Sometimes you wake up pondering the future of the human race. And sometimes you just really want to know if Spongebob lives in an actual pineapple, or just a pineapple-shaped house. Let’s see what we can discover.

Why a pineapple?

After some swift Googlin’, this answer is quite easy. The Sponge’s creator, Steven Hillenburg, was inspired by Polynesian culture. The flowery background, as well as pineapples, are illustrations often used in Polynesian artworks. The creator also stated that he thinks SpongeBob “would like the smell of pineapples”, because sea animals focus on their sense of smell.

So is it a real pineapple?

Yes, according to the creator. However, Spongebob’s house is often destroyed and rebuilt. One episode actually shows how the pineapple ended up in the sea…

However, Once Squidward cuts himself out of the pineapple, it is clearly already hollow. Very suspicious for a pineapple.

But is it?

This 2012 video shows Vihart’s explanation that the pineapple in Spongebob is, according to MATH, not an actual pineapple. The pineapple does not fit into the patterns of spirals present on a grown, living pineapple, making it seem artificial. Kenny P. built on this idea by designing an actual mathematically correct pineapple.

However, Octo, a Octopus (octo meaning eight) actually has six legs. Seeing that SpongeBob’s creator was actually a marine biologist, he was probably aware of this fact and just didn’t care that much about math when drawing the show.

The last drop in the Rusty Bucket

After searching wide and deep, I found a last bit of evidence that drove me over the edge. In the episode Home Sweet Pineapple (S1E5), SpongeBob’s pineapple is consumed.

Enter the nematodes.

These cheeky wormy boys actually drink Spongebob’s pineapple, destroying it completely. This does imply that there is juice in the pineapple, making it seem very alive. As a final nail in the “the-pineapple-is-artificial”-coffin is the fact that Spongebob ends the episode by replacing his house with a newly grown pineapple.

What can we learn from this?

SpongeBob’s house was originally an actual living pineapple. There are episodes where it is built up using lumber and nails, but there are also episodes where it is eaten. As the now world leading expert in SpongeBob related real estate I can comfortably say that the house was….

whatever they needed it to be at the moment

and I should definitely learn to spend my free time better.

Thanks for reading lol.

Does SpongeBob live in an actual pineapple? was originally published in Roof Toilet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I love cooking and watch what most people might consider an unhealthy amount of cooking videos. To share some of my love for the kitchen, here are three of my current favorite cooking channels. These are all slow-paced, but high-quality channels that focus more on storytelling than fast recipes, great to watch when feeling tired at the end of the day.

Alvin Zhou

Alvin’s videos are, without a doubt, some of the highest quality cooking videos on the internet. The pacing is slow since he takes extensive care in preparing every single ingredient to perfection. The videos have chill music, and beautiful cinematography and always results in an awesome dish that makes you wish you could eat it straight from your screen.

If you enjoy Alvin’s content, he’s currently doing a series recreating Anime recipes for the Babish Channel.

Pasta Grannies

The name says it all. It’s a team of folks traveling around Italy to collect traditional recipes from the source, grannies. The videos feature some history of the dish and show the grannies cooking the dish in easy detailed steps. The recipes often feature local ingredients, specific to a town or region.

Plus, who doesn’t love grandma’s cooking?

Glen And Friends Cooking

Glen (and Jules) have quickly claimed a favorite spot in my arena of cooking channels. Their channel features the Old Cookbook Show, where Glen recreates a dish according to old recipes. He provides fascinating background stories about the time periods, ingredients, and origin of the recipes. A great balance between educational and entertaining, plus all Canadians are nice.

Hopefully, these channels can provide you with some viewing or cooking pleasure, or at least help brighten your day!

Just don’t watch them hungry.

Cooking channels to recharge your soul was originally published in Roof Toilet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In high school, I had a history teacher who would threaten to teach us about “the history of the spoon” for the entire hour if the class was annoying. Although it never got to this point, I am now stuck in my adult life wondering about what kind of beautiful historic spoons I missed out on. Now dear reader, I shall enlighten us both.

Presenting, ten oddly specific history spoons, rated from shitty to superb.

The rating system

The spoons will be rated in 3 different categories:

• Beauty ✨ — Is it pretttty?
• Use 💪🏻 — Is it useful in modern life?
• Purpose 🥄 — Do I need one or can I use another spoon?

Leggo!

10. The Demitasse Spoon

The Demitasse spoon is meant to be used with a “Demitasse cup”, a small cup for strong coffee like espresso. Its use is stirring milk or sugar through these beverages.

