"Weird Al" Yankovic has been writing and performing parody songs since he was in high school, and was once a regular on the syndicated radio show Dr. Demento. His first single was "My Bologna," a parody of "My Sharona" in 1979. Since then, he's been stealing the thunder of pop artists by making their songs into comedy, but they all love it. In those 45 years, he's had a string of songs that you can't help but think of every time you hear the hit song it was made from. And your kids think you are just being silly by singing the wrong lyrics.
YouTuber boogiehead took ten songs and show us the original and then the "Weird Al" parody to remind us how funny they are and to show us how well he recreated the tune with his own comedic lyrics. You can see how the production values of his videos improved exponentially with a bit of notoriety. -via Laughing Squid
We recognize Saturn by its magnificent rings, but other planets have smaller and less visible rings, and earth may have had them, too, at one time. Three scientists from Monash University in Australia just published a study explaining how. They studied impact craters from the Ordovician period, around 466 million years ago. Mapping where the earth's tectonic plates would have been at the time, they found that all these craters were within 30 degrees of the equator, while most of earth's dry land was further away. They believe a large asteroid came close to the earth, and was pulverized when it hit the atmosphere. The debris formed rings around the planet that lasted for millions of years, but fell to earth gradually and caused those Ordovician craters.
This theory would also explain the ice age called the Hirnantian Icehouse, which happened near the end of the Ordovician period and was the coldest earth has been in half a billion years. It was a mass extinction event that saw the disappearance of 85% of the earth's marine species. A shadow caused by rings of debris in space would have kept sunlight from reaching the surface. Read a further explanation of these findings in a press release from Monash University. -via Gizmodo
(Image credit: Grebenkov)
グラスに満ちた月 pic.twitter.com/uh8tfTYx3V
— Tatsuya Tanaka 田中達也 (@tanaka_tatsuya) September 16, 2024
Today, September 17, is harvest moon festival day in Japan. It is a traditional time, a Japanese tourism website explains, for viewing the moon at night. Tatsuya Tanaka, a professional miniatures artist and long-time Neatorama favorite, offers this lovely image of astronauts sharing a drink while back lit by the full moon.
The image appears to be three miniatures on top of a glass of beer which is lit from the bottom by an LED.
-via Spoon & Tamago
Serving curatorial realness fr.#museum #history #royalarmouries #genz #armsandarmour pic.twitter.com/tOLNbYGvKB
— Royal Armouries (@Royal_Armouries) September 14, 2024
The Royal Armouries in Leeds, UK is a military history museum that showcases important artifacts from British military history for the past millennium. It's totally slay.
Recently, the institution released this promotional video encouraging people to visit this sigma museum. The value is gyatt. So no bed-rotting. Head to the Royal Armouries in Leeds for, hopefully, an entire tour like this.
-via Rebekka
We were once afraid of bacteria, but then we found out that there are beneficial bacteria that battle harmful bacteria. In fact, we carry around plenty of bacteria that help our digestive systems work, which we call the human biome. And when we developed antibiotics, we no longer had to be so afraid of even harmful bacteria. But viruses are different, and we have no medicines to kill them, just vaccines to prevent their diseases. A lot of science later, we know there are tons of viruses that won't harm us, because they specialize in harming bacteria. Now we know that human bodies are teeming with viruses all the time, which is called the human virome. Like the biome, these colonies of viruses are crucial to our survival. Kurzgesagt explains how your virome works by performing several functions that make our immune system and other systems work the way they should.
The A.V. Club is beginning a series on "women of action" in movies, and the first subject is Sarah Conner, as portrayed by Linda Hamilton. When you think of her as an action hero, you think of that moment we first saw the character in the 1991 movie Terminator 2: Judgement Day and marveled at the muscles she'd developed since The Terminator. She'd also become a fearless tactician and a weapons expert. But Caroline Siede argues that she was just as much of an action figure in the original 1984 film. It's in the first film that we see her transform from an everyday woman negotiating the dangers of modern life to a critical part of a time-travel loop, and having to fight her way through it.
Sarah Conner was more than just an action hero. She was a badass, but also had flaws, fears, and a personality that made her a more rounded and relatable character than the male characters around her. And we can't forget that she was not the main character in either movie, just the most memorable. Read a look into the character of Sarah Conner at the A.V. Club.
Sarah Andersen once illustrated how the cat distribution system works. But there are plenty of variations.
He'd never had a cat before, and didn't really want one, but she volunteered to foster a cat for the New York City rescue Flatbush Cats (previously at Neatorama). The first cat they were assigned was a mother cat that came with three kittens. Fostering cats for a rescue organization is a wonderful thing to do, but it often ends in failure. "Failure" in this case means that they don't manage to be a temporary family because they have to keep the cats. That's why organizations are always on the lookout for more volunteer foster parents. In this case, two of the kittens, Viola and Mandolin, are now permanent pets, and their non-cat dad is now a cat person. Viola and Mandolin are very much loved, as you can see at their Instagram gallery.
After more than 20 years, the International Space Station (ISS) will be retired in 2030. What will take its place? China already has a space station in orbit, and you've probably heard of NASA's Lunar Gateway, a space station that will orbit the moon as part of the Artemis missions. But there are plans for many other space stations in the pipeline, some with launch dates coming up relatively soon. Four of them are big, public projects from NASA, Russia's Roscosmos, India's ISR, and China's CNSA. There are also quite a few space station projects from private companies that are dedicating billions of dollars to getting their branch offices in space. These private companies include Vast, Axiom Space, Gravitics, Blue Origin, Sierra Space, Voyager Space, and Airbus. My guess is that Airbus is the only one you've heard of. Some of these projects are collaborations between companies or between companies and public agencies, while others are working on grants from NASA. Russia and China are collaborating on a project for both a lunar space station and a moon base. Read about ten of these upcoming space station projects at Freethink. -via Big Think
(Image credit: NASA/Alberto Bertolin)
Every year, Forest & Bird in New Zealand hosts the Bird of the Year (Te Manu Rongonui o Te Tau) competition to draw attention to the country's many and varied birds, particularly those that are endangered. Last year, the organization celebrated its 100th anniversary by crowning the Bird of the Century. However, a campaign by talk show host John Oliver pushed the number of votes to seven times the normal number, and left a bad taste in the mouths of kiwis. In 2021, the winner was not even a bird. In 2020, the competition became a global scandal when it was racked by voter fraud.
