(via Bad Newspaper)
Saturday, February 29, 2020
He Asked Every Country for a Flag
This guy in Denmark emailed government representatives, embassies, consulates, UN offices, and tourism offices around the world and asked for a flag. My rule of thumb is to skip sharing any video that is more than ten minutes unless it is particularly interesting, and this one made the cut. You will love seeing the responses he got and the swag they sent, along with the many flags from all over. The moral of the story is, if you ask nicely, people are pretty cool. (via reddit)
Trees
No matter how powerful you are, you can't legislate love. This comic is from Honestly Fake. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Doubtfire
A new musical remix from Pogo gives us the pleasure of revisiting the 1993 movie Mrs. Doubfire and the genius that was Robin Williams. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
What is a Leap Year?
You may have noticed that today is February 29th, sometimes labeled as Leap Day. Even if you haven't, you probably noticed that the Summer Olympics and the U.S. presidential election is happening this year, which means this is a Leap Year. C.G.P. Gray explains why we have a February 29th, but only once every four years. (via Laughing Squid)
Tweet of the Day
ODDLY SATISFYING: Team of vets pull AN ENTIRE BEACH TOWEL out of a python in Australia – with their bare hands. pic.twitter.com/rjzR2lrmEW— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 27, 2020
(via Digg)
Friday, February 28, 2020
Crossing a Log Bridge
Robert Bush set up a camera trap at a log that had fallen across a creek in Pennsylvania. This is supercut of the different kinds of animals who used it as a bridge over a year. (via reddit)
Feeling Old
This happens more than I care to think about. Another alien take on everyday life on earth from Nathan Pyle's Strange Planet.
The Biggest Planes on the Shortest Runway
Saba Juancho E Yrausquin Airport on the Caribbean island Saba has the world's shortest commercial runway, only 400 meters (1,312 ft). Only small prop planes are allowed to land there -no jets. So what's the worst that could happen? Swiss001 used a flight simulator to make some test runs on Saba, with results that range from surprisingly okay to disastrous, made amusing from his commentary and the fact that no one dies in a flight simulator. (via Digg)
Miss Cellania's Links
What to Do If You Think You Have COVID-19. This is the one time a runny nose is a good thing.
You Can Thank Syphilis for Three Major Fashion Trends. (via Digg)
Dancing for Grandpa.
How hard will the robots make us work? In warehouses, call centers, and other sectors, intelligent machines are managing humans, and they’re making work more stressful, grueling, and dangerous.
New York City can be seen as a collection of neighborhoods that each have their own flavor, culture, and name. Redditor bigchunguslolfunny constructed an interactive map labeling those neighborhoods. You can read some of the clarifications in the discussion at reddit.
Grandma Sandy learns what Coke and Mentos is all about.
The Man Who Refused to Freeze to Death. (via Damn Interesting)
The Horrifying Things I’ve Seen as an Office Manager in Silicon Valley.
A blast from the past (2007): The History of Aerial Photography.
Tweet of the Day
Fox News: Liz Warren will steal from the rich and give it to the poor!— The Volatile Mermaid (@OhNoSheTwitnt) February 26, 2020
Me: Cool cool.
Mark Zuckerberg: Liz Warren is an existential threat to my business!
Me: Right on.
Ann Coulter: Liz Warren scares me!
Guys, I already like her ok, you don’t have to sell her this hard.
Thursday, February 27, 2020
Human Test Regarding Your Creativity
Ze Frank asks many questions about your creativity, or lack thereof. The answers are yes, yes, yes, yes, and oh yes! Somewhere in this video, you start to wonder if Ze Frank has just undergone a crisis, but no. We all have these thoughts, conundrums, and setbacks. We're only human.
The Afterlife of a Fart
Five years ago, Loz Blain was in the habit of recording the sound of his farts to send to his brother, Shonky. One of them was so unique that he turned it into a song that went viral called the Fart Symphony. It was the biggest video on YouTube for one day, and then just petered out ...or did it? The song found an extended afterlife in music education.
The Fart Symphony was used in music composition classes at Berkeley College of Music in the US, largest independent college of contemporary music in the world.Kids love it, and the composition adds spice to what could be a boring music class. (via Metafiter)
Loz says he's pleased to see that his fart has resonated with other musicians and students around the world.
