(via Bad Newspaper)
Monday, August 31, 2026
What College Students Know About 9/11
When we say, "Never forget," that kind of falls off a cliff after so many years. Students who are in college now are typically between 18 and 24 years of age. The 9/11 attack was almost 25 years ago, so they don't remember it first hand. But you'd think their parents would have talked about it least once or twice since then. Schools, not so much. My history classes all ended with World War II, because we ran out of time in the school year. I wonder if today's high school students even learn anything about Vietnam. If you rely on schools to teach children everything they need to know, you are shortchanging your children. Most of all, they need to know the importance of reading about what schools don't cover adequately, for the rest of their lives.
Miss Cellania's Links
“Sometimes I look at my husband and think there’s no way I was once nervous to talk to this guy.”
The MAGAs are dreaming of a Right Wing Christmas. The latest from Tom the Dancing Bug.
Scientists Just Made A Cookie Out of Recycled Plastic 'Slurry'. Welcome to 2026. (via Strange Company)
Your daily dose of cats.
KFC is releasing an Oreo chicken burger with a cookie bun. (Thanks WTM!)
In the world of design, there’s a term that’s used for the practice of taking elements from older buildings and reusing them in new ones. It’s called spolia. (via Nag on the Lake)
Unsettling question raised over Trump admin's role in devastating Nepal floods. A USAID/NASA project to create a flood early warning system was canceled by DOGE. (via Fark)
Geologyscience tells us everything we need to know about Fordite. Including why it's becoming rarer. (via kottke)
How Does A Gas Nozzle Know When To Shut Off?
A gas pump will shut off when the tank is full; we've always taken that for granted. It's a fine feature that keeps gas from spilling all over us. But how does it know? The mechanism is a low-tech yet surprisingly complicated system. It's easy to understand as Brain Stuff explains it in this video, but later on when you try to explain it to someone else, you'll end up just showing them this video. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
If Monday Was a Video
If Monday was a video, you can guess what you'll see. Nothing goes right, and you wish it was another day. That's Monday in a nutshell. What really got me was the plastic wrap. It was a brand-new box, and he knew it would be hard to open. He must've bought that exact same brand before, and so knew it was a problem. I also knew the plastic wrap would show up again. I've had lots of problems with plastic wrap. So I'm going to spend the rest of today not doing any of these things. (via Metafilter)
Sunday, August 30, 2026
R. Lee Ermey Musical Road
This is in Palmdale, California. What tune would you guess they would embed into the R. Lee Ermey Musical Road? (via Bits and Pieces)
A Tribute to Tim Curry
A compilation of Tim Curry's most notable roles, including movies, Broadway musicals, and animation voice acting.
Diamond Shreddies
One of the most popular breakfast cereals in Canada is Shreddies. Nabisco introduced the cereal in 1939, which is squares made of wheat that resemble the American Chex cereal. But when your product has been around for 80 years, is a success, and the company refuses to mess with the recipe, how do you advertise it? In 2008, Ogilvy & Mather brainstormed ideas, and an intern came up with "Diamond Shreddies" as a joke. It was a good joke, though, and they ran with it. They ran with it much further and longer than any other joke campaign would have, because Canadians loved it.
Yeah, they loved the new Diamond Shreddies, but Canadians also loved the humor behind the campaign. See, they were in on the joke from the beginning, and that was the genius of it. They bought Diamond Shreddies at the grocery, and later the Combo Pack. And why not? They didn't cost any more than the original Shreddies. Would it have worked in the US? Who knows... there might have been a class action lawsuit. (via Metafilter)
Criminal Corralled by Crime-Fighting Cows
When Jennifer Anne Kaufman fled the stolen vehicle she was driving, she cut across some pastureland, trying to evade police. After all, it was dark and maybe the Seminole County Sheriff’s helicopter couldn't see her well. But she didn't count on a herd of cows following her! Cows know that a person in their field might mean getting fed, or at least something novel to see. In this case, they saw an arrest. A search of the stolen SUV yielded a gram of cocaine. Read the story at the Tampa Bay Times. -via Boing Boing
Saturday, August 29, 2026
Journey to the Center of Time
Journey to the Center of Time is a 1967 movie about time travel (duh). A group of scientists take off in a time machine before it's perfected, lest they lose their grant money. First they go into the future, then the past, but they don't have control over where they will end up. That causes some strange twists in the story. Reviews of the movie say it's pretty badly made, but still a good time, and that's what counts. (Thanks, WTM!)
