Miss Cellania's Links

How to See a Stunning Supermoon and Partial Lunar Eclipse on Tuesday.

The Winners of the Ocean Photographer of the Year Awards 2024.

What's the significance of a hand pulling an ear?

The 365 Most Famous Quotes of All Time. (via Kottke)

Scrambled Maps is an addictive game. Every day you'll find a different city grid and your mission is to put the blocks in the right order.

Kamala Harris Struggling To Button Pantsuit After Month Of Hanging Out With Tim Walz.

Don’t Take Advice From a Habsburg. Eduard Habsburg (who we met earlier), with the help of his royal ancestors, wants to fix your marriage, your soul, and your politics. (via Strange Company)

Canada's Little-Known Imperial Ambitions.

The Flickering Portal to a Forgotten World of Personal Screens. Remembering the Kinetoscope and the Mutoscope.

Kitten Attack

(via Fark)

TV Doctor Reviews TV Doctors

Ken Jeong of the sitcom Dr. Ken is an actor, but he’s also a medical doctor, unlike most TV doctors, who only play one on TV. Here he gives his reviews of fictional doctors from movies and television, from Dr. Oz to Dr. House to Dr. Pepper. (via Tastefully Offensive)

His Own Supply

(via Bad Newspaper)

Busy Doing Nothing

A song that should be Reddit's official anthem
byu/Amaruq93 infunny

A clip from the 1949 movie A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, featuring the talents of Bing Crosby, William Bendix, and Cedric Hardwicke. (via reddit)

Diversifying the Business

(via reddit)

Goats See a Ghost

This happened at a goat farm in the city of Kepez in Turkey's Antalya Province. The livestock manager was puzzled to arrive and find that the goats had not eaten their food. A search through the security footage revealed why. One goat had a feed bag stuck on his head. This odd sight terrified the other goats. They ran and made noise, which frightened the goat, because he couldn't see what threat they were bleating about. So he ran, too, trying his best to keep up with the herd. That only made the panic in the pen spiral out of control. This is a sequence that cries out for "Yakety Sax" as a soundtrack. (via reddit)

Light Bulb

(Thanks, WTM!)

You Can't Ripen a Pineapple

A pineapple will turn yellow if you let it sit for a few days after purchase. You may think that is the fruit ripening, but in reality, it's the fruit actually declining. The host of this video from MinuteFood explains that a pineapple will just get worse as you let it "ripen" on your counter, with disappointing results. Some fruits will further ripen after picking, while others will not, and there's a way to remember which is which, but even then pineapple is an exception that we just need to remember. Non, if we could only tell how long a pineapple has been sitting in the produce bin, we'd be able to judge them better. By the time this video is through, you'll want to make a fruit salad with fresh pineapple. The video is only 6:30; the rest is an ad.

Chupacabra

(via Bored Panda)

Best Funeral Ever

Let this be a reminder to always listen to a song all the way through before you download it for your own purposes, lest it turn out to be a techno dance remix. (via reddit)

Tweet of the Day

Quiet please… Lemon Raspberry Loaf is sleeping pic.twitter.com/pqvfb57AkO

— John Donoghue (@JohnDonoghue64) September 8, 2024

(via Buzzfeed)

Winners

(via Bad Newspaper)

Trump, You're FIRED!

I can understand if you are sick of parody versions of "We Didn't Start the Fire," but this one by Shirley Șerban is full of it. Full of reasons that we can't have Donald trump in any kind of power anymore. And it still barely scratches the surface.

Coffee Sign

(via reddit)

Ace Ventura in Middle-Earth

Can you imagine Jim Carrey's goofy movie character Ace Ventura in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings? He's all kinds of excited about putting his life in danger to save the realm. The fellowship would be better off kicking him to the curb, but I guess they keep Ventura around for laughs. YouTuber Your_Kryptonite7 used five different movies to make this mashup, which meshes rather well considering the silly premise. (via Geeks Are Sexy)

Parrot

(via Pleated-Jeans)

7 British vs. American Pronunciations You Didn't Know About

Laurence Brown has lived in the US for 16 years and is now an American citizen, but if he ever lost his accent or British pronunciations, we would be disappointed. Americans like to pronounce words the way they are spelled, because that makes sense. But some words are spelled differently in British English, so Americans just take out the letters that aren't needed or don't make sense. Still, Brown has had a great time arguing with his wife over why things are pronounced the way they are, because both sides of the pond are pretty casual when it comes to how we pronounce simple vowels. This video has a one-minute skippable ad at 3:13. (via Laughing Squid)