The 2024 competition has been concluded, and no voting scandal has been reported this year. The winner, backed by several New Zealand groups, is the hoiho, a rare, yellow-eyed penguin that also won in 2019 when it became the contest's first seabird winner. The endangered hoiho has experienced a steep drop in population over the 15 years, and there are only 168 pairs of hoiho left. Read about this endangered penguin at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: Kimberley Collins)
Brian Rust, a professional trombone player from a family of trombone players, was diagnosed with an intention tremor. A CNN affiliate in Madison, Wisconsin reports that treatment involved placing wires in his brain to stimulate areas of it. The patient must be awake during this kind of surgery so that he can respond to tests as the device is implanted.
With the permission of his neurologist, Rust brought his trombone into the operating room and played it (or at least manipulated the slide) as part of the tests. Now Rust is able to turn the device on and off and maintain greater muscular control.
-via Dave Barry
You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. There's a signpost up ahead--your next stop, Binghamton, New York.
The small city of Binghamton in the west-central part of the state is proud to call Rod Serling, the creator of The Twilight Zone, a native son. This past weekend, it and Ithaca College hosted SerlingFest 2024, a celebration of Serling's life and work.
The Ithaca Journal reports that this convention culminated in the dedication of a statue of the man near his childhood home. The statue is in Recreation Park, a favorite place of Serling and the inspiration for the episode "Walking Distance."
Skyscrapers with curved glass look really cool, but they can hide a dangerous feature- solar convergence, also known as the solar death ray. Any kid who ever tried to start a fire with a magnifying glass understands that bending the sun's rays into one spot magnifies the heat. This famously happened with two skyscrapers, Vdara Hotel & Spa in Las Vegas, and the skyscraper at 20 Fenchurch Street in London. Both have concave glass that converge sunbeams into deadly spots that vary depending on the position of the sun. The confounding part of the story is that both buildings were designed by the same architect, Rafael Viñoly. You can label the first building as a screwup, but designing a second building with the same problem should be a criminal offense. Yet Viñoly defended his design, at one point even claiming that when the Fenchurch Street building was erected, no one knew London would have more sunny days in the future. This video is only eight minutes long; the rest is an ad. -via Digg
Mri photo of my brain yes this is real
byu/brooklynlikestories ininterestingasfuck
Redditor brooklynlikestories shared a scan of her brain. She explained that she had a series of strokes before she was born. Doctors thought she would be never be able to walk or talk, and might even require a breathing tube. But, as one commenter put it, patients don't always read the text book. She has epilepsy, but otherwise lives a normal life. When people asked about her deficits, she says she isn't good at math and has bad eyesight, but that describes most of the world.
This is an example of neuroplasticity, a brain's capacity for rewiring itself as needed after an injury. Neurons make new connections and move functions from the damaged area to another part of the brain. It can happen at any age, but is more likely when the brain is young and still developing. In the comments, people shared dozens of stories of babies with brain damage who went on to graduate college because their brains compensated for the early injury. Several redditors also shared their own MRI scans that showed missing pieces. Continue reading to see them.
Simba is a border collie and Bonnie is a spaniel, and they are smart dogs. They belong to British dog trainer Olga Jones, and they have been trained so well that they have achieve several Guinness World Records this year! Simba holds the records for the most coins deposited into a bottle by a dog in one minute, the fastest time to traverse between five standing bars by a dog, the most clothes hung on a washing line by a dog in one minute, and the most bottles deposited into a recycling bin by a dog in one minute. Simba and Bonnie together hold the record for the fastest time to complete 10 side leapfrog jumps by two dogs.
You might think that these records were established only because these two dogs are very good at these tricks, because that's what I thought, too. Guinness entries usually include the previous record holder, and there aren't any for these records. But don't let that detract from what good dogs these two are. You'll enjoy watching them show off what they've learned. I was a little concerned with Simba picking up coins with his mouth. Don't try that with your dog. -via Laughing Squid
Motion pictures really got their start in the late 19th century, even though the concept already existed in the zoetrope. Motion pictures on film were developed before the projector or movie theater were widely available, but there were other ways to watch movies. In 1891, Thomas Edison and William Kennedy Laurie Dickson invented a machine called the Kinetoscope, a box that a single person could look into and see light flashing through a series of images on celluloid film. Herman Casler invented the Mutoscope in 1894. The Mutoscope was also an arcade-size box that the viewer peered into, but the viewer turned a crank and controlled the speed, and the images were printed on paper. In other words, it worked like a flipbook.
The Mutoscope was less expensive and did not depend on a power source, so arcades and amusement parks bought them like crazy, spurring Edison to sue the Mutoscope company. Customers didn't care, they flocked to both machines to see a moving picture for the price of a coin, especially the naughty ones. Strangely, while we know the name Kinetoscope, hardly anyone remembers the name Mutoscope, despite the fact that they lasted much longer than Edison's box with the more modern celluloid film. Read about these two machines and their history at Messy Nessy Chic.
(Image credit: United States Farm Security Administration)