Cows Visit a McDonald's
A herd of cows escaped their corral in Queensland, Australia, and headed out together to visit their favorite place- the McDonald's drive-through! The bovines showed up just in time for supper, and caused quite a commotion among those waiting for their orders. Were they there looking for their missing friends? Maybe to protest the beefy Big Macs? Or did it cross their minds to engage in a little cannibalism? In any case, their orders were not filled, because the attendant couldn't understand anything beyond "moo." They were a little short on funds, anyway. The TV outlet 9 News Australia couldn't find where they went to next. Maybe Wendy's. (via Fark)
Sea Life
It's been two years since we've seen a new animation from Cyriak Harris. That dry spell has come to an end! He says he's been traveling, and while crossing the ocean, decided to record a short documentary. Okay, maybe not, but he says it is based on a true story, involving a whale. Not a story he's actually witnessed, but it could happen, right?
Fans expected some horrors from the depths of the deepest oceans or the depths of one's nightmares, but this is just a happy little whale to accompany a happy little song. Not what we'd normally expect from Cyriak, but we're just happy he's emerged from whatever he's been doing besides animations and gave us something to smile about.
Star Wars Episode 4 Remake
Ever since home video became a thing, kids have wanted to remake Star Wars. This group actually did it. Byron Ruf and friends remade the whole movie on their own, although they skipped a few scenes you really don't need, so it comes in at barely over an hour. The attention to detail meant even having a Stormtrooper knock his head on entrance. There are a few improvements, such as Luke NOT looking straight down into a lightsaber, Han shot first, and in the end, Chewie gets his medal. Incidentally, I love that the shortest kid played Chewbacca. It's awesome. (via reddit)
Friday, August 28, 2026
Dolly Parton on the Cas Walker Show
We only had two TV stations when I was a kid, both out of Knoxville, so I was very familiar with Cas Walker ads ("Shop and save at the sign of the shears, and the name Cas Walker!") and The Cas Walker Show. I never saw it in color, though. Dolly Parton was on the show several times when she was in school. The day after she graduated from high school, she went to Nashville to seek her fortune, and in 1967 landed a regular gig on The Porter Wagoner Show, which was broadcast nationwide! Sevierville was so proud they held a Dolly Parton Day when she was home. Dolly went back to The Cas Walker Show to promote it. She was 21 at the time.
A Surprising Train Crossing
The train shows up about half way through the video. It's a Brandt truck pulling four cars full of railroad ties and a tie lifter, but you'd never know that ahead of time by the train whistle. This is a road–rail vehicle, and it can drive on track or on roads, using different wheels. The unused wheels are lifted for each purpose. This one is super sturdy, since that's quite a load it's pulling. This video is from Ontario.
Bouncing Balls
Alexander Gustafsson has been playing with a physics simulator. In the video above, he starts with 100 balls in a straight line and each has a slightly different degree of surface restitution (bounciness) than the next. When they are all dropped at the same time from the same height, it takes a while for them to differ in their response. When they do, the effect is somewhat like the mercury wave, except that bouncing balls dispel their energy pretty fast and their bouncing eventually stops. The other difference is that this is a simulator. Then he does it again with 900 balls in a 30x30 grid. As the balls differ in bounciness, they also differ in color and the sound they make when they bounce. That was so much fun he went wild for his next video.
This version renders 999 balls arranged in a spiral. The surface restitution, color, and sound are barely distinguishable between individual balls, but vary greatly from first to last. This one rendered a bit strangely toward the center, with balls so close together they look like a continuous shape, like a snake. (via the Awesomer)
Miss Cellania's Links
A Society That Runs on Stimulants is Badly Broken. Around the world, people are pumping themselves full of caffeine, amphetamines, and other performance-enhancing drugs just to survive their working hours. This isn’t sustainable. (via Metafilter)
Trump’s war on Iran is rapidly draining US navy budget, documents and interviews reveal. (via Fark)
Cats have it all figured out.
The Prehistoric Paintings on the Walls of Caves Have Always Been Moving. But With the Right Kind of Light, Some Actually Seem to Move.
