The musical collective Postmodern Jukebox has become famous around the world for remixing modern songs with styles from earlier times in the Twentieth Century, including ragtime, jazz, swing, doo wop, sock hop, and more.
Their most recent music video is inspired by the rhythm and blues music of the early 1960s that is depicted in the Broadway stage and film musical Hairspray. Jeffrey James sings "Lucky," a song most famously sung by Britney Spears for an album released in 2000. The lyrics tell the story of a girl who is a Hollywood star and, consequently, thought to be extraordinarily lucky to have such a happy life. But, as would turn out to be appropriate for Spears's own life, is actually lonely and sad.
This isn't some old T-55 from a couple generations ago that you could buy cheaply after the Soviet Union fell in 1991.* This is a T-90, which is Russia's top-shelf modern main battle tank.
Redditor /u/Mutantlight snapped this photo from a Peto's truck stop and casino in Roanoke, Louisiana. The Drive followed on the story and contacted the manager. She said that the truck hauling the trailer with the tank broke down and the driver asked if he could leave it at the stop while he went to Houston for another truck. The Drive learned that the tank had been captured in Ukraine last fall. Somehow, it has been brought to the United States.
"Gangsta's Paradise" written by Coolio and Doug Rasheed and performed by the former is one of the most iconic hip hop songs of all time. It's even been honored with a "Weird" Al Yankovic parody, which is how a musician knows that he's really made a cultural impact.
The song is a tragic ballad describing the narrator's regret mixed with a sense of honor. It's a crime story that would be well-completed if followed by Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues," which tells us what happens at the end of a criminal career.
In this video, musician Bob Strachan sings Coolio's lyrics with Cash's melody in a powerful synthesis of two genres.
There’s a certain tradition behind these little trinkets. If you’ve ever spotted some items left on somebody’s gravestone, it’s not just there randomly. It usually is left because of sentiment.
Leaving coins on a gravestone signifies that the person buried there was a member of the military. These pennies are a symbol of remembrance, intended to honor the individual for their service to their country. They can be left by loved ones, friends, or coworkers who visit the deceased to convey their pride.
These coins can also make an impact on the family left behind by the deceased. Now, note that each type of coin left holds different meanings. For example, if someone left behind a nickel, it means that the visitor who left the coin went to boot camp with the person buried. A dime, on the other hand, signifies that the visitor served alongside the deceased.
Lastly, if you see a quarter, it means that the person who left it was present when the soldier passed away.
🌞 From our new art site Artgonaut (check it out!), here's an art installation by Pierre Brault on a building in Paris that cleverly use the Sun to cast a shadow that reads "Slow Life"
🕹️ The Super Mario Bros theme song is now in the National Recording Registry. Miss C was kind enough to include several fantastic clips of the theme song played by a youth orchestra, played on a Marimba with four mallets, and on a bandura and accordion. TIL bandura, a Ukrainian folk instrument, can replicate the coin sound effect perfectly!
🤣 Self check-out has an unexpectedly hot item in the bagging area.
🏠 This unassuming house has a Mickey Mouse-shaped portal that'll take you to your own private Disney World. It's for sale for $1.1 million, so it's almost as expensive as a trip to the amusement park for a family of four (Image: REcolorado)
🚗 The crazy story behind the 1932 Bugatti Royale Esders involves King Zog, the self-proclaimed king of Albania who had over 600 blood feuds. This one is from our new car site Grand Blog Auto, which we'll build up over time.
This little skit may seem funny in a "back in my day..." way, but the way we pay for things today is altogether weird. I got used to paying for everything with a credit card because of the points, but then stores won the right to add a surcharge for their expenses, so I try to have some cash on me lately for small purchases. Most of my regular bills go to a credit card automatically, and I pay that once a month with a phone transfer from the bank. I use PayPal for mail order. My kids use debit cards and Venmo. Or at least one does; the other doesn't have any money, so it's all credit.
I still write checks for bills where the drive-through window is close by, and for taxes. But stores either won't take checks at all, or they don't need you to fill them out at all because they just run the check through a machine and get the money transferred. It never occurred to me that a store would give up on checks because the cashiers can't read cursive. But I'm not surprised that young people don't write checks. The banks won't let you open a checking account until you're 18, and by then it's a bit late to get your parents to show you how to do it. Now I'll step down from my soap box and let you tell us how you feel. -via Nag on the Lake
Once upon a time, feature-length movies were filmed in shoots of two to six weeks, but that was back when they didn't have to worry about color, sound, focus groups, or marketing. Now movies can take years to complete. You can blame competition, audience expectations, and big budgets. But Rocky was a blockbuster zipped up in no time at all. Maybe that's because it was a story Sylvester Stallone had dreamed about for years already. You could say the same thing about a band's first album, which might contain original compositions that the band had been playing for years. The second album is not so easy. But sometimes when inspiration hits, you go with the flow and don't worry about refining, especially if you're as talented as Freddy Mercury.
A few other really successful projects came about in astonishingly short time, including architecture, video games, and one very fast mountain climber, in a pictofacts list at Cracked.
