was just a hoax, but it turns out that at least one of these 12-layer food monstrosities was created, canned and eaten -and here's the review. We still don't know if there were really many of these available or how many people actually ate them, but we do know now that they were created by British video game store chain Game and this one can was real. Via Geekosystem

Wisconsin Is Using Cheese To Thaw Icy Roads Posted: 28 Dec 2013 10:00 PM PST The state of Wisconsin is known for its cheese, and the Cheeseheads that love it so much they’re willing to wear cheese wedge shaped hats to football games. Now that winter is upon them Wisconsin has discovered yet another use for their beloved dairy product- they’re using cheese brine instead of salt to thaw the icy roads. Salt tends to bounce off the icy surface, and gets knocked away even more by drivers, but a waste product from the cheese making process called cheese brine helps the salt stick to the ice, and together they melt the ice better than salt alone. The best cheeses to use are provolone and mozzarella, and when you’re finished you can make some delicious cheese flavored slushies with scrapings from the road! Mmmmmm, road cheese! Via Cheezburger

Kittens Study Physics Posted: 28 Dec 2013 08:00 PM PST (YouTube link) Panda, Pikachu, and Pavel explore a Newton's Cradle. If they study hard, they may grow up to walk in the footsteps of the many cat scientists who came before them. All three kittens are offspring of Coco, the mother cat we've featured a couple of times before. See more of the kittens and their family at Facebook.

Cool It Water Bottle Posted: 28 Dec 2013 06:00 PM PST Cool It Water Bottle Are you determined to make 2014 the year you drink more water? Keep your promise to yourself and the environment with the the Cool It Water Bottle from the NeatoShop. This adorable reusable bottle is made of stainless steel.  Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Water Bottles.  Link

A Geektastic Christmas Wedding Proposal Posted: 28 Dec 2013 06:00 PM PST Pretty much every gamer knows that the best reason to get married is because it's dangerous to go alone. That sentiment was once again repeated with Redditor Blakplague's Christmas marriage proposal to his girlfriend. The great Zelda-inspired box was designed by Etsy seller Turbo Toaster Studios, who sells quite a few other cool gaming-inspired boxes in their shop. No word on whether the girlfriend in question actually said yes, but we would hope so with this kind of a fantastic and nerdy proposal. I know I sure would! Via When Geeks Wed

Michelangelo's Grocery List Posted: 28 Dec 2013 04:00 PM PST Sometimes people will say something like, "I could listen to Patrick Stewart read a phone book." For you youngsters, a phone book was just a list of numbers, and the phrase means that a great talent can make even the most mundane activity a pleasurable experience. Open Culture posted a grocery list written by the artist Michelangelo in the 16th century. See, this household task was a necessary chore 500 years ago.   But when Michelangelo scrawled, he scrawled with both a craftsman’s practical precision and an artist’s evocative flair. “Because the servant he was sending to market was illiterate,” writes the Oregonian‘s Steve Duin in a review of a Seattle Art Museum show, “Michelangelo illustrated the shopping lists — a herring, tortelli, two fennel soups, four anchovies and ‘a small quarter of a rough wine’ — with rushed (and all the more exquisite for it) caricatures in pen and ink.” As we can see, the true Renaissance Man didn’t just pursue a variety of interests, but applied his mastery equally to tasks exceptional and mundane. Which, of course, renders the mundane exceptional. -via Metafilter, where you can read a translation.

Surreal Short Film - Stanley Pickle Posted: 28 Dec 2013 02:00 PM PST (Video Link) When the main character of a film has a funny name like Stanley Pickle you kind of suspect odd and hilarious things from them before the film has even begun. Stanley lives in a wind up world where everything works like clockwork, and everything can be fixed with a simple turn of the key. But when he encounters a feathered femme fatale in the forest outside his house his mechanical view of the world changes forever. It's surprising how much heart this short film from Vicky Mather et al packs into a quirky storyline about an oddball mechanical family's life and an unexpected romance. And despite the silly title there’s a maturity to both the story and stylistic elements of the film that make it one fun short to watch. Via Cartoon Brew

Maple Pecan Cupcakes With Buttermilk Pancakes On Top Posted: 28 Dec 2013 12:00 PM PST Pancakes are appropriately named as they are essentially just cakes cooked in a pan instead of in an oven -which is why they make such great breakfasts. It's also why we're amazed they never appeared on a cupcake before. The Moonblush Baker remidied this problem by making these adorable pancake-stacked cupcakes and she even made sure to match the flavors with pecan and maple so they are a heavenly combination of classic breakfast and dessert flavors. The only thing that could possibly make them better would be Nutella and bacon -as those two things could make everything better.