The Most Dangerous Diagnosis in a Heat Wave. People with schizophrenia face a perfect storm of dangers on a hotter planet. (via Damn Interesting)
21 Lesser Known Meanings and Backstories of 80s Pop and Rock Song Lyrics. I thought everyone knows these stories, but I'm probably wrong.
Breakthrough drug nearly doubles survival with advanced pancreatic cancer – an oncologist explains how daraxonrasib overcame an ‘undruggable’ disease.
Bowling Tricks and Pool Shots
Poolbowl must be some kind of combination of billiards and bowling. All I know for sure is that Jason Belmonte and Florian "Venom" Kohler have a lot of time on their hands, and have used it to perfect some glorious tricks. So what if they have terabytes of outtakes, this compilation video is cool! (via Metafilter)
The Gaia Hypothesis
We hurt the earth, so the proper response from the earth would be to get rid of us. Maybe we should stop hurting the earth. This comic is from Zach Weinersmith at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
Thursday, August 27, 2026
The Weird, Scary Airspace Over Washington DC
Twenty-five years ago next month, a hijacked airliner crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, DC. Since then, restrictions for airplanes flying over our nation's capital have been seriously beefed up. Unauthorized flights are liable to lead to arrest, fines, and even the danger of being shot down. But right in the middle of that restricted zone, we have Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) with tons of flights arriving and departing every day. On a side note, who designs an airport with three runways in which only one can be used at a time?
Pilots who fly into Washington have a list of rules to follow, from registering identification to obtaining a password to staying in contact with control towers at all times. Older rules for DCA mandate that they follow DC's rivers to approach the airport. If you don't know all the rules, you have no business being there. Air traffic controllers have procedures that are just as strict and Byzantine. These rules are all in service of safety and for keeping the military from having to shoot down your plane. Half as Interesting gives us an overview of how complicated it all is. The video is only seven minutes long; the rest is promotional.
Dramatic Iceberg Physics
What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? In this case, the unstoppable force is an enormous iceberg, and the immovable object is the west coast of Greenland, near the town of Ilulissat on July 26th. This time lapse video condenses an hour of activity into ten minutes, with the film speed changing during the sequence.
The iceberg does stop when it hits the land, but the force of its forward motion creates incredible stress inside the ice. The 'berg shudders, cracks, and bobs. Great chunks of ice fall off, roiling the water. As the size and shape of the iceberg changes, it rolls to the side, exposing some of its larger underwater mass. It eventually splits. At last sight, what's left of the iceberg, smaller but still enormous, was pushed away from the violent split. (via Laughing Squid)
How Norman Conquerors Changed the History of Europe
You might think of the Normans (if you ever think of them at all) as French, but they were actually Vikings who converted to Christianity when they settled in the northern part of France (which became known as Normandy). They conquered England in the Battle of Hastings in 1066, but that was only the first leg of the path of conquests. This TED-Ed video gives us the short version of the long story of the vast influence of Norman conquerors in Europe, including our language. (via Digg)
Hard to Get Out of Bed
There are bad reasons to be stuck in bed, and then there are good reasons. This comic is from Lunarbaboon.
Wednesday, August 26, 2026
The Alligator People
The Alligator People is a 1959 horror film in which a woman looks for her missing husband. She finds him slowly turning into an alligator after an experimental medical treatment went wrong. An intriguing concept with laughably bad special effects. (Thanks, WTM!)
RIP Tim Curry
British actor Tim Curry, who played many of the stranger roles in movies you've seen, died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. It was only a couple of weeks after CBS Sunday Morning aired this interview and retrospective of his life. Variety has a more in-depth look at his career. Curry was very good at what he did, bringing extra flavor and fun to every role.
If We Lost All Earth's Bodies of Water
The question for the What If? series was "What would happen is all the bodies of water on Earth magically disappeared?" Yeah, you had the same thought I did, of course we'd all die. You can't survive without water, and neither can any other living thing on earth. But that's too easy of an answer. Randall Munroe and Henry Reich instead take this scenario one step at a time. First, people swimming would fall to the ground. Then boats would crash, with a possible survivor. yeah, a lot of other stuff happens, and the extinction of all human life is treated like just one more event in a series that stretches way beyond that, with lots of details. It's a good thing the word "magically" appears in the question, so we don't have to worry about this theoretical disaster. We only need to worry about the slow loss of water.
