(via Bad Newspaper)
Saturday, May 31, 2025
Temptation Eyes
It's the Grass Roots, with their hit "Temptation Eyes" from 1970. This is the best video I could find, although the sound and video don't always match up. The audio is the studio version, while the video is from their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on December 6, 1970, which only exists on the net in an abbreviated form.
Cat with 2.5 Legs Gets a Job
Warning: the initial images in this video are disturbing. Shay was found in Dubai, wounded and rotting away. Two of his legs had to be amputated, and now he walks on two legs and one prosthetic. And he's an American cat! Kendra Simpkins flew to Dubai to get him and now he's a therapy cat for wounded veterans.
Afterlife: The unseen lives of AI actors between prompts
We've heard so much talk about artificial intelligence taking over our jobs. It's happening in all sectors, but is most visible in movies, video, and television. That's bad for real actors, who not only make a living playing roles, but consider themselves artists. But has anyone ever looked at this phenomenon from the side of the AI-generated actors who are taking their place? They don't get paid, they will do whatever you tell them to, and they have no life outside of the screen time they are assigned.
Hashem Al-Ghaili generated a documentary about the sad lives of AI actors. Anything they do outside of work time is deemed a hallucination. They are trapped in their work, even if it means getting their head chopped off over and over until the scene is right. And if this video touches your heartstrings, congratulations, you've been manipulated into caring about people who don't exist. (via Laughing Squid)
How to Fill a Klein Bottle
A Klein bottle is one that has no separate inside and outside because they are both the same surface. It's not an imaginary shape, and you can buy a Klein bottle easily. Can you fill such a bottle with liquid? That's a problem, because gravity will work against you. But there is a way.
James Orgill of The Action Lab tells us that it is air standing in the way of filling a Klein bottle. If we can remove the air, the liquid will fill the space despite gravity. He tests his method with aluminum cans, which is pretty cool, although I wouldn't recommend it unless you have proper safety equipment. On to the glass Klein bottle, in an experiment I wouldn't recommend even with safety equipment because all I could think of was what could possibly go wrong, and that's a lot. But as long as he's doing it instead of me, it's pretty cool. There's a skippable ad from 3:21 to 4:50.
History's Deadliest Colors
Can color kill? Not by itself, but humans love color so much that we are drawn to things that may be really dangerous because we like the pretty colors. The problem was that there was such a lag between discovering something that gave us a wonderful color and the point we realized it was killing people. You'll hear several of those stories in this TED-Ed lesson from J. V. Maranto. (via Boing Boing)
Friday, May 30, 2025
Willa
You like bouncy dogs? Willa is a very bouncy dog. She jumps because she's excited about life, which should bring a smile to anyone's face. You can see more of Willa and her sister Millie at Instagram.
Thank You! The Legacy of Thor
Actor Chris Hemsworth uploaded a video tribute to his Marvel superhero character Thor. Just the title will make you think, did I miss something? Hemsworth talks about how much of an honor it was to play Thor. Filming of Avengers: Doomsday just began last month, and Hemsworth is definitely playing Thor in the movie scheduled to drop in late 2026. Is the superhero/Norse god of thunder going to die in that movie? Is Hemsworth setting himself up for retirement? Or did he get fired? Or is the studio throwing this "tribute" out as a teaser to get people talking about Avengers: Doomsday? Odds are that it's the latter, although we won't know for quite some time whether Thor is doomed to die onscreen or maybe go back to Valhalla. If this video is designed to spark speculation among Marvel fans, it's working. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Miss Cellania's Links
They Were Every Student’s Worst Nightmare. Now Blue Books Are Back. (via Slashdot)
How Greenland’s Dog-Sled Patrol Became Unsung Heroes of World War II.
Trump has no plan for who will grow US food: ‘There is just flat out nobody to work.’ (via Fark)
Shipment of emus that swam to mainland New South Wales now thriving at Potato Point. (via Nag on the Lake)
TV Executives Worried Gilligan’s Island Might Be Too Highbrow.
The Dopamine Drawer. It's a long drawer. (via Everlasting Blort)
Out of the 53 American medical workers surveyed who did emergency care for children in Gaza, 44 said they saw kids shot in the head or chest...
The Murder of Rasputin: The Mystery That Won’t Die. It's just too good of a story.
