Nicole Pesce is a concert pianist of the highest caliber. She's been at work since early childhood, having memorized over 500 songs by the age of  7. Now, as an adult, she's personally composed over 300 and is famous for her comedic performances reminscent of the late Victor Borge.

In this concert delivered in 2011, Pesce imagined what the classic tune "Happy Birthday" would sound like if it had been written by famous classical composers. She mixes up that song with Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata", Chopin's "Military Polonaise", Brahms's "Lullaby", Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor", and a Mozart piece that I can't name.

For the final bit, Pesce imagines Mozart performing it while very drunk. Quite athletically, she plays the piano while upside down. Pesce takes her inspiration from a particular scene in the film Amadeus.

-via Nag on the Lake

There's a Facebook group called simply Funny Signs. Anyone can go look, and 4500 people have joined in order to post funny signs. Be warned that it is a time sink, as you keep scrolling to see the strangeness of modern signs. See, we ignored posted signs for so long that those who create them had no choice but to get creative just on the off chance that you might read one. And creativity pays off!

It's amazing what you can find entertaining if you just pay attention. You can see a roundup of 40 such signs at Bored Panda, or go directly to the Facebook group to keep up with the flood of incoming signs. 

Finnish madman Lauri Vuohensilta (previously at Neatorama) loves to destroy things in dramatic fashion. He's managed to obtain some high-performance fireworks to blow up various objects like handbags and mail boxes, but the ultimate goal is to blow up the toilet from his father's workshop. Now, to be honest, it appears that the toilet was being replaced anyway, and they took it outside to give it a respectful send off after 50 years of service. We also get to meet Lauri's father, and find that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. The elder Vuohensilta finds the explosion a success, noting that at least the toilet doesn't leak anymore. But wait! There's more! They also blow up a washing machine and a car. "That was a big boom!" A good time was had by all. -via Fark

The ancient human species known as Denisovans were first identified by fossil fragments in Siberia. More were found in Tibet. And although Denisovans disappeared as a species 50,000 years ago, DNA studies show that traces of Denisovan DNA exist today in people throughout southeast Asia. And now scientists have finally found a Denisovan fossil in southeast Asia, in Laos to be exact. Samples of sediment removed in 2018 from Tam Ngu Hao 2, also known as Cobra Cave, contain animal teeth and a human child's molar. The tooth, estimated to be 164,000 to 131,000 years old, is almost certainly Denisovan. It shares some morphological dimensions of Neanderthal teeth, but no remains of Neanderthals have ever been discovered that far south in Asia.    

We know that several human species inhabited Asia at one time or another, including Denisovans, H. erectus, H. neanderthalenis, H. floresiensis, H. luzonensis, and H. sapiens. We also know that they interbred, although the exact timeline of the interactions between each species is not yet clear. Read more about the new Denisovan identification at Archaeology World. -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: Fabrice Demeter, et al)

Rejection, whether is from a job or a date, can be painful. But sometimes, when it happens, the person turning us away can be kind about it.

David Attenborough, a British broadcaster most famous for creating and narrating nature programs, such as Life on Earth, has a public reputation as a gentleman. He does not casually cut down people who seek his aid.

James Mielke, a producer for the video game design studio Limited Run Games, once attempted to enlist Attenborough as a voiceover artist for the game Jupiter & Mars. That's an underwater, immersive VR experience, so Attenborough would be an ideal narrator.

Attenborough thanked Mielke for the invitation, but demurred. He doesn't do fiction narration in order to maintain a specific public image. But he let Mielke down gently.

-via Richard Eisenbeis

I posted a free-floating meme for a laugh and ended up learning something new. This illustration from a medieval manuscript isn't a tucking-in bird, it's a caladrius. The caladrius bird was usually white, and often lived with kings. A medieval healer would be well-equipped to own, or at least know, a caladrius because of their healing and diagnostic abilities.