38 Bizarre Items Dropped on New Year's Eve Posted: 28 Dec 2013 10:00 AM PST (YouTube link) The big ball drop at Times Square in Manhattan may be the most famous dropped object that rings in the New Year, but that custom happens in places all over for the holiday. Some towns drop much stranger things to signal midnight on New Year's Eve. John Green describes some of these customs in the latest mental_floss videos. "Nothing in real in this world excepr for baloney!" -via mental_floss

Neatolinks: Just Try to Castrate A Hippo, We Dare You Posted: 28 Dec 2013 08:00 AM PST Apparently It's Really Hard to Castrate a Hippo (Geekosystem) This One Table Will Rule Them All (The Mary Sue) Watch These Movies on Netflix Before They're Gone (Gizmodo) Disney Characters With and Without Beards (Design Taxi) Top Image: Minecraft Wedding Cake By Dahli-Lama (Reddit) Second Image: Ultimate Wedding Photo Bomb (Cute Overload)

The Lion King - Cute Kitten Version Posted: 28 Dec 2013 06:00 AM PST (Video Link) Nothing gets people singing Hakuna Matata quite like a good old fashioned Lion King reference, and when you combine the beloved 90s Disney movie with cute kittens you’ve created a video that’s bound to take the interweb by storm. The Pet Collective knows how to use cuteness in their videos to maximum effect, and now this Cute Kitten version of The Lion King is about to get them so much viral love! Just like their previous videos such as Pug Puppy Version of Home Alone and Pug Puppy Version of Elf, this one stars a cuddly cast of young critters (from the People And Cats Together rescue) and a kid narrator to make the whole thing off the charts adorable. Via Geekosystem

This Week at Neatorama Posted: 28 Dec 2013 05:00 AM PST This will be the last weekend update at Neatorama …this year. The end of the year is a time that many blogs and websites look back and give a report on how they did for the year, and what their biggest articles and posts were. To be honest, that seems like an awful lot of work to me. However, without even looking, I can tell you that the biggest post of the past year here at Neatorama was Three Exotic Necktie Knots to Try: The Eldredge Knot, The Trinity Knot, and The Cape Knot. Not a day goes by that someone, somewhere on the internet isn't passing that one around. If I were to hazard a wild guess at number two, it would be The Forbidden Island. I might be wrong, but I can't think of any other posts from 2013 that continue to pop up in our daily stats as much. Otherwise, we've brought you over 10,000 posts, including more than 300 feature articles, in 2013. Whew! We unveiled a new daily feature just yesterday: Neatolinks. See, as many posts as we put up to bring you the best of the web, we figured even more would be better, so Jill is rounding up a daily list of links to aid in your enjoyment of the internet. When you see the word Neatolinks in your RSS reader, it will be followed by a title from one of the links, but rest assured there is a variety of subjects inside. We celebrated Christmas in a big way. Thank you for contributing your holiday pictures to Reader Holiday Photos. We love seeing your pictures!     Jill Harness brought us 14 Hilarious Family Christmas Photos and 12 Crazy Christmas Foods. We also have a compilation post of Awesome Christmas Video Greetings 2013. Eddie Deezen gave us Who Framed Roger Rabbit: The Inside Story. Two Body Interactions: A Longitudinal Study came from The Annals of Improbable Research. Mental_floss magazine told us The Legend of The Oregon Trail. In this week's What Is It? game,  the mystery object is a cork borer sharpener. "A cork borer, often used in a chemistry or biology laboratory, is a metal tool for cutting a hole in a cork or rubber stopper to insert glass tubing." And this thing sharpens it. That was weird, but y'all came up with even weirder answers. A t-shirt goes to Kevin George, who said it is a "Radial doughnut cutter." Makes perfect sense. Another t-shirt goes to Jaguarfeather, who said "Tis a lawless switchblade peg-leg belongin' ter Captain Kidd's Kid. He were so short, nobody ere noticed him much, but iff'n ever a pirate be less than kind to the little bilge rat, the Kid took 'is satisfaction direct out of 'is ankle, he did!" Congratulations to the winners, and a big thank you to the What Is It blog, where you can find the answers to all this week's mystery items. Our Conceptis puzzle this week was Skyscraper Light Puzzle. The Pzzler was Santa's Reindeer. And the Whodunit was called The Genie, the Movie Star, and the Hobo. The most popular post this week was Google's Santa Tracker, which was fun and useful. Coming in second was 14 Hilarious Family Christmas Photos, and Nutella Liqueur Is the Most Delicious Booze Ever got third place. The most-♥ed post was a tie between I Liked You Better Deaf and Belka Learns to Howl, followed by a tie between Dog Won't Let Her Owner Take A Drink and Introducing Quirky the Blind Kitten. Thanks for all the ♥s! The most-emailed post was The Christmas Can Can. On social media this week, Nutella Liqueur Is the Most Delicious Booze Ever was our most-liked post on Facebook, Reindeer Games got the most Tweets, The Legend of The Oregon Trail was the most-pinned post on Pinterest, and 12 Crazy Christmas Foods had the biggest number of shares on Google+. We also have our own social networking sites. You need to check in at the Neatoramanauts Facebook page often, where you'll find discussions, links, and images that aren't here on the main page. Like this Storm Trooper joke. It was our most popular Facebook entry for the week! A funny cat picture got the most comments. Why don't you join in the fun? Welcome back to Neatorama founder Alex Santoso, who spend the weeks leading up to Christmas playing Santa Claus: meaning he was mailing out gifts from the NeatoShop fast and furiously with a short staff. We missed him here, but all that work at the NeatoShop helps to keep this site going for another year. Give him a couple of days to catch his breath (and maybe even read the blog), and he'll be putting up an after-Christmas sale for you to find serious bargains! We ran a lighter schedule of posts through the week of Christmas, but we'll be back to full-time posting this coming week, gearing up for the New Year and making plans to bring you the best stuff ever in 2014! Thank you all for joining us in 2013, for your tips, comments, shares, and support. We couldn't have done it without you! Make your plans carefully for a safe and happy New Year celebration. We want to see you back here in 2014!

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