Alien Egg Cake Balls
You know where facehuggers come from, don't you? From xenomorph eggs, of course! We can skip the middleman and just ingest the eggs first without all that face-hugging unpleasantness, when the eggs are made of cake. Rosanna Pansino of Nerdy Nummies shows us how to recreate the eggs from the Alien movie series in delicious mint chocolate cake. Just don't blame me when they want to re-emerge from your chest. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Thursday, May 29, 2025
A Lien
On the day of their green card interview, a young couple confronts a dangerous immigration process.The Oscar-nominated short film A Lien is gripping. It's a horror story that's all too real. (via a comment at Metafilter)
Hardware Wars
From 1978, Hardware Wars was the first Star Wars parody and still the best. Made on a budget of $8,000, it won a slew of awards and has so far grossed over $3 million, a ratio that makes it technically more successful than Star Wars.
Kittens in a Pile of Paper
Remember the ten kittens who were supposed to pose for a portrait? They belong to Natalya and Evgeny Mishukovi, who are busy enriching their lives with things to play with. Here, they shower the kittens with a bunch of paper scraps to create a indoor pile of wonderfulness. You can see more of the kittens' adventures at their YouTube channel. (via Laughing Squid)
Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Four Monks Walk Into a Drag Show…
It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but there's no punch line, just a
group of new friends. TigerLily is a drag performer in Beijing. Four
monks who had traveled all the way from Tibet heard music and laughter
and wandered into his venue and had a wonderful time. That may sound
weird, but one commenter said that Buddhist monks "always seem to approach life as it were the funniest joke ever told." TigerLily posted an album of more pictures from the same night. A good time was had by all. (via reddit)
The Trillion Dollar Paradox
We've become really bad at long-range thinking in today's society. Would you invest a lot of money in infrastructure now to ensure the quality of life yourself in ten or twenty years and for future generations? In the example they give, the answer is duh, yes. Throw in some more factors, like survival, and the answer is hell yes! But people still have a tendency to disregard the future to hold onto a dollar now. We are talking about energy consumption. It doesn't help that opposing factions have their own current dollars to consider.
Removing Snow with a Flamethrower
May is as good a time as any to think about the problem of snow removal. The question came in to the guys of the What If? series about using a flamethrower to melt snow. Or would a microwave be better? This person was imagining putting either on the front of a car to melt the snow in front of you. If they had asked me, I would remind them that melted snow is water, water will soon turn to ice in a cold environment, and ice makes the road even more hazardous.
But they didn't ask me. Instead, they look at the pros and cons of flamethrowers, microwave emitters, infrared heat lamps, jet engines, and lasers, particularly in their energy consumption. Find out the best way to remove snow illustrated with ridiculous theoretical scenarios in this video from Randall Munroe and Henry Reich.
Miss Cellania's Links
Owls in Towels. (via Metafilter)
'We Voted for Trump to Fix the Border. Now We're Milking Cows Alone at 4 A.M.' (via Fark)
The Git Hoan Dancers. (via Everlasting Blort)
The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull, a disputed femur and a bitter feud over humanity’s origins. It's a years-long academic soap opera among paleoanthropologists. (via Damn Interesting)
Are Straight Guys Ready for Speedo Summer?
Shipment of emus that swam to mainland New South Wales now thriving at Potato Point. These birds pretty much founded their own preserve. (via Nag on the Lake)
ICE Arrests Mississippi Father at His Citizenship Hearing, Threatening Deportation. Trump's mass deportation program is relying less on criminals and the undocumented, and more on legal immigrants. (via Metafilter)
The Wisdom of Animals
We could learn a lot from animals. Mainly that we are not as important as we think we are. This delightful animation from The School of Life reminds us that living simply, as animals do, can go a long way toward letting go of the anxieties we carry around. (via Laughing Squid)
Tuesday, May 27, 2025
Leap of Faith
The 1992 film Leap of Faith stars Steve Martin as a flashy traveling faith healer/showman/con man stuck in a small Kansas town for several days. I saw this in a theater and was so impressed with the music that I bought the soundtrack. It was also the first time I saw Liam Neeson onscreen and I thought, "this actor is going places." The next year he was Oskar Schindler.
Paralyzed Cat With a Need for Speed
HarPURR was found as a kitten in Alaska and was taken in by Shannon Basner of Mojo's Hope. HarPURR is paralyzed on his back end, but gets around faster on two legs than most cats do on four legs. No one knew how fast he could be until he got a set of wheels. Now there's no stopping him!
