There are bad reasons to be stuck in bed, and then there are good reasons. This comic is from Lunarbaboon.
Thursday, August 27, 2026
Wednesday, August 26, 2026
The Alligator People
The Alligator People is a 1959 horror film in which a woman looks for her missing husband. She finds him slowly turning into an alligator after an experimental medical treatment went wrong. An intriguing concept with laughably bad special effects. (Thanks, WTM!)
RIP Tim Curry
British actor Tim Curry, who played many of the stranger roles in movies you've seen, died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. It was only a couple of weeks after CBS Sunday Morning aired this interview and retrospective of his life. Variety has a more in-depth look at his career. Curry was very good at what he did, bringing extra flavor and fun to every role.
If We Lost All Earth's Bodies of Water
The question for the What If? series was "What would happen is all the bodies of water on Earth magically disappeared?" Yeah, you had the same thought I did, of course we'd all die. You can't survive without water, and neither can any other living thing on earth. But that's too easy of an answer. Randall Munroe and Henry Reich instead take this scenario one step at a time. First, people swimming would fall to the ground. Then boats would crash, with a possible survivor. yeah, a lot of other stuff happens, and the extinction of all human life is treated like just one more event in a series that stretches way beyond that, with lots of details. It's a good thing the word "magically" appears in the question, so we don't have to worry about this theoretical disaster. We only need to worry about the slow loss of water.
Miss Cellania's Links
What kind of jobs the people of Pompeii had, and what kind of food they ate in Herculaneum.
Traumatic memories are often fragmented – a psychologist explains how and why that happens.
The Giants of Patagonia. Spanish explorers only reached to their waists, according to one source.
Homer Simpson disappearing into a hedge in Lego. (via Everlasting Blort)
Mamie Toogood and the Burning Boarder. (via Strange Company)
Don't prank your cats. It can be funny, but they'll remember it.
Man arrested after dressing up in 'Grim Reaper' costume on hospital roof and staring at patients. (via Undine)
These Babies Grew Up With Strict Sugar Limits. Decades Later, The Results Are Dramatic. (via Damn Interesting)
Tuesday, August 25, 2026
Dolly Parton Sings for Johnny Carson
Beloved performer Dolly Parton passed away this morning at the age of 80. I wrote a short obituary for Neatorama.
This clip is from 1979, in which Dolly sings a song she wrote for Johnny Carson. She was plenty famous before ever appearing on The Tonight Show, but she's always been gracious enough to spread the credit around. The entire clip is delightful, but the song starts after eleven minutes in.
The Conscience Files
It is against the law to take anything from a national park, no matter how small, but there's an extra deterrent for taking fossil wood from the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. Stolen souvenirs from the park are known to confer a curse on the thief and their families. Not as widely known as it should be, because people keep taking samples of petrified wood. Many of them come to regret picking up those rocks that they send them back to the park with letters of regret or apology. The letters sometimes outline the misfortunes that have followed the theft. Even if they don't really believe in the curse, its association with the pilfered rocks often lead to a guilty conscience. The park keeps an archive of these letters of regret, and Brian Bolster was given access to them to make the mini-documentary The Conscience Files. (via Everlasting Blort)
The World Humanoid Robot Games
Have you ever had a dream about a killer humanoid robot chasing you? In our science fiction, they usually travel pretty slowly, but robotics has come a long way, and now they are competing in foot races. The second annual World Humanoid Robot Games are going on right now in Beijing, and will continue through Wednesday. The video above caught some of the bloopers and awkward moments, but the fact that there aren't hundreds of robots falling over each other tells us that they are really getting the hang of bipedal motion. And they go frighteningly fast. In fact, in the 100-meter sprint, the winning robot finished in 9.39 second, faster than Usain Bolt's world record of 9.58 seconds.
And it's not just running. Another robot set a high jump record of 2.88 meters, which is higher than the human record of 2.45 meters set by Cuba’s Javier Sotomayor. Get ready for another round of nightmares, but now the robots can really catch all of us. (via Born in Space)
Crowbox: Build Your Own Crow Vending Machine
Neatorama once posted about a plan to train crows to pick up litter, specifically, cigarette butts. Here's a way that can happen. The Crowbox is a vending machine for crows. It's set up in stages, to train birds how to use it, but crows are pretty smart and learn quickly. This demonstration video uses quarters, but there's no reason you can't use cigarette butts or something else that crows can easily find. If you'd like to make your own Crowbox, the plans and instructions are here. (via Metafilter)
Monday, August 24, 2026
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