KFC is known for fried chicken, and also for some really weird promotional stunts like chicken-themed prom corsages, nail polish, a Lifetime movie, and a dating simulator. And their food stunts are just as strange, like that time they offered a breadless sandwich made of cheese and bacon between two chicken breasts. They aren't stopping anytime soon. The latest publicity stunt from KFC is jelly beans.

In a partnership with Frankford Candy, KFC will be offering jelly beans in the flavors of fried chicken, sweet corn, and gravy. Will they really taste like gravy, or will they be sugar-based with a hint of gravy? I'm sure you can't wait to try them. Alas, KFC jelly beans will not be available until 2026, when they will drop in plenty of time before Easter. So why announce it now? Because when you hear about it, you may laugh and then think about chicken for dinner tonight. -via Mental Floss 

(Image credit: KFC/Frankford Candy) 

LEGO has unveiled their most expensive build kit ever. Some sites call it the first $1,000 LEGO kit, but it's officially only $999.99 in the US. However, there's no doubt that some will shell out that money to build the LEGO Death Star™ 75419. It has 9,023 pieces, and comes with 38 Star Wars minifigs. It has the most important settings from the original trilogy, like the landing port, the trash compactor (that compacts), Leia's interrogation chamber, the conference room, the Emperor's throne room, and the laser port. It even comes with an imperial shuttle vehicle.  

The set will be available October 4 for Christmas shopping. But wait before you hand over a grand. Be aware that this is no sphere, but a slice through the middle of the Death Star that more resembles a doll house than a space station. The Brothers Brick goes through the build process in their review, and finds both the process and the finished product underwhelming. Your mileage may vary, but it will cost you to find out.  -via Boing Boing 

Happy Star Trek Day!

Yes, Star Trek aired for the first time 59 years ago today.

To mark the occasion, YouTube Rowan J. Coleman continued his expositions on science fiction (including Patrick Stewart and Babylon 5) with a vigorous defense of William Shatner as he appeared in the original Star Trek. I agree with Coleman that Shatner has been unfairly maligned as a bad actor.

He plays his role quite well, especially the physicality of his characterization. Kirk has a young, vigorous personality. I'd like to see Coleman continue this series with a comparison of an actor of the same area depicting a similar role: Jeffrey Hunter.

More than 40,000 people spent this past weekend at the EY Centre in Ottawa, Ontario, for Ottawa Comiccon- and many of them were dressed to draw attention to their favorite characters from movies, comic books, TV, video games, and folklore. Leading up to spooky season, we have the Victorian werewolf above and his steampunk potential victim. Geeks Are Sexy was there, of course, to document the best cosplay of the con. I was gobsmacked at the costumes, and particularly the intricately -detailed props. Behold out this Swamp Trooper, or mudtrooper, on his speeder bike. 

And check out the axe this character from the game Monster Hunter World carries!  

But don't miss the cosplayer inhabiting the body of Han Solo on a full size tauntaun from The Empire Strikes Back. You can see a gallery of the best costumes from all parts of the galaxy and all different universes at Geeks Are Sexy, plus a video. 

The Guardian reports that Warsaw, Poland recently opened a new light rail station in the Targówek district. This new station includes amenities intended to increase use of the metro system, including a small branch of the public library system. The 150 square meter library has 16,000 books available for browsing and checkout, a comfortable seating area, and a hydroponic garden.

Recreational reading is not a widespread practice in Poland, partially due to the legacy of the destruction of most of the country's libraries during World War II. The National Library of Poland hopes that this new public library location will encourage commuters to read full-length books instead of browsing on their phones while commuting.

-via reddit | Photo: Warsaw Public Library

Barney Curley was on track to become a priest when he was sidetracked by tuberculosis and had to find another way to make a living. He became a smuggler, a pub owner, a horse trainer, a band manager, a bookie, and dabbled in a few other activities, but kept being drawn back to his father's profession, which was gambling. 

What made Curley a hero in his native Ireland was a daring scheme in 1975 involving a carefully selected horse race, a network of associates, a talented jockey, an unremarkable horse, and a telephone booth. In a rather complex and secretive manipulation of odds, Curley managed to turn a £15,300 stake into £300,000⁠ in just a few minutes. That was, of course, after a long and convoluted plan was put into place. And it was all legal. 

Read how Barney Curley pulled that off and became a legend in Irish horse racing and a real hero in his later years at Damn Interesting. 

(Image credit: Jonathan Billinger) 

You might think your parents were cheap, but they'd prefer to be called thrifty. That may be all well and good for everyday people who have to live on a budget, but the rich are not like you and me. Once someone decides that acquiring money is their goal, they tend to not want to let any of it get away. Some very rich people in history turned this desire into an obsession, even to the detriment of their own health and well-being. Since money is power, it also worked to the detriment of their families, employees, tenants, and everyone around them. Weird History tells us about ten of these rich misers who wasted their lives hoarding money as if their lives depended on it. Money is no good if you don't use it in some way, and you can't take it with you when you die, so we can assume that these folks were mentally ill. Luckily, this obsession is an illness that most of us easily avoid by not being rich. 

In 2009, the book Star Wars, the Essential Atlas was released. It was full of maps, but the galaxy far, far away was much bigger than anything that could be printed in a book. Eventually, a map of the entire galaxy was posted as an online supplement to the atlas. The internet allows us to zoom in on the galaxy map containing hundreds of planets so that we can actually read their names. You have to wonder how many nights Lucas stayed up late thinking of planet names, but he probably had plenty of help from associates and hardcore fans. 

