The world has fallen in love with Jimothy, a raccoon that lives in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. He has an abbreviated, stumpy appearance. Smithonian magazine explains that it's most likely due to a rare disorder called short spine syndrome. Despite this disability, Jimothy scampers well and appears to be able to fend for himself.

Jimothy is a heroic figure, defying the entropic call upon mortal flesh to fall to weakness and despair. That's why we sell a t-shirt with his visage at the NeatoShop.

He has also inspired Phoebe Sanders, a banjoist who specializes in making puppets that dance.

The sequel to Mel Brooks' Spaceballs has been 40 years in the making. Well, maybe not, more like 35 years in limbo and is now in the making. Sadly, it won't be Spaceballs: The Search for More Money, but instead will be titled Spaceballs: The New One. And since 1987, there has been plenty of new Star Wars material to parody. 

The plot of Spaceballs: The New One seems to be following in the footsteps of The Force Awakens, with a second generation of our heroes from the first film. Bill Pullman returns as Lone Starr, and the actor's son Lewis Pullman will play Prince Starburst, the offspring of Lone Starr and Queen Vespa. Starburst and friends "must find Lone Starr, Yogurt, and any other iconic legacy characters fans are demanding," which pretty much echoes the entire Star Wars sequel trilogy. Still, The Force Awakens was very much like a reboot of the first Star Wars movie from 1977 with some fresh faces, and Spaceballs: The New One isn't above doing the same thing. Read what we know about the movie at Inverse. Spaceballs: The New One is scheduled to open on April 23, 2027.     

You can argue about the First Amendment and freedom of speech all day, but when it comes down to individual words and their spelling and usage, we defer to linguist Dr. Erica Brozovsky. She's not a stickler for correct usage, but she does keep an eye on how languages develop and change over time. Today, Brozovsky explains how certain governments have tried to standardize certain words, even names, either to protect a language or possibly to resurrect it. 

Users of the English language, however, don't like to be told how to speak and write, which is why it has splintered into British English, American English, Australian English, etc. We have language authorities, more from academia than from governments, that tell us the correct way to spell and use English words, but even they are aware of how language changes and evolves due to the way real people use it in everyday life. 

The business world loves to tell how the invention of the automobile wiped out the carriage making business. Yet the coachbuilder D’Ieteren is still thriving 221 years after its founding. It's made the D’Ieteren family the richest in Belgium today, although they no longer make carriages. Instead, each generation has learned to pivot from one business to another by leveraging the craftsmanship they already knew. D’Ieteren went from carriages to building auto bodies to importing cars to automotive glass- but not all at once. They gradually slid into each product as they noticed the market, while many carriage companies just gave up because no one bought horse carriages anymore. 

You might not care a bit about the richest family in Belgium, but the moral of the story is that a business, or a person, can get caught up in their current profession thinking that's all they can do because it's what they do best. If you let go of thinking about what you do in your job, and start thinking about your overall mission instead, it's easier to pivot to what else you might be good at. I did this accidentally when I left my last radio job and decided the business was no longer compatible with my family life anyway. So I turned my blogging hobby into a profession, and was surprised that so many seemingly disparate skills I learned in radio benefitted my online work. Read about the D’Ieteren family business and what we can learn from it at Big Think. 

(Image credit: André Ritzinger) 

Can you recall all the reasons you loved the 1987 movie RoboCop? Was it because of the cool robots and the violent action scenes? Was it because of your empathy for the character Alex Murphy, who was doomed to live as a robot- as long as he was useful? Is it because of its satirical take on government corruption, corporate monopolies, and late-stage capitalism? That may depend on how old you were at each viewing. But there are other reasons that RoboCop is held in cinematic high esteem.  

Forty years later, RoboCop holds up better than most action films of the '80s because it just plain looks good. Dutch director Paul Verhoeven was criticized by some at the time for his European style of filmmaking, but overall, his care for crafting each scene as a work of art paid off, and audiences didn't even know it. Rowan J Coleman breaks down what Verhoeven did to make RoboCop a timeless film. There's an ad from 5:58 to 6:37. -via the Awesomer 

It is thought that Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union, is the subject of the most non-religious statues on earth, even after many were toppled in the early 1990s. In December of 1958, a Soviet expedition reached Antarctica's Pole of Inaccessibility, the point of the continent furthest from any coastline. They arrived in tractors, and build an airstrip and several buildings. They also erected a substantial bust of Lenin atop the chimney of one of the buildings. The plane that picked them up left a generator, a radio transmitter, and stores of food. But no one ever used that research station. A few Soviet and American expeditions visited in the 1960s, but it was mostly forgotten afterward. After all, it wasn't easy to find, much less get there. 

In 2007, a British team reached the Point of Inaccessibility on kite skis. They found the research station completely gone, buried under Arctic snow and ice, with only Lenin remaining, looking toward Moscow. Read the story of the inaccessible Lenin statue at Boing Boing. 

(Image credit: Cookson69) 
      

Marc Schulz builds custom mobility scooters that will make you laugh and take you places. One of his models is this scooter designed to resemble the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile. On his Instagram page, you can see appearances of the scooter in parades where it demonstrates classy style and functionality.

Schulz informs readers that he's now working on a scooter that looks like the landspeeder from Star Wars.

The Heart Attack Grill seemed like a bad idea from the start. That wasn't just a clever name, the Arizona eatery had waitresses dressed like nurses, and offered free food to people over 350 pounds. It was an experience, and a statement of backlash against the health nuts that were telling everyone how to eat, no matter how right they were. The Heart Attack Grill flourished and moved to Las Vegas, the city where an experience is worth whatever people are willing to pay for it. The Heart Attack Grill closed a couple of months ago. But surprisingly it wasn't because of lawsuits or the real medical problems of their customers. 
    
