From Global News:

A Colombian advertising company is pitching a novel if morbid solution to shortages of hospital beds and coffins during the coronavirus pandemic: combine them.

ABC Displays has created a cardboard bed with metal railings that designers say can double as a casket if a patient dies.

[…]

The beds can hold a weight of 330 pounds (150 kilograms) and will cost about $85 each, Gómez said. He said he worked with a private clinic on the design, which he hopes will be put to use in emergency clinics that might become short on beds.

At least one doctor was skeptical of how sturdy a cardboard bed might be. He also warned that any corpses should first be placed in a sealed bag before being put in a cardboard coffin to avoid potentially spreading the disease.

What stage of Dystopian Hell is this?

Colombian company creates hospital beds that can double as coffins [César García / Global News] Read the rest

The Alpaca graphic design cooperative created this terrific "illustrated and interactive Dante's Inferno, an alternative learning tool for the Divine Comedy first Cantica, made for aiding visual memory." From the project page:

The work is based on the anthology "Testi e scenari" - Volume 1 (Panebianco, Pisoni, Reggiani, Malpensa), published by Zanichelli in 2009, and it has been developed by Alpaca together with the Molotro design studio...

The translation to the English language is based on the one provided by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The whole text is available on Wikisource and it's in the public domain. We chose the Longfellow translation not only because it's open source, but also for its closeness to the language of Dante. The syntax, the rhythm, the lexicon used by Longfellow may feel odd for native english speakers, but they render the original language with great accuracy.

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Trumpy Bear [Amazon] is a thing this holiday season: an incredibly expensive teddy bear with a blond wig stapled on and a flag stuffed into a "hidden zipper". Wittgenstein's advice is recommended: "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence." [via Snopes] Read the rest

A researcher reviewed 23,005 comments left on videos about science and related topics. You'll never guess what they found out about how YouTubers view women. Adrianne Jeffries, quoting Inoaka Amarasekara:

“I was quite disappointed by the time I’d gone through them,” she said. “I could see why people would not want to be on YouTube.”

The researchers found that about 14 percent of comments for female on-camera hosts were critical, compared to about six percent for male hosts.

They also found female hosts got a much larger proportion of comments about appearance (4.5 percent for women versus 1.4 percent for men) and comments that were sexist or sexual (nearly three percent of comments for women versus about a quarter-percent for men)

Imagine if, for a decade, Google left the world's largest social network to fester, allowing racial slurs, sexist abuse and any and all forms of bigotry to stand without moderation or even the slightest serious community management, all the while vigorously enforcing policies against marketing, spam and copyright infringement, making clear that nothing is there without its conscious assent. What a world that would be. Read the rest

Thousands of years ago in Hierapolis (now Turkey), tourists visited a temple named Plutonium built at a cave thought to be a gateway to the underworld. Magically, large and small animals would drop dead at the entrance to the cave while priest somehow survived. This isn't legend, it's reality. And now scientists have determined why. From CNN:

Research published by the journal of Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences in February shows that a fissure in the earth's surface, deep beneath the site, emits carbon dioxide at concentrations so high it can be deadly.

Using a portable gas analyzer, Hardy Pfanz and his team of volcanologists found CO2 at levels ranging from 4-53% at the mouth of the cave, and as high as 91% inside -- more than enough to kill living organisms...

Pfanz's research adds another possibility: the fact that the animals and priests are different heights. CO2 is a heavier than oxygen, therefore it settles lower, forming a toxic gas lake above the ground. "The nostrils of the animals were way in the gas lake," he says, whereas the priests stood taller, above the gas lake.

Above: digital rendering of the temple Read the rest

These Japanese single color jigsaw puzzles are appropriately named "Pure Hell." They're available with 1,000 or 2,000 tiny pieces, black or white.

Pure Hell jigsaw puzzles (Amazon via Laughing Squid)

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President Flip Flops are cheap footwear emblazoned with Trump tweets, one foot contradicting the other. There are several "editions", each as revolting and transfixing as the other. Read the rest

Artist Roberto Benavidez specializes in whimsical piñatas, but his Hieronymus Bosch piñatas are a Garden of Earthly Delights. Read the rest

Swearballs let out a tirade of curses when you throw them at something. The fine family of products includes F-Bomb (demonstrated above), a Magic S Ball with foul-mouthed Magic 8 Ball options, and Swearball Classic, which lets you add your own recorded swears and rants: Read the rest

In Hell's Super, Steve is hell's superintendent. Working with his assistant, the damned Orson Welles, there is an unending list of problems to be solved, but nothing can ever be fixed! It is Hell, after all!

Existence is pretty humdrum until Flo comes to the underworld. Flo is a force of good, who comes to hell to help ease the suffering. Something is certainly kindling between them, can there be love in Hell?

Can Steve use duct tape to hold everything together, including his love life?

Hell's Super (Circles In Hell Book 1) by Mark Cain via Amazon (free via Kindle Unlimited) Read the rest

Centralia, Pennsylvania is Hell on Earth. It's the town where a 12-year old boy once fell into a pit that "suddenly appeared in his grandmother’s backyard. He grabbed onto a tree root, and his cousin pulled him out from the steam-emitting hole in the earth." The pit was caused by an underground coal fire that's been burning for over 50 years "and may burn for several more centuries."

Pricenomics has a good short history of Centralia, which is now mostly abandoned.

[Photo credit: Lyndi and Jason via Flickr] Read the rest