The Goodest

(via TYWKIWDBI)

Mercury in Retrograde

Most of the time when you hear the words “Mercury in retrograde,” it’s someone talking about astrology. Mercury in retrograde is an astrological phrase that somehow explains all kinds of bad things happening, if you believe in astrology. But retrograde is a real phenomena for planets in orbit. It just doesn’t mean all that much when you understand it. “Retrograde” conveys the idea that the planet, whether Mercury, Mars, or whichever, is moving backwards. Planets do not move backwards. But they can appear to, which is an illusion Joss Fong explains here visually. Mercury does it about four times a year! No wonder astrologers depend on it so much. (via Laughing Squid)

Tweet of the Day

Pets imitating their owners
pic.twitter.com/1CEEHG6Kqz

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) August 25, 2024

(Thanks, WTM!)

Bad Luck

From 1973. (via Undine)

Hurt Feelings

From 1913. (via Undine)

Four Kinds of Teachers

The kids have gone back to school again, and it occurs to me that this year is the first that I don't have any children in school in a quarter-century. Yeah, they grow up fast, but they stay in school as long as they can. Anyway, a video from Charlie Berens completely captures the gym teacher, the cool teacher, the art teacher, and the substitute teacher in every school. They are exactly the same as they were 50 years ago when I was a student- I can even name them. You know these folks, even if you haven't been to school in a long time.  

Track Math

(via reddit)

A Gloriously Happy Dog

Mia was taken in as a puppy by Beldi Dog Refuge in Morocco. Her back legs are paralyzed, possibly from an encounter with a car. Mia ended up in the Netherlands with a family who loves her and proved she can get around just fine without her back legs. This video is less about that and more about her efforts to make friends with her housemate Dino, an adult male cat who had a hard time putting up with the puppy's shenanigans. These frenemies eventually settled into a relationship. You can tell the cat loves her even though he has to keep up appearances. Now that Mia has wheels, there will be no stopping her! You can read Mia's story and keep up with her further adventures at Instagram.

Friday

(via Fark)

A Bike Flip on a Moving Train

Here's a bike stunt that has never been done before, either because no one thought to do it, and if they did, they couldn't afford to make it happen. Enter Red Bull. Polish cyclist and world champion Dawid Godziek will show us some bike tricks including a flip on a moving train. He and his brother Szymon Godziek designed and built the run on top of ten cars from the Polish State Railways. The locomotive here is high-tech and can maintain a steady slow speed in order to load cargo from hoppers without stopping and starting. That allows Dawid to get used to the physics of performing on a moving train, and helps keep him in the shot. (via Metafilter)

Miss Cellania's Links

Drunk Worms, Dead Trout, and Milk-Spewing Cows: The 2024 Ig Nobel Prize Winners.

The 2024 Fall Foliage Prediction Map is online now. (Thanks, Brittany!)  

When a Glacial Dam Burst, an Alaskan Town Was Hit With a Sudden Flood. From Alaska to Peru and the Himalayas, glacial lakes are suddenly breaking free and causing deaths and millions of dollars in damages.

John McFall Is Breaking Barriers as the World’s First Parastronaut. Paralympian and surgeon John McFall is redefining the astronaut image and proving that space travel is achievable for people with physical disabilities. (via Kottke)

News of the Times: Another U.S. School Hit by Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. The latest from Tom the Dancing Bug.

A House for Sale with Character. Lots of them. (via Digg)

6 Infamous Unsolved Bank Robberies. Keep in mind that just because these schemes worked once, that doesn't mean they will work again.

Ancient Roman military camp discovered in Swiss Alps. (via Damn Interesting)

What Researchers Learned From the World’s Oldest Cookbook.

Friday the 13th

(via Fark)

Real Life Space Invaders Using Drones

For GeekCon 2016, a team led by Tomer Daniel engineered a game of Space Invaders for the real world. Okay, there are computers involved, but the game play itself takes place outside of a computer. The targets are Arduino-enabled drones with LEDs, the weapon is a laser that turns itself off momentarily after firing, the movement is supplied by a twenty-foot rail underneath the player’s seat, and the drones turn out their lights when they get “hit.”
Read more about how they did it at Hackaday. A good time was had by all. (Thanks, John Farrier!)

