"Pull my finger."

In Germany, this request usually has a different connotation. The Associated Press tells us that fingerhakeln is a traditional sport from southern Germany and the alpine region of Austria.

Two men face each other across a table and place their middle fingers through a leather loop. Then they try to pull each other across the table. Fingerhakeln requires a lot of strength--sometimes enough to dislocate an opponent's finger.

Last Sunday, 150 men gathered in a beer tent in Bernbeuren, Germany to compete. Approximately 1,000 spectators watched the athletes, who were dressed in traditional clothing, pull against each other in successive rounds until a champion prevailed.

-via Dave Barry

Someone call a carpenter, because there is obviously something very wrong with the stairs leading off the concert stage! When someone falls down a flight of stairs in real life, we might hear plenty of banging and screaming, often resulting in injuries, and there's nothing funny about it. When singers with distinctive and iconic voices fall down the stairs, everyone knows who they are. Master mixer Dustin Ballard, better known as There I Ruined It (previously at Neatorama), shows us what that might sound like. He assures us that no singers were hurt in the making of this nonsense. Each fall is mercifully short, but still paints a picture in our minds. You almost feel sorry for the singer, fictional as this scenario is. You have to wonder what inspired this project, because it can't have been good. My guess is that Steven Tyler was the original inspiration, but Johnny Cash makes it perfect.

The 1975 movie Jaws was based on the 1974 bestselling novel by Peter Benchley, but to make the film, Steven Spielberg had to condense, adapt, and flesh out the visuals. For research, he went to the Shark Lab at Cal State, founded by marine biologist Dr. Donald “Reef” Nelson. Spielberg was impressed by Nelson's knowledge -and his office, which served as the inspiration for that of the movie's marine biologist character Matt Hooper, played by Richard Dreyfuss. Nelson was hired as a consultant on both Jaws and Jaws II.

Dr. Nelson became an expert on sharks from swimming with them for years before Jaws became a blockbuster hit. But he learned so much more about sharks afterward that he regretted the way the movie portrayed the great white shark, which he considered a disservice to the fish and to sharks in general. Read about the life and research of Reef Nelson at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Bruce)

When a parent or partner calls you by a pet name, they are either trying to be exclusive and intimate, or else they can't recall what your name is. You know which one it is. People use odd terms of endearment in all languages all over the world. The variety of pet names is huge, and the most common have to do with sweet foods. That makes sense, because it's what people like and crave. There are also pet names that imply smallness or cuteness, or even monetary value. People also have pet names that make no sense at all to outsiders because they are based on a shared experience from long ago.  

Our favorite linguist, Dr. Erica Brozovsky (previously at Neatorama) goes over the universality of pet names, the different kinds that have proved to be popular, and why we use them. The upshot is that my pet names for my loved ones are adorable and sweet, while your pet names for your loved ones are cringey. -via Laughing Squid

We don't know what this tiny ground spider calls itself. But we humans should refer to it by its official taxanomic identifier, which is Hotwheels sisyphus. It lives in southwestern China and is one of three recently classified ground spiders in that region of China.

ZooKeys informs us that it was named specifically for the Hot Wheels toys produced by Mattel bccause the coiled embolus (I think that's part of the legs) of the animal resembles a Hot Wheels track.

The Drive says that the Hotwheels sisyphus is noted for its "weird genitals," but I think that's getting a bit personal. I mean, how would you feel if people primarily thought of your genitalia when learning about you?

-via Super Punch

Surgeons have an intimate relationship with the human body, and particularly their patients' bodies. Their efforts are mainly to save their lives, but when a patient is dead, that relationship is broken. The surgeon can do nothing more for them. That was well understood until relatively recent medical breakthroughs made it necessary for dead patients to undergo surgery in order to donate their organs. An entirely new category of patient was designated for those who are brain dead, but their bodies must be kept going long enough to harvest those organs.

