There’s quite a bit of bacteria on a donkey’s penis. // She has pneumatic wings. (h/t, Darleen) // Starlings at 200 frames per second. // Low pass. // Grandma caterpillar putting on lipstick. // Vertical planters. // Dots, tendrils and laminate glass. // At last, classical action figures. // Why cats don’t rule the Earth. // Cardboard Lincoln Continental. // Ocean drifters. // Real treasure. (h/t, Damian) // There’s something to be said for thoroughness. // Elstree 1976. // Emu insemination is harder than you’d think. // This. (h/t, Franklin) // Star Wars trilogy redubbed. // Meanwhile, in art restoration news, man taking dump discovered. // For hardcore Whiskey drinkers. // For all your underwater drilling needs. // And finally, never look directly at the Sun in high definition.

Looking for a new home? This could be for you: 

DiedInHouse.com is the first of its kind, web-based service that helps you find out if anyone has died at any valid US address. A DiedInHouse.com Instant Report saves you time and money, by instantly providing you with valuable information that may impact your decision to purchase or rent a house.

The site tempts readers with a number of charming case studies involving unsolved murders, serial killing, meth lab mishaps, ladies belatedly found in chimneys, and decomposing occupants who did not in fact “move to Mexico.”

Well, it is Hallowe’en. 

Can you tell what it is yet? // Oh, Waitrose. Never change. // On the making of Kubrick’s The Shining. // “Here’s Johnny.” // At last, an app for all you gin enthusiasts. // Handmade blown glass creatures. // Beware the brinicle. // Burning incense. // B-2 stealth bomber. // His aim is better than yours. // Why black athletes dominate certain sports. // Designer chocolate. // Cat is cat. // Cats caught mid-shake. // Katharine gives good cape. // Vincent Price channels Edgar Allan Poe. // Always keep your octopus entertained. // He feeds parakeets. // Cardboard Kraftwerk. (h/t, Anna) // Frightgeist, an interactive map of Hallowe’en costume trends. // And finally, via Dr W, “Through spiritual research we found that physical reasons are just one part of why sinkholes appear.” 

How to sing polyphonic overtones. A project for the weekend. // Potato toys. // Wooden watches. // Wooden cars. // Watch out for the switched-on kids. // Screenshot, 1983. // Chess set or choking hazard? // Balloon festivals. // I think it’s broken. // Northerners of yore. // New York’s feral cats. // An Arizona monsoon. // Screw the fish, admire the plants. // Swing riot. It’s the Sharks and the Jets all over again. // Dominoes of note. // Doorbell cam. // On the ageing of dogs. // Maximum dadliness. // “Atomic gardening” was a thing, apparently. // Passenger. // This. // And finally, I denounce the cultural appropriation.

202 people. 7,000 feet. 

Via Laughing Squid. 

The in-store music of K-Mart, 1989-1992. // Caffeinated peanut butter. // Build your own robot head. The wife will be thrilled. // Build your own overhead control panel. // On the crap that used to be advertised in 1970s comic books. // A museum of tiny film sets. // The hero’s journey. // Che or Hitler? // Los Angeles time-lapsed. // Leonard Nimoy reads The War of the Worlds (1976). // The lights of Moscow underground. // On greed. // How to skin a sex doll. // Arthur Conan Doyle’s favourite Sherlock Holmes stories. // On Stalin’s rise to power. Part 2. // Tree stump house, 1930s. // Enormous, very slow laundry-folding robot. // The Red Drum Getaway. // “The dead outnumber the living 14 to 1.” // And why parents rarely want their children to be artists, part 15. 

I’m heading out of town for the weekend, a long one, for a wedding, so I’m afraid you’ll have to throw together your own pile of links in the comments. Oh, come on. How hard can it be? I’ll set the ball rolling with these: a good deed of note, why you can never tune a piano, and a close encounter with some trees. 

Phone signal permitting, and festivities permitting, I may check in on you at some point. So play nicely. And don’t get any stains on the upholstery. 

Battleship probability calculator. // Cat eggs for breakfast. // Caffeinated shaving cream. // Cashless money box. // A brief history of modern art. // Nutcracker of note. // “How well do you know your toes?” // A global map of racial tolerance. // Enterprise-D VR headgear tour demo. Do the crew quarters have curtains? // Invisibility cloak. Hides particles, not people. // Raccoon earns her keep. // Donkey in a hammock. // Land’s End, from the makers of Monument Valley. // The lost tunnels of Liverpool. // Supersonic shock waves. // McDonald’s straws. // Speed chess. // Walther PPK rubber band gun. // Peek-a-boo fence. // Giant wooden megaphones “amplify the sounds of nature.” // And finally, cheerily, an interactive chart showing how many years you have left to live, probably.

In which I steer you to a fashion pictorial:

It was an era of football haute couture, representing a flamboyant and carefree culture, liberating itself from the dress of prior generations, and which reigned on university campuses across the country during the Jazz Age.

Full-length, pimp-style raccoon fur coats.

Via Ace. 

These guys are way more flexible than you. // Moroccan tree goats, obviously. // Top end kitchen knives made from molten meteorite. // A calendar of tiny dramas. // “It was designed to be an enjoyable ride.” // Only rub the underside. // Bias in social psychology. // Test your ear for pitch. // Candlestick. // “The global number of trees is approximately 3.04 trillion, an order of magnitude higher than the previous estimate.” // Meanwhile, in exploding toilet news. //“No lumps, no waste, no mess.” // Lots of Lithuanian garage doors. // Designing hideous clothes is now even easier. // The Fallout Shelter Handbook, 1962. (h/t, Things) // The earliest known fuck. // And finally, as my dear old grey-haired gran used to say, “When walking past a monkey, don’t ever give it the finger.”