Friday, January 31, 2025
The Ancient Origins of Words for Body Parts
The words we use for body parts may be among the oldest words of all, because our bodies are very close to us, common among us, and important to us. Linguist Dr. Erica Brozovsky tells us about some of those early words for body parts and how they know where they came from. The second part of that sentence is the more interesting part.
See, the spread and evolution of spoken language is like a historic timeline of its own that runs in parallel to the history of the written word or the artifacts of human civilization. If we can make an accurate map and timeline of how language was adapted to different cultures (and we've made a lot of progress), we can fill in many of the blanks in the historical record. "For example, since several languages as disparate as Sanskrit, Greek, and Dutch have similar words for wheel, it stands to reason that the Proto Indo European people had wheeled vehicles." That's mind-blowing, and raises my already-high regard for the study of linguistics even higher. There's way more to the study of languages than just the ancient roots of words.
The Joy of Mayonnaise
The most memorable scene in the 1989 movie When Harry Met Sally took place in Katz's Delicatessen in Manhattan. In this ad, Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal reunite more than 35 years later to have lunch, which accidentally ends up recreating that scene when Ryan adds an obscene amount of Hellman's mayonnaise to her sandwich. The fact that a Jewish deli would not have mayonnaise available on the tables is an extra layer of absurdity. Sydney Sweeney appears to deliver the punch line this time.
As you might have guessed, this is a Super Bowl ad. The game is still ten days away, but in recent years advertisers feel they have invested too much money into their Super Bowl ads to keep them under wraps until kickoff. Get ready for a tsunami of high-priced ads coming in the next few days. (via Metafilter)
Miss Cellania's Links
Gavin Smythe, of Chagrin Falls, USA, won't believe his lying eyes. The latest from Tom the Dancing Bug.
This Is the One SNL Sketch With 100 Million YouTube Views. It's the clickbait title.
Officials Are Offering $1 Million to Anyone Who Can Decode This Ancient Script. It won't be easy.
To Pay for Trump Tax Cuts, House GOP Floats Plan to Slash Benefits for the Poor and Working Class. You knew they were gonna. (via Fark)
The secret to eliminating artificial intelligence slop from Google search results is easy but NSFW. (via Metafilter)
Another tribute to xoxoxoBruce.
An Honest Trailer for Space Jam
Space Jam is a movie about neither space nor jam that combined Warner Brothers cartoon characters with the NBA stars of the '90s, so it was destined to become a classic among a certain age group. That cohort holds the 1996 film on a sacred pedestal. But here comes Screen Junkies to take it down a notch with an Honest Trailer. There's plenty to mock here, and this Honest Trailer makes it clear that to love Space Jam, you pretty much have to be a kid in the '90s. If you were, it was perfect. (via Uproxx)
Coincidence?
Yet some are blaming the crash on Pete Buttigieg or DEI. (via Fark)➡️ January 20: FAA director fired ➡️ January 21: Air Traffic Controller hiring frozen ➡️ January 22: Aviation Safety Advisory Committee disbanded ➡️ January 28: Buyout/retirement demand sent to existing employees ➡️ January 29: First American mid-air collision in 16 years Making America Great Again!
— T. Greg Doucette (@gregdoucette.bsky.social) January 30, 2025 at 10:37 AM
Thursday, January 30, 2025
The Jacksons at the 30th Anniversary Concert
The Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Celebration was a two-concert event at Madison Square Garden in 2001. In this clip, The Jacksons perform "Can You Feel It," "ABC," and "The Love You Save." I love Jermaine's coat! If you want to see more of the concert, a substantial part is on YouTube.
