(Thanks, WTM!)
Friday, May 23, 2025
Kitten and Baby: Double Squee!
Long ago, people said that cats should never be allowed near babies because they would snatch the baby's breath away. Later on, I heard that cats who appear to be doing that are just investigating a baby's mouth because they smell like milk. Now, after a lot of experience with cats and babies, I realize that cats know what human babies are, and find them attractive the same way people find infants of all species adorable.
Amanda got a tuxedo kitten and named him Sushi. Sushi likes Amanda, but absolutely loves baby Xiomora. They spend so much time together that Sushi knew immediately when Xiomora became ill. And even afterward, Amanda knows when Xiomora's diaper needs to be changed, because that's the only time Sushi leaves her side.
The Story of Medusa
We are all familiar with Medusa, the mythological Gorgon with snakes for hair and the ability to turn men to stone just by making eye contact. But how much do you know about her backstory? In ancient Greek mythology, she was a straightforward monster that needed to be killed. But in a later retelling by the Roman poet Ovid, Medusa started out as a perfectly normal young woman who was raped and then blamed for it. Her punishment turned her into a monster in more ways than one. Ovid's story is tragic, but much richer with the themes of trauma and injustice. In this TED-Ed lesson from historian and archaeologist Laura Aitken-Burt, we get an animated version of Ovid's tale. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Miss Cellania's Links
What The Hell Are People Doing uses estimated statistics from a number of sources to calculate global activities currently going on. (via Metafilter)
Capuchin Monkeys Caught on Camera ‘Abducting’ Baby Howler Monkeys in a Strange Tradition Seen for the First Time.
Kyphosis Bicyclistarum. The bane of 19th century bicycle riders.
Believe it or not, there was a time when the US government built beautiful homes for working-class Americans to deal with a housing crisis. (via Damn Interesting)
The World’s First Mass-Produced Flying Car Is Here and It Costs $1 Million. (via Real Clear Science)
What the Comfort Class Doesn’t Get. People with generational wealth control a society that they don’t understand. (via kottke)
Water voles are almost extinct - could glitter save them? (via Metafilter)
The New Sneetches. The latest from Tom the Dancing Bug.
Things Cats Don't Like
When a cat has a poor opinion of something, they will let you know, clearly, in their own way. In this compilation video from the Pet Collective, you'll see cats hating on modern technology, toys, family members, and everyday objects. To be honest, some of these clips aren't so much dislike for objects, but more of a cat wanting to see how much destruction and chaos they can cause. Yet we still love them.
Thursday, May 22, 2025
Monkeys Are Communist!
Could a monkey do your job? Whether you are a house painter or a surgeon, the threat is real. Monkeys may be taking over your profession right now! In this parody of a 1950s educational film, one thing leads to another and next thing you know, we are all in the clutches of communism. As an aside, watching this video is the first time I have been truly aware of the stereo separation on my desktop computer. (via Everlasting Blort)
The Mean Kitty Song
It's been 17 years since Cory adopted a kitten and named him Sparta. He was so enamored of the little bundle of energy. that he wrote this song, and now it has 92 million views on YouTube. The internet was a lot of fun in those days.
Every Norm Entrance on Cheers
Actor George Wendt died Tuesday at age 76. Wendt was best known for his role as Norm Peterson on the sitcom Cheers, which ran from 1982 to 1993. Norm was the bar's most loyal customer, and Wendt earned six consecutive Emmy nominations for the role. He appeared in all 275 episodes of the show. Norm's nightly entrance into the bar was a running gag on the show. He enters on the left and is greeted by all. Someone asks how he's doing as he makes his way to the far end of the bar, and is rewarded with a one-liner. This video is a compilation of every one of those scenes in chronological order. It's 18 minutes long, since it covers eleven years, but you can come back to it later if you want to see them all. The plot remains the same throughout. (via Laughing Squid)
Instant Karma
A motorist with a dash cam pulled up to an intersection and stopped with plenty of room for pedestrians to cross. The guy crossing the street didn't not seem happy about it at all. But he got his. Then, for bonus points, he gets angry again! (via Boing Boing)
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
An Honest Trailer for Snow White
When we first heard about the live-action remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, there was suddenly a lot of hype, and a lot of criticism for all kinds of reasons: the casting, the CGI dwarfs, the opposing political opinions of its stars, and of course, the usual rants about the wisdom of making live-action remakes when we have perfectly good animated classics. When the movie finally opened a couple of months ago, after a year's delay, you didn't hear much. Oh, it made some money, but not enough to cover its costs, and Snow White became the biggest box office bomb so far this year. Since you might not have seen it, Screen Junkies is here to explain what went wrong in this Honest Trailer.