Miss Cellania's Links
What kind of jobs the people of Pompeii had, and what kind of food they ate in Herculaneum.
Traumatic memories are often fragmented – a psychologist explains how and why that happens.
The Giants of Patagonia. Spanish explorers only reached to their waists, according to one source.
Homer Simpson disappearing into a hedge in Lego. (via Everlasting Blort)
Mamie Toogood and the Burning Boarder. (via Strange Company)
Don't prank your cats. It can be funny, but they'll remember it.
Man arrested after dressing up in 'Grim Reaper' costume on hospital roof and staring at patients. (via Undine)
These Babies Grew Up With Strict Sugar Limits. Decades Later, The Results Are Dramatic. (via Damn Interesting)
Tuesday, August 25, 2026
Dolly Parton Sings for Johnny Carson
Beloved performer Dolly Parton passed away this morning at the age of 80. I wrote a short obituary for Neatorama.
This clip is from 1979, in which Dolly sings a song she wrote for Johnny Carson. She was plenty famous before ever appearing on The Tonight Show, but she's always been gracious enough to spread the credit around. The entire clip is delightful, but the song starts after eleven minutes in.
The Conscience Files
It is against the law to take anything from a national park, no matter how small, but there's an extra deterrent for taking fossil wood from the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. Stolen souvenirs from the park are known to confer a curse on the thief and their families. Not as widely known as it should be, because people keep taking samples of petrified wood. Many of them come to regret picking up those rocks that they send them back to the park with letters of regret or apology. The letters sometimes outline the misfortunes that have followed the theft. Even if they don't really believe in the curse, its association with the pilfered rocks often lead to a guilty conscience. The park keeps an archive of these letters of regret, and Brian Bolster was given access to them to make the mini-documentary The Conscience Files. (via Everlasting Blort)
The World Humanoid Robot Games
Have you ever had a dream about a killer humanoid robot chasing you? In our science fiction, they usually travel pretty slowly, but robotics has come a long way, and now they are competing in foot races. The second annual World Humanoid Robot Games are going on right now in Beijing, and will continue through Wednesday. The video above caught some of the bloopers and awkward moments, but the fact that there aren't hundreds of robots falling over each other tells us that they are really getting the hang of bipedal motion. And they go frighteningly fast. In fact, in the 100-meter sprint, the winning robot finished in 9.39 second, faster than Usain Bolt's world record of 9.58 seconds.
And it's not just running. Another robot set a high jump record of 2.88 meters, which is higher than the human record of 2.45 meters set by Cuba’s Javier Sotomayor. Get ready for another round of nightmares, but now the robots can really catch all of us. (via Born in Space)
Crowbox: Build Your Own Crow Vending Machine
Neatorama once posted about a plan to train crows to pick up litter, specifically, cigarette butts. Here's a way that can happen. The Crowbox is a vending machine for crows. It's set up in stages, to train birds how to use it, but crows are pretty smart and learn quickly. This demonstration video uses quarters, but there's no reason you can't use cigarette butts or something else that crows can easily find. If you'd like to make your own Crowbox, the plans and instructions are here. (via Metafilter)
Monday, August 24, 2026
Paper Towel Roll
This is cute and clever. Two lengths of a cardboard paper towel roller make a talking puppet. A little felt, a banjo, and a clever song and you've got real entertainment! (via Laughing Squid)
The Real Story Behind Gangs of New York
In 1979, the movie The Warriors depicted New York street gangs and was a hit, but it wasn't all that close to real life. Then the 2002 movie Gangs of New York did the same, but more than hundred years earlier. Was it at all accurate? Nobody from that period is around to tell us, but the fictionalized movie was based on a non-fiction book. If you saw the movie but didn't read the book, let's just say the story was longer and more complicated than what was shown on screen.
In the movie, the war was between Confederation of American Natives and the Dead Rabbits, reduced to Protestant vs. Catholic, or Anglo-Americans vs. Irish immigrants. in the historical events, it was more a war over control of a small slum neighborhood, where people with no social mobility, no hope, and few resources will fight to the death to keep the only thing they have, which is their identity with a group. But history is not just written by the winners, but by those with access to the press, so there are still questions about what really happened. We may never know the entire truth.
