(Thanks, Jennifer!)
Saturday, June 13, 2026
A Song Made With No Musical Instruments
Andy Brewer is an audio engineer and composer. He was playing around with pink noise, what we lay people would call static, on an equalizer and found he could extract musical notes from it with a little work. Could he play a song using just those notes? It would be a song without a voice or musical instrument. Yes, he could, although it was a lot of work. You wouldn't be able to do this if you didn't know a lot about music already. This song is technically "electronic music," and it's what a synthesizer (which is a musical instrument) does, although Brewer didn't use a synthesizer; just an equalizer.
Music buffs in the comments said this is an additive synthesizer or a subtractive synthesizer. I don't know which is correct, but it took many people many years to develop the music synthesizer, while Brewer started from almost nothing and figured it out on his own. I'm impressed. The song is quite pleasant, too. (via kottke)
Raccoon and the Light
A cute animated story of a raccoon finding a flashlight shows what forest creatures do in the dark. (via The Kid Should See This)
Friday, June 12, 2026
"Something" as It Was Born
On February 25, 1969, George Harrison spent his 26th birthday in an EMI studio with sound engineer Ken Scott to make demos of three songs he had written: “Something,” “Old Brown Shoe,” and “All Things Must Pass.” This is one of those recordings. YouTuber britt2001b rendered it in stereo and added some subtle string sounds from the later Beatles' recording of "Something," but the raw emotion is still there.
The Reason Behind Catnip
Crazy cat lady that I am, I have a small part of my garden dedicated to catnip (and strawberries; they seem to get along well). The cats like it, and it makes my home the cool place for neighborhood kitties to hang out. But is there any evolutionary reason for cats to go crazy for catnip? Research has isolated the exact compounds that intoxicate cats, nepetalactone in catnip, and nepetalactol in silver vine, another popular cat attractant.
Not only have scientists found how these compounds affect cats, but also why. It's an adaptive feature of their evolution! Cats rarely pay any attention to plants, but the cats who went for catnip or silver vine were more likely to survive and reproduce millions of years ago until a catnip attraction became quite common among several cat species on the African savannah. This TED-Ed video explains why with charming cat animation, although you might not like one of the experiments that led to this knowledge. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
What's In Your Pants
In the current climate of war, corruption, economic struggle, and hatred, I keep wondering why so many people hang the entirety of their political views on the sex or sex life of consenting adults they don't even know. It's not just in the US, either. New Zealand has a new bill in parliament called Definitions of Woman and Man and they're taking public feedback on it now.
St. Matthew-in-the-City put up a new billboard expressing the church's view.
Nametags for Nameless People
Bill Wurtz shares another nonsense song, this one about name tags. Are they important? No. Are they invasive? Could be. Are they a joy? Only in this universe. (via the Awesomer)
Miss Cellania's Links
Juan Romero: How a Teenager's Thirty Seconds With RFK Haunted Him For Fifty Years. You know him from this picture.
Judge Cancels Whole Case After Lawyers Admit They Didn’t Read AI-Generated Filings.
Look what they did to Tinkerbell!
The World Cup Match So Violent It Changed the Rules Forever.
Hollywood’s Original “Bad Girl”: The Tragic Muse of Kurt Cobain. Was Frances farmer mentally ill, or just more rebellious than the studio allowed?
Dads can't handle the time they hear about their daughter's first boyfriend.
A PR Hoax Created the Year’s Hottest Rock Band. Imagine What It Can Do in Politics. (via Damn Interesting)
A Blast from the Past (2008): Messing with Mother Nature: 5 Cautionary Tales.
The Cats' Orchestra
Anyone who ever saw The Aristocats knows that cats make music like nobody's business. Click the "more" button to see 14 cats playing their chosen instruments.
Cummulus & Nimbus
Every gag about clouds you can fit into a 45-second video is here in this cute animation from German producers we think things. (via Laughing Squid)
Scientists
The struggle is real
— Paul J. Dauenhauer (@pauldauenhauer.bsky.social) June 8, 2026 at 7:53 PM
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Thursday, June 11, 2026
The Slow Loris
You've seen pictures of a loris. They are big-eyed, adorable little primates. But keep your distance. They can be deadly!
Lover's Lane
The story of Lover's Lane is an urban myth about a couple who goes parking and narrowly escapes a horrible death. What we called "parking" is the custom of young people in a car finding a secluded space to canoodle away from prying eyes, and many towns have at least one road that is famous for such activities nicknamed Lover's Lane. The first part of this video explores the history of how parking itself became a thing.
Then at about five minutes in, we learn about the very real crimes that may have sparked the urban legend. Or did the legend inspire the crimes? Since we don't really know how far back the legend goes, it's not quit clear. But for someone who wants to kill and get away with it, teenagers in a car on a lonely road present a tantalizing opportunity.
The third section of the video goes into how these crimes and the Lover's Lane legend influenced the modern horror film. That seems only natural, since the target audience for these movies are young people who have the world in the palm of their hands, until they don't.
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