It also became a talking point for students at Auckland's Royal Oak Intermediate who had been studying body percussion and how different parts of the body, such as one's voice, can be used to make sound.
Thank You
When we become parents, we finally see what we put our own parents through. While we don't do all this stuff for our kids in order to receive thanks, it's nice when it happens, even if it is decades later. This comic is from Lunarbaboon.
Toyworld
This faux trailer was made from video clips of the Toy Story movies overdubbed with audio from the TV series Westworld. The way it works together so well is downright creepy, almost horrifying. (via Laughing Squid)
Miss Cellania's Links
The Worst Book Covers On Amazon.
Murder! Espionage! Cosmic Rays! The History of Carbon-14 Is Way More Thrilling Than You Think. (via Digg)
The Trump Federal Employment Questionnaire. The Latest from Tom the Dancing Bug.
Is It True Women Retain the DNA of Every Man They’ve Ever Slept With in Their Bodies? No, but Today I Found Out ran that story down to its source, and determined the exact assumptions that led to the urban legend.
For decades, Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post covers championed a retrograde view of America. This is the story of the politically turbulent 1960s, a singular painting, and Rockwell’s unlikely change of heart. (via Metafilter)
Apple Doesn't Allow Movie Villains to Use iPhones. So if you see someone in a film using an iPhone, that person is okay.
If We Ever Start a Cult, this is Where We’ll be Sourcing the Outfits.
Indiana Jones 5 will be the first movie of the series directed by someone other than Steven Spielberg. (via Uproxx)
A blast from the past (2018): 10 Impressive Yarnbombing Projects.
Tweet of the Day
This creature has the body language of a drama student pretending to be an animal https://t.co/iE0cucI9BC— ariANAL grande (@saintsleazy) February 9, 2020
It's a bush baby. (via Everlasting Blort)
Wednesday, February 26, 2020
Think About Things
The group Daði og Gagnamagnið are competing to be Iceland's entry into this year's Eurovision competition. The finals are Saturday. No, I don't know how to pronounce the group's name, but they say you can find their music online with the singer's name: Dadi Freyr. (via reddit)
In a First, Cheetah Cubs Born Through Surrogacy at the Columbus Zoo
Hey, a scientific breakthrough and adorable baby kitties in one video! Ahem. There are not enough cheetahs in the world to ensure their survival as a species, but breeding cheetahs in captivity has always been a challenge. Some are already overbred, while others do not make good mothers. The biologists at The Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) have been working on the problem, and now have two cheetah cubs to show for it. They are the product of IVF and surrogacy, meaning they are the genetic product of two cheetahs and were gestated and birthed by a third, all in different locations. The two cubs were born at the Columbus Zoo on February 19. Read more about the experiment at Smithsonian.
Carpet
I hate carpets. You don't really understand how dirty they are until you start cleaning them. Hard floors get dirty, too, but they don't lie to you about it. This comic is from Chris Hallbeck at Maximumble.
An Honest Trailer for Frozen 2
Disney has always known that six years is just enough tie for a new generation of kids to be born that would enjoy their movies. Expectations were pretty high for Frozen 2, six years after the first Frozen was a smash hit. But the reason Frozen was such a hit was its unique and characters and unique magic. The sequel, by definition, is not unique, and the plot appears to be stolen from a Marvel movie. So of course it made a ton of money ($1.4 billion so far) for Disney. This Honest Trailer explains Frozen 2.
Miss Cellania's Links
WW2 killed 27 million Soviet Citizens. Every 25 years you see an echo of this loss of population in the form of a lower birth rate.
The NYC Mandate That Shaped Modern Skylines. (via Digg)
The 19th-Century Nurse Who Was Secretly a Serial Killer. (via Damn Interesting)
The 14th Amendment says states that infringe the vote must lose representation in Congress. It's time to make this happen.
When Appalachian Resorts Became Prisons for Axis Diplomats.
Covert Illustrations Inside of Switzerland’s Official Maps. (via Amusing Planet)
Pretty Maids All in a Row. The flower called Calceolaria uniflora is also called the flower-doll plant, and you can see why. (via Nag on the Lake)
Badass Women History Class Totally Failed To Mention.