Miss Cellania's Links
When an American Airplane Crashed Into a School in 1944, an English Village Lost Almost All of Its Youngest Children. Why Has WWII’s Worst Civilian Aviation Accident Been Forgotten?
Cats being weird, awkward, and easily startled.
Jimmy Bond: In the first filmed version of James Bond, he was American.
He was waiting for his son to return from the USS Lincoln. Then Border Patrol arrested him. (via Fark)
91 Ridiculous DIY Fixes That Somehow Get The Job Done Perfectly.
Welcome to Volvo Island.
This bottle of Dijon mustard from Costco is crazy hot. A months-long investigation revealed the surprising reason why. (via Metafilter)
The Birmingham church bombing wasn’t an isolated act of terrorism – there were dozens of attacks on Black houses of worship during the Civil Rights Movement.
Creative Dog Plays Ball with Himself
There's no doubt this is a much-loved dog. But humans can't be there all the time, school and all. Bear has figured out how to harness the power of the trampoline to toss a ball for him to catch! Yes, Bear is pretty smart. (via Tastefully Offensive)
Solar
Science Sundays
— 𝖢𝖠𝖳 𝖡𝖴𝖳𝖫𝖤𝖱 𝖲𝗋. (@catbutlersr.bsky.social) August 23, 2026 at 4:16 PM
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Sunday, August 23, 2026
Pac-Man's Forbidden Love
There are four ghosts in the game Pac-Man, Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde. Surely I'm not the only one who said Stinky most of the time when naming them. They are all assumed to be guys except for Pinky, who often is assumed female because of the color. In this video, Pac-Man is confronted by Pinky, and he really notices her for the first time. He expresses admiration for her skills, and nothing gets a woman's attention like expressing admiration for her skills. You can see where this is going.
Or does it? What are the implications of a relationship between warring factions? In Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, these shenanigans led to tragedy. However, it can also lead to reconciliation between factions, especially when grandchildren come along. But these are video game characters, so anything can happen.
How to Name a Drug
If you ever watch regular TV anymore, you are exposed to drugs constantly, because pharmaceutical companies buy all the ad space. You don't know what they are for, but you hear the names constantly: Tremfya, Rinvoq, Cialis, Dupixent, Skyrizi, and you can't actually ask your doctor if any are right for you because she'd probably laugh. The best drug name I've heard is Flonase, which tells you exactly what it does, but most of them seem like gibberish. You might think that naming them is a matter of drawing Scrabble tiles out of a box, yet that's far from what happens. Drug names have to be approved by a lot of different boards or organizations, mainly to make sure yours is different enough from all the other drugs so that they won't be confused. And there are tons of guidelines to follow. Half as Interesting takes us through the arcane procedure of naming a new drug. Note: some countries do it differently, because the UK does call that drug NovoRapid, and Rogaine is known as Regaine in Australia.
Pinball Isn’t as Random as it Seems
People who grew up with video games look at a pinball machine and think that there's no strategy, it's just a matter of keeping the ball in play and listening to random noises. Those of us who grew up playing pinball know better. I was never the greatest pinball player, but I managed pretty well to keep the ball in play long enough to score points, but not nearly as well as someone who had studied a machine and maximized his/her strategy. Roger Sharpe knows how to do that, and gives us some tips on the intricacies of scoring big in pinball. (via Boing Boing)
Asynchronous Communication
A few years ago, I had an epiphany and shared it with my children. "You kids text instead of calling so you can just not respond. You really don't want to communicate with anyone." They just looked at me and said, "Duh, Mom." That's one of the reasons I don't text. I don't want to give my kids another opportunity to ignore me. This comic is from Jeff Lovfers at Don't Hit Save.
Saturday, August 22, 2026
Killers from Space
The 1954 movie Killers from Space stars Peter Graves as Dr. Douglas Martin, a nuclear scientist who is abducted and then possessed by aliens. The aliens want to steal power from earth for some reason or other, and there are giant insects. Dr. Martin supposedly died in a plane crash, but then he gradually starts to remember who he is, just in time to save the day. Killers from Space has all the elements you'd expect: aliens, atomic bombs, and mutant monsters, but that doesn't mean it was particularly good. (Thanks, WTM!)
