(via Cracked)
Sunday, July 26, 2026
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.
Ebenezer
Oh look! It's July, and we have a trailer for a Christmas ghost story! The trailer says "The name you know, the story you don't." Hogwash. Everyone knows the story of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. There have been over a hundred movie and TV adaptations of it. Knowing the story doesn't keep us from watching it again and again. The 2026 version titled Ebenezer stars Johnny Depp in the title role, along with Rupert Grint as Bob Cratchit, Daisy Ridley as his wife, and Ian McKellen as Jacob Marley.
The trailer focuses on the star power of Depp and the many oddball characters he's played before. We can assume with this cast that the acting will be good. As far as I'm concerned, the success of Ebenezer will depend on how they portray the ghosts. Meanwhile, it is kind of nice to see scenes of falling snow while we swelter in the summer heat. Ebenezer opens on November 13th.
Cats Groovin' to the Oldies
There are lots more of these, but you'll have to continue reading to see them because quite a few people have complained about the number of cats seen on this blog.
The Two-Minute Wave
Pro surfer Koa Smith caught a wave off Namibia's Skeleton Bay that took him for a nearly a mile! He surfed a single wave for a distance of 1.5 kilometers for two minutes that took him through eight barrels. It was captured on video, both from a drone and from Smith's own GoPro POV. Both videos are mesmerizing.
My whole day surfing I try to InVision that one dream wave that I want to experience. I picture it clearly. What it will look like. How it will feel. The emotions pouring out of me when the wave is complete. Then this happen :)(via Laughing Squid)
Survival of the Fittest
A flying fish wins the Darwin award for bragging about years of evolution instead of generations of evolution. This is the latest from pleumier, a biologist who makes comics. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Friday, July 24, 2026
It's A Man's Man's Man's World
Did you know that James Brown performed this as a duet with Luciano Pavarotti? Yes they did, but not in the same language. (via Nag on the Lake)
An Increasingly Tiny Mailbox
"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" is an informal motto of the US Postal Service. However, mail carriers are not obligated to deliver your mail when you're obviously messing with them.
Vlog Creations, a YouTube channel dedicated to non-harmful pranks, invested in a long series of mailboxes of varying sizes and heights, and gradually installed smaller and smaller ones to see how long it took for the mail carrier to notice. Yeah, he noticed, but he's more amused than annoyed. Then it became a battle of wits to see how small they could make the box and still get their mail picked up and/or delivered. My mail carrier will never pick up outgoing mail unless he has some to deliver. This carrier put up with ridiculous challenges all the way through.
You can see a much longer video detailing this prank here.
Miss Cellania's Links
This Indian Maharaja Saved Hundreds of Polish Orphans During World War II, Offering Them Refuge When No One Else Would.
People are watching the Reflecting Pool like reality TV. It's a microcosm of the Trump administration, at the junction of corruption and incompetence. (via Fark)
The Legend of a Lost Roman Legion in China.
A Plane Crash Killed 92 People—And Exposed a Major Government Secret. (via Damn Interesting)
Castlemap is an interactive map of the world's great castles and fortresses. (via Metafilter)
‘We were at their mercy’: inside the Amazon tactics that hiked prices across the internet.
An ad for high heeled shoes. I bet they had to pour the blood out when she finally took them off.
Feds have a new teen pregnancy prevention plan: Fertility and ‘reproductive goals.’ (via Fark)
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