Cicadas are in the news now, because two different broods are synching up to invade from underground. The Forest Preserve District of DuPage County (Illinois) made an educational video about the life cycle of the 17-ear cicada. You might think that would be boring, but the bug's activities are acted out by human staff members, so it's way funnier than it has to be. (via Laughing Squid)
Sunday, May 12, 2024
The Best Cicada Video You Will Ever See
Mother's Day ROAR
In which women find they are a lot stronger than they ever thought they could be. (via Nag on the Lake)
Mother's Day at SNL
Honestly, when I scheduled the nine-year-old Mother's Day monologue from SNL for the middle of the night, I had no idea that Saturday Night Live would do the same thing again this year for the opening scene. But they did and it's glorious.
Mother’s Day Apologies
The cast of Saturday Night Live had some apologies to pass along to their mothers for various transgressions over the years. Moms are not surprised. This aired a few years ago, but it's still funny.
Tweet of the Day
Wondering how does this species survive in the wild.. 😅 pic.twitter.com/BlUxXYuNfm
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) May 9, 2024
Saturday, May 11, 2024
Singing About Love
Romanian singer Maria Coman has a lovely voice and knows how to use it. The song is from 1 Corinthians 13:1-8. (via Kottke)
Lily’s Surprise
Don has a couple of problems: his memory is poor, and his handwriting looks like a second-grader’s.
Lily is a smart kid, but her execution needs a little work. For one thing, it helps to find out what Mom’s name is and remember it. Her parents explained that Lily was promised a surprise if she stayed quiet enough for her mother to take a nap. The surprise was Reece’s sticks, so there’s no spoilers to keep from her anymore.
In the discussion at reddit, people told stories from their own childhoods, like the kid who forged a note from God, the woman who knew her Dad’s name but not his age, and the one who wrote a threatening letter to the Tooth Fairy.
Lily is a smart kid, but her execution needs a little work. For one thing, it helps to find out what Mom’s name is and remember it. Her parents explained that Lily was promised a surprise if she stayed quiet enough for her mother to take a nap. The surprise was Reece’s sticks, so there’s no spoilers to keep from her anymore.
In the discussion at reddit, people told stories from their own childhoods, like the kid who forged a note from God, the woman who knew her Dad’s name but not his age, and the one who wrote a threatening letter to the Tooth Fairy.
Star Wars Without Dialogue Shouldn't Work This Well
The 1977 movie Star Wars (now known as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope) was a masterpiece in how it drew you in and made the viewer a part of the action. Part of that was because of the way it was designed to be driven by action instead of dialogue. Sure, it had dialogue, some of it quite memorable, and some of it amusingly bad. Almost 50 years later, we can watch the movie and pay no attention at all to what the characters are saying -but we can't watch it with the sound off because the music is so important. CinemaStix explains how that happened in this mini-documentary with commentary from George Lucas and John Williams. Still, this masterpiece had to be heavily edited to make it watchable. The essay the narrator refers to is How Star Wars was Saved in the Edit. In the end, it all came together to charm and excite a generation that still can't let go of the Star Wars universe.
The Most Viral Graduation Ceremony of 2024
Thursday night was commencement for the Thomas Jefferson University School of Nursing in Philadelphia. Each student's name was announced as they received their diploma, and the captions soon followed. This quickly became a game for the viewer to try and guess what the name really was from the announcer's pronunciation of common names like Stephanie and Elizabeth. The real kicker was the name Thomas, considering the name of the university.
The announcer was using cards with the phonetic spelling of the names, which should have included the normal spelling but apparently did not. After the first three rows of students, her cards were replaced with a list of names, and all went well after that. The university has issued an apology, but the viral moment will live on forever. (via reddit)
Robot Chicken’s Breaking Bad Rap
You’ve seen a million parodies, remixes, and raps about Breaking Bad, but this one is from Robot Chicken. That means it will take a weird left turn almost immediately. Let’s just say this is a great video to watch the first thing in the morning. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Friday, May 10, 2024
Was Amelia Earhart Eaten by Giant Crabs?
Pilot Amelia Earhart was attempting to fly around the world in 1937 when her plane disappeared, shortly after leaving Howland Island in the Pacific, and neither she nor navigator Fred Noonan was ever found. What happened to Earhart? There has been plenty of speculation and theories proposed over the past 87 years, but one of the strangest was that she was eaten by giant crabs. There are giant crabs in the South Pacific, as we will see in this video from IFLScience. (via Strange Company)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)