• Beauty ✨ — 1/5 — Looks like a teaspoon, kinda basic.
• Use 💪🏻 — 1/5 — I really don’t see the point.
• Purpose 🥄 — 0/5 — Does nothing that a teaspoon can’t.

9. The Coffee Spoon

It’s like a teaspoon, but for coffee 🌈.

• Beauty ✨ — 1/5 — Like a teaspoon that got abused in a tug of war contest.
• Use 💪🏻 — 2/5 —The longer handle could help with tall glasses, but still…
• Purpose 🥄 — 1/5 — I guess it stirs coffee?

8. The Mustard Spoon

Are you still spooning mustard with a regular spoon like an unsophisticated peasant? Come out of the dark ages and start using a mustard spoon.

• Beauty ✨ — 2/5 — Teaspoon, but kinda thicc?
• Use 💪🏻 — 2/5 — Seems qualified to scoop mustard.
• Purpose 🥄 — 1/5 — Would I pack this on a camping trip where I’ll be eating multiple jars of mustard every day? Still no.

7. The Salt Spoon

Are you tired of the continuous struggle of scooping salt with a teaspoon? Guess what, there’s a spoon for that.

• Beauty ✨ — 2/5 — Can’t tell if the handle has skulls or frogs on it.
• Use 💪🏻 — 3/5 — The deeper scoopy bit seems handy for salt/sugar.
• Purpose 🥄 — 1/5 — Don’t want to be salty but still pretty useless.

6. The Ice Tea Spoon

This spoon used to be exclusively for iced tea, but became the standard for chilled drinks and became quite useful for cocktails. But how does it score?

• Beauty ✨ — 2/5 — It’s like a giraffe and a teaspoon had a baby.
• Use 💪🏻 — 3/5 —Seems very useful when you’re dealing with tall glasses.
• Purpose 🥄 — 3/5 —Although the ice tea scenario is pretty specific, it is quite a versatile spoon.

5. The Caviar Spoon

Imagine being on your yacht like a Bond villain, trying to impress a lovely lady. She was unimpressed with your yacht, the private jet, and the helicopter. But then you whip out your CAVIAR SPOON. Good luck now James.

• Beauty ✨ — 5/5 — The prom queen.
• Use 💪🏻 — 2/5 — Can’t say I’m an expert on caviar, but this seems pretty basic spoon-wise.
• Purpose 🥄 — 2/5 — Sadly, we’re looking at spoon-like purpose, not show-how-rich-you-are-purpose.

4. The Caddy Spoon

What’s a Caddy Spoon, you ask? Well, it’s a spoon from Victorian times in England, dedicated to scooping loose tea leaves into the hot water. Neat.

• Beauty ✨ — 4/5 — It’s got some flair and nice curves.
• Use 💪🏻 — 3/5 — Scooping tea is serious business, especially in England.
• Purpose 🥄 — 2/5 — Well. Tea leaves can be grabbed or scooped with basically everything.

3. The Mote Spoon

Continuing on the Victorian tea train, this is the Mote spoon. After you’ve scooped in your tea leaves with your Caddy spoon, you want to take them out at some point. Enter the Mote spoon.

• Beauty ✨ — 4/5 — Looks surprisingly dangerous?
• Use 💪🏻 — 4/5 — Seems like this would work well, it’s got slotted holes and everything!
• Purpose 🥄 — 2/5 — We. Have. Teabags. Sorry, Mote spoon 💔

2. The Fruit Spoon

This spoon is made for scooping out fruits. While I don’t scoop many fruits, they do have cool teeth-like things at their tips to help cut the fruit.

• Beauty ✨ — 4/5 — Simple at first, yet complex on the inside.
• Use 💪🏻 — 4/5 — Once I find a scoopable fruit, this will probably help out.
• Purpose 🥄 — 3/5 — Teeth ON SPOON. (is it a spork?)

1. The Seal-top Spoon 🏆

The best spoon history has to offer. Why? Spoons usually do one thing. This one does two. Picture this:

You are sitting in your medieval castle, next to a crackling fireplace. You are enjoying a rich stew, scooping with your seal-top spoon like the fair ruler you are. But a servant runs in, informing you of another raid by those darn French rebels. You start writing a letter to declare war, this will not stand. You clean your stewy seal-top spoon and use it to heat some wax to put your seal on the letter. The hot wax drips on the parchment and then you seal the letter using your seal. Because your seal is on the top of the SEAL. TOP. SPOON. 🤯

• Beauty ✨ — 5/5 — It has your seal on it, that’s dope.
• Use 💪🏻 — 5/5 — It has so many uses, why would you ever need another spoon?
• Purpose 🥄 — 5/5 — Good for stew eating and war declaring. Best spoon, ever.