Alien Recut as a Comedy
How do you make the horror film Alien into a comedy? Well, first you get rid of that darned xenomorph altogether, and you make it about the cat Jones. In this parody trailer, which is honestly pretty short, Mashable proves that you don't need jokes to make a comedy trailer. You don't even need laughs, although there is a giggle or two here. All you need is the music. (via Tastefully Offensive)
Tuesday, May 20, 2025
Car Towing: You're Doing It Wrong
Dante Brown's Saab broke down on Interstate 610 in Houston. Instead of calling a tow truck, he called his girlfriend to come and tow the car. She brought her SUV, but had no towing equipment outside of a single chain. They attached the chain to the rear axle of the Saab and set off down the highway. The axle soon broke, and as Brown overcompensated in his steering, the car fishtailed wildly across several lanes! Brown was obviously not in communication with his girlfriend in the SUV, and she appeared to be oblivious to the mayhem going on behind her.
Police eventually caught up with the pair. No tickets were issued for the traffic incident, but Brown was arrested on an outstanding warrant. Next time, call a tow truck. (via Born in Space)
That's Trump Derangement!
Randy Rainbow's latest parody song is set to the tune of "That's Entertainment!" He takes the role of a fake TV doctor and diagnoses your symptoms as TDS, or Trump Derangement Syndrome. There's a skippable ad within this fake ad from :50 to 2:25.
American History Class
Hmm, I seem to recall a war from 1991 in which we kicked Iraq out of Kuwait in a matter of weeks, after a buildup of several months. It was the second Iraq War that gave us an initial victory over Saddam Hussein and then dragged on for years to an ambiguous withdrawal.
But I get the point. Even back in my school days, American History only covered wars, Revolutionary, Civil, and World War II, and then ended. World War I was covered so quickly no one learned anything, because we had to get to the second one, since all our teachers lived through it. Vietnam was not history yet. From Married to the Sea.
Killing in the Name, Hillbilly Version
"Killing in the Name" by Rage Against the Machine has been covered by everyone and their brother, but this is the first bluegrass version I've heard. The band is Tião e os Bravos, from Brazil. Strangely, this version has SFW lyrics. (via Laughing Squid)
Choral Black Hole Sun
Choir! Choir! Choir! from Toronto put together a 225-person choir to sing Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” in tribute to vocalist Chris Cornell, who committed suicide in 2017. (via Uproxx)
Monday, May 19, 2025
Confusing Things About Grocery Stores in the US
Laurence Brown of Lost in the Pond has been in the US for years, and is now an American citizen, but still recalls enough about Britain to compare and contrast the two countries. This video is about a grocery shopping trip and some American things that confused him until he got used to them. Why do American cashiers have to stand up all day? Why do Americans refrigerate eggs? How can you compare the size of milk when the measurements are so different? And then there's the tax thing, which is a surprise to Europeans. Our taxes are added after the sale because each state has a different sales tax rate. Some cities also add another tax. And some states don't tax groceries at all. The video is not as long as it looks; there's a 95-second skippable ad at 2:40.
When Your Favorite Movie Aged Terribly
Children aren't great movie critics. A film that really impressed you as a kid could be just another example of the horrible schlock rushed to home video to feed the masses. Gen X and Millennials are finding this out now, as Ryan George illustrates. Boomers, not so much, because fewer movies got made or seen in the days before home video, and the movies we saw in theaters required bigger budgets, more vetting, and had to appeal to adults as well as children. B-movies at the drive-in were an exception, but we knew even then that they were not expected to become classics.
