Tesla Designer Creates New Chocolate Chip
Remy Labesque’s main job is helping design cars for the electric car company Tesla. But over the last few years, he’s had an interesting project on the side – designing a new shape for chocolate chips.
Mr. Labesque got interested in chocolate after taking a class at a company in California called Dandelion Chocolate. Soon, he was working with Chef Lisa Vega on a way of improving chocolate chips.
(Source: Dandelion Chocolate.)
The kind of chocolate chips we’re used to seeing are made in a way that’s easy to produce in a factory. But Dandelion Chocolate wanted chips that melted quickly in the mouth, but still held together as a chunk. They also had to be easy to make.
After three years of work, Mr. Labesque came up with designs for two sizes of chocolate chips. They have an unusual shape, which allows two edges of the chip to melt in your mouth right away. But the center part of the chip is still chunky.
(Source: Dandelion Chocolate.)
The chips were designed for making chocolate chip cookies, but the company says they taste pretty good on their own, too.
Tourist Breaks Toes on 200-Year-Old Statue
Last week, an Austrian tourist visiting a museum in Italy sat down on a 200-year-old plaster statue to take a selfie. When he got up again, the statue had lost two toes.
(Source: Sailko [CC BY], via Wikimedia Commons.)
The statue was created by Antonio Canova around 1808, and is known as “Pauline Bonaparte as Venus Victrix”. It shows a woman leaning back on a sofa, with her bare feet stretched out before her. The broken statue was a plaster model used to make a more valuable (and tougher) statue made of marble.
Security video from the museum shows the tourist sitting down at the statue’s feet, and then leaning back to put his body in the same position as the statue.
(Source: Antonio Canova [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.)
The police have tracked the tourist down. It’s not yet clear what will happen as a result. The tourist has written a letter saying he is very sorry.
Mickey Mouse Signs Tax Checks in Rhode Island
The tax department in the state of Rhode Island sent out 176 checks last week, giving people money back from their taxes. But there was a problem with the checks. Instead of being signed by the state leaders in charge of returning tax money, the checks were signed by Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse.
(Source: WikimediaCommons.org.)
Walt Disney, who created the cartoon star Mickey Mouse, has a well-known signature. Mr. Disney’s writing was used to create the Disney logo. But neither Walt Disney nor Mickey Mouse has the power to sign checks for the tax department.
The signing mistake was the result of a problem in the tax department’s automatic check-signing system. The signatures were only supposed to be used in testing the system. Using such clearly fake signatures was a way to make sure no test checks got mistaken for real ones.
(Source: Walt Disney [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.)
But this time, 176 checks were actually mailed out. The tax department says it has canceled all of those checks and has now sent out new ones.