(via She Who Seeks)
Saturday, October 17, 2026
Luna and Kallie
When I had a houseful of kids, someone would bring a cat home as "their cat." but the cat would decide to be close to a different person. That didn't really matter with a bunch of busy teenagers. Now the cats are all close to me, because they have no choice. Luna was adopted into a family with several children, and decided the baby Kallie was hers. Can you blame her? Everyone loves babies.
Why Ghosts Wear White Sheets
There was one time I actually went trick-or-treating as a ghost wearing a bed sheet with two eye holes. Just once. I learned that it's impossible to keep the eye holes in the right place when you're walking, or doing anything. I guess that's why Charlie Brown had multiple eye holes cut into his sheet. When my kid wanted to be a ghost, I insisted on using a white bathrobe with a (non-pointy) hood and plenty of white face paint. She changed that to a black robe with white face paint and was much scarier.
But why are ghosts depicted as being covered in a white sheet? The art that makes them look like that goes back further than the trick-or-treat costume. Even today, when very few kids want to be a ghost for Halloween, we hang up balloons with white fabric over them to decorate our porches, because that says "ghosts" to us. Dr. Emily Zarka of Monstrum explains why.
How Polar Bears Ruined Halloween
Trick-or-treating can be a bit different when you live in Nunanvut. In addition to watching out for traffic, you have to keep clear of polar bears! The town of Arviat cancelled outdoor Halloween activities for years because of bears, and now armed guards surround the town during trick-or-treat.
No Kings Today
whoa... the current map of "No Kings: Vote Early" events planned for tomorrow, sat oct 17: www.nokings.org
— Rachel Maddow (@maddow.bsky.social) October 16, 2026 at 6:43 PM
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Friday, October 16, 2026
Former Bully Needs Surgery
The latest skit from Foil Arms and Hogg finds a former school bully going in for surgery. He gets a bit nervous when he meets his surgeon and finds out they went to school together. This is another of many reasons you don't bully other kids (or adults). He survived the surgery, but woke up with no eyebrows.
An Owl Uses Sound to Hunt Under the Snow
If you're a rodent out in the forest, there's nothing more frightening than a hungry owl. They stare at you with those super predator eyes and glide in silently for the kill. Under a thick blanket of snow, however, they can't see you.
The great grey owl will find you anyway. These birds have superpowers, and they can hear voles moving underneath the snow. They have excellent hearing, and their whole face is designed to enhance that ability. We need special effects to detect what the owl can hear. They also use physics to fine-tune their attack on a fast-moving vole they cannot see. The owl's survival depends on it.
This nature sequence is from the CBC show The Nature of Things, from a series called Secret World of Sound. If you're interested, you can see how they got this amazing footage in a behind the scenes video explaining the acoustic camera. (via kottke)
The History of Domino's
The original title of this video is How Domino's Became #1 With Bad Pizza, but I'm not using that because many folks like Domino's pizza. I haven't eaten one in I don't know how long and besides, pizza is like sex. Anyway, Domino's is the number one pizza chain, and often it's the only name people can remember. Most of that is the work of Tom Monaghan, who founded Domino's in 1960 with his younger brother Jim. Success came from hard work, streamlining the restaurant's menu, delivery, and inventing of the pizza box. Name recognition came, too.
In the last 60 years, there have been many Domino's Pizza news stories that you will recall once you hear them again. Not all were detrimental to the company. but they all add up to a pizza place that everyone knows, even if they don't particularly care for the pizza.
Miss Cellania's Links
When Gilded Age New York City went to war against banana peels. (via Strange Company)
Legends Haunting Cemeteries. (Thanks, WTM!)
A Calvinesque and Hobbesian look at the midterms. The latest from Tom the Dancing Bug.
The Werewolf Trials That Predated the Salem Witch Trials By 200 Years.
R2D2 got teabagged at the Quebec Comiccon. An embarrassing episode.
The Zenith Balloon Tragedy of 1875. Like Icarus, they flew too high.
A Blast from the Past (2013): The Haunted Hospital.
Pumpkin Killing
Tennessee YouTube member hickok45 showed us how to carve a jack-o-lantern with a handgun (twice), and how to chop down a Christmas tree with a shotgun. Here, he presents the many different ways you can destroy a pumpkin after you're done with it. The chosen methods tend toward the violent, which is no surprise. Some men really do love their their power tools and weapons! But somehow I doubt if he expects you to emulate his skills with a light saber. His favorites are shown a second time in slow motion.
This is actually hickok45's fourth video in the Pumpkin Killing series. You can see more pumpkin mayhem in parts one, two, and three. (via Viral Viral Videos)
Zombies
I've been hanging out on the internet too long. I've read this discussion on so many websites that it doesn't even seem weird in context. That's why, of all the implausible things on The Walking Dead, the most implausible was the lack of discussion on the nature of zombies. This comic is from Alex Culang and Raynato Castro at Buttersafe.
Thursday, October 15, 2026
Paid Vacation
You will not be surprised that that United States has no mandatory paid days off for workers. But you might be surprised that we are the ONLY nation with over a million people that does not mandate any paid days off for workers. Gig work doesn't have any paid time off at all. In radio, most stations I worked for gave you a week's vacation if you lasted a whole year. However, they always made you feel bad for taking it. And you had to work extra hours for anyone else who took one, so we paid for it during the year and management wasn't out any cash. The rest of the world doesn't expect everybody to work all the time forever.
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