(via Bad Newspaper)
Monday, January 19, 2026
Dear America, We’d Like to Speak to the Manager
Danish comedian Huxi Bach explains Greenland to America. That is all. (via Metafilter)
Rescue Dog and a Surprise
When you find a beautiful dog in an unusual place or out in the middle of nowhere, there's a good chance that the previous owners dumped her because they were too cheap to have her spayed and now she's pregnant. This happened to me twice- one was even dumped right in my front yard. I managed to find homes for 15 puppies in total. Oh, yeah, they both were spayed soon after.
Joel and his wife found a Great Pyrenees in their front yard. How did she get there? She had no microchip, so they kept her and named her Waco. Waco got along fine with their golden retriever Wellington, and fattened up quickly. That was because she was pregnant, and she soon gave birth to eight puppies who were all mini-Wacos. If you want to see more of these puppies, check out Wellington's TikTok channel.
Shakespeare's Personal Life
William Shakespeare is the most famous writer in history, but we know little about his personal life. You may have seen the 1998 movie Shakespeare in Love or the recent Hamnet, but the former is fiction and the latter is highly fictionalized history. The truth is that people in the 16th century weren't as curious about artists as they were about the art, and Shakespeare's biography has a lot of holes in it. Maybe Shakespeare liked his privacy.
Anyway, the documented facts about Shakespeare's personal life are few and far between, and only take up about half of this video from Weird History. Then there are plenty of rumors and tales that mostly arose after his death and may have been changed over time. They address those, too. What it all adds up to is that the most famous English artist of his time is now a rather blank slate for more stories to be written.
Miss Cellania's Links
Tales from the Olden Days of Landline Phones.
You Need A Kitchen Slide Rule. Even if you never use one, the reasons behind it are interesting. (via Nag on the Lake)
Discover Michelangelo’s First Painting, Created When He Was Only 12 or 13 Years Old. An informative video accompanies the article. (via Boing Boing)
The ancient baths of Pompeii were outrageously filthy, study finds. (via Strange Company)
How White Southerners Distorted the History of Ancient Egypt to Justify Slavery in the U.S.
Valheim player keeps building Dollar Generals despite friend begging them to stop: 'I do not want to play Valheim with Greg anymore'. (via Metafilter)
Barbara Thompson: Prisoner of the Aboriginal.
The Wall Looks Permanent Until It Falls. On the optimism of preparation in a time of democratic decay. (via Nag on the Lake)
What Martin Luther King Actually Thought About Car Commercials
Dodge aired an ad during the Super Bowl in 2018 that used a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. It was supposed to be inspirational, but there was no hiding the Dodge Ram trucks. Then Nathan Robinson overdubbed a different part of the very same speech to show us what King actually thought about advertising. I am not at all surprised. (via Astead)
Sunday, January 18, 2026
MLK's Final Sermon
Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his last Sunday sermon on March 31, 1968, at the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Washington, DC. Now 58 years later, the subject matter is just as valid, and that's a tragedy. This is just a small excerpt. The entire 47-minute sermon is available at YouTube, if you are interested.
A Robot to Control Your Cat
Cats love to stroll along kitchen counters because they are human-high and often contain tasty or at least interesting things. People have tried many methods to stop them, but all cats are different, so nothing works consistently. My Marshmallow roams the counter, leaving evidence that she scratches herself with my cactus garden. I cope by putting dirty dishes away quickly and not leaving uncovered food out. And cleaning the counter often. She has me trained.
Cookie is a hard case, though. He roamed the whole kitchen and was not susceptible to human tricks. The guy behind the YouTube channel Lab-X is an engineer, so he built an AI-assisted robot with a squirt gun built in, and trained it to recognize Cookie and deter him. He named it Puffy. There were plenty of tests and failures and tweaks to be made before it actually worked. If you don't care about the tech stuff, you'll still get a kick out of Cookie's antics. My cat would spot the robot and knock him off the counter immediately.
An Address from the Cabinet
Saturday Night Live has been off for almost a month, so they had a lot to catch up in the opening skit of their first broadcast of 2026. Since the news is so awful, they leaned in more on style and the weird smaller gaffs recently from the current administration. And the language is more SFW than the real news.
Cat Trapped in Stairs
Henriette Kleppan's family moved to a new home with their cat, Sverre. The house needed some work, including building new stairs. After the carpenters were gone, the family couldn't find the cat. They called for Sverre and finally heard him crying weakly from inside the new stairs! Four-year-old Julie and 7-year-old Mikkel were quite upset. Sverre was closed up inside the stairs for at least five hours. He was pretty glad to be out, and doesn't seem to hold a grudge about the misadventure. (via Digg)
Saturday, January 17, 2026
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