ereed

Through a forest, no less.

Cool Tools reader Joe Stirt recommended this large cat litter scoop. I bought one, because the little plastic scoop I’d been using for a couple of years had gotten flimsy from use and would often buckle at the handle. This one is made from cast aluminum and will never bend. It easily shaves hardened clumps of litter from that litter box that would cause a plastic scoop to fold in half. It’s actually a beautiful looking tool, too. If Raymond Loewy designed a scoop, it would look like this (maybe the handle wouldn’t be covered with textured plastic). Cleaning cat litter is an unpleasant daily chore for me, but the DuraScoop makes it much less unpleasant. I’m surprised it is only $13. It’s easily worth three times the price.

I like to buy these adorable little critter-shaped paperclips from stationary accessories maker Midori of Japan on Amazon. They work just the same as regular paperclips, but they add a lot of sweetness and personality when the design matters, not just the function.

More than 24 designs are available in Midori's super-kawaii D-Clips series, with lots of little animals and birds to choose from: elephant, turtle, squirrels, whales, penguin, and more, on sale for $7-8 per pack of 30 clips at the time of this blog post.

IKEA isn’t just the largest furniture store in the world. It’s also the amusement park of shopping malls – or a claustrophobic shoppers’ hell, depending on both your mood and how mobbed the winding labyrinth of Swedish goods happens to be on any given day.

But did you know that there are secret shortcuts for those who just want to get in and out? The public is allowed to use the shortcuts, but there is no map on where they are. In fact, the shortcuts frequently change so that savvy customers don’t get used to them and bypass the megastore’s intended walkway.

The walkway, by the way, has a code name: Long Natural Way, aka Long Natural Path. Speaking of codes, if you hear an employee announcing “Code 99!” there’s a lost kid roaming the path. If you hear an urgent “Code 22!” blasting through the speakers there are long lines at the registers and help is needed.

If you’re a confused customer there isn’t a code – you’ll have to find an employee and ask for help. Employees are told not to approach customers to see if they need anything (this is the Swedish way).

After hours IKEA actually does become an amusement park, with employees moving the walls (yes, the walls move) to play hide-and-seek and compete in pallet jack races. To add to the merriment, at the end of the year employees receive awesome holiday gifts including electronics and even plane tickets.

Many more Behind the Scenes Secrets of IKEA Employees can be found here. Makes IKEA almost as intriguing as Disneyland!

Thanks Mental Floss!

An unintentional oversight in a new Texas law, enabling open-carry advocates to make the world even more dangerous, has opened up Texas state run psychiatric hospitals to guns. Formerly even law enforcement officers would lock up their guns before entering, now everyone is free to defend themselves.

This from the Austin American-Statesman:

Licensed gun owners can now bring their firearms into Texas’ 10 state psychiatric hospitals.

Before the state’s new open carry law went into effect, guns were banned at those state facilities. No one — visitors, deliverymen and the like — could bring firearms anywhere on campus. Even local law enforcement officers, who were already allowed to bring their weapons into the facilities, regularly lock up their guns before entering Austin State Hospital out of an abundance of caution.

Now visitors can bring guns into the buildings where patients live. Employees are still prohibited from bringing them on campus.

The stars at night, are big and bright. Makes it easier to aim.

This "website" is really just a redirect to a Facebook search for friends who like Trump. If you're in the mood to shed some dead weight from your social obligations, this is the perfect tool. 

Apparently this handy link originated from Gabriel Whaley, an internet troublemaker also known for the infinite text-in-progress gif. 


via @Gabriel_Whaley

Thanksgiving may have come and gone, but that doesn’t mean Walmart’s ready to give up on the celebrity pie fever that swept the country last month. No siree. Instead, the company says it has restocked the unusually popular Patti LaBelle-branded sweet potato pie — with an assist from some two million pounds of sweet potatoes. 

CNBC reports that the new shipment of pies will be delivered to Walmart stores across the country in the next two weeks.

The announcement was made by Walmart CEO Doug McMillon on Instagram, with the exclamation “They’re Back!”

Walmart’s director of corporate communications, John Forrest Ales, confirmed the news to CNBC, noting that “it took about two million pounds of California-grown sweet potatoes to deliver this Christmas miracle.”

The pies became something of a sensation last month with the big box retailer unable to keep the dessert (or not dessert?) on the shelves.

Celebrity pie fever was the brainchild of Kinna Thomas, senior buyer for cakes and pies at the store, who wanted to improve the chain’s desserts. She began the process of sending her family sweet potato pie recipe to its mass-baking suppliers to find the best pie.