Author and anesthesiologist Ronald W. Dworkin takes us into that uncanny state as doctors attempt to slow the body's dying process and race to harvest organs that will be viable for saving other patients who need them. The procedures involved are unlike anything else those doctors do for their patients, and they are very aware of the gravity of the procedure, and how the body responds even when the mind is gone. They are also mindful of the deceased and the gift they are giving. Read about the overwhelming experience of performing exacting surgery on a somewhat functioning body with a dead brain at Aeon.  -via Nag on the Lake

The reason they call it fight choreography is because it's like a dance. And because it's like a dance, each cinematic fight has its own rhythm. However, a fair amount of these fight scenes you remember from your favorite movies have the same rhythm (if not, they will fix it in the edit), and here they are all fighting to the tune of "Pedro" by Raffaella Carrà (Jaxomy & Agatino Romero Remix). While this multifandom movie montage is pretty short, it contains multitudes of action from the heroes and villains you know so well. It will start your adrenaline flowing.  -via Geeks Are Sexy

In the age of printers, e-books, the Amazon marketplace, and expiring copyrights, it's really easy to sell a book that one didn't write, and there is no shortage of people taking advantage of the opportunity. Anyone can release a new copy of a literary classic that's in the public domain with very little work. But these rapidly-produced books need a cover. The workshops that spew out all these novels don't want to take too much time designing a cover, so they do a Google search for art that will illustrate some word in the title, whether the title has anything to do with the story or not. The result is a glut of hilariously bad covers for books you know and love, or else were forced to read in high school.  

You can bet your bottom dollar that the people who put these covers together have never read the book. They aren't even looking for good art, either, just easy art, like stock images, Photoshopped copies of things they've used before, or even something cooked up on Microsoft Paint. You'll get a laugh out of a collection of the worst covers called Public Domain Atrocities. If you want more, there are lists of covers here and here as well. And then there's this.  -via Metafilter

We look back at fashions of the past and wonder what they were thinking. A little research and some common sense tell us that high heels were developed to hold one's feet in the stirrups while riding a horse, but became common for women because it signified someone who doesn't do hard labor and stayed for good because they make women flex their leg and butt muscles attractively. The codpiece started out for reasons of modesty, but became popular as a way of showing off. But what was up with the ruffled collars of the Elizabethan era? They only look natural on Bozo the Clown. They served no practical use, and they certainly weren't comfortable. Weird History goes over the real purpose of ruffs, plus how the fashion changed to become more elaborately ridiculous over time, spread across the world, and eventually died out -except for clowns. But hey, we may wonder about the strange fashions of the past, yet those folks would look at our modern clothing the same way. 

The Boy Scouts of America organization is changing its name to Scouting America, as an attempt at rebranding and because they have 176,000 girls in their ranks. They will still have merit badges for certain achievements, as do the Girl Scouts. But why should these badges be limited to young folks? We learn and change throughout our lives. And there are certain accomplishments that mark the achievement of middle age. The badge above is called the Ceramics Class at the Local Community College Badge. You receive that when you realize that you were too busy building a career and raising kids for the past twenty years and now you don't have any hobbies, and that has to be fixed quickly.

Another is particularly relevant due to a popular post we had not too long ago. The Boombox Badge is to mark your accomplishment of admitting that "you don’t care about new music and start listening only to music that was awesome when you were fifteen." Oh sure, you can argue about that all day, but then you won't get the badge. See nine of these badges for the achievements of middle age at McSweeney's Internet Tendency.  -via Nag on the Lake

(Images credit: Jane Demarest)

Since 1977, kids have gathered at Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theatres to eat technically edible pizza and play arcade games. Part of the background ambiance has been the animatronic band that company founder Nolan Bushnell developed somewhat by accident when he bought a rat costume thinking that it was a coyote costume. He then had engineers develop animatronics to make the rat costume move and named the resulting character Chuck E. Cheese.

Alongside other anthropomorphic animal band members collectively named Munch's Make Believe Band, Chuck E. Cheese sang original and cover songs when activated. Four decades of on-demand concerts followed. But now, the New York Times (sorry, paywalled article) reports that the company is shutting down the last of these animatronic features in Chuck E. Cheese restaurants.

Kids these days are more interested in screen-based entertainment rather than the robotics of the 1970s. Round the decay of that colossal wreck boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away.