Mastering the Bagpipes
How does one become a bagpiper? Apparently it's not as easy as just being Scottish, because Stuart Smillie of Great Big Story is of Scottish descent, although he lives in London now. His boss sent him to Edinburgh to learn how to play the bagpipes, which shouldn't take long, seeing as he's already Scottish, but it turns out that didn't help a bit. Neither did having his own kilt. Smillie contacted Andrew Coulter at Killberry Bagpipes, Edinburgh's last custom bagpipe maker. Did Smillie learn to play the bagpipes that day? That might depend on your definition of "playing," but he did learn a lot about bagpipes, pipers, and the kilts they wear. (via Laughing Squid)
Barnaby Dixon's Raptor Puppet
Barnaby Dixon is the young puppet designer who showed us his delightful Aztec warrior finger puppet last year. Now he's got a new one that evokes the real feel of a prehistoric raptor! The puppet is a rather complicated construction, but as before, his skills in operating it make it something special. (via Tastefully Offensive)
Giggles
(Thanks, WTM!)If you're having a bad day, watch this video, please ❤️❤️😂 pic.twitter.com/amuktGKB42
— Vince Langman (@LangmanVince) January 25, 2025
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Canadian Road Rage
Rob and Brandon were driving to work when another car cut them off. In the US, this might escalate into murder, but this is Canada, where people are famous for handling their anger in a different way. Rob is upset that the other driver is clearly laboring under a handicap, so he exits the truck and fixes the problem himself. There, let that be a lesson to you! (via Laughing Squid)
The Real Logic Behind ZIP Codes
Most countries use postal codes, but they use a variety of systems to assign those codes and make them work. Americans have a vague notion that our ZIP codes are geographic, but that's only part of the story. The Postal Service has their own geography that no one outside the industry understands. It works, but it's a system that was launched in 1963 designed for mail that was hand-sorted. Halfway through this video, we switch from the US system to the Irish postal system, which is designed for machine-sorting and will blow your mind. It's totally ingenious and has a lot of benefits, up until the moment the power goes out.
Toxic Comments
Every year, the company Meat & Livestock Australia puts their heart and soul into an ad campaign to get people eating local lamb meat. The 2025 ad is a live-action recreation of the internet, complete with comment sections represented by people in bleachers enjoying the show. Everyone's got something to say, but no one has anything to say that you haven't already heard. First, people disagree about whether the thing they've just seen is any good. Then they disagree about whether it's even real. Then they fight with each other. It's obvious that if real life were like the internet, we'd have to invent some alternate world to get away from it. The point is that no one agrees on anything, except the wonderful allure of grilled Australian lamb.
Miss Cellania's Links
When Russian Radar Mistook a Norwegian Scientific Rocket for a U.S. Missile, the World Narrowly Avoided Nuclear War.
CNN’s Jim Acosta Rips Trump In Defiant On-Air Announcement He’s Leaving: ‘No Time To Bow Down To A Tyrant.’
The 8 Dirtiest Jokes on Pee-wee’s Playhouse.
Almost one in 10 people use the same four-digit PIN. Find out if you’re one of them. (via Damn Interesting)
Man with perfect vision surprised when doctors discover a chopstick lodged behind his eye.
Life in Another Light: Infrared Photography Contest 2024 Winners. (via Everlasting Blort)
The Beautiful, Weird World of Japan’s Answer to David Lynch.
Getting Power During a Power Outage
The electricity in your home goes out. What to do? Well, if you knew what you were doing, you could use a flashlight to find the available batteries in your home to generate juice to run your most valuable gadgets. Mehdi Sadaghdar of ElectroBOOM gives us a demonstration of why we really don't want to do what he's doing. Ever. But we appreciate the pain he goes through to warn us. (via Laughing Squid)
How'd He Do That?
(Thanks, WTM!)The cat's gaze. 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/wt3K8MLNH3
— The Figen (@TheFigen_) January 25, 2025
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Hot Wheels POV Ride
The bigger the boy, the bigger the toy -or at least more of them. YouTuber Brutal Menace has plenty of Hot Wheels tracks, and he makes good use of them. He's turned his entire house into a track, complete with speed boosters! What's even better, he rigged a car with a camera so we can get a thrill from the point of view of the tiny driver. The effect is like watching a roller coaster POV video, but it also makes you want to try something like this yourself, which a roller coaster video doesn't do, for me at least. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
A Strangely Readable Jumble
The Dark Side Of Star-Lord You Never Hear About
For many of us, the Marvel movie Guardians of the Galaxy was the first time we encountered Star-Lord, the leader of the Guardians and an all-around relatable hero with a sense of humor. But the character has a history in Marvel Comics that you might be surprised to know. Character creator Steve Englehart had a long-term vision for Star-Lord that went by the wayside when he left the company. Then things got weird as other writers took over, and Star-Lord moved to TV, video games, and movies. Your vision of Star-Lord might be changed by this video from Looper, but you can can look at him any way you want to. After all, it's fiction! (via TVOM)
Monday, January 27, 2025
Farewell to a Dedicated Reader
I just found out from Minnesotastan that xoxoxoBruce has died. Very sad news. Bruce was a regular contributor to the comments section here, sent me links, and was a regular correspondent. I just received his Christmas card the other day, postmarked December 11th but for some reason it took more than a month to get here. Bruce was always ready with a joke, ready to be friends, and quite generous. Bruce helped keep me afloat a few years ago when I got laid off from Mental Floss and times were tough. I couldn't be more grateful.
