This week’s roundup from Tasteologie and Liqurious includes strawberry mojitos, dandelion pancakes and mini rainbow vanilla bean donuts! To find out more about each delectable post, click on its individual image.

Head to the next page to see the full unboxing and a size comparison between the BIG and small!

Birds made from LEGO, fitness minded furniture and camel jumping all feature in this week’s roundup from NOTCOT.org. To find out more about each post, click on its individual image.

A Colombian salt cathedral, surfing British Columbia and Hong Kong for art lovers are all part of this week’s roundup from NotVentures roundup. Find out more about each post by clicking on its individual image.

Waffle jelly shots, homemade marshmallow crème and pinata cookies are all part of this week’s roundup from Tasteologie and Liqurious. To find out more about each post, click on its individual images.

Renting a vacation home versus going to a hotel often means foregoing the convenience of room service… and if you were to pick a gorgeous remote spot, you may not be able to find all your gourmet favorites either! But this doesn’t necessarily mean giving them up, instead, when we day dream a NOTCOT team getaway somewhere like Big Sur, we think it would be the perfect excuse to try all kinds of packable gourmet treats and condiments and other experiments on vacation! See some of the fun we’d love to play with on the next page!

A beautiful new take on the climbing wall, a postcard creating Rube Goldberg machine and piles of baby scorpions are all part of this week’s roundup from NOTCOT.org. To find out more about each post, click on its individual image.

The Mexican Riviera, Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum and a spot of glamping are all a part of this week’s roundup from NotVentures. To find out more about each destination, click on its individual image.

That’s right, at the NOTlabs we still have our Puma Penguin Army… so now, we’ve just adopted our very own real life Antarctic penguin colony and hope to bring you updates from colony NOTCOT! It’s all part of an awesome new project by my former Zoology colleague Tom Hart, a self-described ‘penguinologist’ who has done some amazing research into penguin behavior and conservation over the past few years. Antarctica is the perfect environment for penguin colonies, but as the highest, driest, coldest continent on earth, it isn’t the easiest or most accessible to researchers. After piloting time lapse data collection, Tom is now looking to set up a series of time-lapse cameras in Antarctica and link them to a satellite phone, enabling researchers to gain access to remote areas accessed by humans only once every five to ten years. You can find out more about Penguin Lifelines and how to help this exciting new penguin research via the penguin cam RocketHub page where you can adopt a penguin colony yourself and even get the opportunity to go out to Antarctica for a mission!!!

We look forward to bringing you updates from the NOTCOT colony in the future, but in the meantime, here is some of that incredible footage from the team. Love the serenity of Antarctica and the stark contrast between the real time footage and frenzied time lapse of five months of furious penguin activity (and serious weather!).

Join us in supporting the Penguin Satellite Camera Project here, and see more pictures of the penguins and adventures on the next page!

Incubating your own eggs is something a lot of kids get to do in school, but something I’ve never actually done myself, so I was very excited to get the chance to incubate our own little brood! It was a fantastic birthday-present of sorts with a borrowed incubator and permanent home in the country all lined up.

I’ve always been fascinated by livestock breeds, so we’d thought a lot about what types of breeds we’d be after (those considering poultry in the UK, but confused about breeds should make a trip down to the incredible Domestic Fowl Trust). With a few favorites in mind, we were happy to find a few local breeders and picked up 6 Wyandotte hatching eggs (3 silver-laced and 3 gold-laced). We documented their 21 day journey from eggs to chick and hope you enjoy their journey as well as a live stream of the chicks as they grow over the next week or two! See it all on the next page!

“Officine Autodromo was founded to recapture a romantic era of motoring. It was a time of Gran Turismo when driving from city to city wasn’t just a matter of hopping onto an expressway. It meant slipping on your driving gloves for a high speed jaunt through the great roads of Europe with a powerful, sweet-sounding engine propelling you into new adventure, and maybe even a little danger. Autodromo watches and accessories draw aesthetic inspiration from the world of mid-century auto racing. Our products have a vintage feel, alloyed with a clean, uncluttered modernist design philosophy. Each new product is conceived as an artifact that might have existed in the past, but is equally at home in the world of today.”

