(via Bad Newspaper)
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Hot Metal Ball In Aloe Vera Gel
Hot Metal Ball In Aloe Vera Gel (audio on)
byu/BoysenberryOk5580 infunny
Make sure the sound is on for this one. One commenter suggested doing this in an empty stall in a busy public restroom. (via reddit)
An Honest Trailer for Captain America: Brave New World
Captain America: Brave New World is the fourth movie of the Captain America series from Marvel, unless you count the TV miniseries The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which was, of course, on TV. But you have to have seen the TV show to understand who this new Captain America is. Brave New World hit theaters in February, opened strong, and then petered out as word of mouth got around. Reviews were mixed, and Brave New World seemed like another formulaic MCU movie. It may yet break even, as it will be available on Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD on May 13. Meanwhile, Screen Junkies would like to help you decide whether to watch it or not with this Honest Trailer.
Miss Cellania's Links
Hitler’s Terrible Tariffs. By seeking to “liberate” Germans from a globalized world order, the Nazi government sent the national economy careening backwards. (via kottke)
The Ford Executive Who Kept Score of Colleagues’ Mixed Metaphors and Malaprops. “We need to talk about the elephant in the closet.” (via Metafilter)
Packing for a Congo Expedition in the 1800s, and Now. (via Nag on the Lake)
My European trip reminded me of one more way America hates kids. (via Fark)
37 Times People Messed Up On Movie Sets And Accidentally Created Pure Magic.
Cosplayers were front and center at Laval Comiccon this past weekend in Laval, Quebec.
“Bionic Girl” Debuts New Wireless Hands That Even Work When Detached From the Main Prosthetic. (via Damn Interesting)
Walpurgis Dance
April 30 is Walpurgis Night, or Witches Night in Germany and some other European countries. This dance is from one of the events a few years ago in the Harz district of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. (Thanks, jamie!)
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
I Still Believe
Since you enjoyed "Let the Day Begin" by the Call that I posted a couple of weeks ago, I decided to pull out another of their songs. This video of "I Still Believe" was recorded at The Ritz in 1986. People remember the song from the 1987 movie The Lost Boys, but that was a cover version by Tim Cappello.
Kitten in a Car Engine
While test driving a Mercedes, the driver heard a strange sound coming from the car. There was nothing wrong with the car, but it was meowing. The driver pulled into Royalty Auto Service where mechanic Sherwood Cook located the culprit- a tiny kitten (this was Sherwood, Jr. There's also a Sherwood III and Sherwood IV on the staff). The kitten wasn't easy to get to. They had to put the car of a lift to reach her! Meanwhile, Sherwood fell in love with the kitten, and declared that she would be part of the staff as well. After all, his grandchildren are already part of the business without actually having to work, why not a kitten, too? Besides, she's seen parts of a car that you and I never will. She was checked out by a veterinarian and given a new name- Mercedes.
Buster Keaton's Most Amazing Stunts
He did all his own stunts in an age with no green screen, no CGI, and not much in safety protocols, just bravery and timing. This video came with an article on Keaton’s 5 Rules of Comic Storytelling at Danny Dutch. You'll also find a description of the stunts in the video.
Koeiendans 2017
Wanna see some happy cows? Then you're in for a real treat! "Koeiendans" is a Dutch terms means "cow dance." Why are these cows so happy? They've been inside their nice warm stalls in the Netherlands for five months, and now they get to go outside to frolic through the fresh new grass in the pasture. You'd be dancing, too! These cows belong to Brandsma's Pleats, which might be the farm's name, but it's all Dutch to me. (via Everlasting Blort)
Monday, April 28, 2025
How to Become Pope
CGP Grey made this video when Pope Benedict retired in 2013, but it is relevant now as the Vatican prepares to choose a successor to the late Pope Francis. (via Boing Boing)
Peacock Tries "Faking it" to Find a Mate
It seems weird to me that married men tend to draw more attention from women than single men. The women they attract have no inner block against adultery, I suppose. But when you think about it on a purely biological level, being married indicates that a man has already been vetted and found worthy by at least one woman.