Thanks for reading! 💖

10 odly-specific historic spoons — Rated from shitty to superb was originally published in Roof Toilet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One song every day: Why I only create one Spotify playlist per year

For the past three years, I’ve been curating my own playlist. Every day I add a single song to it, so each year I end up with 365 songs to represent my year.

Why?

Glad you asked. I’ve always been a fan of playlists, however, not my own. Whenever I create playlists one of three things tended to happen:

• I lose track of what it’s for and it ends up incoherent mess
• I set a theme/mood for the playlist that was too strict and lose interest
• I finish a playlist, but never listened to it again.

Enter the 365 playlist

I archived all my old playlists in a folder (yes Spotify has folders 🤯) and started fresh. My goal was simple:

Create a single playlist every year, adding one song each day

Over the past three years, I’ve stuck to the practice and have no intention of stopping. Here some great reasons why you might to create your own 365 playlist.

An active quest to seek new music

You need a song every day. While this might seem easy, since music is all around us, you do have those days when you are too busy to listen to some music. Creating a consistent habit of adding a song to a playlist every day keeps you searching for new music or might trigger a deep dive into old favorites.

Shallow waters, or deep dives

Somedays might be simple: you hear a song on the radio, and you add it to the list. These quick and impulsive additions are one of the biggest upsides of doing a 365 playlist. For one, when you shuffle through the playlist, you might be surprised by the songs you added weeks ago. Even better, you might like it so much that it triggers you to do a deep dive into the rest of the artist’s work. The playlists itself becomes a way to discover new music.

It’s a time capsule

If I listen to one of the previous year’s playlists, I am surprised by how much of the songs trigger a memory from the day I added them. The song I add tends to reflect the day, whether it is through an event or because the song channels my mood. Listening back becomes very rewarding because the playlist becomes its own musical time capsule for that year.

Getting started

Well, the easy part is making a playlist. Here are some tips to help you keep it going.

• Add it to a todo-list — I have a list of my daily todo’s, so I can track if I’ve added a song that day.
• Actively reach out to people for recommendations — I love asking people for new music. Make sure that you sent them a song for every song they share with you. Sharing is caring!
• Keep a backlog for the unmotivated days — Some days, I discover a load of new music and some days I can’t be bothered. Keep the songs you discover in another playlist for when you are unmotivated and just want to tick off the task.
• Use your platform’s recommendations — Spotify has generated playlists like Discover Weekly, Release Radar, and Daily Mixes. These are great for discovering new music without the hassle.

Hopefully, you’ve enjoyed reading about my slightly psychotic approach to music curation, and might give it a go yourself!

As stated before, sharing is caring, so I’ll end with a recommendation.

Bangers from start to finish, Rock Steady is my favorite. Stream it here using your platform of choice

One song every day: Why I only create one Spotify playlist every year was originally published in Roof Toilet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I recently read James Clear’s Atomic Habits, an excellent read about how to set up systems to support your habits and help you stick to them. For an extended version of Habits stacking, and all related systems, check out James’ blog at https://jamesclear.com/habit-stacking

How to start habit stacking

Congrats, you’re already doing it. You can’t help it. A habit is nothing more than an answer to a question your brain already knows.

• You become thirsty, you drink something
• Your phone buzzes, you check your messages

These patterns are examples of habits you already have. The trigger (like thirst or a buzzing phone) leads to a response (the expected action you’ve done before).

The art of habit stacking will teach you how to use a habit as a trigger for another habit.

The art of habit stacking

A trigger leads to a response, but how can we make a habit become a trigger for another habit. Many of us already do this, in the form of little rituals throughout the day:

• You might grab a cup of coffee, just before you start working.
• You read a book in bed, just before you go to sleep.

The key to stacking habits is to choose a habit you already have as a trigger for another habit. Two years ago I decided I wanted to learn Italian. Like most people wanting to learn a new language, I installed Duolingo, but after a couple of weeks, I became inconsistent in doing lessons. I kept forgetting.

So, I decided to link this failing habit to an existing one is was doing successfully. The pattern became:

• I start brushing my teeth in the morning → I start an Italian lesson

Two times two minutes of brushing a day (thanks electric toothbrush ❤) = two Italian lessons done.

