The unplanned welcome crew!

Crew-9 had some surprise visitors after splashing down this afternoon.🐬 pic.twitter.com/yuOxtTsSLV

— NASA's Johnson Space Center (@NASA_Johnson) March 18, 2025

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams had planned to be on the International Space Station for only eight days and ended up stranded in space for nine months when their transportation plans fell through. But on Tuesday, a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft rescued and delivered them in a spashdown off the western coast of Florida.

When they arrived, USA Today reports, a pod of dolphins surrounded the craft. They splashed about as the retrieval team harnessed the pod to bring it to the awaiting ship.

As the Bard said:

Dog goes 'woof', cat goes 'meow'

Bird goes 'tweet' and mouse goes 'squeek'

Cow goes 'moo', frog goes 'croak'

And the elephant goes 'toot'

But this is true in only the English language. In other human languages, animal vocalizations are pronounced differently--albeit sometimes only slightly.

Vivian Li of The Pudding has charts with soundboards illustrating the onomatopoeia that express different animal sounds, including cats, ducks, and pigs. She goes into an astonishing amount of detail about the phonetic mechanics involved in making each sound in each language and draws connections between them despite the different languages originating around the world. 

-via Flowing Data

Water, water everywhere, and nary a drop to drink. That's the ocean, and it's pretty big. Even if you're stranded out in the middle of the sea, you can't drink seawater, because it's so salty that it can poison your body. Most of the water on earth is seawater, and with climate change, fresh water is getting somewhat scarce in places where people need it. That's why there are more and more desalination plants every year, working to provide fresh drinking water but also contributing to the problem by using fossil fuels. Meanwhile, if you ever find yourself stranded out at sea, this TED-Ed lesson has a few tips on how to obtain fresh water, either from rain or dew, or from the blood and organs of certain sea creatures. To the person who doesn't have it, fresh water is more valuable than anything.   

People will argue about the origins of food, and hamburgers are no different. And if you're looking for the oldest hamburger restaurant in America, the White Mana Diner arguably has the provenance to claim the title. It originated in 1939, not as a real restaurant, but as an exhibit at the World's Fair that demonstrated how one could make a hamburger dinner while standing in one spot, using a huge griddle and a precisely designed system. That was impressive, and in 1946, the building was transported to Jersey City, New Jersey, and became the White Mana Diner. It's been in operation ever since.

But the diner itself is not as interesting as its owner Mario Costa. He began working at the White Mana in 1972 as a teenager, and within seven years bought the business. But he also bought rental houses in the neighborhood, another restaurant with a bar, and a gym. Costa offers the gym free of charge to neighborhood kids so they can box instead of getting in trouble doing something else. He once managed Mike Tyson, and still keeps Tyson's pigeons on his roof. Costa is a community hub unto himself, overseeing all his businesses every day, and making hamburgers at the White Mana Diner. Read a fascinating profile of a young man who made good, and now works to give back to the community, at Eater.

(Image credit: Paul Lowry)

You probably noticed the price of, well, everything, going up and up and up. We've heard plenty of explanations, like bird flu for eggs, supply and demand for housing, corporate greed for other stuff, supply chain issues, tariffs, etc. etc. But have we considered monopolies? Sure, monopolies are technically illegal, and so is price-fixing collusion between different companies, but modern technology in the form of algorithms run by third-party services can skip around that and produce the same result. Sam from Half as Interesting explains how that can happen with the example of french fries. He can do this because there is blatant documentary evidence of what's going on to make all our french fries so much more expensive, but this can happen in any industry. And if it happens with America's favorite vegetable, you know it must be going on with other foods and everyday expenses. This video is only 5:55, the rest is an ad.

The Medici family built a banking company that brought them great power in Renaissance Italy. They were of the merchant class and were not elevated to nobility until the 16th century, after which they produced several popes and monarchs. The Medicis also suffered from probably hereditary conditions that caused major joint pain and other problems.  

In 1565, Duke Cosimo I de' Medici commissioned the building of an elevated passageway connecting his residence, the Palazzo Pitti, with the seat of Florence's government, the Palazzo Vecchio. This enclosed passageway, called the Vasari Corridor, is about a kilometer long and snakes around other buildings on its way. The overt purpose of this private passageway was to allow the Medicis to commute without having to mix with the lower class rabble on the streets, and to hide them from potential assassins. However, Ex Urbe makes the case that the Vasari Corridor was also a disability access ramp, the world's largest, that enabled the Medicis to be pulled by donkey cart or carried by servants without being seen. Several of the passageway's features indicate that purpose if you know how the rich of the Middle Ages dealt with disabling infirmities. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Dror Feitelson)

This visualization of the earth's ocean currents is from NASA’s ECCO (Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean) Group, and uses data and models from all kinds of different sources. Your first impression may be like mine, when you saw The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh in the different swirling shades of blue. Not only do we have global ocean currents moving mostly east, they are surrounded at different depths by circular eddies and whirlpools of all sizes. Water likes to go around in a circle. All this movement is powered by the rotation of the earth, weather patterns, and temperature differences. As the weather affects the ocean's movements, those movements also affect the weather around the globe. It's as if there were a whole system underneath sea level that refreshes the earth by moving water, salt, and heat to other places all the time. Because that's exactly what happens. -via Geeks Are Sexy

