If you venture out to Dolores Park in San Francisco in the evening, you are liable to encounter a dinosaur that looks like Jurassic Park crashed into the movie Tron. Resembling a T. rex, the dino glows a neon blue-green color and makes odd sounds like a meow, a fart, or a musical interlude. Kids love it. Check out the dinosaur dancing at Burning Man in this video. Underneath the seven-foot-long costume is artist and lawyer Trevor Mead.

Mead was into costumes and building art long before he became a lawyer- in fact, he went to law school as a way of financing his hobbies. He began building the dinosaur costume two years ago, and later added electroluminescent wire for the lights, and then sounds to calm fearful children and make them laugh. The action is controlled from inside by a steering wheel, levers, and a couple of old cell phones. Now Mead makes his way out to Dolores Park as the creature called the Doloresaurus at least a couple of times a week, during daytime as well as the evenings. Read how the Doloresaurus came out. -via Everlasting Blort

(Image credit: Trevor Mead)

It has come to my attention that we haven't posted the annual Minnesota State High School All Hockey Hair Team for the last couple of years. We're going to correct that oversight right now. The unnamed YouTuber that once went by Game On Minnesota is now called Pulltab Hockey, and he has selected the Minnesota high school players with the most glorious flow from the season that just ended. These students take hockey seriously, but they also take their hair seriously. After all, they're going to be on TV and any of them have a chance to be in the annual video, which is seen by people who've never been to Minnesota and who don't care about hockey. Everyone can admire a great head of hair!  

This year's video sports the theme of Hollywood and the Oscars, but what really stands out is that the players' hair isn't all that long, but it's often fluffy and comes in many colors. The team is introduced in the first six minutes, then we hear about the organization this video supports, and then from about the seven-minute mark, it's all highlights from Minnesota high school hockey season. -via Metafilter

See the all-hockey hair teams from previous years.

The game 368 Chickens sounds really simple. All you have to do is place chickens on a grid and line up three matching chickens in a row (horizontally or vertically, but not diagonally) so they will disappear, over and over, until you've placed 368 chickens. And there's only four kinds of chickens! When I first read the instructions, I thought it might be like Stack the Cats, but no. It's easier because there's no time limit, but it's harder because you cannot change the orientation of the two chickens you must place together. When there is no room left to match up chickens, you've lost the game.

It's honestly easier to try it out than to explain the game. Move the two chickens from the bottom of the screen up to the grid, and it will soon be clear that 368 Chickens is a lot of chickens, and it is not all that easy to sort them. You have to wonder if anyone has ever won this game. -via Boing Boing

In Act 5, Scene 1 of Shakespeare's Hamlet, the eponymous character ponders mortality while holding the skull of Yorick, the late jester to the king.

David Tennant, who was the Tenth Doctor (not the tenth actor to play the Doctor) on Doctor Who, is a classically trained actor who has played Hamlet in the past. He would like to benefit future generations of actors once he has shuffled off this mortal coil. The Daily Mail reports that Tennant would like to donate his skull so that he can play Yorick in future productions of Hamlet.

Tennant is following a great Shakespearean tradition. Polish musician André Tchaikowsky donated his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company to serve as Yorick and Tennant himself has used that skull on the stage.

-via @azirascrowley

Longtime Neatorama readers know that the game Monopoly was developed by Lizzie Magie in 1904. That's why I came close to dumping out of this video when they said it was invented by Charles Darrow. But they quickly course-corrected, so I continued (despite the narrator mispronouncing the word attributed) and found out a lot about Monopoly. Great Big Story talked to Jason Bunn, the 1985 Monopoly world champion, who shows us his collection of more than 400 Monopoly games from all over the world. Not only that, but he shares eight strategies and tips for improving your chances of winning a Monopoly game. If you're cutthroat enough to play Monopoly to win, you should pay attention. -via Laughing Squid

I ordered a @counterparts905 Heaven Let Them Die vinyl from Amazon and I instead received Clay Aikens latest Christmas album. I went through the replacement process and you’ll never guess what showed up today. The exact same Clay Aiken album. @brendan905 pic.twitter.com/KtbP9PJ2v4

— Tj (@letmeliveanddie) March 5, 2025

X user @letmeliveanddie ordered from Amazon a vinyl record of "Heaven Let Them Die," a song by the Canadian punk band Counterparts. Instead, Amazon sent him a Christmas music album by the soft rock star Clay Aiken.