"The Star Spangled Banner" Gets a New Tune
One thing we've always heard about the United States' national anthem is that it is hard to sing, what with that one high note near the end. We've hear it all our lives, from beautiful performances to versions that are laughably awful. What would Dustin Ballard do with the song? A mashup of course. There I Ruined It gave "The Star Spangled Banner" a completely new but familiar tune, setting the words we all know to the tune of "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden. The meter of the lyrics fits pretty well. It might seem a little weird to you, but "the land of the free" would be a whole lot easier to sing this way. And, as one commenter pointed out, if we adopted this version, both the lyrics and the tune would have an American writing credit.
Miss Cellania's Links
‘The Worst Journey in the World’ — Remembering the Untold Heroism of HMS Achates and the Arctic Convoys. (via Strange Company)
How we are losing our free press. John Oliver explains it in chilling detail.
Edmonton six-legged cat on the mend after surgery. Bitsy now has three legs and gets around just fine. (via Metafilter)
NASA resurrects Voyager 1 interstellar spacecraft's thrusters after 20 years: 'These thrusters were considered dead.' (via Slashdot)
The Cat Butt Pencil Sharpener. It meows in agony. (via Nag on the Lake)
Barney Fife Wasn’t Allowed to Faint on The Andy Griffith Show.
Decades-long mystery of ginger cats revealed. They are the way they are because of a specific uninhibited gene. (via Damn Interesting)
The Country That Eats The Most Pizza Isn't Italy Or The US. (via Fark)
Paige Compositor: The Invention That Bankrupted Mark Twain.
Whole Lotta Sex Machine
This remix by djericill gives us the best of James Brown and the best of Led Zeppelin at the same time.
Sunday, May 18, 2025
Claycat in DOOM: The Dark Ages
Warning: gory animation. Lee Hardcastle is a claymation animator with a penchant for violence. Where can he go for the inspiration to outdo himself? Video games, of course, the most violent media we come across in our everyday lives. This video recreates scenes from the new game DOOM: The Dark Ages, in which his character Claycat goes all HAM on his demon opponents. But this is claymation, where the mayhem is both scary and silly. You know how it is with clay- give a little kid a lump of Play-Doh, and their first instinct is to tear and smash it. If you can handle DOOM, you can handle the stop-motion clay version. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
A Trip to the Middle East
Saturday Night Live opened the final episode of season 50 with our president's recent trip to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. He soon breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience as if her were doing the monologue. Not the strongest opening of the year. Much funnier was the annual joke swap on Weekend Update, in which Micheal Che and Colin Jost brutally make each other humiliate themselves on live TV. Jost got revenge for last year by making Che apologize to Jost's wife, who was on hand because she was the guest host. Despite that, Che still got the best of Jost.
100 Movies 100 Numbers 100 Seconds
The idea seems kind of silly, but once you start watching, it's really kind of neat. Your favorite movies have numbers in them, and ThorC1138 edited them to count down from 100 to zero. You'll recognize most of them, and if you are wondering about any of the others, there's a list at the YouTube page. Then you start thinking about how much work it had to be to find and isolate all those numbers, and you have to respect the madness that went into this project. (via Tastefully Offensive)
Saturday, May 17, 2025
Barbara, the Aggressive Shelter Cat
Barbara was designated to be euthanized because she was an aggressive cat. Sarah took a chance on fostering her, but it wasn't easy. Barbara eventually bonded with Sarah and became her permanent cat. The turnaround didn't affect her facial expression, though. See more of Grumpy Barbara at Instagram.