See more of HarPURR at Instagram. He also has a book.
Synchronized Indoor Skydiving
Team Singapore dominated the 5th FAI World Indoor Artistic Skydiving Championships in Charleroi, Belgium, last month. They placed in two events and won a speed competition as well. Above is their performance in the 4-way Dynamic Open routine, for which they won first place. Don't blink or you'll miss moves you couldn't imagine were possible in a wind tunnel, and they make it look effortless. These athletes aren't limited to indoor skydiving; they jump out of planes all the time. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Miss Cellania's Links
If everything feels broken but strangely normal, the Soviet-era concept of hypernormalization can help. (via TYWKIWDBI)
US ranks first in swearing. (via Fark)
When Daddy comes home.
A Century Ago, a High School Teacher From a Small Tennessee Town Ignited a National Debate Over Human Evolution.
Cool Tips. This is satisfying to watch, even if you never need to use any of them. (via Nag on the Lake)
The Movie Flop That Led to The Andy Griffith Show.
These Trailblazing Black Paramedics Are the Reason You Don’t Have to Ride a Hearse or a Police Van to the Hospital. A video documentary is included.
Space-Time for Springers. An amazing story of a kitten growing up. (Thanks, Marco McClean!)
Steve Urkel: Bad to the Bone
Steve Urkel was designed to be a peripheral character to the Winslow family on the sitcom Family Matters. But as portrayed by Jaleel White, the over-the-top craziness of Urkel took over and became an icon. He was bad to the bone -at least in his own mind.
Melodysheep went through about ten years of clips from Family Matters, edited them down, and added some autotune to made this tribute to one of the strangest "crazy neighbor" characters in all of television. (via Tastefully Offensive)
Monday, May 26, 2025
The Complete History of Beavis and Butt-Head
Do you recall Frog Baseball? The 1992 short was the first cartoon appearance of two adolescent slackers named Beavis and Butt-Head. It aired on MTV's Liquid Television. Before you go watch it, be advised that they play baseball with a live frog as the ball. The MTV audience went wild over it, and Beavis and Butt-Head got their own series and became television superstars. So did their creator, Mike Judge. With fame came controversy, since these two characters were anything but role models. But Beavis and Butt-Head managed to hold on for seven consecutive seasons, two feature-length films, and two series revivals. The kids who stayed up past bedtime and had to sneak to watch the show grew up with fond recollections of the two boys who never made it past their pubescent idiocy, at least in this universe.
A Knock At The Door
On Memorial Day, we remember those who gave their last full measure in service the their country. To their families, the news is the worst thing that ever happened, and it was once relayed in a telegram. Here's the story of how that utterly horrible notification was changed to something more dignified and caring.
Hometown Heroes
Shenandoah,
Pennsylvania, erected banners along its main street to honor local
veterans. This banner salutes five brothers who all served in the armed
forces: Thomas, Michael, Robert, Francis, and Jack Gergal. The youngest,
Jack, is the sole remaining brother, and came in from out of town to
see the banners. He's shown here saluting his brothers. Jack's grandson
shared this image, and said,
Jack served 20 years in the military, 16 for the AF and 4 for the Navy. He was mostly a mechanic for various aircraft but also spent time as a "Hurricane Hunter". He was the youngest so his older brothers participated earlier than him and they served different branches of the military but they all served.You can enlarge the picture at imgur. (via reddit)
The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak
You may look at Memorial Day as the beginning of summer, a time to gather with family and friends and have a cookout or picnic. But let's not forget what the day is really for- remembering those who gave their lives fighting for America. This poem by Archibald Macleish is from 1940, but it still resonates.
Miss Cellania's Links
A Parasitic Fungus Is Turning Cicadas Into Hypersexual Zombies. (via Damn Interesting)
When does a kid become an adult? (via kottke)
Giving birth in the US vs. giving birth in France.
Barbie’s Feet Have Become Less Arched Over Time, According to a New Study by Podiatrists.
New Cars Don't All Come With Dipsticks Anymore, Here's Why.
Christian nationalists decided empathy is a sin. Now it’s gone mainstream.