The same phenomena can be seen in peacocks. One who announced that they have found a mate draws the attention of other pea hens. Sam, who doesn't have a mate, notices and uses that tactic for his own ends.
Inside the Fiercest Debate in Linguistics
A controversy among linguists which has been raging for a long time is the concept of universal grammar. Is there a fundamental set of rules that people use, no matter what their language is? There are certain features that almost all languages have in common, such as subjects, verbs, and objects, although their order can vary. But is this universal grammar due to something innate in the human brain, or did it come about when written language developed, or does it point to how languages were all originally related? Dr. Erica Brozovsky explains how linguists have disagreed, or even fought each other, over this controversy.
Miss Cellania's Links
Roman Dodecahedrons: An unsolved mystery of the ancient past. (via Strange Company)
What Elon Musk Didn’t Budget For: Firing Workers Costs Money, Too. An expert on the federal work force estimates that the speed and chaos of Mr. Musk’s cuts to the bureaucracy will cost taxpayers $135 billion this fiscal year. (via Boing Boing)
You Can Rent Van Gogh's Bedroom.
From Ravensbrück to freedom: The story of Sweden’s daring ‘White Bus’ rescue. (via Damn Interesting)
15 Things You Should Never Put In A Microwave. I would add leftover pizza to the list- use the toaster oven.
The 1916 Jersey Shore Shark Attacks. Four people were killed and another badly injured in just two weeks.
When Kitty Litter Caused a Nuclear Catastrophe. (via Nag on the Lake)
The timeline for getting a PhD in the US has changed. Clicking on the commic will take you to an example. (via Fark)
Sunday, April 27, 2025
Short Circuit
Back in 1986, we all fell in love with a sentient robot named Number 5, who later took the name Johnny 5. That's the movie Short Circuit. The robot is a Cold War weapon who doesn't want to be involved in war anymore; he just wants to drink in everything that humans experience.
No One Likes a Soggy Pickle
A Heinz commercial from 1965. It still works, because now I would like a crisp pickle. (via Nag on the Lake)
The Elements at a Party
Foil Arms and Hog throw a party for the elements of the periodic table. The elements all have their individual characteristics, and that comes out in the small talk. Some personality quirks have to do with the chemicals themselves, like oxygen, which is a breath of fresh air. Others have to do with their reputation among humans, like aluminum, which wears a foil hat and is a bit paranoid. And some are just puns, like how boron is so very boring. Some of them even dress the part, like neon wearing Day-Glo colors. Watch for some surprises, like when two nitrogens and one oxygen merge and get the giggles, because that makes nitrous oxide, or laughing gas. That's why it's so important to go over your guest list multiple times to make sure your guests won't clash and cause trouble, or in the worst case, explode. (via Laughing Squid)
Squirrel Gets Ice Cream Every Day
Putter the squirrel us lucky enough to live near Fantasy Isle Ice Cream & Mini Golf in Holden Beach, North Carolina. She ate ice cream from the outdoor tables after customers left, and developed a taste for the treat. So shop owner Scott Martin now gives her a tiny squirrel-sized cone every day. While Putter and her ice cream cones are cute and draw customers, wildlife officials say it's not a good idea to feed any wild animals. Especially not ice cream. (via Atlas Obscura)
Saturday, April 26, 2025
"War Pigs" in Amharic
Ethiopian band uKanDanZ covers Black Sabbath's song "War Pigs" in the Amharic language. It's very good. Singer Asnake Gebreyes sounds better (to me) than Ozzy ever did, and the language doesn't matter because we know what the song says. The band shreds. The song really needed a saxophone. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Pee-wee as Himself
Here is a trailer for Pee-wee as Himself, a two-part HBO documentary about Pee-wee Herman and Paul Reubens, both of them separately and together. The trailer gives you can idea of not only the public Pee-wee, but the private Reubens and how they were connected, yet it doesn't give too much away and just makes you want to see the whole thing. Too bad it's on a premium channel you may not have access to. (via Laughing Squid)
Surströmming
Surströmming is known around the world these days, mainly for YouTube videos of people retching when the get a whiff if it. Surströmming is canned, fermented herring from Sweden, where it is considered a delicacy. Elsewhere, it is considered the stinkiest food in the world. That may be enough to keep you from ever trying it yourself, but you have to wonder what it is about Surströmming that some Swedes love. To find out, Great Big Story went for a deep dive to explain how Surströmming was invented, how it's made, what makes it so smelly, and then what's good about it. Apparently the taste is much better than the smell, but it takes a talented eater to completely separate the two senses. Even the head of the Surströmming Association says to open the can outside.