A blast from the past (2012): Daffodils Mean Spring is Coming!
Cat Solves Doorknob Problem
Matt Hirst couldn't figure out how his pets Dexter and Gizmo were escaping the kitchen while he was at work, so he set up a camera to spy on them. If you are in a hurry, skip to about 1:30. There, you'll see the cat use both paws to turn the doorknob!
When this breakthrough spreads to other cats, we're all in trouble. It will certainly mean my winter heating bill will soar, because cats only care about opening doors. They couldn't care less about being able to close one! Note to self: never position the cat tree near a doorknob. (via Arbroath)
Tweet of the Day
Sometimes the only possible way to get rid of an intrusive thought is to build a thing with sheet metal, foam core, HVAC tape, and a hastily-printed poster. pic.twitter.com/uwAIUAjOUu— Jim. (@Bondcliff2008) February 20, 2020
(via Everlasting Blort)
Tuesday, February 25, 2020
Mozart Mixup
Imagine you have been recruited to do lunchtime concert, and when the music starts, you realize the orchestra is playing something you didn't expect. The Mozart concerto you prepared for is not the one they are performing! That happened to pianist Maria Joao Pires in Amsterdam a few years ago. You can see the dread and panic in her eyes. Luckily she had played the right concerto before, but a mere mortal wouldn't have been able to pull that up from the memory banks and perform as she does. (via TYWKIWDBI)
Max’s Journey to the Moon
Some animators were overjoyed to switch to computer generated cartoons, because drawing the same scene over and over was a lot of work. The big animation studios had already outsourced a lot of those "in-between" drawings to lesser-paid workers. However, experimental animators keep looking for ways to make the work harder, as in stop-motion animation, because that's just cool. A film crew at Wriggles & Robins went a step further- they cooked more than 6,000 pancakes to bring you this simple animated story. It's only appropriate that they unveiled it on Mardi Gras, also known as Pancake Day. (via Digg)
Star Wars: The High Republic
Disney/Lucasfilm has unveiled the creation of a new Star Wars universe. Oh, it's still in a galaxy far, far away, but a new series of books called The High Republic is set even longer ago, specifically 200 years before the events we know from the movies. We'll see the first of these publications in August.
Phase one of The High Republic debuts in August at the Star Wars Celebration Anaheim convention, and will feature five releases: young adult novel Into the Dark, middle grade novel A Test of Courage, comic book series The High Republic Adventures, another comic book series (this one from Marvel) called simply The High Republic, and finally a novel called The Light of the Jedi.
In 2016, Disney de-canonized the "expanded universe," the hundreds of novels, comics, and games set in the Star Wars universe, in order to exert more control over the narrative. With the creation of the High Republic series, the universe will expand once again. It will be an "incubator" of sorts: the stories from the High Republic that prove the most popular among Star Wars fans will be the ones ripe for investing with a movie budget. You can pre-order books through the links at Star Wars.
Miss Cellania's Links
17th-century London Death Roulette. A random game that assigns you a cause of death based on actual records from 1665 London. (via Boing Boing)
A short course on how the American worker is losing ground. Plenty of links make it a much longer and in-depth course.
2020 Underwater Photographer of the Year Winners. (via Digg)
The London Burkers: Body Snatchers of the 1830s. (via Strange Company)
The Origin of "Baby Shark." You may be surprised by how it started.
The Best and Worst Rats of the Week. Through them you will learn the quirks of different rats and get a taste the shenanigans that go on at a rat retirement home.
There is a car, in the hospital parking lot. It tells a story just by being there. (via Metafilter)
Surprisingly “Modern” Fashion Trends of the Victorian Period. Women wore men's clothing, tattoos, and pierced nipples.
A blast from the past (2007): 5 Cars That Became Metaphors (deserved or not).
Celebrating Mardi Gras in New Orleans
In case you didn't make to any Carnival celebrations, you can watch them on video.
Tweet of the Day
hs teachers: your college professors will not accept late work!— jillian (@hundrddollajill) March 20, 2017
college professors: pic.twitter.com/ukkazpAaeR
There are plenty more of these in the Buzzfeed list Tweets that Prove High School and College are Not the Same.