The habit becomes the trigger

The stacking of these two habits works because both take about 2 minutes at a time and they can be done simultaneously. You will need to help your brain to shape the connection between these two activities for the first couple of days. However, if you stick with it, they will become each other's triggers. I can’t look at my toothbrush (or spazzolino 🇮🇹) without thinking of doing an Italian lesson.

Let’s boil it down to some steps

1. Pick a habit you already have (if you can’t think of any, check James’ blog, he has a list of examples)
2. Decide on a habit want to pick up (can be anything, but make sure the activities can be combined or done in sequence)
3. Say to yourself, or better write down: After/Before [already existing habit], I will [do new habit]. (E.g., Before I go to sleep, I will read five pages of a book.)
4. For the first couple of days, you will need to actively remind yourself, but after a while, these habits will become linked.

Tips to help you out

Make it obvious

One of James’ points in the book is to make a habit you are trying to create as obvious as possible. If you want to read a book before going to sleep, place the book on your nightstand. If you still keep forgetting, place it on your pillow. Try getting around that!

Take it easy

Habit stacking works best if done consistently but don’t beat yourself up if you mess up. Try not to miss two days in a row, because it becomes easier to give up after two misses. Also, if you do realize that the habits don’t work well together, don’t stick with them for the sake of it. Find another combination that does work for you.

Track your habits

A great way to stay motivated in completing your habits is to track your progress. This could be on paper, in a journal, or using an app (I like https://streaksapp.com). Having a visual reminder gives you the satisfaction of ticking off a box every time you complete a habit. In time, the duration of the streak will also become the motivation to keep going.

Good luck!

As stated earlier, these ideas on Habit Stacking were taken from James Clear’s Atomic Habits. If you have any interest in forming habits successfully, check out his blog or book!

Habit Stacking: Hacking your daily habits was originally published in Roof Toilet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Introducing Franky the Frog

It’s around 21:30 and I am out on a walk with the family dog. As we’re finishing off the walk, he sniffs a tree and proceeds with marking his territories. Basic dog stuff. While he’s doing his business, I spot a frog smack bang in the middle of the street. We’re in a pretty urban area, so he must have gotten there from the forest a couple of streets down. Hopelessly standing there, awaiting death by car tires. I feel a sudden urge to do the human thing and meddle with nature, after all, it’s our fault the road is there in the first place.

The first plan (motivational speech)

First step, secure the frog. Did I do this by putting myself and my dog in the middle of the road like an insane person? Yes. It wasn’t that busy of a street, so for the few cars that passed, I just stepped aside and prayed the frog didn’t end up meeting a tire. In the car-free moments, I tried to guide the frog by blocking the wrong directions with my feet. Sadly, it seemed keen on returning to the wrong side of the road. Meanwhile, my dog luckily left the frog alone and just chilled looking rather confused.

The second plan (subtle stick provoking)

Since my subtle feet nudging had failed, I needed a new plan. Shall I pick it up? Nah, frogs are notoriously slimy. I’ll use a stick to nudge it in the proper direction, the frog will understand. Right? After many tries, Frank just insists on jumping over the stick instead, leading him in exactly the wrong direction.

The third plan (the boot insanity)

At this point, we’ve made it a solid three-quarters of the way across the road. However, Frank is getting even more angsty as two cars pass. Instead of using this angst to fuel his drive for getting to the preciously desired pond, he turns around and hops toward the car tires. I, still juggling the protection of the frog, the safety of my dog, and the rapid decline of my self-worth, decide on a new strategy. You might think I’m going mad, but I decide it’s a good plan to lead the frog into my boot and use this as a vessel to carry him to safety. Sadly, the frog seems keen on avoiding the dark leather cave I am inviting him into, leaving me stranded on one boot.

The final plan (my oh my)

As I am shamefully putting back on my boot, I gather my thoughts and decide that this endeavor has cost me too many minutes of my life. I (carefully) grab Franky the frog, an act that he seems okay with after all this time spent bonding. I lift him across the street, over the grass, and gently put him down next to the pond.

Happily ever after

Franky the Frog has reached his destination, and arguably, his destiny.

Do I feel kinda fulfilled? Yes.

Could I have gone without taking off my boot? Also yes.

Will Franky live happily ever after? Hopefully.

Did I find a dead frog on that exact road a day later? Definitely.