@letmeliveanddie processed the return. Amazon sent him the Clay Aiken album again. And then a third time.

It is a portent.

-via Brendan Murphy

It's been a while since we checked in on the hand-painted movie poster industry in Ghana. That's one country that skips using Hollywood posters in order to customize advertising for the enticement of the local culture. In reality, they often add violence where there is none in the film, such as the non-existing scene in Mrs. Doubtfire of Robin Williams impaling his ex-wife's boyfriend through the eye with a broom. At least that's who we think the victim is. The quality of the artwork takes a backseat to the concept of a thrilling film, accurate or not. If the artist can't find enough violence in a particular movie, they may borrow from another. So why not put facehuggers into the poster for E.T.: The Extraterrestrial? 

Oh yeah, and Michael Jackson just for funsies. But The Godfather already has plenty of violence, so why not add a cat to make the poster more interesting? A Twitter thread from All The Right Movies showcases 25 of their favorite Ghanian posters for Hollywood movies collected from an art exhibit. -via Cracked

Your children might ask you what a head shop is, and you might have told them that's where you bought blacklight posters and tie-dyed t-shirts. Or bongs, if you want to be honest. Or you might have told them that head shops sold skulls, especially in New York City. You can even show them the documentary.

The short film The Last Headshop by Matt Lenski and artist Sy Goldstein with some assistance from artificial intelligence, is a project that conjures up Lenski's memories of New York City prior to Rudy Giuliani's "broken windows" clean up operation in the mid-'90s that started the ongoing gentrification movement. The city was a collection of gritty subcultures and businesses in which a skull shop could believably fit in. But there really wasn't such a thing, so this is an imaginary documentary that evokes the flavor of the city in those days. The first time I visited New York City was in 1979, and I know of which he speaks. You can read about the inspirations and the meaning of the film in this interview with Lenski. -via The Awesomer

For around 75 years, the USSR isolated itself from the decadent capitalist nations of the West. Some Western influences snuck in, but they were altered in order to be made appropriate for a communist society. In 1939, the Soviet Union got a translation of The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, called The Wizard of the Emerald City. The translation by Aleksandr Melentievich Volkov was pretty faithful to the original, with fifteen pages of new material. In the 1950s, Volkov completely rewrote the story, changing the characters' names and motivations and adding a few new scenes, like the one in which the main character, named Elli instead of Dorothy, gets kidnapped by a cannibal.

In this book, the land of Oz became Magic Land, the Tin Man becomes Iron Man, and Elli's return home is contingent on her helping make three people's dreams come true instead of bringing back the witch's broom. Baum's magical fantasy became infused with the important tenets of Soviet-style communism, particularly collective action and a devotion to hard work. Read how the Soviet version of The Wizard of Oz reflected that society at Jstor Daily. -via Strange Company

The region called Bougainville is made of several islands in the Pacific Ocean. Geographically, they are part of the Solomon Islands archipelago, but during colonial times, Bougainville was lumped in with Papua New Guinea. The Bougainvillians have little in common with the rest of Papua New Guinea, however, and fought their own war for independence, which by treaty is supposed to be accomplished in 2027. But a man named Noah Musingku appears to be throwing a wrench into the plans, since he has declared himself king of his home village of Tonu, which he calls the Kingdom of Papaala. Musingku has a lot of local support, since he is able to provide services that the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) could not afford.

Musingku is able to do that because of the Ponzi scheme he ran in the 1990s, called U-Vistract, which was a combination get-rich-quick investment scheme and prosperity gospel cult. He made at least $232 million from U-Vistract before he retreated to Bougainville and declared himself king. Musingku has been in seclusion in his heavily-secured compound since he was shot in 2006, but has been busy consolidating his power by issuing his own currency and promoting himself as a religious leader. But the story is much more bizarre in the details, since the people of Bougainville have never been treated fairly by any governing authorities. Read about Noah Musingku, who goes by His Majesty King David Peii Upeii 2nd, at the Guardian. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Daniel Liévano)

Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant Beaker of Muppet Labs not only explain gravity, but perform field experiments that mainly consist of dropping things that satisfyingly smash to pieces. And who better to assist with such experiments than Adam Savage? They are trying to recreate Galileo's Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment, more or less, and make their point in the first half of the video. That involves dropping a tugboat on Beaker, but it's an animated sequence, so he wasn't hurt- that time. The rest is nonsense, but a lot of fun, as the three TV scientists channel David Letterman and come up with more and more things that are just fun to drop and smash. What else could you want in a science show? Savage even tries to hire Beaker away from Honeydew, which sets up more mayhem. You might not learn anything about gravity that you didn't already know, but you will enjoy the glorious mess they make.

