Turkey is awash with stray cats, which can't really be called feral because they are friendly and people feed them. Of course, there's not enough kind people to support all of them. One kitten lucked out when a cashier at a shop let him in and informally adopted him. Shakir is there every morning for hte store opening, and keeps watch over everything from his perch on the checkout counter.
Monday, July 27, 2026
Shakir the Turkish Street Cat
Get Ready for a Lack of Communication
Bill McClintock is at it again, with another unlikely rock/soul mashup. Eddie Kendricks never rocked so hard! This one features vocals from The Temptations's 1966 hit "Get Ready" and the music from "Lack of Communication" by Ratt from 1984. Despite being written and produced by Smokey Robinson, the Temptations' song did not do as well as was expected, and the remake by Rare Earth in 1970 was a bigger hit. Still, the Temptations version of "Get Ready" proved to be long lasting, and familiar even 60 years later. The Ratt song? Maybe you had to be a metalhead at the time to really know it.
And if you are such a metalhead, you might recognize Dimebag Darrell's guitar work from the 1994 Pantera song "I'm Broken" in this mix as well. Enjoy songs song three different decades in this masterful mashup.
Miss Cellania's Links
Man Tried to Rob a Bank With a Stolen Kitten. (via Strange Company)
Why American ambulance rides are so expensive. The unfortunately botched economics of emergency care. (via kottke)
Young solo pilot loses her front landing gear. Another pilot takes charge to get her down safely.
What Big Food Did to Ice Cream. The “encrapification” of the American pint — a chemist’s plain-language dissection. (via Fark)
“Weird Al” Yankovic Can’t Stop Landing On The Right Side Of History.
The Largest Intact Meteorite on Earth Is Still Exactly Where It Landed. But Why No Crater? (via Damn Interesting)
If you attack a rapper performing on the street, you might have to listen to him diss you as you wait for the ambulance. (via Metafilter)
The spiteful family feud behind one of New York’s oldest and most luxurious hotels. (via Strange Company)
Road Diets
Yeah, America is big, so we developed four lane roads to get us from town to town faster. Then four-lane roads were extended into town to alleviate traffic. But do we really need four-lane roads in a city? City streets are safer with traffic going slower. To achieve that, some cities are putting their streets on a diet, making them smaller and slower. So far, that's making street use easier for pedestrians and cyclists, while still not causing worse traffic for drivers -in most places. Your mileage may vary, no pun intended. (via Laughing Squid)
Sunday, July 26, 2026
Never My Love
The Association was a pop band who sang sweet love songs with many vocal harmonies. They were the first to record "Never My Love" in 1967, and made it a hit. It has been recorded many times since, most notably by The 5th Dimension in 1971 and by Blue Swede in 1974. This performance by The Association on The Ed Sullivan Show is from December of 1968.
Mr. Jambo
In this music video, musician Barry Bergen travels to Africa in the 1980s to glean the ancient wisdom of this magical land. Mr Jambo is an older man who must contain the wisdom Bergen is looking for, but he doesn't speak English. Indeed, the closed captions tell us that he is saying, "I don't speak English. Do you have a translator?" Meanwhile, Bergan mentions jambalaya and bears, as if they have anything to do with Africa. As silly as the premise is, the song is quite catchy.
There is no Barry Bergen; he's a creation of comedian Kyle Gordon who has has made a career of parodying songs from genres you may not be consciously aware of, but you'll recognize when you hear them. The song "Mr. Jambo" is a parody of the "white guy goes to Africa" genre that you know mostly from Paul Simon's album Graceland, although it's been done by others. It's from his third album Kyle Gordon Is Everywhere, to be released in October. (via Boing Boing)
What Made Darth Vader Visually Iconic
Darth Vader is at the top of many "greatest villain" lists, and near the top in the rest. Nerdwriter looks at the reasons why. (via Laughing Squid)
The Plant Queen
That's life, isn't it? Actually, that's life when you're young and just starting out. I've been growing plant for around 40 years, and there have been plenty of mass extinction events along the way, but you learn, you try again, and eventually you amass a decent garden, whether its houseplants, flowers, or vegetables -or all three! The real secret to convincing people you have a green thumb is to quickly get rid of the failures. Never speak of them. That way, all your friends and neighbors will see are your successes. This comic is from Sarah Andersen at Sarah's Scribbles.
Saturday, July 25, 2026
Terror from the Year 5000
Terror from the Year 5000 is a time travel horror film from 1958. Scientists build a time machine, and trade objects with someone in the year 5200. The objects from the future are radioactive, which should tell you something. They finally bring back a human from that era, but that's not a good idea. Critics said the movie has some good ideas that don't really go anywhere. The budget was low enough to create a "so bad it's good" film that was eventually featured on MST3K. YouTube commenters really like it. (Thanks, WTM!)
How Tonga Made $100 Million Renting Space in Outer Space
The smallest countries of Oceania, spread across the Pacific, aren't rich, but some of them make a surprising amount of money by getting creative and looking to the future. Vanuatu makes a ton of money by selling citizenship. Tuvalu prospers by leasing its .tv internet domain. And Tonga was fortunate enough to be the retirement home of a satellite expert, who saw a fortune in the starry skies above his new homeland. There's money to be made in selling, or in this case renting, what you have plenty of. For Tonga, that was its isolation, which gave them a large swath of the empty space overhead. Half as Interesting explains how Tonga leveraged its location and international pacts about the use of space to make millions of dollars passively. What happened to the money is another story. This video is only around five minutes- the rest is advertising.
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