I helped a frog cross a road for 20 minutes was originally published in Roof Toilet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How it all got started

Let’s set the scene. It’s the year 1979. Steven Greenberg, founder of the disco group “Lipps Inc.”, is working on the group's debut album “Mouth to Mouth”. While the wordplay of combining Lipps Inc. and Mouth to Mouth is a solid 10/10 success, this couldn’t be said for all the songs on the album. All besides “FunkyTown” would be doomed to remain in the shadows of the synthy banger we all know from the ’80s (or in my case, Shrek 2). FunkyTown went on to become a #1 hit in 28 different countries worldwide. But what is this funky town they speak of?

The actual Funky Town

Apparently, New York. Greenberg wrote the song while living in Minneapolis. He dream of moving to New York, a city he deemed a “funky town”. While I don’t want to go too deep into it, New York doesn’t seem very “funky” to me. Creative, innovative, passionate, big, bold, yes. But funky? Not really. A grid of perfectly aligned streets filled with yellow cabs, bright lights and aspirations seem too structured to be called funky. So the case of New York being funky remains to be decided, but is FunkyTown a funk song?

Well, first of all, nobody claims it is. The town is supposed to be funky, but to me, the title also implies a certain funkiness is present in the song. Secondly, genres (like most labels created by humans) are more fluent than they appear on paper. So what is funk?

Funk 101

Let’s kick off by saying that I’m not a music expert by any measure, however, I do listen to a lot of funk music and spent at least a solid hour on research. Probably not enough to make me the world’s leading expert on funk, but close enough.

In the early sixties, Funk originated out of a mixture of soul, jazz, and R&B (rhythm and blues). It focuses on creating a strong rhythmic feel by using the combination of bass and drums. This makes a tune funky and may induce the urge to dance. This brings me to my first problem, the One.

On the One

James Brown is seen as one of the founding fathers of funk. On the One refers to a drum groove where the emphasis is placed on the first beat.

One, two, three, four.

This swinging beat defines the canvas on which the funk song is then painted. The next essential layer is the bass. While some bands still have an acoustic bass, it mostly came to be known as a genre for electric bass. The instrument was invented in the mid-1950s, so everyone still thought the sound was fresh. The drums created the groove and kept it steady, creating space for the bass.

The song above perfectly illustrates the pattern. First, the drums define the structure, with low tones from the bass settings the scene. Then we add some percussion and guitar, and the bass is set free to spice up the sound. The drums and bass form the groove, and the guitar and percussion are added as accents. Knowing this, let’s get back to FunkyTown.

(Not so) FunkyTown

Let’s do a little exercise. Take a moment to close your eyes and try to imagine what FunkyTown’s bassline sounds like. If you could hear it, get yourself a sticker. If you couldn’t, which is most likely, it’s probably because it is about the least memorable part of the entire song. It’s a pretty standard computer bass sound, nobody even came near an actual bass in the making of this song.

When I think of FunkyTown, I hear three things: the lead synth melody everyone recalls, the robot-like vocoder vocals, and the strings.

The drum and bass, combined with the emphasis on the one are all missing. Just so you don’t think these are the ramblings of a mad man, I put both songs side by side to look at their waveforms (volume/amount of noise visualized).

Rapid-fire round

To round off, let’s quickly look at the actual prominent sounds that make FunkyTown such a banger, and how they fit into the funk genre.

The lead synth melody everyone recalls

While synthesizers are used across the funk genre, they are rarely used in such a prominent position. The synth line is FunkyTown, it defines the song. It forms the basis for the song, which is not a role the synthesizer often takes in funk.

The robot-like vocoder vocals

The vocals, delivered by Cynthia Johnson, are used in many ways throughout the song. Sometimes vocoded (the semi-robot sound that later became autotune), sometimes doubled. These effects are relatively modern at that time and not often used in the funk context. Funk tends to focus more on harmonies based on multiple singers, like Earth, Wind and Fire, or solo artists with background vocalists

The strings

Strings and horns are added to this song to dress it up nicely. The sweeping strings and sax-man solos give life to the tune. While horns are pretty common in funk, the strings as a prominent instrument push it out of the genre.

Then what is it?

FunkyTown is not a funk song, as far as we’ve established. But then again, like most strict labels created by humanity, genres are pretty difficult and often more fluid than they are made out to be. The prominent use of synths, strings, and modern drum groove most likely makes FunkyTown a disco song.

But then again, they never claimed the song was funky, just the Town.

Why FunkyTown is not actually funk(y) was originally published in Roof Toilet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.