Autodromo’s newest timepiece, the Vallelunga, is a minimal chronograph inspired by 60’s and 70’s Italian Prototype and Grand Prix tachometers. Named after the challenging road circuit outside of Rome designed by Piero Taruffi, the Vallelunga offers a dual-hand timer offset from center and date just above 6’oclock. This would be even more awesome for recording times if you were driving this beautiful Alfa or Lotus Eleven through France like their photos. The optional black or white dial comes with a brushed steel case and a perforated black leather band reminiscent of a vintage Italian steering wheel. Take a look at the beautiful details and packaging on the next page…

Bacon wrapped jalapenos, homemade golden brown sugar and the refreshing Cilantro Lime Tequila Spritzer are all part of this week’s roundup from Tasteologie and Liqurious. To find out more about each delectable post, click on its individual image.

Spirit-preserved flowers, top secret USBs and plot lines captured by infographics are all part of this week’s roundup from NOTCOT.org. To find out more about each post, click on its individual image.

It was stories of their magical popcorn bacon that drew us to Black Hogg. Bacon’s sirens call is powerful, but Black Hogg is more than just this one deep fried delight. This cozy restaurant is located in Silver Lake on Sunset Boulevard near where Silver Lake Blvd sneaks underneath it. The name also includes a subtle slight of hand. Despite the porcine leanings of a place famous for its bacon, a hogg is actually a sort of teenaged sheep. Black Hogg is a black sheep… it’s also an obscurely named, comfort food serving, Silver Lake hotspot that more than lives up to its hype. It surpasses it. Check out some of our delicious adventure on the next page…

Island hopping in the Galapagos, activities for kids in Los Angeles, and a local’s guide to Istanbul are all part of this week’s roundup from NotVentures. To find out more about each destination, click on its individual image.

The anatomy of a good grilled cheese, homemade mint chocolate bars and a sip of cherry moon, are all part of this week’s roundup from Tasteologie and Liqurious. To find out more about each delectable post, click on its individual image.

Earlier today, I found myself surrounded by grey matter in the stunning exhibition Brains: The mind as matter at the Wellcome Collection. The exhibition is a triumph, offering a fascinating look into our understanding of the anatomy of mind both today and throughout history. The curators have brought together over 150 artifacts surrounding the theme of the brain and they have done a fantastic job of bringing together a wide range of perspectives, genres and media as well as capturing the brain both scientifically and as a cultural object. In ‘Brains’, historical anatomical illustrations complement modern imaging, photo series accompany an elegant audio listening station and modern art and preserved brain specimens all work together in the exhibition space. Somehow, despite the wide variety of displays, the exhibition holds together beautifully and is truly awe-inspiring, though there are certainly chilling moments as we look back on early surgical instruments and videos of electroconvulsive therapy.

The exhibition runs until June 17th and it’s definitely one to see if you’re in town. In the meantime, enjoy the photos courtesy of the Wellcome Collection. You can get a further peek at the exhibition at the exhibition’s online image galleries and you can even explore the surface of the brain in 360 degrees. See many pictures from the exhibition (provided by the Welcome Collection, since photos weren’t allowed) on the next page!

The latest dose of natural inspiration from our resident zoologist and London-based editor, Justine Aw.

Despite being a zoologist, I confess, I wasn’t 100% sure what this amazing creature was when I first caught sight of it. A bright glint of blue and purple in the sunshine, it didn’t fit with its surroundings and the Londoner in me immediately dismissed it as a stray bit of foil or plastic. But then we noticed it was moving on its own, waddling along in a very exposed position at the edge of a Dorset field.

On closer inspection, it looked a bit like a rove beetle with its half-sized elytra (those hard outer wings), but it far larger and more iridescent than any rove beetle I’d ever seen (some 30mm long)! So we snapped a few photos of the beautiful beetle for ID, then popped it back on the soil, where it started to dig. Check out our photos and find out more about these beautiful and fascinating insects on the next page!

Dumpster pinhole cameras, stupidity in super slow motion and adorable baby coatis are all part of this week’s roundup from NOTCOT.org. To find out more about each post, click on its individual image.