You'll find tributes to Bruce at TYWKIWDBI and Nag on the Lake. You can read more about him at the Chevy SSR Forum. Godspeed, you wonderful old fart.
Grandma Learning Use Voice-to-Text
The lesson seems to go swimmingly until grandma starts to read -aloud- what is on the screen. (via Boing Boing)
The Long Courtship of a Feral Cat
You know those movies where a relationship is on a slow simmer for years and years? The one that comes to mind is When Harry Met Sally. That's sort of the way that Marmy came into Ariel Harris' life. Marmy is short for Orange Marmalade, and it's hard to believe that this fluffy cat was feral. Maybe he would be better described as a long term stray, since he wanted to be her cat from the very start. Marmy was shy but persistent, waiting six years for just the right moment to make that step inside and become a house cat. That moment finally came when Marmy was suffering and wasn't able to avoid contact with Ariel and her husband. But he adjusted well to domestic life, and is devoted to his humans. You can follow Marmy's adventures at Instagram.
Snowboarding Crow
We've been told over and over again how smart crows are, but they still astonish us now and then. Logically, we know that flying should be more thrilling than anything humans can do, but we all know in our hearts how much fun it is to slide down a snowy hill. This crow has commandeered a piece of trash to act as a sled! Or, more accurately, a snowboard since he stands up on it. Give them a little time, and the entire flock will organize their own X games to compete with each other. (via Nag on the Lake)
Miss Cellania's Links
How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’ extend to apartheid South Africa. Elon Musk grew up with the privileges of a stratified racial order and Peter Thiel lived in a city that venerated Hitler. (via Metafilter)
Our Favorite Flaming Cocktail Recipes.
How to Weather the Storm. Some tips on surviving the next four years.
Meet the new neighbors: 7.5 million chickens and their mountains of manure. A sickening stench and hordes of flies: What it’s like to live near a mega factory farm.
Scientists Strapped QR Codes Onto Thousands of Bees to Learn How Far They Actually Fly.
‘Circle C Cowboys.’ Meet the U.S. Army Police Force That Brought Law and Order to Post-War Germany. (via Strange Company)
Dumping the Snow off the Roof. (via Everasting Blort)
Marley and Ella
You wanna see something adorable? Mom got 9-year-old Marley a kitten! Marley is very happy about it. The emotional scene was so popular that Marley gave us a follow-up, where we see that Ella the kitten has grown in size, and seems very happy with Marley. (via Laughing Squid)
Round One
Or is he just a Russian pawn? (via Everlasting Blort)For all of those who have posted my cartoon with my signature cut off, here is the original.
— @cohencidents.bsky.social (@cohencidents.bsky.social) January 23, 2025 at 9:02 PM
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Sunday, January 26, 2025
Why Crocodiles Are Thriving in the Shadow of A Nuclear Plant
Most of my life, I assumed that the way you could tell alligators from crocodiles is that alligators lived in Florida and crocodiles lived in other countries. But there are crocodiles in Florida, and in fact there were once a lot of Florida crocodiles. The crocodile population has declined a lot in comparison to alligators, mainly because of encroaching human development on the seashore. But crocodiles still hang on in Florida, with most of the remaining animals living in the canals near the Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant south of Miami. And now that we know about these crocodiles living near a nuclear facility, how long will it be until we get a movie about killer mutant Florida crocodiles?
What Would the Founding Fathers Think?
The opening skit to last night's SNL featured surprise guest Lin-Manuel Miranda, but he barely got a word out before he was run over by a bulldozer and then mocked. Such is life these days.
ᚼᛒ: Harald Bluetooth and Your Phone
Have you ever wondered why your Bluetooth is called that, and where that symbol came from? Me neither, even when mine stopped working this morning. But it's a fascinating story, as told here by Tom Scott. You have to admit, Bluetooth sounds better than "lower power RF," which is what it could have been. And now, because they named the system bluetooth, you know a little more about Scandinavian history. Commenters also added that in Sweden, your wireless communication is called Blåtand because that's how they spelled Harald's name. (via reddit)
Owl
(via Nag on the Lake)This owl has some attitude 🦉
— Science girl (@science-girl.bsky.social) January 25, 2025 at 7:11 AM
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Saturday, January 25, 2025
Eight Years Later, It's the Same Old Story
The Sunday Herald TV Section wins today. pic.twitter.com/OanCZdznGJ— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) January 15, 2017
Thanks, George!