The dung of the caladrius was believed to cure blindness, but this remedy was rather a mixed blessing since it required the direct application of guano in the eyes of the afflicted.  But the real value of the caladrius was in its infallible prognostic abilities.  If it was brought into a sickroom and turned away from the man or woman within, that person would surely die.  If, however, the caladrius kept his gaze on the ill person and 'directed itself towards his face' (sometimes this is depicted quite literally; see below), it was a different story.  After staring down the sick man or woman, the caladrius would fly into the air, taking the illness with it, and the patient was destined to make a full recovery.    

You rarely see any depictions of a caladrius bird after the 15th century, but Saturday Night Live featured one in a skit called Theodoric of York.

See more illustrations of the caladrius and you can learn something new, too, at the British Library's Medieval Manuscripts blog.  -Thanks Kolo Jezdec!

It wasn't easy to stay cool before the invention of air conditioning, and even harder before we had electric power. But some of our Founding Fathers were able to invest in a Fan Chair. The chair, invented by musical instrument maker John Cram, had pedals somewhat like those of a sewing machine, which powered a simple fan that moved back and forth to create a slight breeze on the user's face. The version you see above is somewhat of an improvement, relying on the action of rocking the chair to move the fan.

This is just one gadget from a roundup of eight methods of keeping cool before air conditioning at Mental Floss, most of which we don't use anymore. To be honest, I really would like a sleeping porch. I've known a few people who had them, and they are nice as long as there's a roof for rain and a good screen for insects.   

(Image credit: U.S. National Archives)

This video starts off assuring us that we won't be swallowed by a whale. Then it goes into details of "what if?" The problem I have with the presentation is the word "swallowed." In many of the cases, a better word would be "ingested," because there's a big difference between finding yourself in a whale's mouth and finding yourself in a whale's stomach. In fact, there's only one whale that could theoretically swallow a human, but plenty that might ingest a human. Still, we can't help but imagine being eaten when we see these gigantic ocean creatures. Don't worry, your chances of being ingested by a whale are smaller than being chewed up by a shark. You're welcome. -via Boing Boing

So I ordered a cake from a renowned bakery in Nagpur, through #Swiggy. In the order details I mentioned “Please mention if the cake contains egg”. I am speechless after receiving the order 👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/WHN0Ht20r0

— Kapil Wasnik (@kapildwasnik) May 20, 2022

Remember the telephone game, where a message is sent from person to person to see how mangled it gets? Swiggy is an online service for ordering and delivering food in India. Such services can make life simpler, but we all know that communication gets garbled when a message has to go through too many people, or even apps. This can reach ridiculous degrees when someone fills out the wrong field, and miscellaneous instructions get put where the cake decoration should go. It wasn't the first time this happened with Swiggy.

Dear @swiggy_in , thank you so much.. pic.twitter.com/ZAQ5y3g0hZ

— @run (@arunnair86) December 13, 2021

Then other people responded in the Twitter thread, although we don't know where they ordered their cakes.

Why shouldn't he be? It's his birthday!😂

— GubbWerks Misericordial (@GubbWerks) May 20, 2022

See more of these in the Twitter thread. Some are pretty old, but they are still funny! -via reddit

NASA has been receiving some glitchy data from Voyager I. Yes, you may be surprised to learn that Voyager is sending and receiving signals from earth, which are a little bit concerning lately. Data from its articulation and control system (AACS), which control the probe's orientation, don't match what is happening onboard. How would they know? Because if the data sent back was correct, the antenna would not be pointing toward earth, and we wouldn't have received the signals. Voyager's signals are still strong, and engineers are trying to pinpoint the problem.

But they really don't consider it a terrible problem. Voyager was launched in 1977, and honestly wasn't expected to send back signals this long. It is now outside the solar system, 14.5 billion miles (23.3 billion kilometers) away. NASA engineers have to be specially trained to use its "obsolete" but still working equipment. When it launched, computers were programmed by punch cards and those of us who weren't programmers were giving up our 8-track players for cassettes. Its partner Voyager II is close behind, at 12.1 billion miles (19.5 billion kilometers) away from earth, and has shown no problems in communication. Read an update on the 45-year-old V-gers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  -via Geeks Are Sexy