-via Dave Barry

Does a person have the right to end their own life when it is full of pain and incurable suffering? How about someone else's life? Modern medical miracles sometimes come with a horrific cost. We may be able to save lives that were once doomed, but if it leaves the patient with severe brain damage, in a coma, or in a vegetative state, what have we gained? We've gained some deep ethical and philosophical questions, like what is the minimum standard of a life worth living? In the case of Terri Schiavo, which you may recall from the turn of the century, a 26-year-old woman was left severely brain-damaged and in a vegetative state after a heart attack. Years later, her husband proposed removing her feeding tube, the only artificial life support technology Schiavo required. Her parents objected on the grounds that you don't stop feeding someone because they are disabled. The case dragged on for years, and eventually led to reviews of the laws around life support and death with dignity.

The ethical questions remain, though. You may believe it is okay to refuse life support or life-saving interventions, but not active euthanasia. But what if the patient is unable to express their wishes? What if the patient with a terminal illness or profound disabilities or untreatable pain really wants to end their suffering but needs assistance to carry out that wish? As medical science continues to extend life beyond our ability to enjoy it, these questions will only get more difficult.

If you haven't been keeping up with the Disney theme parks, Disney–MGM Studios in Orlando is now Disney's Hollywood Studios. In 1994, they unveiled a terrifying roller-coaster with a drop shaft feature in a haunted house-type building called The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. They now have the same ride at Disney parks in Tokyo and Paris. The thrill ride features Rod Serling as host, both in archival footage and an actor doing an impression. But it didn't start out that way.

When Disney first opened the movie-themed park in 1989, they were still brainstorming ideas for rides that connected to Hollywood movies. The Mel Brooks film Young Frankenstein was 15 years old, but was so memorable they were going to make a haunted house attraction based on it. The idea was presented as Mel Brooks’ Hollywood Horror Hotel, although staffers called it Hotel Mel. The premise was that Mel Brooks was in the process of directing a new movie there, and visitors would see classic monsters as animatronics in ridiculous scenes. What would that have been like, and why didn't it happen? Read the story of Mel Brooks' Disney attraction that never came to be at Cracked.

Once upon a time, we used cash, including paper money and coins. The most common coin was the quarter, and you may have come across a quarter that has been painted red, although that is pretty rare these day, too. Why would anyone paint a quarter red? These were "house coins," used in vending machines that provided a service. The company that owned the vending machines would collect the coins, and the red quarters would be separated out and given back to the business owner, who had used them in the machines. Harry of Harry's Coin Shop explain that they were used in juke boxes, but that's just one example. House coins were also used in laundromats, car washes, and arcades, but they didn't hold any weight for machines that dispensed products like snacks because the vending machine owner wasn't about to give those away. Business owners would use them to test their machines, make it up to someone who complained about losing their quarter in the machine, or to keep the grandkids busy. I used to get a handful of red quarters at an arcade in the early '80s because I was a "local celebrity" and they wanted me to hang out there. It was a very small town.

The army used to issue a red quarter to new recruits to keep for an emergency phone call, hoping the red would remind them not to spend it otherwise. Repairmen used them to test pay phones, too. But why red? Because they were painted with nail polish, which was predominately red in those days. -via Boing Boing

The anticipated Fashion-Fungus crossover of 2024 has arrived, whilst the celebs were serving high fashion, we are serving high diversity; we’re giving you Ascos, Basidios, Myxos and more.
Brace yourself for myco-magnificence! #MetGala2024

First up Zendaya as Microglossum viride pic.twitter.com/q8UYLAcXja

— Kew Mycology (@KewMycology) May 7, 2024

The Met Gala last week was an extraordinary fashion exhibition in which all of your favorite celebrities came dressed in their most extraordinary custom outfits, all of which were apparently inspired by each model's favorite fungus.

The Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in London maintains a Twitter account devoted to informing the public about mycology, which is the study of fungi. In a recent thread, it provided a detailed exploration of the mycological origins of the fashions at the gala.

-via Marilyn Terrell