I found Exegol first, then eventually Alderaan, Coruscant, Kashyyyk, and Jakku, but I had to refer to the index to find Tatootine. I also found a planet named Klatooine. Each square on the grid is supposed to represent 5,000 light years, which is mind-blowing when you think of all the characters who traveled from planet to planet in the same vehicles they used to travel between locations on a planet. Still not nearly as mind-blowing as twins separated at birth running into each other far, far away from their home planets. -via Nag on the Lake 

The Snake Pit in northern Idaho dates back to either 1879 or 1880. It's a bit unclear because the wild frontier in those days was, well, wild. The menu includes specialties of the West, including Rocky Mountain Oysters. That means deep fried bull testicles served "as long as the bulls cooperate." An order of them comes with blue cheese or spicy ranch for dipping.

The Snake Pit is the oldest restaurant in Idaho still in operation. The Takeout has researched such eateries in all fifty states. For my own Texas, that's Scholz Garten in downtown Austin. This classic German Texan eatery dates back to 1866.

Photo: The Snake Pit

Maru, the Japanese cat who loved boxes, has gone to the Rainbow Bridge. 

Maru was born in 2007, and soon became internet famous for his antics. He was a chunky cat with an inscrutable expression who tried to fit into any box, no matter how small. Here is our first posted video of Maru. People loved to watch Maru whatever he was doing, from discovering new toys to walking through the grass. Maru was certified by Guinness World Records for having the most views for an animal on YouTube in 2017. The video above is a compilation of Maru's earliest videos from 2008. Maru celebrated his 18th birthday in May of this year. He was diagnosed with lung cancer and died this week.   


You can see the videos we've posted of Maru in our archives. Our hearts go out to Maru's human, known only as mugumogu, and his fellow cats Hana and Miri. 

-via Metafilter 

The National School Lunch Program came about when President Harry Truman signed it into law in 1946. That may seem to be the entire story in a nutshell, but the federal government jumped on the idea at least 50 years after it really started, with private, municipal, and state programs. The idea of children going to school with nothing to eat for six or seven hours sounds awful to us now, but that's the way it was before reform programs began in the late 19th century. Sure, some kids brought lunch or went home to eat, but many just did without because their families were poor. 

The women's reform groups, the same activists who advocated for women's suffrage and alcohol prohibition, organized local support for hot lunches served at school. The local pilot programs, paid for by charities and served by volunteers, showed results immediately as children gained weight and earned better grades. The menus from these early programs show that meat was not served in order to keep costs down. Read about the early efforts that led to American school lunches at Fishwrap. -via Strange Company 

(Image source: Library of Congress) 

You might think it's still early in the year to be posting about bats, but you know how Halloween creep is. Some people celebrate their creepy side all year round. For me, bats are a summertime thing, and they've just now abandoned my house to migrate south for the winter. At any rate, bats are fascinating once you get over the ick factor. 

Bats are masters at flying, although they do it differently from birds. They aren't all that great at walking, but they try. Some can even swim! That phrase "blind as a bat" doesn't mean anything, because bats can see quite well, thank you. They only use echolocation because they fly in the dark. There are so many species of bat that their specialized diets cover just about anything available, which means their biology differs greatly as well. 

This video contains NSFW language. There's a 65-second skippable ad at 5:40 

In 1899, a bar in San Francisco unveiled a new idea to capture customers' money. It was a coin-operated phonograph that would play a song on a wax cylinder. The sound was lousy, but that was the beginning of what we later came to know as the jukebox. In 1927, the first such vending machine with multiple records and amplified sound came out, and America fell in love with the jukebox. 

Playing a song on a jukebox was much cheaper than buying records, much less the equipment to play them on. But the real genius was the machine's ability to tabulate how many times a song was played, and therefore how popular it was. Radio didn't keep track of such things in the 1920s, but caught on eventually. Meanwhile, the Mafia got involved, renting out machines and pushing songs from the studios they also owned. By the early 1940s, there were half a million jukeboxes around the country. But they really exploded after World War II, just in time to track the popularity of a new genre of music called rock and roll. Read up on the history of the jukebox at Smithsonian. 

(Image credit: Ethan Long) 

Freddie Mercury reportedly once said, "Do what you want with my music darling, just don't make it boring." This is anything but. 

The Ndlovu Youth Choir was formed in 2009 at a childcare facility in Elandsdoorn, Limpopo, South Africa. They are all grown up now, but are not about to change the name. They released their first album in 2019 after appearing on the TV competition show America's Got Talent, when they made it to the final round. 

The Ndlovu Youth Choir got authorization from Queen to cover "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the isiZulu language of the Zulu people of South Africa. Or partially, because some of the song is in English. It is also partially a cappella, with a band joining in halfway through. The singing is sublime, the staging is sumptuous, and the video is pure eye candy. You can see more from the Ndlovu Youth Choir at their YouTube channel. -via Damn Interesting 

Black Geeks of Dragon Con shared this photo of a cosplayer at the most recent Dragon Con in Atlanta. Stevie Wonder Woman is as beautiful as Aphrodite, wiser than Athena, swifter than Mercury, and as smooth as Marvin Gaye.