From 1910. (via Undine)
Thursday, April 30, 2026
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
Vox explains the history of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the gradual dismantling of it in the 21st century.
More Strange American Things
Laurence Brown is catching up on his list of difference between the US and Britain that aren't big enough to make a whole video about. Here he looks at license plates, road signs, cash, trophies, windows, and wildlife. There's a 50-second skippable ad at 3:55.
Grammar Rules You Don't Need to Follow Anymore
I've never felt good calling myself a language nerd, since I only speak one language. But I can't call myself an English nerd because I'm not English. And I've been making a serious effort to not be a pedant because language changes over time and you can't stop it. For example, it grinds my gears when people say "less" when they mean "fewer," but I don't correct people, and I vow right now that I'm going to let that go forever. I'm fine with ending a sentence with a preposition, because the lengths you must go to in order to avoid it are never worth the effort. If someone corrects you on that, tell them to "Shut up." Or if you're feeling generous, say, "Go on."
There are other grammar rules that are just not worth policing because popular usage is changing. I could not get my kids to say "different from" instead of "different than," and I would correct "on accident" to be "by accident." But why, then, is that different from saying "on purpose"? Yeah, some grammar rules should just go away- especially ones about the confusing use of English prepositions.
Learning a second language makes you understand how hard grammar really is. Princess speaks three languages and the grammar rules of Spanish or French can slip into her English in funny ways. Dr. Dolittle is learning Nepali ahead of her second wedding this fall, and she tells me the word order is completely different from English. We should all be more forgiving about English grammar, especially from someone who knows more than one language. If you can make yourself understood by the person you are addressing, that should be enough.
You Shook Me All Night Long
Matt Nathanson and his band were playing at a concert in Clifton Park, New York, in 2014 when he strummed the first couple of chords of “You Shook Me All Night Long” by AC/DC. They hadn’t planned on playing the song, but the crowd went wild, so they played a few more chords. It’s a song every rock musician at least sort of knows, even if it’s been years since they played it. They still weren’t committed to playing the entire song until the audience started singing, and from there there was no turning back. From the YouTube page:
As Matt brought Andrew McMahon onstage to do Tom Petty's "American Girl" he tore into the riff for "You Shook Me..." and the crowd just took it from there. You can see drummer Chris Lovejoy and guitarist Aaron Tap exchange glances and then Andrew asks Aaron "What's happening?" and Aaron responds, "I don't know" - it just kept getting better from there! Aaron Tap kills the guitar solo (as Matt notes after the song) - bravo!(via reddit)
Wednesday, April 29, 2026
Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont Spelling Bee
Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont Spelling Bee is an Australian (originally New Zealand) game show in the British tradition, where the contestants are comedians and the prize is only the ability (sometimes posed as a threat) to appear on the next show. The point is to make us laugh, and they do. Yes, it's a spelling bee, but Guy Montgomery makes it as nonsensically confusing as possible. You can read about the show and why it works at Kotaku. Americans will need a VPN to catch new episodes, but some from the first two seasons are available at YouTube. (via Metafilter)
When Someone Doesn't Read The News
When things are boing bad, the happiest people are those who don't know what's going on. On the one hand, it's better for your mental health to ignore the news. On the other hand, a lot of the bad things happening these days is because of people not paying attention to what's happening outside their own world.
"Cool" is the King of Cool
Most slang words are coined to represent an age group or some kind of community for which outsiders don't use the slang word. As soon as those words go mainstream, they are out of fashion. It happens so fast that you can date a movie by the slang words it contains, or at least identify the period it's set in. But one slang word just refuses to go away- the word "cool," used for anything good in pretty much any way.
While the word itself goes back hundreds of years, it was first published as a slang word in 1884. That means it was being used as vocal slang for a long time before that. And it's still used today by all age groups. Besides that, it doesn't go out and in and out of fashion, but rather spreads further and becomes more common all the time. "Cool" can be mean many things besides temperature, but it's always a positive word. Linguist Dr. Erica Brozovsky goes through the history of "cool" and the many ways it's been used.
The Swimming Lesson
When a raccoon invades your swimming pool, you may as well put him to work -as a swimming instructor! La Piscine (The Swimming Lesson) is from Faireset and his magnificent YouTube channel Parole de chat. (via Metafilter)
Tuesday, April 28, 2026
The Recording of Led Zeppelin's First Album
This mini documentary covers how and why Led Zeppelin came about and got an album out in a hurry. (via Laughing Squid)
Lous Cadetouns
The farmers of the Landes region of France used to work on stilts because the ground was so marshy. They could really cover some ground in those things! The tradition lives on in a form of dance. (via Neatorama)
Bunny Love
Whenever you hear the term "snuggle bunny" or "cuddle bunny," this is what it means. (via I Am Bored)
Scooby Doo!