Yoda's Lullaby
Yoda's final scene in Return of the Jedi was quite emotional for Star Wars fans. You might look at it a bit differently now that the scene has been given the Bad Lip Reading treatment and has been turned into a musical number. Yoda is just getting ready for bedtime, and he sings a song, completely against Luke's preference. This is totally nonsensical, but its goofiness is the entire point. (via Laughing Squid)
Octopus Steals Crabs From Fisherman
A giant Pacific octopus has learned where to get an easy crab meal -from a crab fisherman's trap! An octopus is about the smartest creature living underwater, so a trap designed for dumb crabs is easy to break into -and break out of. In this video from BBC Earth, we see how the octopus takes advantage of the trapped seafood feast presented to him. Not only does he figure out the trap, but his ability to fit through the smallest of holes serves him well. (via Digg)
Friday, May 16, 2025
Gahan Wilson' Diner
A newbie on the job enters a diner and finds a nightmare. This is pretty horrifying for a cartoon. Cartoonist Gahan Wilson's first animated short from 1992 was shown in theaters before Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and remains in the consciousness of anyone who saw it. Read more about Gahan Wilson's animation career here. (via Nag on the Lake)
Shrimp Date
A month ago, you saw the A Shrimp's Daily Routine, featuring automata by Italian artist Amedeo Capelli. Now we get to see another slice of life as the shrimp gets an invitation to a picnic! Of course, he has to prepare something delicious to take first.
Capelli explains that he's in a "shrimp's era" right now because he likes them, and so do his followers. In an interview at Instagram, he explains what makes his shrimp so charming (in Italian with English subtitles). It mainly comes down to the fact that any human activity is funny when a shrimp does it. There are many of his shrimp automata available at Etsy. (via Boing Boing)
"Lose Yourself" Made With 331 Movies
YouTuber The Usual Suspect recreated Eminem's #1, Oscar-winning song "Lose Yourself" from 2002 using movie clips that deliver the lyrics. We've seen supercuts like this before, but this one stands out for its artfulness. None of the movie scenes nor the movies themselves are duplicated, even in the chorus. Plus they were selected for their rhythmic pace and edited accordingly, leaving us with the illusion that the actors are really singing this song. There's a list of all 331 movies in order under the pinned comment at the YouTube page. Contains NSFW language.
Miss Cellania's Links
Aliens Learn About Humans By Visiting Los Angeles. No one finds them odd in that setting. (via reddit)
They Don’t Read Very Well: A Study of the Reading Comprehension Skills of English Majors at Two Midwestern Universities. A teacher explains the context. (via Metafilter)
Are white South Africans really refugees? A historian who grew up under apartheid explains.
Teaching dogs to whisper. (via Everlasting Blort)
The Dumbest Sci-Fi Movie Ever Remains An Accidental Camp Classic. Why you might want to watch Battlefield Earth for a few minutes.
What Exactly Is Miracle Whip? It’s not mayo, it’s an “alternative mayo dressing.”
This Week was the 90th Anniversary of the First Full-Length Werewolf Movie.
It's Interesting How the Past Can Make You Think About the Present. (via kottke)
Pigeon Whistles: A Defining Sound of Old Beijing. (via Present & Correct)
How Crystal Rose Candy is Made
Look at this beautiful candy! Each piece looks like an antique glass paperweight with a rose blossom inside. Gregory Cohen of Lofty Pursuits shows us how they are made. While this batch of candy is cherry-flavored, later batches produced rose-flavored candies. A lot of work goes into these, so I don't think you'll be making them at home. But while we watch the magic unfold, Cohen keeps us entertained by talking about everything under the sun. You can buy the candy at Public Displays of Confection. (via Laughing Squid)
Thursday, May 15, 2025
Carlos
Meet Carlos Epstein, who showed up one day and wouldn't leave. He's a demanding, talkative cat, and his humans love him. Sure, he's got an Instagram gallery.
Wipeout
It's a simple formula: combine two familiar but dissimilar things to make a funnier thing. Here we have various dance scenes from The Three Stooges set to the song "Wipeout" by The Surfaris. This is what YouTube was made for.
Students Dump Paper to Celebrate Last Day of School
Seniors at Basha High School in Chandler, Arizona, toss paper down the stairs to celebrate the end of school. It's more paper than you imagine. Senior Jordan White captured the video, which went viral on Twitter. Witty_Squirtle is the class valedictorian, and created a reddit account to explain what's going on in the video.