Tweet of the Day

omg that’s like their beyoncé https://t.co/6IxnTeQMxi

— z̵s̴a̶ ̸z̸s̶a̴ ̷g̸a̷b̴o̶r̴t̵i̷o̵n̴ (@zsazsagabortion) September 7, 2024

(via Buzzfeed)

Suspicious Bulge

What could it be? (via Bad Newspaper)

Nostromeow

In the 1979 movie Alien, we were transfixed by the xenomorph that went through different and terrifying life stages, and we were shocked when all the actors we'd heard of were killed off, leaving Sigourney Weaver to be the last survivor, along with the ship's cat Jones. Everyone liked Jonesy, and wanted him to make it out alive. So what if we made the whole cast into cats? Well, maybe throw in some dogs, a pig, and a turtle. (via Geeks Are Sexy) https://www.geeksaresexy.net/  

Toot

(via reddit)

Chickens Carve a Pumpkin

If you are going to start carving Jack O'Lanterns in September, let's hope you have a lot of pumpkins, or else a lot of resin to preserve them with. That didn't stop Bre Ellis, who has pumpkins and chickens and knows how to use them. Ellis scraped the thin rind off of a pumpkin at strategic spots, unleashing the aromatic lure of the fruit underneath. The chickens pecked and pecked at the parts that smelled good until they had eaten their way through. The result was a grinning, glowing Jack O'Lantern! (via Laughing Squid)

Backache

From Married to the Sea.

Carpentopod

Giliam de Carpentier built a 12-legged coffee table that walks across the floor. The "how" is quite interesting. He started by writing a computer program that generated different designs for wooden legs that could walk. The program also tested each design for "fitness" along the desired kinetic parameters, and with those results generated more designs until the design evolved into the optimum leg Carpentier was looking for. Then he designed the table around a device with 12 legs, six on each side, which was the best for moving smoothly and for steering in different directions.

All the components were modeled by computer and tested, tweaked, and finally carved out of laminated bamboo. Next, electronics were installed to power the table and control it remotely. If you are into computer design or woodcarving (or both!), you'll want to read Carpentier's process in designing what he calls the Carpentopod. Carpentier is not building these to sell, but he will share the plans. (via Boing Boing)

Evidence

(via Fark)

Ping Pong Carnival

How many ways can you make table tennis into a form of entertainment? Well, there are trick shots, but that’s just the beginning of the silliness Takkyuu Geinin (which means “table tennis entertainer”) put together. I have to admit, the parts with the long-suffering girlfriend are my favorites. (via Tastefully Offensive)

Tweet of the Day

This puppy had to take some medicine and threw the most adorable tantrum we've ever seen. 12/10 pic.twitter.com/Sdj5WVD5IL

— WeRateDogs (@dog_rates) August 22, 2024

(Thanks, WTM!)

No, Thanks

(via Bad Menu)

Marathons

(via Give Me a Sign)

How Snakes Hijacked Our Brains

They way one species evolves will affect other species around it, which is called coevolution. You see this happening in predators and their prey, as they both adapt to the other's adaptations. Jaida Elcock calls these instances of coevolution "evolutionary arms races." This video gives us examples in the American cheetah, moths with audio camouflage, cuckoos that lay designer eggs, and the snake detection hypothesis. That last one involves humans, who have had a fraught relationship with snakes since forever. Even Genesis tells us to avoid snakes. There's a 50-second skippable ad at 2:44.

Mystery Solved

Scooby-Doo always ended the same way, but no one cared. Now we know why. This comic is from Ellen Woodbury at PizzaCake Comics. (via Geeks Are Sexy)

Field Trip

(via Pleated-Jeans)

You Can't Outsmart a Genie

The Arabian legend of the genie has always fascinated us. The main idea of having a wish granted forces us to come up with our own three wishes, making us focus on what our real priorities in life are. The stories of this trickster character often reveal that the person making the wishes will get what they deserve instead of what they want. The genie can take a wish too literally, or too broadly, or grant it with all the problems that come with it, or mess it up in whatever way he chooses to keep you from getting what you desire. That has given us a thought experiment of sorts, to come up with a way to word a wish perfectly to ensure that the genie cannot trick us out of it or punish us with unintended consequences. This guy finally gets his chance, and he thinks he's ready with the perfect scheme. He's got a lesson coming, and it's that you cannot outsmart a genie. There's a reason the original stories all had the same moral, and it was "don't be greedy."  