YouTuber Generic Entertainment illustrates formal and informal logical fallacies who are busy attempting to organize a meeting and then the leadership of their group. He plays all roles with improvised costumes, such as No True Scotsman with a bagpipe made of a plaid shirt and painter's tape as blue facepaint.

Their argument persists until the supreme fallacy arrives on the scene to aggressively arbitrate what he sees as a petty, meaningless, and ultimately fallacious dispute. Be sure to read the comments at the YouTube video, which are filled with appropriate jokes about the fallacies that did not attend the meeting.

-Thanks, Bruce!

Zillow Gone Wild tells us about a home in Scottsdale, Arizona, that's on the market for $19.5 million. The interior living space is 21,410 square feet, with five bedrooms and 16 bathrooms in the main house, plus a guest house with another two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The number and size of the rooms make it seem more like a facility than a home to me, but we're just getting started.

The main feature is a full-size gym built underground. The listing tells us of famous NBA players who have played in it. It has a professional scoreboard and a locker room featuring five bathrooms. There's also a museum holding a collection of 290 pairs of Michael Jordan sneakers. There's a golf practice range, a nine-hole putting green, and a golf simulator. There's a jogging track around the perimeter of the property. Yeah, there's also a pool, theater, pickleball court, and spa. And it was only built in 2017. I wondered if it belonged to some NBA team owner or maybe a basketball player, so I did some digging.   

The owner is entrepreneur Brett Hardt, who is a huge basketball fan. He built this house to incorporate the dreams of all his family members, and the gym was the first thing built. Word got around about the luxurious underground gym in a private home, and it became a getaway for NBA stars. The size of the home and the amenities make it perfect for hosting guests. But now it's for sale, furnishings included, and if you have a few million to put into a sports dream house, you'll find the particulars at Zillow.

What we have here is an electric bicycle driven by artificial intelligence. In other words, it's a robot. Developed by the Robotics and AI Institute, it's called the Ultra Mobile Vehicle, or UMV. It's a marvel of balance, and it can do tricks! So it's high in entertainment value, but wouldn't it be more fun to actually ride the bike yourself? Oh well, that requires some effort, so we may as well have a robot do it for us. Besides the tricks, there's a sequence at the end that shows how this robot avoids obstacles like a dog and the ball he is carrying, but it comes across as showing us how the robot doesn't like to play with dogs.  

What RAI built this for, besides to impress us with a viral video, is to demonstrate how the UMV learns by feedback. Children learn to balance on a bicycle by feeling what it's like to get it right, and also experiencing what it feels like to lose their balance. On the YouTube page, this learning technique is called reinforcement, which is a psychological term for rewarding desired behavior. You have to wonder what kind of reward works with an AI algorithm. Still, cool robot. -via Born in Space

The Crazy Way 1950s Truckers Fit 5 Cars On Short 35-Foot Car-Haulers https://t.co/6CCK7h1bXz

— The Autopian (@the_autopian) March 6, 2025

In the early history of automobile sales, cars were delivered by train or by driving them from the factory to the buyer, depending on whether there was a road to use. After World War I, cars began to be delivered by truck to preserve the newness of a new car, since they had to be delivered from a train station anyway. However, this wasn't so easy everywhere. In the 1920s, many states enacted new laws restricting the weight, width, and length of trucks using their roads. The most restrictive length was in Illinois, where truck couldn't be more than 35 feet long. That's half the length of today'a car-hauling trucks! Trucking companies were challenged to find a way to get enough cars onto a truck to make the trip worthwhile.

Believe it or not, there were trucks specially designed to fit five new autos onto a 35-foot truck. The patent sketch above from Donald Mettetal, Jr. is for the DeArco car carrier. Your eyes do not deceive you- the truck cab was lifted high above the drive train on the front of the truck, so that a car could be shoved into that space! Despite filing for a patent in 1950, it wasn't granted until years later, and other trucking companies used the same scheme to carry more cars in a shorter truck. Read the history of car carriers and the weird things those restrictions led to, with lots of pictures, at The Autopian.