I've not seen many episodes of Scooby-Doo, but I've seen enough to know they all end the same way. This comic is from Ellen Woodbury at Pizza Cake. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Monday, April 27, 2026
Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman
Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman is a 1993 HBO remake of the 1958 original. This version was marketed as a comedy and had a more feminist slant than the original. Directed by Christopher Guest, it stars Daryl Hannah, Daniel Baldwin, William Windom, and Frances Fisher. (via Everlasting Blort)
They're So Cute When They're Little
The bad news is that we need fewer kittens, since so many of them will end up at shelters, or be euthanized, or end up feral as a adults. The good news is video lasts, so that we will never run out of kittens we can watch on the internet instead.
The History of #2
What did people do before modern toilets were invented? In my neck of the woods, they used outhouses. That was the case in most places, but it became a problem when people started living close to each other in cities. Various systems for sewage disposal were installed by the Greeks, the Romans, and then the Europeans, but it was slow and only came about when the city's waste disposal problems became intolerable.
It was the same in the history of toilet design. There were great leaps that didn't spread and were even sometimes forgotten, possibly because no one really wanted to talk about the problem. Besides, having a flush toilet is kind of useless when you don't have a water delivery system or a sewage system, and that kind of infrastructure was a major undertaking. Once we had running water, not only could we use real flush toilets, but also sinks, bathtubs, and showers! This brief history will make you thankful you have those things. (via Laughing Squid)
Miss Cellania's Links
What should a teacher do when a parent insists the moon landing was faked?
The Wild Concept To Fix Air Travel By Stacking Passengers On Top Of Each Other Is Back, And Somehow Slightly More Reasonable.
Atlas Obscura CEO Louise Story visited Bloomington, Indiana, to check it off her list. She discovered something about herself that she never expected.
The Golden Age of the … Enema?! Content warning: butts.
Pete Hegseth says the U.S. military will no longer require flu shots. Does he not know what the Spanish flu did in WW1? (via reddit)
The Medieval Mystery of a City That Danced Itself to Death. In 1518, residents of Strasbourg began dancing uncontrollably for days until they passed away.
Dopamine Depletion: The Hidden Driver of Alzheimer’s Memory Loss. An existing drug may be of use in slowing the disease. (via Damn Interesting)
A Blast from the Past (2007): Cooking with Tools.
Passing Out In A Centrifuge
Humans were not designed for acceleration, jerk, and G-forces, yet we travel at speeds that force us to endure those things. How do you keep breathing? How do you keep blood flowing to where you need it? It takes training, and still doesn't always work. Tom Scott visits the Royal Air Force training centrifuge in Farnbrough, UK, so that you don't have to. (via Digg)
How These Iconic Songs Got Their Names
YouTuber Walrus Pepper Skelter quickly runs through how 55 songs got the titles they have. The explanations often have nothing to do with the song's lyrical content, just the titles. For example, we all know that "Layla" is about Patti Boyd, but the name itself came from elsewhere. A few could use further explanation, like explaining to young folks that Teen Spirit was the name of a deodorant. The list slips sometimes, with no explanation for the title "Aqualung," just the lyrical inspiration. The video is text-based, so you'll have to look at it. (via the Awesomer)
Which Button Would You Push?
A thought experiment that shows 1. whether you understand odds and 2. what your values are. The real demons are the ones who set up the game.
A Bun in the Oven
She's trying to tell him that she's pregnant, but he just doesn't get it. Good thing she had a backup clue in the bathroom. She would have done better to just tell him. (via Digg)
Saturday, April 25, 2026
Fire Maidens of Outer Space
Fire Maidens of Outer Space is a 1956 British B-movie that combines sex and space flight, typical for the era. Astronauts discover a community of beautiful women living on the 13th moon of Jupiter. They are human, having descended from those who escaped Atlantis when it sunk. How that happened does not matter. They need husbands! (Thanks WTM!)
Kitten with an Exoskeleton
Squid was born with a deformity in his back legs. He lucked out when he came into the care of Drs. Lauren and Daniel Anthony, married veterinarians in Frisco, Texas. They took the kitten in and made splints of different kinds to keep his legs straight while he learned to walk properly. But he needed more, specifically a moveable brace to keep his hips aligned. There are such things, but none small enough for a kitten, so the docs had to make their own- out of LEGO pieces! They explained at Instagram that "he has a flexural tendon deformity of his hocks. The Lego exoskeleton is helping to prevent abduction of the hips!" You might or might not understand that, but we are happy that they do. I guess it's true that you can make anything if you have enough LEGO pieces.
