(via Bad Newspaper)
Saturday, July 19, 2025
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
The 1988 Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker film The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! was the first feature film of the Police Squad franchise, but it was actually a sequel, or continuation, of the television series Police Squad! With the new movie The Naked Gun opening in August, the fourth film in the series, we may as well go back to remember what all the fuss was about.
How Cats Cool Themselves
Here I was, thinking that my cats must really love me, since they are always in the same room with me. It eventually dawned on me that the room I'm in happens to be where the box fan is on. Duh. Outside, they sit under a tree. When we go on walks, they hurry up in sunny spots and linger in the shade. The Helpful Vancouver Vet has some tips for helping your cats stay cool in the summer. Of course, in Vancouver, "hot" doesn't mean the same as it does here. (via Mental Floss)
The Letter Helen Keller Wrote to the New York Symphony Orchestra
Music is much more than just sound. The proof of that is in the time Helen Keller, who was both blind and deaf, experienced Beethoven's Ninth Symphony performed by the New York Symphony Orchestra and broadcast on radio. It was in February of 1924. She placed her hand lightly on the speaker, and was so moved that she wrote a letter to the symphony to describe what she felt. Her words are beyond poetic, and will make you want to listen to that symphony again, maybe with your own hands on the speakers. The letter is also a heartfelt thank you to the musicians who made that joyful experience possible.
Now we all get to experience what Keller felt, as Gillian Anderson reads that letter as part of the Letters Live series. (via Laughing Squid)
Lego In Real Life
A guy makes toast and eggs for breakfast, except his ingredients are LEGO bricks. This stop-motion animation was made in the style of PES films, like Fresh Guacamole. Short and sweet, and satisfying. This video took BrickBrosProductions three days and 1,500 still images to create. (via Digg)
Friday, July 18, 2025
The Real Purpose of the Semicolon
This TED-Ed video starts out talking about how everyone gets the semicolon wrong because they don't know its proper use. I held my breath, ready to be chastised. It was a relief to learn that I have been using a semicolon properly, but that's not the most interesting part of the lesson. Freelance journalist Emma Bryce explains the straightforward purpose of this punctuation mark in a way I've never heard before, but it makes perfect sense. I can't recall ever being taught about the semicolon in an English class; I picked it up through context over many years of reading. I also picked up the use of a semicolon in a list through context, which is a bit complicated. That's not explained here at all, and I'm not about to try. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
An Honest Trailer for The Naked Gun (2025)
An Honest Trailer for The Naked Gun? How did I miss the movie at my local theater? I'm not losing it; this movie doesn't open until August first. It appears that Screen Junkies has really arrived, because the producers of The Naked Gun approached them about making an Honest Trailer.
The Naked Gun is the fourth movie in franchise, which were all sequels of the 1982 TV series Police Squad! It is the first to be made without Leslie Nielsen playing the main character Lieutenant Frank Drebin. Instead, Liam Neeson plays his son, Frank Drebin Jr. If you've never thought of Neeson as a comedic actor, well, no one thought of Leslie Nielsen as a comedic actor until he starred in Airplane! either. Does Screen Junkies like the movie? Considering how they got early access, you can guess that they do.
Miss Cellania's Links
Splitting Hairs: Chinese Immigrants, the Queue, and the Boundaries of Political Citizenship.
The Heroic Adventures of Lex Luthor. The latest from Tom the Dancing Bug.
How was the wheel invented? Computer simulations reveal the unlikely birth of a world-changing technology nearly 6,000 years ago. (via kottke)
The World's Only Ferris Wheel Sauna.
Kate Wagner looks at a modernist house that defies all the rules of architectural design. And if you ever wanted to see a McMansion interior in landlord gray, here are the pictures.
32 Movies That Completely Change When You Add an Extra Letter. I would love to watch Sitar Wars.
The Godfather Presidency: How Donald Trump’s Governing Style Mimics the Mob. (via Metafilter)
Dinosaurs Gathered to Perform Mating Dances With Kicks and Spins at This Site in Colorado—and You Can Go See It for Yourself.
Billions & Billions & Billions & Billions & Billions & Billions
Billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billio pic.twitter.com/PnM0dTHPvV— VICE News (@vicenews) July 15, 2017
Our president keeps talking about someone named Bill Yenzins. None of these clips are used more than once. At least Carl Sagan had other amounts to talk about. (via Metafilter)
Thursday, July 17, 2025
The QWERTY Keyboard Sucks
More people are familiar with the QWERTY keyboard today than ever, whether you learned to type with ten fingers on a typewriter, two thumbs on an iPhone, or even if you type on a bluetooth keyboard in anagrams like I do . It's what we are all used to. But it's not the best layout, nor is it even mediocre. An efficient keyboard layout would group the most used letter keys together, and have vowels on one side, so that you'd be alternating your hands for most words. The problem is that learning a new keyboard layout is a lot of work.
So why do our keyboards start with QWERTY? For a long time, no one knew, because the Remington Company that produced it never told us. But we eventually figured it out, and the revelation is like finding out you've spent decades doing more work that you needed to. Half as Interesting is glad to explain that. The video is seven minutes long; the rest is an ad. (via Damn Interesting)
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