Kaido is a miniature Australian Shepherd. Matty is a human (I'm guessing; he doesn't say directly). Together, they bike through the streets of New York City.
Kaido is a civic-minded dog who contributes to the well-being of his polity. He contributes to the efficient implementation of social services, such as ambulances, by howling whenever he hears the siren erupting from one.
-via Laughing Squid
The trope of the evil scientist is useful for fiction, but it is grounded in real history. Scientists as a whole are just as ethical as the population of people they came from, and that means that some were fine with doing horrible things to experimental subjects they considered lesser than themselves, whether that involved animals, disabled people, subjugated races, or even uninformed volunteers. Some of these experiments turned out to be a bit fraudulent in their findings as well.
A psychological experiment conducted by John B. Watson in 1920 may seem tame compared to those linked above, but it involved an innocent baby, which shocked the scientific world. It was one of the experiments that led to stricter ethical standards in science experiments, and drove home the importance of scientific rigor in claiming results that may or may not stand up over time. There is little direct documentation left of the Little Albert experiment, but Weird History uses what little photographic evidence is left plus plenty of stock footage to tell the tale.
British artist Chris Barker made a poster in the style of the album cover for the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band featuring images of notable people who died in 2024. It's a big crowd.
Barker has worked around the clock in the past few days trying to include every celebrity. The image above is version five for 2024, as he updated the collage to include former president Jimmy Carter and a couple of other people who passed on in the last week. By now it should be definitive. Barker said he received more notifications about Carter than anyone else since he's been doing this annual project. You can enlarge the picture at Instagram or Bluesky. The latest key we have is for version four, enlargeable here, and if he gives us an updated key I will edit this post. Note Kobosu, the dog we know from the doge memes, in front. Also Burt the crocodile who starred in the movie Crocodile Dundee. The objects in front are representative of people who aren't recognizable by their pictures.
See Barker's poster from last year here, and those going back to 2016 here.
Putting up Christmas decorations can be exciting, but taking them down and packing them away feels like a chore. It's difficult to switch from an array of festive lights to the bleakness of the rest of the winter. Redditor 1s0m3r posed the question of everyone's traditional schedule in taking Christmas decorations down. The most common answer seems to be after January 6th, which is Orthodox Christmas, Epiphany, Three Kings Day, or the 12th day of Christmas. Coming in second was soon after New Year's Day. Some leave them up much longer because they dread the work, or have another family occasion to celebrate. Some folks just take down the Santa Clauses and leave the tree to be decorated for Mardi Gras or Valentine's Day. And some people just leave all the decorations up until they are good and ready to say goodbye to them, maybe around Easter.
I prefer the gradual approach. I stashed all the wrapping paper and ribbon first, then Christmas clothing as it's washed. Around New Year's Day I pack the tree ornaments away, but I will leave the tree and lights up until Epiphany, at least. I have so many lights, inside and out, that it will take a week to pack them away, because I don't like to spend all day doing anything. What about you?
In Finland, college students often wear haalarit, or overalls (what we would call coveralls) to university events, parties, and ceremonies. The appearance of each haalarit will tell you a lot about the wearer. The color indicates what discipline they are studying, which will vary by school. The patches worn are from a student's experiences and accomplishments, so being covered with patches is a sign of status. And sometimes you can tell that a student is "taken" if the overalls have a mismatched part, because they swapped with their significant other. The haalarit are a source of pride for students, and a way to boost school spirit. It also makes it easier to see who has the same interests as you do.
The custom of the haalarit began in the 1950s or '60s when other students began copying the coveralls worn by Civil Engineering students in Sweden. Further digging reveals that these overalls should never be washed. Well, college doesn't last forever. -via Kottke
For many Americans, the only time we drink champagne is at weddings or on New Year's Eve, so we may as well get the most of out it. For advice, we can turn to scientists like chemical physicist Gérard Liger-Belair of the "Effervescence & Champagne" team at the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne. He has possibly the best job a physicist can have, studying the bubbles that make champagne special.
Liger-Belair explains the science behind champagne, which is fermented twice to produce the bubbles. The experience of drinking it relies not only on the quality of the underlying wine, but also in the bubbles. People will rate a cheap wine as more expensive if it has bubbles, no matter how they are produced. You'll get more bubbles by pouring champagne down the side of a glass, and instead of a champagne flute, you'll have a nicer sip from a wider glass that won't concentrate the carbon dioxide under your nose. Read more about the science of champagne and how to maximize the pleasure of drinking it at BBC Future. -via Damn Interesting
(Image credit: Hubert Raguet/Equipe Effervescence, Champagne et Applications)
Kelsey Piggott is a master baker in North Salt Lake, Utah who specializes in sourdough bread loves painted with vivid images from life and popular culture. I take it this loaf comes from a scene in which Bluey and Bingo pretend to be elderly women.
Now, technically, snowglobes are edible if you're sufficiently reckless. But redditor /u/bloomcakes created edible snowglobe cupcakes that will be completely pleasant to consume.
