This weekend, police were called to an Ikea store in Glasgow, Scotland when employees learned that thousands of people had signed up on Facebook to play an unauthorized game of hide-and-seek in the maze-like building. According to The Scotsman, "groups of youths who looked like they were only there for the game were turned away from the shop.
" From The Scotsman:

The trend for using Ikea’s giant warehouses for games began in Europe a few years ago - and has seen people hiding in fridges, under beds and in the firm’s big blue shopping bags.

..

However in 2015, IKEA was forced to impose a ban because the events were getting out of control.



Citing health and safety a spokesman explained: ‘We need to make sure people are safe, and that’s hard if we don’t know where they are.’



Rob Cooper, IKEA Glasgow Store Manager said: “The safety of our customers and co-workers is always our highest priority. We were aware of an unofficial Hide and Seek Facebook event being organised to take place at our store today and have been working with the local police for support.



“While we appreciate playing games in one of our stores may be appealing to some, we do not allow this kind of activity to take place to ensure we are offering a safe environment and relaxed shopping experience for our customers.”

"Police called to Scottish IKEA after thousands sign up for hide and seek" (The Scotsman)

image: Google Maps Read the rest

When something goes wrong with a product you own or a service you pay for, it's reasonable to expect quick, effective customer service from the company responsible for whatever it is that's giving you trouble. Read the rest

When workers at an Ikea in Stoughton, Massachusetts expressed interest in forming a union, the company responded with an illegal anti-union crackdown that culminated in locking workers into a conference room and forcing them to watch anti-union slideshows that workers described as "scaremongering". Read the rest

Fashion designer Virgil Abloh has been working on pieces for an upcoming IKEA collection. One of the first pieces to be unveiled is this pop-art rug that looks like an oversized shopping receipt.

Dezeen writes:

During IKEA's annual conference today, the brand revealed the first official photos for the upcoming Markerad collection, which has been in the works for over a year and is aimed at millennials...

The Markerad collection is due to hit stores in 2019. Other pieces in the range include slogan-covered rugs and Abloh's take on the IKEA Frakta bag.

In early May, HYPEBEAST shared this video of some of the other pieces in Abloh's collection for IKEA, including his slogan-covered rugs and that modified Frakta bag:

My first thoughts on the rug: I kind of love it but it's not long enough. IKEA receipts are like a mile long. Maybe it should've been a hallway runner instead.

image via Dezeen Read the rest

Here's a fact you can kill with alcohol or a head injury and never miss: Ikea doles out around 2 million of its Swedish meatballs, per day. Here's another: those Swedish meatballs? There's a very good chance that they're not actually Swedish.

According to the Hürriet Daily News, the recipe for Swedish meatballs is actually based on a recipe from Turkey. In a tweet that shook the meat-in-ball-form world, the Swedish government declared that “Swedish meatballs are actually based on a recipe King Charles XII brought home from Turkey in the early 18th century. Let’s stick to the facts!"

From the Hürriet Daily News:

Annie Mattson, a researcher at the literature department of Uppsala University, told Anadoly Agency that Sweden’s King Charles XII lost a battle against Russia and took shelter in Bender, then an Ottoman territory near Moldova.

Having spent a long time in Bender, apparently on a local food bender, Charles XII couldn't bear to leave behind the local cuisine. When he finally headed on home, he came packing the recipes for cabbage rolls, meatballs and, god love him, introduced Turkey's national love for strong, hot coffee to the Swedish people.

Earlier today, The Guardian got their meat hooks on this story and added to it. Apparently, feelings on the revelation, in Turkey are mixed.

This week in Turkey’s meatball capital, Inegöl, a local chef, İbrahim Veysel, told the Dogan news agency it was an honor that the Turkish dish should have become “an example to different cuisines all over the world”.

Read the rest

"Idea-instructions" bills itself as "An ongoing series of nonverbal algorithm assembly instructions", with a half-dozen illustrations of popular computer science concepts covered to date; the latest covers Public-Key Crypto, one of the most important and elusive concepts from modern crypto. Read the rest

Ikea is a Swedish furniture retailer famous for its vast and disorienting store layouts. SCP is fictional universe depicted exclusively as reports filed with a secret government agency whose job is to secure and contain supernatural objects, entities and places — think Torchwood meets the OSHA Hazardous Materials Specifications Committee and you're all set. One of my favorite SCP stories is SCP-3008, concerning the discovery of a nascent civilization formed by shoppers lost in an infinite Ikea.

And now it is a game!

SCP-3008

A game set in the SCP universe based on SCP-3008 - an endless Ikea.

The good thing is: Food stores get restocked every now and then. You won't starve.

The bad thing is that the staff tries to kill you as soon as the lights go out.

Barricade yourself with furniture, battle the staff and survive as many days as you can.

You can already download a basic prototype. Lights out!

Keep an eye on developer N00MKRAD's YouTube Channel and Patreon page for updates. Read the rest

My Swedish-born (former Rubik's Cube champion) pal Lars Petrus has created a Swedish-to-English IKEA product name dictionary.

He writes:

Part of what makes IKEA unique is their product names. Each name means something, often in a funny or ambigious way. When IKEA went international, they decided to use the same Swedish names everywhere. This makes sense from an organizational sanity standpoint, but it deprives most of the world of this particular joy.

It's not complete nor current but it still is a lot of fun!

(Lifehacker)

Previously: IKEA now has furniture for cats and dogs Read the rest

IKEA's new Lurvig collection literally translates to "shaggy," which is appropriate because it's made just for pets.

