Wednesday, April 22, 2026
Tuesday, April 21, 2026
Tundra
"Tundra" is the newest song by OTYKEN, an indigenous Siberian band that mixes dance-pop with traditional folk music. The instruments include duck calls and a jaaw harp. The lyrics are in the Dolgan language, but you can turn on the captions in English. The song boils down to "If you love me so much, come see my wonderful snow-covered home in the tundra." (via Everlasting Blort)
Things He Eats
I wanted to make it clear that this is Matt Shirley's diet, not mine. I follow the "S" (for single) diet: sandwiches, salad, soup, and cereal. I am also making a real effort to consume more fresh fruit, although that's quite expensive.
Cat Loves Treadmill
Dr. Dolittle brought her treadmill here for storage, and set it up for me to use. Then she handed me the remote. Remote control? For a treadmill? Why on earth would you use a remote control for a treadmill? This video explains- you can control the machine for your cat. No, not my cats; they like to sleep on the treadmill, but as soon as the power light goes on, they are out of here. They will stick to neighborhood walks, thank you.
Archie is different. And he's in shape, too.
HOPE-65
A chimpanzee is sent on a deep space mission to find a habitable planet for earthlings to colonize. The astronaut and the mission are both named HOPE-65, from a long line of chimps specially trained for this kind of task, in which we can assume there is no going home, no matter what she finds. We don't know how the previous missions went, but this one found a planet, with oxygen, water, and life! The real question is- is this really a suitable planet for colonization by humans?
HOPE-65 is a 2026 senior film project from the French art school Brassart-Grenoble, specifically the students in the 3D animation and video effects department. You can read more about the film at Kuriositas. (via Nag on the Lake)
Radio and Blogging
Bloggers come in many types. Some enthusiastically post about their area of expertise. Others are writers at heart and live to type out their thoughts or interests. Some pass along fun or interesting things they've found on the internet when they find them. And some are desperate to create content on a schedule to make a living. Yes, many bloggers fit into more than one category. I started blogging to make friends at a time when I was desperately lonely. My personal blog became my hobby, and it led to a career of writing for other blogs, but I kept this one out of habit, for fun, and to keep friends coming back. And it's an easy way to express my limited creativity.
For the first few years, I posted only once a day, on a single subject, but those posts were crafted to present a variety of elements- links, jokes, pictures, comics, and videos. Then my boss at Neatorama advised me it would be easier and more productive (and way more flexible) to put up short posts several times a day and I've done that ever since. But there is a sort of method to the madness.
See, in free entertainment like radio or broadcast TV, the product is not the entertainment, but the audience, which is sold to advertisers. The bigger the audience, the more they can charge for advertising. On the programming side, our job was to produce the biggest audience possible. Therefore a radio show should give the listener what they want, which they say is "variety," but they also want to hear their favorite song.
Programming radio involved a ton of rules, which may be very different today. Each hour is crafted to deliver the right number of current hits, brand new songs, classic oldies, the weather forecast, and the obligatory ads. We made broadcast clocks to keep this straight for each hour, which were round because everyone understood analog clocks back then. These clocks varied by the type of station format and the time of day, but they were mostly consistent in theory. For example, we might play four top hits every hour, so if you have a category of Top 20 songs, you'd hear the same one every five hours, except we would have 21 on the list so they didn't show up at the same minute in a different hour. We might have three oldies an hour, which wasn't repetitive at all if you had a library of 2,000 oldies, and that category could be split into power oldies and obscure oldies if that worked. The ad slots would be formatted so that they didn't come too often or were too long (if we could manage that). We also had some goofy formatting tricks to goose the ratings -or at least we hoped.
The disc jockey once had some leverage within these formatting rules, like selecting the oldies you wanted as long as they hadn't been played in two weeks or whatever. We could also change the order of songs a bit to improve flow, as long as the system held up. We dropped songs to make the time work or talk more. I was once involved in designing clocks and a music rotation system for a new station, and it was quite involved. We didn't have internet yet, but we used a computer for databases and some math help. Still there were late night arguments about what oldies or recurrent songs deserved to be played and how often.
