Neatorama

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• Sandwich Shoe
• When Cats, Peaches, Lunch (and Letters) were Mailed Beneath the Streets of NYC
• The 41st Annual Razzie® Awards
• Kentucky Roundabout
• No Astronaut Has Ever Eaten Astronaut Ice Cream in Space
• The Unlikely Success of Fish Sticks
• Technical Hitch
• Check Out This Amazing Octopus Wine Decanter

Sandwich Shoe Posted: 26 Apr 2021 04:49 PM PDT Food artist Manami Sasaki, who is internet famous for her elegant slices of decorated toast, says that: I feel that breakfast, which wakes up our senses for the day, and shoes, which take us to the exciting world outside, have something in common . . . Run, don't walk, to or with this sandwich to fuel you through the day. It's completely edible, vegetarian, and made with several different types of bread. -via My Modern Met

When Cats, Peaches, Lunch (and Letters) were Mailed Beneath the Streets of NYC Posted: 26 Apr 2021 02:42 PM PDT In 1897, mail delivery in New York City sped up tremendously when a system of pneumatic tubes was laid underneath the streets. The same technology that allows multiple lanes at a bank's drive-through was harnessed to deliver messages and some surprising goods in the city in those same kind of cylinders.   At 24-inches long and 8-inches wide, these cylinders could hold up to 600 letters. A team of 136 "Rocketeers" and dispatchers made sure the system ran smoothly, transporting upwards of 95,000 letters per day. The original tubes were less than a mile long, from the old General Post Office to the Produce Exchange. It quickly grew to cover both sides of Manhattan Island with a crosstown line. Extensions were added to the Bronx and Brooklyn using the Brooklyn Bridge. There is even a rumour that a popular Bronx sandwich shop used the system to send their sandwiches – the real submarine sandwiches! It took only 20 minutes for a canister to travel from the General Post Office to Harlem. A 40-minute mail wagon route was reduced to 7 minutes. There was at least one case in which a cat was sent through the tubes, causing astonishment that the feline survived the trip. The New York pneumatic mail system ran until the 1950s, when it was discontinued due to the high expense of maintaining it. Read about the days of tube mail at Messy Messy Chic.

The 41st Annual Razzie® Awards Posted: 26 Apr 2021 02:42 PM PDT The Academy Awards were bestowed on the movies of 2020 on April 25th. As per custom, the annual Golden Raspberry Awards (Razzies) were announced the night before. If you think the Oscar nominations are full of movies you've never heard of, the Razzies took that even further. You have probably heard of Borat Subsequent Movie-Film, which was awarded two Razzies, but those were only because of Rudy Giuliani. The rest of the movies flew under our radars in a year that theaters were mostly closed. A film called Music led the awards with three Razzies, followed by Absolute Proof and Borat: Subsequent Movie Film with two each, and 365 Days and Dolittle each received one award. The year 2020 itself garnered a special award as "The Worst Calendar Year EVER!" Celebrate the worst in film by checking out all the awards at the Razzies site. Scroll down past the winners to see the nominees in each category from other movies you've never heard of.

Kentucky Roundabout Posted: 26 Apr 2021 02:42 PM PDT There's a new roundabout in eastern Kentucky, specifically in Rowan County near the Bath County line. Luckily, traffic was not coming from all directions when this video was taken, because these are NOT one way streets! The roundabout was constructed to improve traffic flow and reduce accidents, so what could possibly go wrong? They will definitely have to improve signage or something. -via Jalopnik

No Astronaut Has Ever Eaten Astronaut Ice Cream in Space Posted: 26 Apr 2021 02:42 PM PDT The New York Times has broken open a scandal at NASA and other space agencies around the world. Have you ever eaten one of those sweetly-flavored food bars labelled in NASA gift shops as "astronaut ice cream"? Then you've accomplished something that no astronaut has done while in space: With real ice cream available, there is no need in space for those blocks of chalky Neapolitan astronaut ice cream parents buy for their children at museum gift shops. Indeed, in the 60 years of the space age, no astronaut has ever eaten astronaut ice cream, at least not in space. The freeze-dried ice cream was indeed developed in 1974 for NASA — for the gift shop in the agency's Ames Research Center in California. The company that makes it, Outdoor Products of Boulder, Colo., now sells a couple million of them a year. Sorry for linking to a paywalled article, but this is an important scandal for people to know about. -via Super Punch | Photo: Ruth Hartnup

The Unlikely Success of Fish Sticks Posted: 26 Apr 2021 02:42 PM PDT Embed from Getty Images Fish sticks were introduced in 1953 by Birdseye, the company that made frozen food palatable and therefore popular. Fish sticks came to be extremely popular over the decades, believe it or not, because kids like them and families (and institutions) find them so convenient. An article at Hakai magazine explains why fish sticks were developed, how they are made, and why they've stayed with us so long. They are made from various kinds of mildly-favored fish with a battered coating that keeps them from sticking together in the freezer.   The battered disguise may be needed because, at least in North America, seafood has often been second-tier. "We've mostly considered the eating of fish to be beneath our aspirations," writes chef and author Barton Seaver in American Seafood. Traditionally, fish was associated with sacrifice and penance—food to eat when meat was unaffordable or, if you were Catholic, to eat on the many days when red meat is verboten. Fish also spoils fast, smells bad, and contains sharp bones that pose a choking hazard. The advent of fish sticks made eating fish easier and more palatable for the seafood wary. "You can almost pretend that it isn't fish," says Ingo Heidbrink, a maritime historian at Old Dominion University in Virginia. In his native Germany, where a reported seven million people eat fish sticks at least once a week, companies changed the fish at least three times since its introduction, from cod to pollock to Alaska pollock, a distinct species. "Consumers didn't seem to notice," says Heidbrink. Personally, while I served them to the kids at times, I avoid fish sticks because I ate them at school every Friday from first through sixth grade, and that's enough. But they proved to be quite popular among folks who stocked up for the pandemic. Read everything you ever wanted to know about fish sticks at Hakai magazine. -via Digg

Technical Hitch Posted: 26 Apr 2021 02:42 PM PDT Even if you are used to working alone from home, like cartoonist Simon Tofield, every once in a while you have to communicate with the outside world. That will be the one time the cat decides to butt in, so to speak. And so it is with Simon's Cat in this new animation.

Check Out This Amazing Octopus Wine Decanter Posted: 26 Apr 2021 10:36 AM PDT Octopus Decanter by Josh Dewall pic.twitter.com/DTbqqZpRgP — 𝐀𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐬 𝐀𝐩𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐚 (@A_aphrodisia) April 25, 2021 The wine aerates as it flows through the eight legs of the octopus. It's an ingenious design by Joshua DeWall, a glass artist in Virginia. Look at his other extraordinary glass sculptures, many equally functional, on display on Instagram. I'm especially taken with DeWall's delicatelycomposedarthropods. -via Fabulous Weird Trotters

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