We don't deserve dogs. The account We Rate Dogs always rates a dog at more than ten out of ten, and at the end of the year, they take on the gargantuan task of selecting the top ten dogs of the year for us. In this year's list, you'll meet courageous dogs who rose to the occasion as heroes, who proved their undying loyalty to their humans, and who work hard to please us. Rowdy suffered multiple injuries in protecting an autistic child who had wandered off. Coby saved an entire neighborhood by finding a gas leak. And the stories get even more inspiring after those. There's even a dog who performed CPR! While man's best friends are all good dogs, these puppies went above and beyond for their humans, and deserve to be on the top ten list. You might want to grab a hankie before watching this video. -via Metafilter
Tom Nichols once taught a class in the Cold War and American pop culture, for students who were too young to have experienced both at the same time. Many songs, movies, and TV shows carried references to the arms race between the US and the Soviet Union that fly over their heads today. The Twilight Zone is famous for this, but the original Star Trek series, which aired from 1966 to 1968, was rich with Cold War allegories.
The various sci-fi writers who worked on Star Trek were open to all kinds of adventures, but series creator Gene Roddenberry pushed his own ideas constantly. In the series, the United Federation of Planets stood in for first world countries, specifically NATO, and the Klingon Empire represented the second world, the Soviet Union and its communist allies. Despite the Prime Directive, Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise often stepped in to stop wars on various planets or protect a planet from the Klingons. Some episodes mirrored real-world events that have become disconnected over time. Nichols takes us through a few of those episodes and explains the Cold War analogies in an essay that will bring back memories, good or bad. -via Damn Interesting
Insane Facebook Marketplace Items is an X account that showcases some of the strangest things that people are trying to sell on Facebook Marketplace. These include, recently, an Officer Big Mac jail from what must have been a McDonald's playscape.
Now, if you can outbid your competition and get to Blacksburg, South Carolina for pick up, you can have your own in your office or home. Place it up front so that people who approach you understand that you are both playful and menacing as the situation demands.
Content warning: many salacious items are for sale, often of a phallic nature.
-via Zillow Gone Wild
Qin, 26, is a professionally trained dancer and the owner of a restaurant in Chongqing, China. The South China Morning Post reports that for a couple of years Qin has attracted customers by performing like a lumbering robot while serving food. Her movements are so unlifelike that people online (and even directly observing her in her restaurant) though that she was actually a functional android.
Her perfect control of her eye movement is especially impressive. She appears to be completely unblinking. You have to watch very carefully to detect the subtle movement of breathing as she moves through the restaurant and interacts with customers.
-via Laughing Squid
I'm a fan of Star Trek: Lower Decks, which just finished after five seasons. It was a popular show with good ratings. Why did Paramount drop it? Internet rumor has it that although subscribers were watching Lower Decks, no one was signing up for Paramount+ for the first time in order to watch Lower Decks. So the company cancelled a thriving series.
The way that people interact with television is very different from the way that Miss Cellania and I grew up with. Will Tavlin of N+1 traces the history of Netflix in particular and the way that this streaming service has shaped the production and marketing of movies and series.
Tavlin mentions that Netflix has catered to a market called "casual viewing". This is a show or movie that one plays while not actually watching the screen. It's background video to play while attending to other tasks, such as doing chores. The characters narrate what they've done, what they're doing, and what they plan to do so that the viewer can more or less follow the plot without paying close attention.
Before we get too disgusted, it's worth noting that several Netflix writers on X are insisting that this allegation is untrue.
-via @Anthony_cf97
As he has for the past twelve years, Barry Petchesky has compiled a year-end list of emergency room dramas involving things stuck in people's body orifices. This is as good a time as any to remind you not to stick things in your body holes that aren't designed for that purpose. The items are taken from U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's reports of emergency room visits in 2024. In this year's list, he dropped reporting on what kids stuck up their noses or in their ears, and there aren't even any throat reports. The report is merely on three orifices on the lower end of the human body, so you can consider the whole post NSFW. The objects removed might even induce nightmares. You can ask why and how, but we can assume that 98% of the time, the patient explained they slipped and fell. However, some include notes from the patient that will make you cringe. I even had to look up a couple of words. Read the list at Defector.
Every year since 2007, DJ Cummerbund gives us an artful mashup of the most popular pop songs of the previous year. For the year 2024, there's a distinct theme among the 25 biggest hits, and it's more than just a steady dance beat (with a bit of a country twang this time). These songs, or at least the lyrical clips used, all appear to reference regret, blame, and most of all, alcohol. Was it the current zeitgeist that inspired songwriters to go in that direction, or was it the mood of the nation that propelled these kinds of songs to the top? Or was it DJ Earworm's selective editing that brought out that theme?
Many commenters likened this video to the United States of Pop in 2009, titled Blame It On The Pop. Taylor Swift, Beyonce, and Lady Gaga all appeared in that video, and are back 15 years later, still making the hits. You can hear all the United States of Pop videos from 2007 to 2024 in this playlist.
