In the US, you can give your baby pretty much any name you choose, but the very worst examples might draw the attention of Child Protective Services. In Australia, the regulations prohibit certain types of names, and each is judged individually. The one that gave me pause was a restriction against naming your child a title. In Kentucky, that would exclude a lot of Generals, Majors, Dukes, and Earls. But one rules was a restriction against a name "contrary to the public interest for some other reason." That's as ambiguous as you can get, and gives bureaucrats a lot of power over naming your child.
Kirsten Drysdale of the Australia Broadcasting Corporation decided to test the limits of the law by naming her child something pretty bad, but not specifically prohibited. Oh yeah, she really did. Let's see how that goes. This video does a good job of covering up the worst language, but it still has NSFW audio. (via reddit)
Wednesday, September 20, 2023
The Legality of Baby Names in Australia
Miss Cellania's Links
The Wild History of the Tale That Created the Modern Vampire (And No, It's Not Dracula).
How to pronounce "D'yer Mak'er."
Older Adults Share The Best Things About Being In Your 60s.
Doodle a few minutes with the refreshing web toy Water. (via Everlasting Blort)
John Fetterman is leaning into the latest ridiculous conspiracy theory about him by selling t-shirts. This would look good on my 5' 3" frame. (via Fark)
Should you be friends with your kids? They can always make new friends, but they need a parent.
Brain-altering parasite turns ants into zombies at dawn and dusk. They glued tags to hundreds of ant butts to study them. (via Real Clear Science)
Electric Vehicle Gender Gap Suggests Men Want Novelty, Women Want Value. Just like every other part of life.
Visualizing Chopin
Enjoy an animated visualization of Chopin’s Etude, opus 25 no. 1, in A-flat major. Stephen Malinowski and his Music Animation Machine make it look as pretty as it sounds. (via The Kid Should see This)
Tweet of the Day
This is pretty neat technology, if you care at all about golf courses. (via Super Punch)Bubba Watson’s hovercraft golf cart is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. Imagine how much fun a round of golf would be in one of these.🤣 pic.twitter.com/4umEl14PNE
— Tour Pro 🏌️♂️ (@OfficialTourPro) September 16, 2023
Tuesday, September 19, 2023
Superfools
Aretha Franklin sings "Chain of Fools" to the music of Black Sabbath's "Supernaut." We also hear a variety of Ozzy Osbourne songs mixed in, too, in the latest mashup by Bill McClintock.
Outsmarted
Big dog, small cat... but the cat has something going for it. He's smarter than the dog! (Thanks, WTM!)
Longtermist
How Daniel Radcliffe Pulled Off A Hollywood Magic Trick
Daniel Radcliffe was eleven years old when he first auditioned to play the role of Harry Potter. He grew up making the eight Harry Potter films, and was inextricably linked to the character. But not for life. Radcliffe wanted to be an actor since he was five years old, and was determined not to be typecast, which would shorten his professional career. He latched onto all kinds of roles during and after Harry Potter, and became most noted for the weirdest ones- roles that were totally opposite what you would expect from the child wizard in a child's literary series. Let's see how Daniel Radcliffe deliberately set out to stretch his abilities and our expectations after establishing a name for himself in an iconic role.
Loanwords and Calques
We know that a few words are the same in all languages, or at least many languages, because they travel from one language to another. It's only natural, as we travel the globe and find things and concepts that are new to us. There are a lot of "loanwords" that just become a part of the second language. That's what we get for communicating. Even more common are words taken from another language and then get changed a bit to fit better into the second language. You might even call them mangled, as some examples end up being rather funny to people who speak both the old and new languages. Then there are "calques," which I wasn't at all familiar with, but it has to do with translation. Tom Scott explains these leaps of language that eventually enrich all of our languages. Along the way, we also find out where Admiral Ackbar's name came from.
Miss Cellania's Links
What the Internet Will Tell You About the Canadian Marble Fox.
The Earth Opens Up Under Three Cadillac SUVs.
29 Video Game Features With Bonkers Backstories. It was easier to make a bug into a feature than it was to fix it.
Why Can’t Vampires Eat Garlic?
While carrying garlic is presumably adequate to repel vampires, ingesting garlic is even better because it makes one's blood distasteful to vampires. The Medical Journal of Australia offers tips on the proper dosage for such purposes.
Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani perform an animated mugshot duet. (via Nag on the Lake)
Carrots were originally purple, not orange. Here’s what happened. (via Damn Interesting)
Toronto restaurant issues liability waiver after customer asks for ketchup on shawarma. (via Metafilter)
Best Reason to Use a Dashcam
Imagine tootling along in your car when this happens. This was on Red Hill Avenue in Irvine, California. The local paper had the story a bit later. It was a Piper Cherokee with some kind of equipment failure that prompted an emergency landing on the street. No one was injured, and the plane was not damaged during the landing.
Like redditor AHPpilot said, “One man's emergency landing is another man's hilarious dash cam video.” (via reddit)
Tweet of the Day
Interior decorating at its finest. Read more at Homes and Hues.my jaw has never been lower pic.twitter.com/XJhZTTEdg1
— kristen 2.0 (@_shaunasjorts) September 17, 2023
Monday, September 18, 2023
Duck Soup
The 1933 movie Duck Soup is about the closest we've come to a perfect comedy. It stars the four Marx Brothers plus Margaret Dumont. It was Zeppo's final film with his brothers. The synopsis:
Groucho portrays the newly installed president of the mythical country of Freedonia. Zeppo is his secretary, while Chico and Harpo are spies for the neighboring country of Sylvania. Relations between Groucho and the Sylvanian ambassador deteriorate during the film, and they go to war at the conclusion.Even if you've never seen the whole movie, you already know some of the highlights, like the hat exchange, the sidecar gag, and the famous mirror scene. Oh yeah, and a lot of jokes you've heard over the years. (via Metafilter)