Miss Cellania's Links

Inside the White House on 9/11, according to the staffers who were there.

Saturday Night Live Announces Cast Changes for Season 50.

Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris for president.

12 Sports Mascots That Inspire Fear, Not Fans.

An obvious but cute song parody. (via Metafilter)

The Mississippi Spoon Gallery in Davenport, Iowa has more than 10,000 rare and historical spoons, and a spoondelier. (via Boing Boing)

The Golden Age of Offbeat Arctic Research. (via Ars Technica)

For many years I have been posting little observations online. What you may not know is that for many years, artists have been illustrating them - for no reason other than they wanted to respond. (via Nag on the Lake)

Driverless semis could be months away.

Start 'Em Early

(via Fark)

Worms

In this Polish animation, worms get their kicks from watching traffic go by. A film by Zbigniew Lenard.

Tweet of the Day

Shadow play by Scotdronepic.twitter.com/DsMrERf32E

— Ramin Nasibov (@RaminNasibov) August 21, 2024

(via Everlasting Blort)

Self-Defense

From 1906. (via Undine)

Jitterbug Bite

This is what happens when a jitter bug bites you! Lucille Ball sings and dances in the 1940 movie Dance, Girl, Dance.

Google Search

"Melty clocks" alone would have done it. (via reddit)

Champion and Gamora

Foreverland Farm in Ohio takes in abused, disabled, and abandoned farm animals to give them the care they need. One of their critters is a goat named Champion who was born with only three legs and was rejected by his mother. He was hand-reared and then made his way to the farm. But he was lonely. After Champion had surgery for his remaining rear leg, the dog Gamora decided he needed to be protected and nursed back to health, so she became his mother figure. Champion recovered indeed, but the relationship between these two best friends remains. You can follow the adventures of Champion and Gamora at Instagram. Be warned that it's full of sad background stories of all kinds of rescued animals. 

Inconvenience Store

(via Bits and Pieces)

James Earl Jones

He was Darth Vader, Mufasa, King Jaffe Joffer, the voice of CNN, and a host of other characters. James Earl Jones' accomplishments included two Emmys, two Tonys, a Grammy award, and an honorary Oscar, making him one of the rare EGOTs, but he also had a slew of other awards and honors.

Jones was born in Mississippi and moved to Michigan as a child, He developed a stutter so bad that he refused to talk all the way through elementary school. After military service and graduating college with a drama degree, Jones became known for his Shakespearean roles on Broadway. The leap to movies came with a role in Dr. Strangelove in 1964, but really broke through when he reprised his Broadway role as Jack Jefferson in the movie The Great White Hope in 1970. Jones had already been on TV on the soap operas Guiding Light and As The World Turns, and on Sesame Street. Jones was asked to dub over the voice of David Prowse in the 1977 film Star Wars, and became the voice of Darth Vader forever after. He portrayed Alex Haley in Roots, Thulsa Doom in Conan the Barbarian, and King Jaffe Joffer in Coming to America, a role that, along with Madge Sinclair, inspired the look and sound of Mufasa and his mate Sarabi in The Lion King. IMDb lists 190 screen credits for James Earl Jones.

Jones died Monday at his home in Pawling, New York. He was 93.

Life Imitates Art

(via Fark)

The Hidden Meaning in Shrek

Earthling Cinema looks at the Dreamworks movie Shrek from the point of view of aliens from outer space. That means that various concepts have to be explained as if they were outside of one’s experience, and those explanations are just wrong enough to grab your attention. In addition to explaining the characters and plot, the alien then goes into the history of how Shrek came about, which is even funnier, as he points out all the Disney references in the movie and the reason they are there. Makes perfect sense to me! Now I want to see the whole movie again. (via Laughing Squid)

Tweet of the Day

He trusted his feelings and acted.pic.twitter.com/9Y2CmYYupg

— Figen (@TheFigen_) August 25, 2024

(Thanks, WTM!)