Herding Kittens
How do you take a photograph of ten kittens? They are all from one litter, so they need a family portrait. But arranging kittens to face a camera is like …trying to herd cats. Exactly like that. No wonder mama cats are always on their last nerve. Evgeny, the Russian cat daddy, found that it's best to just use video instead of a still camera. (via Tastefully Offensive)
Friday, April 25, 2025
Fish Scares a Tiger
Riddhi the tiger lives at the Andhari Tiger Reserve in India. He usually doesn't get spooked easily, but when you see a fish, fly, that's something you don't see every day! Is it a predator or a supernatural sign? Either way, he doesn't want to be too close! (via Boing Boing)
Chocolate Bowling Alley
Amaury Guichon is an artist, and his medium is chocolate. You have to be a serious food artist to own a lathe and know how to use it. Here he makes chocolate bowling pins with molds, the lathe, and spray-on chocolate. Then he makes a bowling ball out of chocolate, with holes matched to his own fingers and a bright candy shell. Guichon even makes a smooth and glossy wood-grained alley out of chocolate, complete with gutters! The alley itself is not regulation size, so bowling a strike is not that difficult. The difficult part would be to get this far without eating the equipment. (via Nag on the Lake)
Miss Cellania's Links
The Forgotten Power of the Parlour Palm.
The Shocking Autopsy of Morris Foster. A suspicious death led to the revelation of shocking procedures in a facility for the powerless. (via Strange Company)
That electrical outlet behind your couch.
The History Of Guacamole. (Thanks, WTM!)
America's 19 wealthiest households barely squeak by with trillion-dollar windfall in 2024.
The 15 Best Opening Lines in Rock Music. (via Fark)
The Controversial History of the Word "Hillbilly."
Family Feud: Gilligan's Island Vs. Batman
Classic TV stars play for charity in a 1983 episode of The Family Feud. Who will win: the cast of Gilligan's Island, or the cast of Batman? The questions aren't as provocative as they are now, and some were a product of their time. Plenty of actors are political now, and it's hard to imagine a bedroom that doesn't already have a TV and phone in it. (via Laughing Squid)
Thursday, April 24, 2025
One-sided Affection
Cali the cockatoo and Jackson the Maine Coon cat act out a scenario that may be familiar to you. Cali desperately wants some attention, and Jackson wants none of her shenanigans. I can see the speech bubbles about their heads now.
Cali: Pay attention to me! I like you; we can be friends!
Jackson: Scram! I'm a cat; you're just a bird. You are lucky I don't eat you.
Cali: Please? Come on, just for a little bit?
Jackson: Oh, all right… No! Someone might see us.