The Heart Attack Grill story takes only about three minutes, then Weird History explains founder John Basso's reasons for closing his Heart Attack Grill by taking us through the history of Las Vegas restaurants and how they've changed over time.  

  
    
   

When Ruth Mae Urdanivia married Jose Urdanivia, a Peruvian diplomat, he life turned into a whirlwind of gentility, world travel, and state occasions. The couple had five children and seemed very happy. Then in 1957, Jose died of heart attack at age 42, and Ruth moved back to her hometown of Allentown, Pennsylvania. She had trouble adjusting to life as a single working mother. 

Urdanivia spent two years hoarding a prescribed barbiturate, and in October of 1959, gave it to her five children, aged four through twelve, crushed into drinks, and took a massive amount herself. She woke up three days later, tried to slash her wrists, and then turned on the gas oven. Her landlord found her and the five dead children. Urdanivia was hospitalized and charged with five counts of murder.

What drove Urdanivia to kill her children? She complained about money, the limited lifestyle she had as a widow, and the lack of help from others. Yet she had a pension from the Peruvian government she never bothered to accept, and her brother was caring for two of the children. And her story indicated she began hoarding drugs soon after her husband died. Read about Ruth Mae Urdanivia and what happened to her after the murders at Pennsylvania Oddities. -via Strange Company 

You know how people used to say never touch a baby bird that fell out of its nest? That's been debunked, and now we are encouraged to return it to the nest for the mother to find. The same principle held when park rangers in South Africa found a newborn zebra that was in the water behind a concrete dam, with no mother around. They rushed the foal to Care for Wild Rhino Sanctuary because there wasn't a zebra sanctuary nearby, and you can't really get picky about the species you care for when a baby is in danger. 

However, they didn't find a dead zebra mother, so why was the foal left behind? If the newborn was unresponsive at first, she may have thought it was dead. Or she may have given up after not being able to get the foal out of the water. In either case, this story from the Dodo has a happy ending.

Your 2026 Solon Beef Days Hay Bale Toss Champion ➡️ @CaelWinter pic.twitter.com/REoo1lHif5

— Hawkeye Football (@HawkeyeFootball) July 18, 2026

Solon, Iowa is the home of Beef Days, an annual festival of food, music, and sports. One of its feats of strength competitions is the hay bale toss. The goal is to toss a hay bale over a bar set high

The winner this year was Cael Winter, a football player with the University of Iowa Hawkeyes, having thrown the bale thirteen feet and six inches. You can see his winning toss above or watch the entire 2 hour and 27 minute contest here.

-via David Burge

Check out this image from a Zillow listing. When you have a huge golden dome on your house, it may be a little difficult to decide what to do with the interior. This looks weird overall, but I focused on the shiny wooden surface. At first I thought it was a table, but the way it aligns with the carpet leads me to think it's just a shiny part of the floor. Now, how fun would it be to remove the stair railing and make a game out of it? It would be like curling- just slide your little brother across that wood and see if you can chuck him down the stairs. Goal! 

This is just one of a collection of strange images from Zillow listings that Rebecca Makkai has collected over the past year or so. Most are like puzzles in that the more you look, the more details you find that make no sense. It's no wonder people wanted to sell these places. See 21 of these over-the-top rooms in the post, with a button at the bottom that implies you can see more if you sign up for notifications. -via Nag on the Lake 

Andy Beth Miller of The Takeout undertook the laborious task of evaluating the many beef sandwiches available across the United States and selecting the best from each state. Seriously, there's a methodology section at the end because this is science.

Part of good scientific research is replication of experiments, for which I volunteer.

Seven of the sandwiches are reubens, of course. But this one pictured above also has my attention: the three-way roast beef from The Modern Butcher in Danvers, Massachusetts. It's a delicacy available only one day a week because preparation includes a 16-hour sous vide. It has garlic, mayonnaise, and very rare roast beef.

Photo:The Modern Butcher

Flightradar24 is an internet service that tracks aircraft flights all over the world. If a plane flies overhead, you can point your phone to it and pull up the aircraft type, the flight number, its origin and destination, and even its altitude and speed. You can also look up historical tracking information. Aviation enthusiasts rely on Flightradar24.  

Flightradar24 also has a blog, where they post aviation news, airport incidents, crashes and near misses, and general information. A recent post is titled Investigators release preliminary report on LEGO 747 and Space Shuttle crash. The LEGO Space Shuttle was being transported by the 747 when the accident occurred, which is described as "a kinetic encounter with a Felis catus." Accompanying photos show the crash site and debris field, as well as the alleged perpetrator. There is also a chart detailing the Owner/Operator Information, just as it would for any other crash. And 129 comments from aviation enthusiasts, including one urging an investigation by the FAA (Feline Accident Avoidance) and the NTSB (Never Trust Silly BlackCats). -via Metafilter 

Have you noticed that people who never talk about or even think about soccer (also known as football) are suddenly fans, or maybe even experts? This is particularly true of Americans, because North America is hosting the World Cup. There are also those who are soccer fans once every four years, when the World Cup happens elsewhere. Or the Olympics, when you find yourself wrapped up in women's gymnastics for a short time, but then switch to speed skating two years later. Meanwhile, you haven't paid attention to anything outside of baseball. Or maybe not even that. So many people only care about American football for one weekend in February, or horse racing on the first Sunday in May. If you don't keep up the rest of the time, it might be difficult to bluff your way through, as Ryan George demonstrates here. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

In case you aren't even trying, the 2026 World Cup comes to an end tomorrow when Spain and Argentina play at 3 Eastern Time.