Hi, student at Basha High School, a.k.a the school seen in the video above, here, created a Reddit account just to explain to you guys what's going on because Twitter is a firestorm and Reddit is usually better at that sort of thing.(via reddit)
This is known as the Paper drop, a very long time school tradition at Basha where all the seniors gather in the F Building stairwell after the second bell of C lunch on the last day of school and toss every paper, yes every paper, that they have saved up over 4 years of attending the school. Each year students bring trash bags full of paper to the school and dump them all at once. The "waterfall" you see in the video was only a little of a probably 5-10 minute drop of paper.
Afterwards, seniors slide down the stairs and go outside to where they take pictures, say goodbye to teachers, and say goodbye to the school for one last time as graduation is done at Arizona State University. While the seniors are reminiscing, underclassmen from across the school, as well as a teacher that brings a leafblower every year, gather the papers up into trashbags to be RECYCLED while the janitors talk and watch along with everyone else.
Basha High School is a fantastic place that's had its ups and downs, but this one event brings together everyone from geek to jock into one, single, Basha Bear student body.
Wednesday, May 14, 2025
"Twin" Dogs with Prosthetics
Elliot was found on the streets of Cairo with missing paws due to abuse. Debbie Pearl of the Unstoppable Ranch arranged to bring Elliot to California, nursed him back to health, and have him fitted with four prosthetic legs. It took Elliot months to learn how to walk in them, but once he did, there was no stopping him! But that's not the end of the story.
Pearl heard about another black dog in Cairo with missing paws due to abuse. This dog is a girl, now named Zoe. Having gone through Elliot's recovery, Pearl immediately accepted her and had prosthetics made again. The two dogs look like twins, so one cannot help but think they may be related, and maybe even suffered under the same abusers. But both Elliot and Zoe are living a good life now with eleven other well-loved disabled dogs, and are even earning their keep as therapy dogs! (via Laughing Squid)
Hot, Questionable Hose Water
A song that reminisces about the way childhood went some years ago, from KindaSoundsLegit. There's no video, but we get the lyrics captioned for us. This isn't a rant about how things were better back in the day. Some things were borderline disgusting, but we didn't know any better. We were just kids.
Miss Cellania's Links
James Lind And The First Clinical Trial. The results took decades to be universally adopted.
Before you plan a wedding in a remote forest location, you may want to ponder the logistics. (via Dave Barry)
Texas suffering from climate change; farmers struggle as Mexico and U.S. wrestle with water from the Rio Grande treaty. (via Fark)
American Schools Have Been Feeding Children for More Than 100 Years. Here’s How the School Lunch Has Changed.
Where in the world are babies at the lowest risk of dying? (via Real Clear Science)
13 men spill the weirdest, silliest secrets women don't know about guys. None of them surprised me.
Ice has become Trump’s private militia. It must be abolished. (via kottke)
Cream by David Firth
You might know animator David Firth as the creator of the legendary Salad Fingers. This short film is an ad campaign parody for a product called "cream." The promises of the product start out mundane, but quickly escalates into the bizarre. Cream is not only a cure-all, it performs miracles! You'll start to wonder how the story can get any weirder, and then it does. (via Metafilter)
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
Cats Cooking Soup
When a cat lover falls ill, it takes more than chicken soup to make him feel better. His cats do what is necessary. This animation was created for ArtCenter's Capstone Animation program 2025.
Wallace & Gromit’s Breakfast Machine in Real Life
There is a charming scene in Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers in which Wallace is slung out of bed, dressed, and served breakfast in a mere few seconds by his dog Gromit with the aid of some mechanical shenanigans. Joseph Herscher of Joseph's Machines saw this as a challenge. Can he recreate the scene in real life without resorting to special effects?