Inside a Rotting Watermelon
YouTuber Photo Owl Time Lapse brings us an up close and personal view of what happens to a watermelon as it ages. He carved a hole into the melon, removed a large part of the fruit and juice, and installed a GoPro camera. He also drilled a hole to provide light for the video. This time-lapse covers 128 days in all! Let's hope this was nowhere near the videographer's living quarters. (via Boing Boing)
The Kitty Transplant
It's a scary operation, and you may have even tried it yourself at one time or another. It's the kitty transplant. Cats don't always want to go to the place you want them to be, so the transplant has to be done very carefully. Specifically, the cat must be kept in the same position as it is being transplanted. Will the cat take root where it is transplanted? There's no way to predict, and the odds are against it. Adverse reactions range from a violent action during hte procedure to merely wandering off afterward. But if you're lucky, the cat will flourish in its new spot. In this recreation, Abram Engle turns to an expert for advice about getting his orange cat Kurt to relax in bed instead of his usual cat basket. Let's listen in as they attempt a kitty transplant, and sweat it out waiting to see if the operation was a success. (via Nag on the Lake)
Feathers in a Vacuum
You know from Galileo’s experiment that falling objects will fall at the same speed, no matter their weight. The experiment falls apart when you use feathers, however, because they waft down rather than fall, because of air resistance. But what if you took the air out of the equation?
The world’s largest vacuum chamber is in Cleveland, Ohio. Physicist Brian Cox visited to show us what a falling feather looks like without any air resistance. The clip is from the BBC Two show Human Universe. (via Metafilter)
Friday, January 24, 2025
Cough Syrup
An Unidentified Seismic Object
Scientists who keep their eyes on seismographs picked up a unique signal last year that lasted nine days. It went right past most of us, but researchers couldn't figure out what it meant. Did we really have an earthquake that lasted nine days? The signal was too steady for that, besides being strangely sustained. There was also a tsunami in Greenland, a wave taller than any seen before. Did an earthquake cause that? It took almost a year for scientists to figure out what happened to cause that nine-day signal, but when they did, it was not only surprising, but almost comical to picture. But it's not funny, because these extreme events will only get worse as the temperature on earth rises. Reid Reimers explains how the mystery of the nine-day signal was unraveled. There's a 40-second promotional break at the three-minute mark. (via Damn Interesting)
Miss Cellania's Links
How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days. “In one of the most astonishing political transformations in the history of democracy, Hitler set about destroying a constitutional republic through constitutional means.” (via kottke)
Everyone Who Has Ever Been to Space, Charted. Space traveler demographics have shifted over time. (via Metafilter)
Schools Using AI Emulation of Anne Frank That Urges Kids Not to Blame Anyone for Holocaust. (via Damn Interesting)
Florida man eats diet of butter, cheese, beef; cholesterol oozes from his body.
A list of links about those who are pushing back against the efforts to make the US a fascist dictatorship.
20 Albums Turning 50 in 2025. Get ready to feel very old.
Sunfish that got sick after aquarium closed has recovered — thanks to human cutouts. He was just missing the admiration of the crowds. (via kottke)
Shrek Movie References
The Shrek movies tickled our fancies for a lot of reasons, but one was the many callbacks to other famous films. The Dreamsworks production referenced all the top Disney films, and slipped in scenes that reminded us of classic non-animated films, too. Possibly more of them than you realized. In this video, Bora Barroso collected as many of these references as he could and show them to us side-by-side. There's a list of them at the vimeo page. (via TVOM)
Lemmings
(Thanks, WTM!)Technically they are only falling. pic.twitter.com/tiJrWkndpu
— The Figen (@TheFigen_) January 13, 2025
Thursday, January 23, 2025
Guess the Recipe
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1 and 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
The last two lines are for the streusel topping.
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
and cinnamon (to taste)
I'll have to try this myself. Someday.
Security Camera
Dog moves security camera so he can secretly eat food on the tableMake sure the sound is on for this one. These animals understand more than you know. The dog moves the camera so he can help himself to the food on the table.
byu/MaxQ50 infunny
Cholesterol
You may have heard that eggs are bad because they cause high cholesterol. That was the conventional wisdom since the 1960s, but it's far from the whole story. We've learned a lot about cholesterol since then. It's all about fats, which we need, but not a lot, and come in many different types, some more harmful than others. Then there's HDL, or good cholesterol, which counteracts LDL, or bad cholesterol, and it's hard to keep up with which is which and how to regulate them in your body. Luckily, we have the TED-Ed lesson to set us straight on cholesterol and how to keep our arteries in good shape. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
The Golden Sahara II
Jim Street designed and built a car he called The Golden Sahara II, which we get to see on a 1962 broadcast of the TV show I've Got a Secret. I thought the front of the car was the back at first. The paint contains fish scales. The tires are glass. There's a bar in the back. You can steer it with a joystick. And the whole thing cost $75,000 in 1950s money. No wonder it didn't take off. (via the Presurfer)
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
Journalists Break Into House to Save Three Dogs
You know what's awful about being out of town when your neighborhood is evacuated over wildfires? Knowing that your dogs don't understand how to evacuate. Andrea Pasinetti was on a business trip, and his three dogs were at home in Pacific Palisades. The woman who was feeding them was forbidden to approach the house. But you know who gets to go into forbidden areas? Reporters, that's who. CBS News correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti was reporting from within Pacific Palisades already. Andrea took a chance and relayed a message to Vigliotti and his crew, who were able to get to the home. But would the dogs trust them enough to leave? I don't think I need to tell you that this story has a happy ending. After all, it is from the Dodo.