The line includes scratching mats (that wrap around IKEA table legs), aesthetically-pleasing beds, and a variety of bowls, leashes, toys, and other pet care accoutrements. IKEA writes that it was created by "pet loving designers with support from trained veterinarians."

According to Mashable, the collection piloted in Japan, France, Canada, U.S and Portugal (Algarve) just this month. It will open up to the rest of the world in March 2018.

Some pooches in Japan are already enjoying pieces from the collection:

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、 、 お姉ちゃんはチェックだけ。 やっぱり乗ってくれませんでした。 そしてミドリのペラッとしたトコ、干したりぶら下げる様にあるのかな？ でも噛んじゃうので無い方が嬉しいよ、イケアさん。 、 #IKEAペット #LURVIG #欲しいベッドは12月発売でした汗 、 #frenchbulldog #frenchie #フレンチブルドッグ #フレブル #miniturebullterrier #buhigram #BUHI #buhistagram #dogstagram_japan #bullterrier #bully #ミニチュアブルテリア #ブルテリア #犬 #dog #おもち #おこめ

A post shared by 🐖🐐もちこめ母🐖🐐 (@mochikome_mama) on Oct 10, 2017 at 7:18am PDT

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NEWアイテム✨ #IKEAペット用品 #LURVIG #お気に召していただけたかしら #チカチカする #dog #corgi #コーギー #ナタネ

A post shared by 703アジュンマ (@703neeeeya) on Oct 9, 2017 at 6:49pm PDT

All items are affordable, ranging from 79 cents and up. One of the most expensive items is a cubed cat house that's reminiscent of an old-fashioned TV set. It costs $54.98.

IKEAで10月から、ペットのいる家庭向けの家具シリーズを出すぞ。公式リリースは10月5日みたいだけど、一部もう店頭に並んでいるし、コーナーも作ってる。ブラシとか小物もいっぱいあるで。

LURVIG/ルールヴィグ https://t.co/P1ac9XJNpH pic.twitter.com/Gh3uEg1gpM

— pwpmdsp (@pwpmdsp) September 29, 2017

The entire catalog is here. Read the rest

A petition has been posted on Change.org by a Maryland gamer, Brad Smoley, to try and convince Scandinavian stick furniture powerhouse IKEA that there's a significant-enough market for a dining room table that converts into a gaming table. Read the rest

Jules Yap takes to Ikeahackers to describe how you can use four Knuff magazine boxes to form a storage-top for a small-apartment-sized coffee table, using an Ikea stool for your base. Read the rest

The SCP Foundation features unsettling horror and SF stories, all posed as the technical reports of a secret international consortium whose job is to secure, contain and protect the public from all manner of weird threats, from unnatural beasties to sentient buildings. Written in the dry language of officialdom, they're the perfect short fiction for the internet-era and often extremely clever. I think this one about being trapped in an infinite IKEA, by Mortos, is my favorite yet.

Description: SCP-3008 is a large retail unit previously owned by and branded as IKEA, a popular furniture retail chain. A person entering SCP-3008 through the main entrance and then passing out of sight of the doors will find themselves translocated to SCP-3008-1. This displacement will typically go unnoticed as no change will occur from the perspective of the victim; they will generally not become aware until they try and return to the entrance.

SCP-3008-1 is a space resembling the inside of an IKEA furniture store, extending far beyond the limits of what could physically be contained within the dimensions of the retail unit. Current measurements indicate an area of at least 10km2 with no visible external terminators detected in any direction. Inconclusive results from the use of laser rangefinders has lead to the speculation that the space may be infinite.

SCP-3008-1 is inhabited by an unknown number of civilians trapped within prior to containment. Gathered data suggests they have formed a rudimentary civilisation within SCP-3008-1, including the construction of settlements and fortifications for the purpose of defending against SCP-3008-2.

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Balenciaga sells a $2,145 leather bag that looks exactly like a cheap, big, blue plastic Ikea Frakta bag. Read the rest

In 2014, IKEA, the Swedish-based global furniture company, sent a cease-and-desist letter to a blogger by the name of Jules Yap. Yap ran the extremely popular website IKEAhackers.net, which helped people “hack” IKEA furniture into new, creative, and unexpected designs. The site was already almost a decade old when IKEA’s lawyers demanded that Yap hand over the URL. What follows is a case study from Superfandom: How Our Obsessions are Changing What We Buy and Who We Are.

In weaponry, as in life, sometimes the best things are free. Take the lowly IKEA pencil. No, literally take one or more of the ubiquitous free writing utensils. Then watch this video on how to weaponize them. Read the rest

Der Postillon reports that Ikea now offers an affordable flatpack solution for any wannabe autocrats looking to shave a few dollars off their $25bn whitey elephants.

The simple, Scandinavian designed border wall (with a 5 year guarantee) is primarily made of pressboard with a birch effect and can be assembled with the help of a hex key. A 12,000 page instruction manual with easy-to-understand pictures makes construction child’s play – as long as there is not a single screw missing.

“However, assembly requires two people: one person can hold the wall while the second screws it together”, it states in IKEA’s offer.

The problem is, of course, that it looks great when you put it together the first time, but one move and it turns into a a pile of rickety MDF. Previously. Read the rest

After a pair of Belgian teenagers made a viral sensation with a Youtube video documenting their unauthorized sleepover in an Ikea store, at least 10 other sets of teens have tried to repeat the stunt: now, Ikea is putting the world's teens on notice that they will press charges if they catch you trying it. Read the rest