The answer is yes, but it wasn't easy. This time, we get to see the process of building one of Joseph's machines, despite his trepidation about falling from a great height. The jelly made a mess, the bed broke, and there was no plausible substitute for training a real dog to initiate it all. You can skip to 7:39 and see the finished stunt, or you can enjoy all the hard work and bruises that went into making it. (via kottke)
How To Cook A Cheap Steak Vs. An Expensive Steak
You don't have to break the bank to enjoy a great steak, but you do have to treat your meat purchase right to get the best flavor. How much you spend determines the cooking method, and there are things you van do to make a relatively cheap steak truly delicious. Of course, if you are buying the bottom-of-the-barrel meat at your local butcher's counter, you might be better off to make stew or something. (via Digg)
Monday, May 12, 2025
Leftover Pasta
When you're young, you might think of your brother as merely a companion who has always been there, and you don't really appreciate him until something goes very wrong. Caleb got himself trapped inside a video game titled Leftover Pasta. His little brother Frankie can save him only by completing the game. But Frankie is younger and this mission (and the game) is making him very nervous. The game itself is hard to crack and nonsensical to those of us not familiar with this kind of challenge. But that's not really important to the plot. It's really about the love these brothers have for each other.
Ben Knight made this short film for his BFA degree at CalArts. From the credits, it appears that his family did the voices. They did the music, too. (via Metafilter)
What Dogs Do After Their Human Dies
They will break your heart in mourning. The things dogs typically do after the death of their closest companion all make sense when you think about the meaning behind these behaviors. I don't have much experience with dogs, but I know when my husband died in 2004, his dog acted weird for a while, then decided she belonged to another guy in the neighborhood who was kind of like my husband, and certainly a dog lover. I let her go live with him, which was the best thing for her. Meanwhile, my cat Gogo had regular episodes of plaintive wailing for about six months. I didn't know she felt so close to my husband, but then I realized they were both home all day every day, while I worked. She eventually decided she would make do with me. (via Laughing Squid)
Universal Preschool
I first went to school when I was almost six years old, because there were no programs below first grade. No one expected a child younger than that to know their numbers, letters, or how to read. Now children learn to read in kindergarten, a fact I didn't know until my kids went to school. They also went to preschool the year they turned four. That's when I learned that preschool is mainly for getting kids to love school, which is a great start for their education. But preschool still isn't universal. In my state, four-year-old are welcome to go to preschool, but you have to pay for it unless you are low income. Three-year-olds can go if they have a disability. I tried to get Dr. Dolittle into preschool at three by telling them English is not her first language. She undermined that by speaking to the teachers in complete English sentences.
Vox tells us more about preschool and why it's still not universal or free in all the states.
A Really Big Kapla Tower
KaplaBen has an awful lot of wooden Kapla blocks. His ultimate goal is to build a 50-meter tower of Kapla blocks. Meanwhile, this is his third prototype to test out his design. He estimates that he used about 18,000 blocks to build this tower over the last six months. It is clear that he has no children or cats, or he wouldn't have ever gotten this far. I was impressed when he pulled out the scissor lift to reach the top and still didn't knock it down.
But all things must come to an end. KaplaBen built a staircase around the outside, and I wondered what that was for, but the plan becomes apparent when he lines up blocks like dominoes to begin the controlled demolition. He had cameras ready everywhere, including the floor inside. It was only a miracle that camera wasn't covered up with blocks as soon as the first blocks came down, and the resulting fall is quite satisfying. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Miss Cellania's Links
100 Years Ago: The Man Who Single-handedly Stopped Thousands of Illegal Deportations. This obscure piece of history will induce some déjà vu. (via Damn Interesting)
Let's Go On An Internet Road Trip! Where we go is up to you and hundreds of other players. (via Metafilter)
Bride's father has dementia, but she brings him to the wedding in the perfect way.
Was it a stone tool or just a rock? An archaeologist explains how scientists can tell the difference.
The New Pope Is Calling Himself Leo—Just Like 13 Other Pontiffs Who Came Before Him. Who Are They?
How Scotland’s 35-Year Kilt Ban Backfired in Spectacular Fashion.
Why some women are choosing to be celibate or ‘boy sober,’ for a life without sex. (via Fark)
What Is Narcissism?
We know the story of Narcissus. We've aware of narcissism, the psychological condition of being obsessed with one's self. But do we understand what's wrong with these people? No, we don't have to be tolerant of people who are arrogant, selfish, and oblivious to the welfare of those around them. But it might help if we understood what is going on with them. If we can't help them, avoiding such people may be the best thing for your own mental health. This video is from The School of Life. (via Laughing Squid)
Sunday, May 11, 2025
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