Yum!

(via Bad Newspaper)

Coffin Birth

Warning: this video may not be appropriate for sensitive souls, and is not recommended for pregnant women. It's about postmortem fetal expulsion or extrusion (PFE), or coffin birth. That's when a pregnant woman dies, and her body still manages to expel the fetus. In the modern era, if a woman dies during labor or in the final stages of pregnancy, the baby will be delivered by cesarian section and may survive. If the fetus dies along with the mother, is inevitable when the pregnancy is not far enough along, modern embalming procedures will prevent coffin birth. The only time it happens these days is when a deceased pregnant woman's body is not discovered for some time. Before modern medicine, it was a rare but gruesome event we only know about because of some documented accounts from morticians and some ancient exhumed graves with evidence. So all in all, it's not something you should be worried about happening, but a grim reality from the past.

Goth

(via Give Me a Sign)

Wednesday Kitty for a Cabinet Position

You might recall Paul Klusman (klusmanp) from the viral video An Engineer's Guide to Cats, which went viral in 2008. His cat Wednesday has taken note of the election this year, and is angling for a cabinet position. After all, she loves cabinets!

This is How Holiday Creep Works

It happens every year, when people are shocked that Halloween stuff is in stores already! You should know by now that the way retail is done is that a certain amount of space is dedicated to back to school supplies, and people come in and buy them right before school starts. Then you have empty shelves, which are useless in retail. So they are filled with things for the next buying season. As those Halloween items sell, they will be condensed and the extra space will be filled with Christmas stuff, and people will be shocked at how early they are out. If you are just noticing this, it's because schools start earlier now than when you were a kid, so school supplies are bought in August. People are also regularly buying more seasonal decorations than ever, so more space is allotted for them. The same thing will happen when Valentine candy comes out the day after Christmas, and Easter candy comes out the day after Valentines Day. This comic is from Wes Hotchkiss at The Gentleman's Armchair, a webcomic that went defunct in 2020. (via Geeks Are Sexy)

Liechtenstein

(via Bored Panda)

The Lazy Man's Guide To Time Travel

Science fiction is full of time travelers, because going to another era is a wonderful opportunity for adventure. Some stories try to make it plausible, which is difficult and technical and often boring for an audience. Why not just skip all those details and get where (or when) you are going so the adventure can commence? That requires shortcuts in the writing, and a suspension of disbelief among the audience. But when you are sitting in the audience, it does appear that these travelers are either too smart to bother explaining it to us, or too dumb to realize they've just lucked into time travel. They go over ten methods that make time travel easy in movies. We know time travel is impossible, so why quibble about the technical details? A phone booth is just as good as an accelerometer bending the space-time continuum when it's on the big screen. (via Laughing Squid)

Miss Cellania's Links

Mystery of Sinus Troubles Solved -in the Shower. Or listen to the story at Instagram. (via Fark)

When did your kidney stone start growing? ANSTO scientist carbon dated his to find out. (via Metafilter)

When a Trailblazing Suffragist and a Crusading Prosecutor Teamed Up to Expose an Election Conspiracy. An unlikely duo exposed political corruption in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1914—and set a new precedent for fair voting across the country.

Internet picks “werewolf clawing off its own shirt” as new Michigan “I Voted” sticker.

The Mummies of Mammoth Cave. Because I had to learn more about the Fawn Hoof Mummy. (via Strange Company)

Mary Ann Bevan: The Heartbreaking Story Behind The ‘World’s Ugliest Woman.’ The story was posted at reddit, but the "before" picture there is not Bevan. Here is a picture of Bevan before she developed acromegaly.

Spain’s 'pineapple-gate' sparks hopes of romance and shop chaos. (via Nag on the Lake)

Who Gets to Kill in Self-Defense? (via Metafilter)

José Meiffret’s 200km/h Bike Ride. The real story is the terrifying way he did it.  

Darby and Joan

(via Fark)

A Meal Fit for a Cat

Jun Yoshizuki of Jun's Kitchen charmed us last year by showing us how to make Fluffy Omurice. Everyone noticed his beautiful and well-behaved cat. Now he prepares a special meal for his cat Kohaku. From the YouTube page:

I normally cook a meal like this for Kohaku once a year on his birthday, but since I got a lot of requests to make a food for him, I decided to make this video. I’m going to make meals for human from next time. If you want to make a meal for your cats, please do research on which ingredients are okay to use. Also, make sure not to feed too much nor too often since it’s difficult to make a meal that are nutritious enough for cats.