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Kingsland, Arkansas, has a Cash flow problem. The town is the birthplace of country musician Johnny Cash, and features a silhouette of the Man in Black on its water tower. Last week, someone shot the tower with amazing aim, and started a leak in a "very sensitive area" of the silhouette. For days, the image of Cash has appeared to be peeing on the town. Unlike cities in the west, Kingsland is not suffering a water shortage, and the effects on residents' water flow should be minimal. Kingsland authorities are concerned about the cost to repair the leak, estimated to be around $5,000. That may seem trivial, but it's a stretch for a small town with a limited budget. However, the viral story should be well worth it if the city were to launch a GoFundMe account. Since the initial report, a suspect has been arrested in the incident. Stephen Colbert addressed the story with a couple of musical numbers. -via Metafilter, where you'll find all the puns.

When does advertising become a historic landmark? Not just yet, at least as it concerns the rural barns leading us to Rock City, and that's why they are disappearing. Rock City is a tourist attraction atop Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga in Tennessee. It was founded by Garnet Carter in 1932. Carter needed to advertise Rock City, but only to people who could travel there. Roadside ads made sense, but billboards were expensive to build. And that's why barn roofs were painted in large white letters on a black background with short slogans, the shortest being "See Rock City." Another barn down the road would give more information. Farmers were happy to have their barns painted free, and also got a small stipend or free entrance to Rock City. Oh yeah, and they were all painted by one guy.  

The Rock City barns intrigued me as a child on road trips with the family, and actually helped me learn to read. The Interstate Highway System was inaugurated in 1956, but it took decades to complete in mountainous areas. Even more threatening to the painted barns was the 1965 Highway Beautification Act, which restricted billboard advertising. At one time, there were 900 barns directing travelers to Rock City, and today there are only 70 that are being maintained. Read the history of the See Rock City barns at Atlas Obscura.

They say you should let sleeping dogs lie, but Mabel is twitching, so Mr. Andrew Cotter (previously at Neatorama) assumes she is dreaming of chasing squirrels. Why do we always assume that? Because dogs love to chase squirrels. But in this video, we see that Mabel has higher aspirations. She dreams of being a police detective and solving crimes! Oh wait, no, she's dreaming of being a TV star in a series about a police detective and her partner! And now Cotter's fans are demanding a full episode of Willing and Mabel every week. Kudos to Cotter for his American accent adopted for the TV show.  -via Laughing Squid

We've posted about Alan Smithee, a movie director who doesn't exist, but manages to get credit for a lot of them. It's a pseudonym for directors who don't want their named attached to a film they've just directed. To catch up on the concept, read the explainer here.

In 1997, there was a movie that hopped onto the Alan Smithee joke big time. A movie named Trio starred Sylvester Stallone, Whoopi Goldberg, and Jackie Chan. It turned out to be awful after the studio recut the footage, so the director wanted to disown the movie. However, Trio isn't a real movie, but rather a movie-within-a-movie. The director, played by Eric Idle, couldn't take his name off the movie because his real name actually was Alan Smithee. Are you still with me? This was the premise of a comedy titled An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn.

But to make the story even more meta, An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn was written and produced by Joe Eszterhas and directed by Arthur Hiller. Eszterhas edited the film, and the result was so awful that Hiller demanded his name be taken off the project. So, An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, about a director named Alan Smithee, was released with a directing credit to... Alan Smithee.

The movie was so awful that it returned $52,850 on a $10 million budget, and won five Razzies. It was so awful that the Directors Guild of America changed their rules about crediting a movie to Alan Smithee. If you are still confused, read the more in-depth version of this story at Cracked. 

Japanese YouTuber Kurahito Craft made a completely functional and sturdy cushion entirely out of wood. the screenshot above illustrates how. By cutting notches into opposing sides of the columns, he used the material's natural flexibility to create springs. When all 60 wood springs are bound together and capped, they combine into a flexible cushion that doesn't break under pressure. 

To put his design to the test, Kurahito stood on the assembled cushion with his full bodyweight, as well as gradually reduced the number of springs down to only four. So as long as the springs are prevented from flipping sideways, they hold up well.

-via The Awesomer