Then, somehow LaBelle – who is apparently known for her sweet potato pie – added flourishes to Walmart’s version before it went into mass production.

While the pie has been for sale nationwide since spring, it didn’t gain traction until recently thanks to a combination of a few things: fall began, Thanksgiving approached, and a much lesser-known singer than Patti LaBelle posted a video review on YouTube that became a viral sensation, turning the pie itself into a viral sensation.

Ales tells CNBC that in the 72 hours after the video went viral, the company sold one pie per second.

“At the end of November, the pies were the most-requested item across all Walmart Wish Lists,” he said, noting that the pies will now be available all year.

Patti LaBelle Sweet Potato Pies are back at Wal-Mart [CNBC]

David Bowers, the mayor of Roanoke, Virginia, recently praised the concentration camps that the US built during World War II to imprison Japanese American adults and children. And, according to Bowers' logic, that's why we can't allow Syrian refugees to be resettled in his town.

George Takei has something to say about it. From his Facebook post:

Earlier today, the mayor of Roanoke, Virginia, Mr. David A. Bowers, in the attached letter, joined several state governors in ordering that Syrian refugees not receive any government assistance, or be relocated to their jurisdiction. Apart from the lack of legal authority to do so (under the Refugee Act of 1980, only the President has authority to accept or deny refugees), his resort to fear-based tactics, and his galling lack of compassion for people fleeing these same terrorists, Mayor Bowers made the following startling statement:

“I’m reminded that Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears that the threat of harm to America from Isis now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then.”

Mayor Bowers, there are a few key points of history you seem to have missed:

1) The internment (not a "sequester") was not of Japanese "foreign nationals," but of Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens. I was one of them, and my family and I spent 4 years in prison camps because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. It is my life’s mission to never let such a thing happen again in America.

2) There never was any proven incident of espionage or sabotage from the suspected “enemies” then, just as there has been no act of terrorism from any of the 1,854 Syrian refugees the U.S. already has accepted. We were judged based on who we looked like, and that is about as un-American as it gets.

3) If you are attempting to compare the actual threat of harm from the 120,000 of us who were interned then to the Syrian situation now, the simple answer is this: There was no threat. We loved America. We were decent, honest, hard-working folks. Tens of thousands of lives were ruined, over nothing.

Mayor Bowers, one of the reasons I am telling our story on Broadway eight times a week in Allegiance is because of people like you. You who hold a position of authority and power, but you demonstrably have failed to learn the most basic of American civics or history lessons. So Mayor Bowers, I am officially inviting you to come see our show, as my personal guest. Perhaps you, too, will come away with more compassion and understanding.

-- George Takei

When you’re home alone, perhaps the thought has crossed your mind: “What happens if I hurt myself and no one is here to help me?” In the case of one Pizza Hut customer in Arizona who fell while waiting for her order, help came in the form of a pizza delivery man.

The 69-year-old woman lives with her daughter and son-in-law, who had gone out for dinner last week, reports the Apache Junction/Gold Canyon News. She was reaching for her purse to fetch payment for her Pizza Hut order when she caught her toe on a drop cloth and fell to her floor, landing on her face.

“I tried to relax but I landed on my chest or nose. This is a very hard tile floor,” she says. “There was blood everywhere. I was in a lot of pain. I knew I was hurt.”

She called her daughter, but didn’t want to call an ambulance because she was worried her insurance wouldn’t cover it. Despite her pain, she crawled over to the screen door to unlock it for the delivery man. When he arrived, he offered to wait with her, she said.

“I was crying the whole time,” she recalled. “Trevor offered to put the wings in the fridge and get me water. He sat next to me and was very calm. He told me he plays softball and knows what it’s like to get hurt.”

Her daughter called and the delivery man answered, explaining who he was and saying he wouldn’t leave the woman by herself.

“He was so calm and relaxed. I thought, here’s this stranger in my house,” her daughter said. “He could have done anything. But he stayed next to her on the couch. I was so thankful.”

When the woman’s daughter and son-in-law got home, the Pizza Hut worker helped them get her in the car to take her to the hospital. As it turns out, she’d broken her humeral neck at her shoulder and arm joint.

In the end, the delivery guy refused to take the tip she offered him.

“It’s the human thing to do. I just happened to be there,” he said.

Special delivery: Pizza Hut driver comforts customer in distress [Apache Junction/Gold Canyon News]

Members of the British Parliament voted 305 to 287 this week against removing a luxury tax on tampons and women's sanitary items.

Apparently, the government considers feminine products "non-essential, luxury" items.

Outraged women took to Twitter to protest the "tampon tax" and show off just how luxurious their tampons really are.