And then he posts the recipes, in case you want to treat your cat, too! (via Tastefully Offensive)

Tweet of the Day

Buddy, let me tell you bout MY family tree

— Eduard Habsburg (@EduardHabsburg) April 24, 2024

Eduard Habsburg is a Hungarian diplomat. He married another Habsburg descendant (a rather distant relation), and they have six children. If you're not familiar with the Habsburg history of "keeping it in the family," their Wikipedia entry has a whole section on marrying relatives. (via Bored Panda)

Tornado Warning

(via Bad Newspaper)

The Trouble With Angels

I loved this movie when I was seven years old; I probably saw it two or three times during its run at my local theater. The 1966 movie The Trouble With Angels was Hayley Mills' first movie after her contract with Disney expired. She was ready to leave her Pollyanna image behind and played a juvenile delinquent who is sent to a Catholic boarding school. The shenanigans of her character along with her best friend seem laughably benign in the 21st century. The Trouble With Angels also stars Rosalind Russell and Gypsy Rose Lee; it was directed by Ida Lupino.   

Frosty Glass

(via reddit)

Dancing Tectonic Plates

When time is condensed and a million years takes a fraction of a second, you can see how the tectonic plates of the earth's crust make our world look like a living, breathing being. This animation goes back to 1.8 billion years, or about 40% of earth's history. The map looks familiar for just a second, then moves to form a supercontinent called Gondwana in the Southern Hemisphere. Further back, these plates form a bigger continent called Pangaea. But further back still, we see the earth as a collection of far-flung islands.

You'll have to watch more than once. Notice how India flies off Asia and heads closer to its origin at the South Pole. In each viewing, note the color of a present-day continent and follow it back to see where it was a billion years ago. This constant churning of the planet brings materials from the ocean floor and the earth's mantle to the surface, feeding our environment with the chemicals necessary for life. (via Damn Interesting)

How It's Done

(Thanks, WTM!)

Tobbedansen

Te Land, Ter Zee En In De Lucht is a long-running Dutch TV show that translates to On land, at sea and in the air. It's a game show featuring wacky competitions. The competition you see above is called Tobbedansen. You can read the rules, if you know Dutch. From the video, we can deduce that the goals are to 1. design a wacky boat, 2. survive launch, and 3. to travel far enough to ring a bell. It takes a while for any team to get far enough to show us the bell-ringing. The sport is not easy, but you have to admit it's entertaining. This event for the TV show took place in May at the amusement park Efteling. A good time was had by all. (via TYWKIWDBI)

The Cat Says

(via Bored Panda)

Simon's Cat Logic: Ragdolls

Rag doll cats are all the rage in the last few years. They are big and fluffy and go limp when you pick them up. Artist and animator Simon Tofield tells us more about the breed, because he’s been drawing ragdolls. I had a cat once that everyone insisted was a ragdoll, but I think she may have been a breeder’s reject because while she had all the other specifications, she wasn’t large. But she went limp just like the best of them. This is Savanah.

Tweet of the Day

Bookmark and try later

📹Cc2020319 pic.twitter.com/tAjN4i7R6k

— Yogesh Kumar (@YKwolfpec) August 26, 2024

(via Everlasting Blort)

Trading Up

From 1913. (via Undine)

Nanoscapes

Butterfly wings display an amazing range of colors, but it's not always from pigments. Rather, these colors, from bright to dark to strangely iridescent, are often caused by the way light bounces off tiny physical structures on the wing' surface. What may look invisible to a predator may also be a bright, attractive color to other butterflies, and different still to the human eye. Whatever works to help the butterfly survive long enough to reproduce.