Some of you have already figured out how this loose regimen has influenced my blogging. It wasn't conscious at the time, but I started scheduling this blog like a radio clock, except for a day at a time instead of an hour. I knew if I didn't have a consistent schedule, I'd have twenty posts up in one evening, and then nothing for the next two days. I keep a code for each post on a large calendar and fill them out as I schedule a post in the categories of videos, links, pictures, social media sharing, etc etc. You are used to the 6AM cat (or other animal). If I have ten cat pictures, I can schedule them for the next ten days in a row. The 3AM video is always a rerun from quite a few years ago. Pictures are often scheduled way ahead, while the videos are often last minute decisions.
Still, this blog is a hobby and I don't depend on it for a living. I don't care about SEO or competing for clicks. If I miss a slot or throw in something extra, I don't care because I know I've got plenty of other slots covered. Most folks only visit a blog once a day at most. Sure it's silly to be so regimented, but in some areas of life, regimentation makes things easier, like always brushing your teeth before bed or watering plants on the weekend. It doesn't make any difference in the long run, but I thought I'd let you know how it's done.
Artemus II Mission
They called it a Free-Return Trajectory," according to the Canadian Space Agency, but they also said, "Space Slingshot" would also work. The moon is glad it worked. Another year, and we will try to hit the target. This comic is from Nathan Pyle's Strange Planet.
Monday, April 20, 2026
Cats at the Beach
A compilation of kitties discovering the world's biggest sand box. The water's not too bad, either.
Children Need to Take Risks
When I first moved to my current home, my neighbors were up in arms because my ten-year-old was out in the creek turning rocks over to find crawfish. Didn't I know that's not safe? Honestly, I wouldn't have expected anything less from her. Many people who grew up as free-range children lament the regimented lifestyles of today's youngsters, because it can result in anxious young adults ill-equipped to navigate the world. But we won't be going back to those days. Back then, there was safety in numbers, and now you can't even find other children except at school and play dates. Kids still need time, freedom, and risk to develop competence and confidence. So what can we do?
One thing we can do is replicate some of the elements of free play and exploration with designed spaces that are less sterile and obvious and more open to imagination. Children want to try things they've never done before, and it helps if they get to figure it out themselves. This TED-Ed lesson looks at some of the factors that go into slightly risky play that helps children develop their own agency. The downside is that these kinds of playgrounds will inevitably cost money to use.
Miss Cellania's Links
Winfried Freudenberg: The Berlin Wall's Last Victim.
60 Free Film Noir Movies. (via Memo of the Air)
I won the world’s deepest underground marathon. I tried not to think about the 1,300 metres of solid rock over my head
US military served 'gray object' amid food shortages as morale at 'all-time low.' Yet the Pentagon has lobster. (via Fark)
The World Only Showing Countries Based On Share of Immigrants. The US is way down the list. (via Nag on the Lake)
The Roman emperor Commodus. He was full of himself, and Rome finally had enough.
Neanderthal Babies Were Apparently Built Different and Reached Toddler Size in Only Six Months. (via Damn Interesting)
A particularly controversial UFO account. And how it fell apart. (via Strange Company)
Homemade Drivable TIE Fighter
If you are in Hubbards, Nova Scotia, and see Darth Vader coming toward you, you aren't necessarily hallucinating. Allan Carver built his own TIE fighter that he can drive around the neighborhood! He says it's roughly a third of the size of Vader's vehicle, and doesn't fly, but it tools around at a maximum of six miles per hour. He still wears a helmet while driving -you can guess what kind. The TIE fighter is powered by several wheelchair motors (hence the speed) controlled by a Sabertooth dual-motor driver and a DX8 remote control receiver, so it can go whether he's in it or not. Read more about the TIE fighter at the YouTube page and at Carver's website. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
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