Monday, February 24, 2020
Vultures: the Acid-Puking, Plague-Busting Heroes of the Ecosystem
Vultures are fairly disgusting birds, and when you see one circling in a movie, it's never a good sign. But every species has its niche in the ecosystem, and vultures fill the role of nature's cleanup crew. "It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it." And where vultures are endangered, we find out how valuable they really are.
Portrait of Mom
Redditor 10fletcher showed us the portrait her kid did of her ten years ago, and also shows us how she hasn't changed a bit.
A couple of years ago, I found a painting Princess did in second grade, a rendering of the family as it was. I framed it and hung it on my bedroom wall. Gothgrrl came home the next weekend, and I showed it to her. She said, "That's not very good. Didn't she go to art school?" She honestly thought it was recent!
I Choose You
Decatur Public Schools asked its teachers to choose a student who inspired them to come to work every day, and to tell that student. It's seven minutes of pure positivity that will have you reaching for a hankie. (via Digg)
How Do Blood Transfusions Work?
The first blood transfusions took place long before we had any concept that blood came in different types. That is frightening to think about. Most patients died, but for some reason they kept trying. Aren't you glad they finally figured it out? (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Miss Cellania's Links
The Famous Iwo Jima Flag-Raising Photo Captured an Authentic Moment—But Gave Many Americans a False Impression. (Thanks, Jim Kimble!)
How much will Medicare-for-all save Americans? A lot.
The Terrible Truth About Star Trek's Transporters. (via Real Clear Science)
Jokes I’ve Told That My Male Colleagues Didn’t Like.
The Backflip That Broke the Internet.
Songs That Sound the Same. You can let this playlist just run while you do something else, and you'll be glad you did. (via Metafilter)
How the English Found Cannabis. They found it irresistible. (via Nag on the Lake)
The New Explosive Theory About What Doomed the Crew of the Hunley.
A blast from the past (2016): 13 Times Animals Interrupted News Reports.
That's The Way I Always Heard It Should Be
Carly Simon performs her hit song at the Shaefer Music Festival in New York in 1971.
Tweet of the Day
Gotta love #EyeMovements! Look at how much the optic nerves move!!! ❤️#fMRI. Source: https://t.co/GJJEhZPtx1 pic.twitter.com/wvBc8UYQXi— Matthias Nau (@NauMatt) February 19, 2020
(via Digg)
Sunday, February 23, 2020
Somebody to Love
Nice to have a little floor show with your lunch! Diners at UNASP, a university in São Paulo, Brazil, were treated to a fine cover of the Queen song "Somebody to Love."
Why Don't People Wear Bike Helmets In The Netherlands?
When I saw the title question, I figured it was because bicycles greatly outnumber cars in Amsterdam and most towns in the Netherlands. But there's a lot more to it than that, due to the culture of cycling. (via Digg)
Paranoia
Click to the right to advance the comic, and all will become clear. This story is from Deogie. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Zamboni Driver Wins Hockey Game
In the sport of hockey, the goaltender is a unique position, requiring such a particular set of skills that a team cannot just substitute another player. Teams keep two goalies ready, and also a designated emergency backup, an experienced amateur, on the off chance that their two goalies are injured. Saturday night, the Carolina Hurricanes saw both their goalies injured, and called up 42-year-old Zamboni driver David Ayres to fill in. He made eight saves on ten shots to help the team defeat the Toronto Maple Leafs. A good time was had by all. (via reddit)
Tweet of the Day
Improvised behavioural mimicry is intelligent by any standards, I'd say.— John R. Hutchinson (@JohnRHutchinson) February 19, 2020
from https://t.co/V9rw4gHpOm pic.twitter.com/gj6TVByjxr
Hello! (via Everlasting Blort)
Saturday, February 22, 2020
King Cake
Last year, when I was working at a grocery store during Carnival season, we were mandated to make king cakes, but the required decorations did not arrive until May. We also sold Pączkis, but a six-week supply arrived two days before Ash Wednesday.
Leftovers
Such logical thinking, but it still doesn't make kids eat. This comic is from Nathan Pyle's Strange Planet.
Why Do We Drive on Parkways and Park on Driveways?