A Japanese Take on American Sushi
Jun Yoshizuki of Jun's Kitchen makes American-style sushi with what seems like the entire contents of a grocery store to the beat of a fast, bouncy soundtrack. You don't even need to like sushi to enjoy the efficient moves of his practiced technique. His "studio audience" consists of his curious and appreciative cats Haku and Nagi, who are both well-fed and well-trained. We can assume that Poki is in another room with the door shut. (via Laughing Squid)
Michael Jackson Medley
The a cappella group Kings Return sings Michael Jackson songs- 34 of them! You'll recognize most, and some will hit your nostalgia button because you haven't heard them in many years. (via Kuriositas)
The River That Just Disappears
Rivers are the water paths that rain and snow follow from higher elevations to lower elevations until they reach the ocean. The Colorado River, on the other hand, flows from the Rocky Mountains in Colorado through several states and then just disappears. Oh, it used to flow into the Pacific Ocean, but that was before people moved to the western US and wanted to live there a grow crops despite the fact that it's a desert.
Half as Interesting takes us on a tour of the Colorado River and what happens to all that pristine snow melt along the way. The video is eight minutes long; the rest is an ad.
English
People used to criticize my boss for a small grammar faux pas, and I would point out that English is his fourth language. Remember the beam in your own eye. (via Bored Panda)
Eating Their Way Around the World, in One City
Two guys who go by the name Taste Buds came up with the most enjoyable (to produce) YouTube series imaginable. They embarked on a quest to try the food of every country in the world, without leaving New York City! They pick countries pretty much at random and go to a different restaurant every week. Does New York City have a restaurant from all of the 195 nations on their list? They've found 21 so far.
At each restaurant, they explain their project and get the VIP treatment. They ask questions about the cuisine while they eat their way through several dishes and quite a few drinks. It would take a week to recover from such excess. Now I'm hungry for Hungarian goulash, but I'll have to make it myself. You can see videos from all 21 restaurants so far at YouTube. (via Laughing Squid)
Miss Cellania's Links
The Southern Poverty Law Center indictment, the Klan history behind it, and the ignominy of Todd Blanche. (via Metafilter)
Investigational Pancreatic Cancer Vaccine Shows Lasting Results in Early Trial, Supporting Continued Testing. It involves custom-made mRNA vaccines. (via kottke)
The Secret Origin of Justice Roberts's Shadow Docket. The latest from Tom the Dancing Bug.
Hideki Tojo: The Man Who Started a War, Survived His Own Bullet, and Went to the Gallows with "Remember Pearl Harbor" in His Mouth.
This Data Center Is Getting a $77 Million Tax Break to Create One Job. (via Fark)
Matt Selman Explains Why The Simpsons Couch Gag Is Essentially Dead. That's not the only way the show has changed.
Investors lost billions on Trump’s memecoin. Investors? I thought it was just a vehicle for international bribes.
A Blast from the Past (2007): Animals That Only Bite Tourists.
Laser Magic Spectacular
You know how lightsabers break the rules of physics by showing a light that just ends at a certain point? This music video from Auralnauts corrects that by outfitting Luke, er, Dirk Lasermaster, with a lightsaber that goes on to infinity. Otherwise, the weird things that would never happen in a real world were left in the footage from The Return of the Jedi. In fact, those weird moments are highlighted by repetition to a ridiculous degree.
The song is from their album The Last Laser Master. It's an adjunct to their 6-part opus called Auralnauts Star Wars Saga. (via Digg)
Impeachment
It won't work until January. He could do a lot of damage between now and then. (via Fark)Support for impeaching Trump is at 55%, according to a new Strength In Numbers/ @Verasight.io poll, with 37% of adults opposed. Crucially 1 in 5 of Trump’s own voters support impeachment. Read and share: www.gelliottmorris.com/p/2026-04-22...
— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris.com) April 22, 2026 at 8:42 AM
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Thursday, April 23, 2026
Kentucky Moon
From the days when you had to sing, dance, act, and make people laugh to make it in show business. The Ritz Brothers perform with Tony Martin in this clip from the 1938 movie Kentucky Moonshine.