The award-winning film Nanoscapes shows us the structures that produce these colors, from a normal view down to the electron microscopic level that magnifies the details up to 50,000 times. At the microscopic level, the surface of a butterfly's wings take on the look of a fantasy alien landscape. (via Nag on the Lake)

Newspaper Job Opening

(via reddit)

Trying To Capitalize On 15 Minutes Of Fame

In our world with so many cell phones and the internet, anyone can go viral at any moment, resulting in "fame" for a short time, usually referred to as 15 minutes. When millions of people outside of your circle of family and friends have seen you, that's fame, isn't it? Maybe, but the same thing happens to hundreds, maybe thousands of people every year. Unless you have some solid accomplishments, or are able to entertain people on a continuing basis, it's not going to last. There are others in the pipeline, you know. Meanwhile, there are many folks out there trying to monetize a short, slightly amusing moment as best they can. https://ahchooguy.com/ You can enjoy that fame, but think twice before you quit your day job over it. Being seen by millions of people is not quite the flex it was 50 years ago. Ryan George explains this better than I ever could by acting it out. (via Geeks Are Sexy)

Grayson

(via Buzzfeed)

Historic Body Parts You Can Oddly Visit Today

You may leave instructions for the disposal of your remains after death, but you really can't control what happens after you die. That goes double if you're famous. It's one thing to bequeath your body to science for the good of mankind and quite another to end up with your body, or a part of it, on display at some museum for people to visit. Weird History goes through a list of 21 people (if I counted right) who ended up in that predicament. I had an immediate reaction to the story about Rasputin (spoiler ahead) because "the organ actually belonged to a cow" doesn't make any sense, because cows are female. Try a bull.

Weekend Blessing

(via Fark)

The Film, Television, and Video History of NASA

NASA was formed in 1958 to replace the NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), and introduced the concept with a short film -back when even the directors pronounced it “En Aye Ess Aye.” Since then, NASA has produced many such films, TV shows, and videos. Here’s a compressed look at them. (via Boing Boing)

Tweet of the Day

Indian action movies are next level! 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/3D9mtRWgA9

— Figen (@TheFigen_) August 26, 2024

The bad guys expend all their ammo, then wait around to see if the good guy is going to kill them with machine gun fire or by homemade missiles. And no one was hurt. As one commenter said, "We go to college for physics. We go to the movies for fun." She's right, you know. (Thanks, WTM!)

A Police Matter

(via Bad Newspaper)

Video Game Accountant

We play video games for to escape the real world. Still, those video game characters use a lot of resources, and someone has to keep up with all that. Enter the accountant. The poor guy is just doing his job, but his job is annoying. Nobody wants to be told how to spend their money! Still, that's what you hired him for. He's a professional party pooper, trying to reign in expenses for the benefit of the game's long-term viability. What's wrong with that? It's annoying, because we're all just here to have fun. The poor accountant knows he's not liked, and he knows his job is the opposite of exciting. Surrounded by all the luxurious trappings and odd challenges of video games, the accountant starts to break down. NOW we feel for him. This skit from Dorkly is only 2:35; the rest is promotional.

Arrested in Denmark

Greta Thunberg was arrested Wednesday at a protest in Copenhagen. That's not really news, but this picture is... arresting. Did they send the hottest cops out because they knew there would be photographers at the event, or do all Danish cops look like this? Remind me to do some crimes next time I am in Denmark. (via reddit)

Designing an Electric Skateboard for a Three-legged Dog

We all love seeing a dog (or a cat) ride a skateboard, and some have become very good at it. You'll see that a dog climbs on a skateboard, and then pushes off with one back leg. Simone Giertz has a dog that cannot do that, because Scraps only has one rear leg. How can she rig up a skateboard so that Scraps can use it? Giertz wanted to make it so that Scraps could steer the contraption by balancing on her front legs, and Giertz could control the forward motion. She enlisted the help of a children's robotics club that she met while making a LEGO ad, for which she was apparently paid in LEGO blocks. (via Nag on the Lake)

It's Coming

(via Infidel753)

Long Jump with a Front Flip

Tuariki Delamere of New Zealand threw a big wrench into the sport of the long jump when he launched into a front flip in competition in 1974. This move can add inches to a jump, although it seems like magic of some sort to us non-athletes. A gymnast would understand, and an article from Wired explains the physics. Anyway, the track and field folks call this a somersault jump instead of a flip, so you know they are completely separated from gymnastics. And they ultimately deemed the somersault jump to be too dangerous, which also tells you they never even watched gymnastics. Something tells me the real reason that this move was banned is because everyone would do it until the long jump would be completely out of reach for track and field athletes who weren't also gymnasts. (via Kottke) https://kottke.org/