It's pretty rare these days that I wake up and realize that I've been dreaming. But just a few minutes later, all memory of the dream is gone, and I go about my daily routine. It's only the memory of remembering that lets me know I dream at all. But maybe you're one of those people who can remember dreams, and maybe you're even sometimes aware that you're dreaming before you wake up. Experiencing a dream while knowing it's a dream is called lucid dreaming, and a few people are lucky enough to be able to guide those dreams by force of will. The good news is that there are some things you can do to induce and practice lucid dreaming and your control of it. Bright Side has some tips and tricks that will help you. If you ask me, it seems to be more trouble than I want to put into it, but you do you. Even if you don't want to try it, there are a some tips for a better night's sleep toward the end of this video. -via Digg
The Little White Chapel in Las Vegas is a famous wedding venue for couples who would like to get married legally, quickly, and stylishly. There are many package options, including getting hitched by an Elvis impersonator and using the drive-thru window for couples who are in a hurry.
Food & Wine magazine reports that on April 15 and 16, couples will also have the option of getting married while standing in front of the iconic Oscar Mayer Wienermobile for free. As a promotional gimmick, Oscar Mayer is covering the cost of the wedding itself and providing a "Hotdogger"--an official Wienermobile driver--to officiate at the ceremony.
Algar the Bard is a musician straight out of the Fourteenth Century. He composes and performs adaptations of modern songs with medieval themes and instruments. Past performances include R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" and Black Sabbath's "Iron Man".
For his latest video, Algar is bardrolling us with Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." Nothing about his performance lets us down. Enjoy this chipper approach to the modern classic on the lute-guitar, whistles, and something called an Irish bouzouki. That latter instrument is a modern Irish alteration of a Greek instrument that can be traced back to Byzantine times.
Scientists did an analysis of hair from a 3,600-year-old body unearthed at a burial site on the island on Menorca, off the coast of Spain. The hair showed traces of hallucinogenic drug use. They also found evidence of a storage box for such drugs, elaborately carved with geometric designs. Groovy. So what kinds of hallucinogenic drugs did people use that long ago? The Face gives us four plants available at the time that could be used to produce hallucinogenic effects. The caveat is that these are all poisonous, and could easily be lethal. Yet ancient people used them as medicine and for mind-expanding rituals. You have to wonder how many people died before they got the preparation and dosages right for the effects they were looking for. -via Digg
Given the size of the universe, there is a high likelihood that there would be life on other planets. So why don't we have any evidence of these alien life forms? Well, when your mother complains you don't call her, you remind her that contact and non-contact goes both ways. Life on earth has been around for billions of years, and we've only managed to send machines to the next planet over. Kurzgesagt poses the idea that if life is out there, they may be waiting for us to find them. Our human civilization may be well ahead of any other intelligent life, and space exploration is very difficult, for a whole lot of reasons. Other planets may have even more reasons not to try interstellar travel. The last minute of this video is an ad.
In 1972, the United States signed "the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction," along with 108 other countries. But before that, Cold War experiments were carried out in many cities and rural areas across the US to simulate enemy biological warfare attacks, in order to prepare defenses against such attacks. These used common strains of bacteria that they considered benign (Serratia marcescens, Bacillus globigii, Bacillus subtilis, and Aspergillus fumigatus), plus chemicals used as tracers, also thought to be benign, like fluorescent zinc cadmium sulphide. The tests began in 1949 when bacteria was released in the Pentagon's ventilation system. This program moved to US cities in 1950, and over the next 20 years, the US military carried out 239 experiments in 66 cities in the US and Canada.
The public was never informed of these experiments. It was later learned that the bacteria weren't quite benign. Serratia marcescens and Bacillus globigii in particular can cause serious infections. A bacterial spray in San Francisco in 1950 led to eleven people being hospitalized and one man died. It was also later determined that zinc cadmium sulphide is a carcinogen. Read about the biological warfare experiments of the Cold War era and what we learned from them at Today I Found Out.
A few days ago, viewers who were listening (and doing their tasks) with Lofi Girl, were a bit surprised when she and her cat disappeared in the middle of an April 10 stream on YouTube. The music still kept playing, but the iconic character was nowhere to be seen. Listeners noticed that some odd clues were left in the empty room. These included a slow zoom on the blinking blue light of a window and a teaser for April 11.
The channel fulfilled its promise when the day rolled in: a new person entered a different room– a purple-themed area. It was a guy getting down to do his work, with his dog climbing on the desk to fall asleep. The stream then revealed the new name: “synthwave radio - beats to chill/game to.”
Listeners can now choose between Synthwave Boy or Lofi Girl for their background music of the day. Note that you don’t need to go to a different channel. They usually stream at the same time, and you can swap between the two characters or streams for the music you would like.
And it looks similar to Earth. Will this be our new home in the future?
Experts have found a planet that shares a lot of characteristics with our planet– from size to orbiting around a star to having a magnetic field. The exoplanet, named YZ Ceti b, contains a magnetic field. This is an exciting discovery as the reason why our planet is habitable is because of its strong magnetic fields. These are responsible for enveloping our atmosphere and stripping away charged particles from that area.
YZ Ceti b orbits a small red dwarf star and can be found 12 light years away from the Earth. The scientists found the exoplanet thanks to repeating radio signals coming from YZ Ceti b. They hypothesize that the signals could be a result of particle interactions between the exoplanet’s magnetic field and the star it orbits around on.