Coyote vs Acme
The long-awaited Coyote vs Acme is finally going to see the light. Based on a 1990 story, the film is a combination of animation and live action, and it's a courtroom drama. The Coyote, after untold disappointments with their products, is suing the Acme corporation. As you might guess, not all the action takes place in the courtroom, because it wouldn't be the Coyote we know without a lot of destructive chaos.
Warner Bros. seemed to be against this film from the start. First, they put limitations on their cartoon characters. Then they declined to move ahead with the movie. Years later, they approved a different script. Coyote vs Acme was completed, and got great reviews from anyone at previews or test screenings. However, in 2023, Warner Bros. announced it would not be released, drawing a lot of backlash from fans. They later said it could be released if the producers could find another distributor, but they also demanded too much money from anyone willing. Finally, in 2025, Ketchup Entertainment got a deal. Coyote vs Acme will open in theaters on August 28. (via Metafilter)
Infinity War of Infinite Avengers
The war cry is "Avengers, Assemble!" because there's strength in numbers ...up to a point. When you have to assemble eleventy-eight superheroes, it can take a bit of time. How many superheroes is too many superheroes? You know what they say, nothing succeeds like excess. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Tear the Flesh
People seem to like the first idea better. This comic is from Chris Hallbeck at Maximumble. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Wednesday, April 22, 2026
Do Animals Have Minds Like Humans?
We don't know exactly what's going on in someone else's mind, but we can take a guess based on their behavior. That goes for primitive species like worms with few neurons, up through animals with many neurons, to humans, who have taken the concept of "mind" a lot further. Yet we still don't know where to draw the line on which animals have "minds" as we think of them. Heck, we can't even define "mind" as opposed to sentience, self-awareness, and consciousness.
Humans, with the most complex of all brains, have managed to use our collection of neurons to develop and understand higher concepts like empathy, morality, art, fiction, prediction, language and math, long-term planning, and civilization itself. We've become pretty good at telling others what's on our minds, although we still cannot totally experience the way someone else thinks. Kurzgesagt gives us a brief tour of how brains differ between species and how more complex brains work. There's an ad from 4:44 to 6:00. The video ends at 10:42.
One Weird Trick to Unclog a Sink
Don't call a plumber! All you need to unclog a stubborn drain is ...eggs! Lots and lots of eggs. By the time you get to the end of this tutorial, you'll start to fear an egg shortage. Or maybe this guy has his own chicken coop and few neighbors to give eggs to. But at least, you'll be slightly entertained.
The YouTube channel HowToBasic most often gives us recipes, with similar results, but this time they went in another direction. This has to be a riff on those ads you see about why you should put oil in your toilet or aluminum foil on your door knobs. I still don't know those things because I am well aware that if I click on the ad, I'll be led down a 45-page primrose path of more ads. At least this video gets to the point quickly. (via Boing Boing)
Miss Cellania's Links
Teach your twins their names early, because you're going to need help. Even when they are Deborah and Michael.
Paramount Filming Locations (1927). See the spots in California that could stand in for faraway places. (via kottke)
If anyone asks you what Trump has done wrong, you can refer to this open letter. Sadly, it's far from complete. (via Fark)
The Winged Cat of Pinesville, West Virginia. (via Strange Company)
I Stumbled Across My Boyfriend's ChatGPT and It Ended Our Relationship. It wasn't cheating or some dramatic betrayal. What I found was worse: his uncertainty. (via Nag on the Lake)
Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie was supposed to launch a cult series into mainstream fame. It didn’t quite work out that way.
An intriguing song from 1979: "I'm Gonna Be an Engineer."
The Guy Who Gave Us the Word "Shrapnel."
Tuesday, April 21, 2026
Tundra
"Tundra" is the newest song by OTYKEN, an indigenous Siberian band that mixes dance-pop with traditional folk music. The instruments include duck calls and a jaw harp. The lyrics are in the Dolgan language, but you can turn on the captions in English. The song boils down to "If you love me so much, come see my wonderful snow-covered home in the tundra." (via Everlasting Blort)
Things He Eats
I wanted to make it clear that this is Matt Shirley's diet, not mine. I follow the "S" (for single) diet: sandwiches, salad, soup, and cereal. I am also making a real effort to consume more fresh fruit, although that's quite expensive.
Cat Loves Treadmill
Dr. Dolittle brought her treadmill here for storage, and set it up for me to use. Then she handed me the remote. Remote control? For a treadmill? Why on earth would you use a remote control for a treadmill? This video explains- you can control the machine for your cat. No, not my cats; they like to sleep on the treadmill, but as soon as the power light goes on, they are out of here. They will stick to neighborhood walks, thank you.