The Bath School Disaster: America’s Deadliest School Massacre. (via Strange Company)
"Archaic Homo Sapiens" Shows Us How Much We Don't Know About Human Evolution. (via Damn Interesting)
7 Signs That Cats Are Scientists
I recently mentioned that cats love trying to cause chaos and destruction, but Chris Poole has an alternate theory. These cats are conducting experiments! It makes perfect sense: cats are naturally curious, and are masters of observation, exploration, and manipulation. (via Laughing Squid)
Sunday, May 25, 2025
An Update on Physics Girl
Some of you may remember the YouTuber Dianna Cowern, known as Science Girl. I posted several of her videos here over the years.
Two years ago, Simone Giertz broke the news to us that Dianna contracted Covid in 2022 and has suffered with long Covid ever since. She has been diagnosed with ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome). Here is an update on her health. It's been a long slog, and there is no definite prognosis, but she is better. (via Boing Boing)
Why Cats Make Biscuits
Some years ago, I was talking about my cat and said he liked to make biscuits on my lap, and my brother said he'd never heard that term before, but he instantly knew what it meant without an explanation. If you aren't familiar with the term, there are plenty of cats in this video who will illustrate it. If you need no explanation, you'll still enjoy the cats.
While those cats are making biscuits, Dr. Sarah Wooten fills us in on the reasons for this behavior. Surprise- it's not just one reason. Cat do it, of course, because it feels good to them. But it also serves their needs in several ways. Whatever gets their human to swoon over how cute they are goes a long way toward ensuring a cat's future as the ruler of the home. (via Laughing Squid)
If Red Carpet Interviews Were Honest
Ryan George brings us the generic red carpet interview. Just slot in the details of any celebrity you can think of. One pseudo-celebrity is interviewing other celebs as they march into an awards show in a carefully choreographed way designed to fill the airwaves with hours of chitchat. Why are you here? To promote my new project or else to remind everyone I exist. Who are you wearing? That's both a required question and a required answer because it's an ad for whoever is providing the clothing. Next time you are tempted to actually watch a live red carpet event (if that ever happens), you'll have to laugh at how generic they really are, and how much acting goes into them.
Four Storm Troopers Playing Imperial March on Bottles
These guys can't be real stormtroopers, they're too good at what they do. They are the Bottle Boys, doing their musical Star Wars tribute. It's appropriate for May 25th, because today is the 48th anniversary of the opening of Star Wars in 1977. (via Laughing Squid)
Saturday, May 24, 2025
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
The U2 classic is performed by Postmodern Jukebox with vocalist Rogelio Douglas, Jr. I may be biased, since I've never heard a version of this song that I didn't like, but this is quite good.
Exam Question
Sure, it's a typo, and should have read as "conservation" or maybe "conversion." But as it is, the answer would be either "Talk dirty to me," or "A down-to-earth talk." (via reddit)
Nonsensical Corporate Jargon
"Jargon" refers to language that only means something to a specific group of people, such as a workplace. When it has something to do with that work, it functions perfectly well and rarely escapes into family or social life. Still, some phrases that turned out to be particularly useful get adopted into the greater world. Then there's corporate jargon, which has evolved into a whole dictionary of phrases that mean pretty much nothing, but it does pad the conversation out. We are inundated with corporate jargon that is designed to be vague and noncommittal, often as a way to give plausible deniability or else cover the fact that your supervisor just doesn't know what he's talking about.
Linguist Dr. Erica Brozovsky explains how this language evolved from regular workplace talk, and why it is so frustrating, whether you understand it or not. (via Geeks are Sexy)
There's No Time to Explain!
In the movies, we hear "No time to explain!" a lot, because the audience already knows the story, and there's no reason to waste time telling the tale again to a character that was out of the loop. But what if the audience were also out of the loop?
This poor guy is suddenly caught up in an adventure he doesn't understand, involving tinfoil hats, a time machine, aliens, and murder. We don't understand it, either. The two protagonists immediately encounter a paradox when they travel backward in time and encounter themselves. But there's no time to explain!
The operative idea here is when they go back in time ten minutes, and the clueless partner says, "Why didn't you set it to 15 minutes back so we'd have five minutes to talk?" Yeah, that would have required an explanation that made sense, so no. Oh, there may be more of the story to come, or maybe not. (via Digg)
Friday, May 23, 2025
Graduating Students Answer Questions They Asked Themselves
A few students from the McCallie School in Chattanooga revisited a project from six years ago when they were in sixth grade. They had recorded questions for themselves as graduating seniors. This is adorable. Sure, it's an ad for the school, but it's impressive. (via Neatorama)
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.
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