Their owner assures us that most of the time, they get along wonderfully. (via Tastefully Offensive)
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
His New Nose
If your child came to you to reveal his plastic surgery, would you react like this? Maybe, and so would everyone else. It's contagious. (via reddit)
A 43-pound Cat
When Kristine met this fat cat, he was so big that he was named Biggie. Biggie weighed 43 pounds! For reference, the last time I took a cat to the vet, he weighed eight pounds, and I thought he was overweight. Biggie is a heckin' chonker, as they say. Kristine took him in and put him on a diet. Big orange cats are known to be very food-motivated, so Biggie was not happy with the amount of food, but he lost weight over time, and went from barely being able to move to playing with toys and walking all over the house. There was a period when he could walk downstairs, but not upstairs, which meant Kristine had to haul his behemoth butt back up. The family's success with Biggie led them to found The Big House Sanctuary and Rehab to help overweight cats get healthy. They've published an online guide called A Quick Guide to Dechonking. This video has a 30-second sponsor message at :30.
Twins are Really In Sync
Australian twins Bridgette and Paula Powers speak to a journalist after witnessing a carjacking incident in which their mother tried to help after the car crashed. But you probably don't need to catch every detail of the crime, because that's overshadowed by how they told the story. The sisters are so in tune with each other that whatever one says, the other is already saying!
This interview is not the first time that Bridgette and Paula have gone viral. They've been called "the world's most identical twins" since they were quite young. Yes, they always dress alike, and they do everything together. They don't feel right at all when they aren't together. But the way they speak in unison makes us wonder whether they have some kind of telepathy, or if they along ago got into the habit of predicting the next word our of their sister's mouth. (Thanks, Brother Bill!)
Miss Cellania's Links
U.K. cartoonist Rebecca Burke on her ICE detainment: ‘No one should be here.’ (via Metafilter)
Homestar Runner is a website again.
Andor: How the 'gangster' years of the young Joseph Stalin inspired the gritty Star Wars series. (via Boing Boing)
There’s Still More to Learn About Anne Frank. A new biography considers the young diarist as inspiration and as a person in her own right. (via Strange Company)
A Brief History of the Jonestown Massacre.
The Baseball Team That Would Literally Die If They Lost.
The Movie Mistake Mystery from Revenge of the Sith. It's been solved! (via kottke)
Angela Lansbury in famous works of art. (via Metafilter)
Revenge of the Tree
They're trying to pull a tree stump out of the ground with an SUV. They should have tried digging, even a little bit, because that tree has been there since way before any of these guys were born. It's not giving up easily. Okay, spend the first 30 seconds of the video trying to imagine what will happen. And then be surprised. (via Jalopnik)
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
A Day with the Saucier At One of New Orleans’s Oldest Restaurants
Arnaud's is one of the oldest restaurants in New Orleans, and one of the biggest, too, as it occupies eleven buildings in the French Quarter. The operation is so big that the chefs specialize to the max. Bobby McNabb is the saucier, meaning he makes sure that there are plenty of the various sauces that give each meal a distinctive flavor. Each one takes hours, or even days, to come to the proper stage. Each is made with care, but made in amounts that would stagger a home cook, or a chef at a smaller restaurant. Even people who never cook will enjoy following what he does for a day. But the camera crew is kicked out at 5:30, because that's when they really get busy! (via Nag on the Lake)
The Cats That Rule Disneyland After Dark
Visitors to Disneyland are often charmed by spotting cats in the park. They aren't trespassing; these cats live there. They serve an important role in rodent control, which is quite necessary when you consider the amount of food purchased (and dropped) and the amount of garbage Disneyland has to deal with every day. But they weren't brought in as pest control experts. When Disneyland was preparing to open to the public, the staff found that a colony of feral cats had set up housekeeping in Sleeping Beauty's castle. Getting rid of the cats would be difficult, so Disney decided to let them stay, and even made them official cast members. Their duties in rodent control was a bonus. The park has an estimated 200 or so cats who mostly stay in areas away from people when the park is open. They are fed and fixed, but are still feral. And in case you are wondering, Walt Disney World in Florida does not have an official feral cat program like Disneyland, but you may well spot cats in the park because Florida just has a lot of feral cats. (Thanks, WTM!)