Archie is different. And he's in shape, too.
HOPE-65
A chimpanzee is sent on a deep space mission to find a habitable planet for earthlings to colonize. The astronaut and the mission are both named HOPE-65, from a long line of chimps specially trained for this kind of task, in which we can assume there is no going home, no matter what she finds. We don't know how the previous missions went, but this one found a planet, with oxygen, water, and life! The real question is- is this really a suitable planet for colonization by humans?
HOPE-65 is a 2026 senior film project from the French art school Brassart-Grenoble, specifically the students in the 3D animation and video effects department. You can read more about the film at Kuriositas. (via Nag on the Lake)
Radio and Blogging
Bloggers come in many types. Some enthusiastically post about their area of expertise. Others are writers at heart and live to type out their thoughts or interests. Some pass along fun or interesting things they've found on the internet when they find them. And some are desperate to create content on a schedule to make a living. Yes, many bloggers fit into more than one category. I started blogging to make friends at a time when I was desperately lonely. My personal blog became my hobby, and it led to a career of writing for other blogs, but I kept this one out of habit, for fun, and to keep friends coming back. And it's an easy way to express my limited creativity.
For the first few years, I posted only once a day, on a single subject, but those posts were crafted to present a variety of elements- links, jokes, pictures, comics, and videos. Then my boss at Neatorama advised me it would be easier and more productive (and way more flexible) to put up short posts several times a day and I've done that ever since. But there is a sort of method to the madness.
See, in free entertainment like radio or broadcast TV, the product is not the entertainment, but the audience, which is sold to advertisers. The bigger the audience, the more they can charge for advertising. On the programming side, our job was to produce the biggest audience possible. Therefore a radio show should give the listener what they want, which they say is "variety," but they also want to hear their favorite song.
Programming radio involved a ton of rules, which may be very different today. Each hour is crafted to deliver the right number of current hits, brand new songs, classic oldies, the weather forecast, and the obligatory ads. We made broadcast clocks to keep this straight for each hour, which were round because everyone understood analog clocks back then. These clocks varied by the type of station format and the time of day, but they were mostly consistent in theory. For example, we might play four top hits every hour, so if you have a category of Top 20 songs, you'd hear the same one every five hours, except we would have 21 on the list so they didn't show up at the same minute in a different hour. We might have three oldies an hour, which wasn't repetitive at all if you had a library of 2,000 oldies, and that category could be split into power oldies and obscure oldies if that worked. The ad slots would be formatted so that they didn't come too often or were too long (if we could manage that). We also had some goofy formatting tricks to goose the ratings -or at least we hoped.
The disc jockey once had some leverage within these formatting rules, like selecting the oldies you wanted as long as they hadn't been played in two weeks or whatever. We could also change the order of songs a bit to improve flow, as long as the system held up. We dropped songs to make the time work or talk more. I was once involved in designing clocks and a music rotation system for a new station, and it was quite involved. We didn't have internet yet, but we used a computer for databases and some math help. Still there were late night arguments about what oldies or recurrent songs deserved to be played and how often.
Some of you have already figured out how this loose regimen has influenced my blogging. It wasn't conscious at the time, but I started scheduling this blog like a radio clock, except for a day at a time instead of an hour. I knew if I didn't have a consistent schedule, I'd have twenty posts up in one evening, and then nothing for the next two days. I keep a code for each post on a large calendar and fill them out as I schedule a post in the categories of videos, links, pictures, social media sharing, etc etc. You are used to the 6AM cat (or other animal). If I have ten cat pictures, I can schedule them for the next ten days in a row. The 3AM video is always a rerun from quite a few years ago. Pictures are often scheduled way ahead, while the videos are often last minute decisions.
Still, this blog is a hobby and I don't depend on it for a living. I don't care about SEO or competing for clicks. If I miss a slot or throw in something extra, I don't care because I know I've got plenty of other slots covered. Most folks only visit a blog once a day at most. Sure it's silly to be so regimented, but in some areas of life, regimentation makes things easier, like always brushing your teeth before bed or watering plants on the weekend. It doesn't make any difference in the long run, but I thought I'd let you know how it's done.
Artemus II Mission
They called it a Free-Return Trajectory," according to the Canadian Space Agency, but they also said, "Space Slingshot" would also work. The moon is glad it worked. Another year, and we will try to hit the target. This comic is from Nathan Pyle's Strange Planet.
Monday, April 20, 2026
Cats at the Beach
A compilation of kitties discovering the world's biggest sand box. The water's not too bad, either.