Threading the Needle
We have always loved watching tires rolling around on their own, especially downhill where they can get up some impressive speed. The guys from How Ridiculous had fun rolling tires down a hillside in New Zealand, and in one brief sequence, actually flew a drone through a rolling tire! That's special, but if you want more, you can see the extended sequence here. (via Born in Space)
Miss Cellania's Links
The City with the Largest Population in the World: Welcome to Chongqing. (via Nag on the Lake)
Obelisks: A New Form of Life?
On two (legendary) occasions in 1983, the Dayton Daily News accidentally switched the captions for The Far Side and Dennis the Menace. The result lifted both cartoons to an entirely new level.
Japan's Mascots Getting Stuck in Infrastructure.
Trump's Executive Order Against Trans People Technically Makes Every American Female. (via Fark)
Heavy Metal Cat. No artificial intelligence involved, no animation software, just someone having fun with a cat video.
The Forgotten Woman Who Transformed Forensics. In the 1970s, Martha Goddard invented the rape kit. (via Kottke)
Ice Carousel
Janne Käpylehto took a chainsaw to a frozen lake in southern Finland and carved out his own ice carousel! He cut a near-perfect 40-foot circle, and then used a solar-powered outboard boat motor to power the spinning circle of ice. The ice must be pretty thick and heavy to stay level with a shelter, fire, and several people all on one side, although you can see it dip slightly as they jump across the circle. Käpylehto plans on building a bigger one next.
I’ve been planning to build an ice carousel for some time, but managed to do it in Lohja just now. I shot a video with aerial views and its gone viral. Total views more than 5 million. Next one will be a 50-meter giant with sauna, PV plant, electric outboard motors, stage and band.(Thanks, wordord!)
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
Grammarian vs. Errorist
The rule of thumb on the internet these days is that half the participants don't know much at all about proper language use. The other half are cringing at the errors. It's best for your blood pressure to let those errors slide, but it's really hard not to judge someone for making the same errors that have been pointed out a million times.
Elle Cordova illustrates the struggle between a grammarian, who really cares about language and how it should be used, and an errorist, who superficially appears to wax eloquent but is making language errors left and right. You can tell which one is which immediately, because the "good guy" wears white and the "bad guy" wears black. You have to really pay attention to get all the humor out of this one, as the errorist touches on every pet peeve you can imagine. When yours shows up, you'll want to rewind and see how many others you can identify. If you can keep up will all the errors the first time through, you'll be impressed with Cordova's extensive knowledge of self-replicating language errors endemic to the internet. (via Everlasting Blort)
Special Effects Gone Wrong
Nothing in this short film is real, because it's all about special effects. Actor Ryan Argon is about to lose his starring role because the director is an idiot. But he gets his chance at redemption when two guys steal the special effects -all of them! So what is real (in the video) really isn't, because those stolen special effects get deployed over and over. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Weather Hair Style
Frozen Hair Round 2:
— Voicesofjake (@Fischer3Jake) January 16, 2025
(Since everyone else is posting my video on this cesspool of an app, I will too!) pic.twitter.com/LKsdySTuZV
Jake Fischer at Voicesofjake shows us both how cold it is and how crazy he is by letting his hair freeze. The viral "wet hair challenge" involves going outside in the freezing cold with wet hair and seeing what kind of wild shape you can achieve. Jake went for the straight-up look, and since he has long hair, that was very far up. But think of how cold it can be on your head to wait for the hair to freeze! (via Laughing Squid)
Useless Salad Machine
The Useless Duck Company has developed a machine that will toss your salad. Considering that the tossing is the easiest part of making a salad, this is truly a useless machine. But when you have a new 3D printer, you look for things to make. You'll have to admit that watching this thing work is more fun that making a salad. Still, I don't think they'll be overwhelmed with orders. (via Geeks Are Sexy)