It's a common joke on English usage: Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways? Leave it to the guys from Today I Found Out to take the question seriously and do the research to answer it. Simon Whistler explains where those various words came from.
Ormie the Pig
Ormie wants a cookie. There's a reason we put cookies up on top of the refrigerator -so little pigs can't get them! Ormie does have his own Facebook page, though.
Friday, February 21, 2020
Diabetes
How do you pronounces diabetes? Is it diabeettus or diabeetees? Behold the tug-of-war between Wilford Brimley and some doctor on TV. Brimley was put back into the spotlight earlier this month when people noticed the resemblance between him and the coach of the Kansas City Chiefs.
Ellie, no. I am the “diabeetus” guy. https://t.co/ZsJrviWrwT— Wilford Brimley (@RealWilfordB) February 3, 2020
(via Metafilter)
ALONE: Stormtrooper on the Run
This fan film takes place just after Return of the Jedi. A surviving stormtrooper finds himself isolated on the forest moon of Endor. Is he communicating with surviving Empire forces, or are the voices all in his head? (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Born in the USA
After years of his song being blithely misinterpreted, Bruce Springsteen performs it a bit differently these days.
Miss Cellania's Links
The Simple Math Error That Can Lead to Bankruptcy. It's the gambler's fallacy, since we don't understand the rules of probability. (via Digg)
The End of Miss America.
Actors Who Originally Auditioned For Rick Grimes And Negan On The Walking Dead.
You People Made Me Give Up My Peanut Farm Before I Got To Be President. While real life has outstripped satire for weirdness, The Onion has a way of highlighting the truth beneath.
The Doctor Who Blew Hydrogen Gas Up His Patient's Asses. Then lit a match to see if their wounds burned.
It turns out that Anna Calcaterra, who made that viral map last week, has a long history of spreading chaos. So does her brother. (via Metafilter)
We Calculated How Much We Pay Trump to Play Golf. It Turns Out, He's America's 10th Highest Paid Athlete.
How One Man and His Dog Rowed More Than 700 Kākāpōs to Safety. While Henry's efforts were akin to sticking one's finger in a dyke to hold back a flood, his ideas are being resurrected today in order to save the last 211 kakapos in existence.
A blast from the past (2007): More Periodic Tableware.
Tweet of the Day
Me, in my teens: This radio station is playing my jams.— Jessie (@mommajessiec) January 17, 2020
Me, in my 20s: This bar is playing my jams.
Me, in my 30s: This grocery store is playing my jams.
Me, in my 60s: This grocery store has music I have never heard before. (via Bored Panda)
Thursday, February 20, 2020
Boycycle
This video by Salvatore Ganacci concerns a man who has wheels instead of legs. Not in the normal manner of a wheelchair, but a body that is also a motorcycle. Supremely weird, but also familiar, as the plotline follows many stories you've seen before. Boing Boing compares it to the new Progressive insurance ads that feature a "motaur."
True Facts: Mating Dance of The Peacock Spider
It appears that Ze Frank read the article Fourteen Fun Facts About Love and Sex in the Animal Kingdom, which I linked to just yesterday. He then ran to get some peacock spider footage from Jürgen Otto and wrote a little song about the peacock spider's sex life. This amusing video might possibly contain NSFW language, depending on your workplace.
Miss Cellania's Links
The Legend of a Cave and the Traces of the Underground Railroad in Ohio.
The best argument for each of the 2020 Democratic frontrunners. This may be affected by last night's debate, with Warren up and Bloomberg down.
Build Yourself a Bird Trap. A video that does not waste your time.
I Spoke Out Against Sexual Harassment at Uber. The Aftermath Was More Terrifying Than Anything I Faced Before
The Princess, the Plantfluencers, and the Pink Congo Scam. (via Metafilter)
8 Hilarious Historical Feuds. They include Mark Twain's vendetta against the postal service, the fight over how vultures smell, and a dinosaur built all wrong.
Trump Shoots Man on Fifth Ave. The latest comic from Tom the Dancing Bug.
Madame Yale Made a Fortune With the 19th Century’s Version of Goop.
A blast from the past (2009): 7 Animals That Appear to Fly (Besides Birds, Bats, and Insects).