We can assume that author Oscar Wilde's actual testicles are with the rest of his body, buried under a huge limestone memorial in Paris’s Père Lachaise Cemetery. The mystery is about the celebrated testicles that came with the stone figure carved into the 9 foot by 11 foot memorial over the grave. The statue, by sculptor Jacob Epstein, is of a winged man flying in a semi-prone position. In 1912, the statue's testicles were so shocking that cemetery officials covered the memorial stone with a tarp. After a court battle with Epstein, the tarp was removed but a bronze plaque covered the testicles. The plaque was later stolen. The statue was again covered in a tarp for some time. Then in 1961, the limestone testicles themselves were stolen. Rumor had it that the testicles were sent back, but were then used as paperweights by a cemetery employee. Meanwhile, visitors were kissing the memorial so much that a glass barrier was added. Read the long and winding story of Oscar Wilde's memorial stone and the testicles no one can see, at Mental Floss.  -via Strange Company

🍕Pizza ... with a side of gator? 🐊 Officer Tolson responded to calls about an 8-foot gator in a 55+ community, intercepted a terrified pizza delivery driver, and ensured a hungry customer was fed (and a hungry gator wasn't). All in a day's work! pic.twitter.com/kbG9TvIaOu

— Bradenton Police Department (@BradentonPD) March 12, 2025

UPI reports that Officer Tolson of the police department of Bradenton, Florida responded to a call about an 8-foot long alligator in a residential neighborhood. While addressing the situation, a pizza delivery driver arrived and attempted to take a pizza to the home where the alligator was lounging. He stopped the driver and, after communicating with the resident, brought the pizza to the back door.

The officer really went above and beyond for the resident who insisted on getting a photo of the gator. He took the woman's phone out to the front of the house to snap a picture of the gator.

-via Marginal Revolution

Twin Peaks, Lost, Stranger Things, Black Mirror, Russian Doll, Severance... there have been an awful lot of TV series that play with your mind by thoroughly confusing you. You either stick with it to find out if everything will eventually make sense, or you dump out because it seems like just too much effort to keep up. You start to wonder if the producers themselves keep up with all the details, and years later there are internet discussions about whether certain parts have been thoroughly explained. There are also shows that try to do all this in one episode, like The Twilight Zone (it will never be done better). These are called "mind bending shows." Alasdair Beckett-King has noticed the proliferation of such television shows, and also noticed they have certain things in common, so he had to do his own version. His show nails them all in 84 seconds, including the surprise ending.

By now you've heard of the "catio," an extensive cage built out into your yard that lets your cats experience the great outdoors while staying corraled and protected. While a catio is a big project, the Philadelphia Zoo has taken the concept to another level by constructing Zoo360, a mesh-enclosed network of walkways that allow diverse animals like monkeys and tigers to roam the zoo, safe from visitors, but able to see and be seen by visitors. Zoo360 allows the creatures to explore, exercise, and get their bearings in space, while safely being separated from humans. It's quite a sight to see, as the zoo residents pass through crowds and overhead as well. While the animals take their walks, you can stand in one place and see many different animals go by, under their own agency. That's a catio taken to extreme! -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: Philadelphia Zoo)

Remember the novelty toy called Big Mouth Billy Bass? It looked like a mounted trophy fish, but talked or sang when activated. No one can figure out why that became such a best seller. But now we have the same sort of thing, only sillier. YouTuber gptars outfitted a Big Mouth Billy Bass with artificial intelligence, so it can respond to questions, and also made it believe it is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Besides quoting lines from Schwarzenegger films, it wants to motivate you to work out, or, as we've all heard, "pump you up."



No, this isn't a real product you can buy -yet. But it's pretty cool in the same way Big Mouth Billy Bass was cool the first couple of times you saw him flop about and talk. After you've heard them sing "Take Me to the River" a few hundred times, the charm grows a little thin. -via Geeks Are Sexy

We learned decades ago that people can survive in outer space as long as they have a controlled environment that supplies proper oxygen and heat. But that doesn't mean that living in space is altogether safe and healthy. Astronauts who've spent months or even over a year in space can tell you that the human body is designed for the specific gravitational pull of earth. Take that away, and our bodies start to act weird.

For one thing, fluids are not pulled away from our brains or our sinuses in space as they are on earth. Astronauts  feel as if their noses are stuffed while living in microgravity. The extra fluid retained in the head also changes the shape of one's eyeballs. Muscles waste away because they don't work as hard as on earth. Skin becomes more sensitive when it is not weighed down by the fabric of our clothing. While most of the effects are reversible, it's not pleasant. Movies make spacecraft in circles that rotate to create gravity because it's easier on the film budget, but such gravity simulations may make living in space healthier for future astronauts. Read about the physical effects of space travel at the Guardian. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: NASA)

An understanding of the rhetorical situation in which a communicator is situated considers the intersection of speaker/author, audience, and the subject. The exigence--the motivation--of the speaker/author and the purpose--what reaction the speaker/author hopes to provoke from the audience--dictates the resulting genre of communication.

There is a proper rhetorical situation appropriate the online comment voice. But it is prudent to know when one is in that situation and when one is not. Kelly has not only selected an inappropriate content for his diatribe, but also the wrong audience to which to deliver it. Cartoonists Ian Boothby and Pia Guerra illustrate this common faux pas.

Knowing how humans will make a competition out of anything, you might not be too surprised to learn that snowball fights have become an organized sport. You will not be too shocked to learn that it originated in Japan. The sport of Yukigassen pits teams of seven players against each other. The rules were established by the Japan Yukigassen Federation, which oversees competitions in many countries where snow is available. Every year, the world champion is decided by a tournament at the foot of Mount Usu in Japan, where around 100 teams compete for the title. Great Big Story explains the history of Yukigassen, how the sport is played, and even gives us tips on how to make and throw the perfect snowball. Useful information right now, if you live in the Southern Hemisphere.

How long before the Yukigassen becomes an exhibition sports in the Olympic Winter Games? It may be some time, since the games won't be hosted in Asia for at least the next ten years.