The Charleston
This film from 1925 shows us how it's done. These are professional dancers. The woman in pink is wearing a showgirl costume; the dancer in dark blue wears the style that was more likely to be worn by the general public.
Earth is Our Home
Domino artist Hevesh5 used 8,000 dominoes for her tribute to Mother Earth for Earth Day. She built a 3D world out of dominoes, complete with continents and a "fragile ecosystem." Then with the magic of video, she put it back the way it was. If it were only so easy for us to do that with the real Earth. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Monday, April 21, 2025
Monty Python And The Holy Grail
Monty Python And The Holy Grail was released 50 years ago this month. That's the perfect reason to watch this definitive story of King Arthur and his knights of the round table again! And if you have someone watching it with you, you can compete to speak along with the most quotes.
New Ghosts in the Pac-Man Grid
Pac-Man has been avoiding or killing the same ghosts for 45 years now (as if you can really kill a ghost). He's gotten to known them all and their individual quirks pretty well. But suddenly now he runs into a ghost he's never met before. A stranger in the Pac-Man grid? It turns out that one of the ghosts couldn't get out of jury duty and they had to call in a replacement. The problem is that the temp agency sends them ghosts who can't get a steady job for one reason or another. How bad do you have to be to be bad among ghost? We are about to find out, courtesy of Dorkly. The video is only 2:15; the rest is promotional. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Miss Cellania's Links
RIP Pope Francis.
What we know about Star Wars: Starfighter, the next movie from a galaxy far, far away, so far.
“A Source of Amyuzmint.” On the Use of Bad Spelling in Early American Comedy. (via Damn Interesting)
Librarians are dangerous. (via Metafilter)
Inside The Strange Origins Of Graham Crackers And Why They Were Invented. (Thanks, WTM!)
Musician Who Died in 2021 Resurrected as Clump of Brain Matter, Now Composing New Music. The article does not tell us whether the sounds of Revivification resemble music, or whether that music is good. (via Strange Company)
Trump draft executive order would make sweeping changes to the U.S. State Department. We will be basically ceding Africa to Chinese influence. (via Fark)
Angler Catches 153-Pound Behemoth in Texas Using Ultra-Light Tackle, Likely Setting a New World Record.
Woman Who Can Smell Parkinson’s Disease Is Helping To Pave the Way for a Medical Breakthrough. (via Damn Interesting)
Incredibly Realistic Wolf Animation
This is just one of many wonderfully ridiculous animation tests (and parodies) you'll find in this Metafilter thread.
Sunday, April 20, 2025
"The Perfect Storm"
When French metal band Eons of Decay needed a video for their song The Perfect Storm, they enlisted the talents of Fabrice Mathieu, who has delighted us with his film mashups for years. Mathieu turned to popular science fiction, dystopian, and disaster movies and used clips from more than 50 of them to illustrate how awful a perfect storm could be. Things go from bad to worse as we see war, wildfires, earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, urban overcrowding, sandstorms, economic collapse, floods, asteroids, and general mayhem that you would expect from armageddon. If you don't like heavy metal, you should watch with the sound off and enjoy the utter destruction that Hollywood offers us, and tell yourself "It's just a movie..." There's a list of the movies used at the YouTube page. (Thanks Fabrice!)
Easter Parade
Judy Garland and Fred Astaire sing "Easter Parade" from the 1948 movie Easter Parade. I can understand people wearing their very best clothing for Easter, but making it into a public fashion show seems a bit over the top. That custom peaked in the mid-20th century, and while many people still wear either their newest or best clothing to church on Easter, it's not really a competition for the most part.
You might wonder what the "rotogravure" is. That was a printing technique, and in the song it refers to a magazine section that was printed in color. And about the other question in your head, Judy Garland was 26 when this movie was released; Fred Astaire was 49.
He's Alive
My favorite Easter song, as recorded at the1990 GMA Dove Awards. Dolly Parton makes the story come alive. As appropriate. May your Easter be as joyous.
Saturday, April 19, 2025
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