The Original Series prompted the creation of some very strange merchandise. Most notably, the notorious Spock helmet never appeared in the Original Series, although it did make an appearance in the more recent comedy Lower Decks.

Like the Spock helmet (officially "Space Fun Helmet"), the Astrotank was clearly created by a design team that had never watched Star Trek or did not care about product topicality at all. It had Star Trek written on the side and a sticker vaguely resembling the Starfleet logo. Tanks made only two appearances on Enterprise and none of them looked like this . . . thing.

Still, you can buy an Astrotank if you wish. They're occasionally listed on eBay, albeit for steep prices.

The Astrotank and Space Fun Helmets are only two bizarre items of Star Trek merchandise produced. You can see 7 others at Star Trek's official webpage, including a Star Trek V marshmallow dispenser.

-via @TheMekon_Venus

There's an issue that we need to talk about--something that we've all known about for a long time but have avoided addressing directly.

We're talking about the elephant in the room. Specifically, we're talking about this wild elephant that walked into a grocery store near the Khao Yai National Park in Thailand.

The elephant is named (by humans, we don't know what he calls himself) Plai Biang Lek. The Associated Press reports that shop owner Kamploy Kakaew recorded the elephant shoplifting rice crackers, dried bananas, and a sandwich.

As I said, Plai Biang Lek shoplifted these items; he made no attempt to pay for them. Although he left without attacking any humans, he did steal from them.

Shameful.

Legends have come down to us from ancient times about dead bodies that rise from the grave to terrorize the living. That's where we get the concept of vampires, zombies, and revenants. But fear of the dead goes back much further, to the Neolithic era, as we find more burials that have been engineered to keep a body from rising again. As these finds get older and older, we have to think about why we bury the dead in the first place. Deliberate burials go back at least 100,000 years, although archaeologists still argue about how deliberate some of these graveyards really were. And burial practices of ancient humans are hard to discern. Were stones placed on top of graves to keep animals from digging them up, or to keep the dead from coming back to haunt us?

Different burial sites have vastly different customs, which come from the dominant culture, but some graves even in the same graveyard appear to have extra steps that make this one burial different from those around it. What do these burial customs say about the way that person was regarded? Or were they "pinned down" so that they couldn't rise up and spread the disease that killed them? Read about the research into the long history of our fear of the dead returning at Aeon.  -via Real Clear Science   

(Image credit: Alissa Mittnik, Chuan-Chao Wang, Jiří Svoboda, Johannes Krause)

The sixth film in The Karate Kid franchise is in theaters now. Karate Kid: Legends brings Ralph Macchio and Jackie Chan together. Chan's character was also in the 2010 movie The Karate Kid, starring Jaden Smith, which was a remake with the same plot as the 1984 original, except it took place in China. The movie did well, but you might be surprised to learn that it was the highest grossing of all the Karate Kid films. That's because it was not only set in China, it was a hit in China.

But what was shown in China was not quite the same movie. Knowing how lucrative the Chinese market could be, the producers of The Karate Kid bent over backwards to get the film in Chinese theaters. For one thing, there is no karate in China, it is kung fu, so the movie was titled Gong Fu Meng (Kung Fu Dream). It was edited differently from the American version, with the spotlight on Chinese movie stars who got little screen time in the American version. Some plot points were changed, too, to please Chinese censors. Read up on how The Karate Kid was changed for the Chinese audience at Den of Geek.

I never thought about the fact that Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" didn't have a music video. See, in 1973 when the song was new, music videos weren't a thing. It was another ten years before MTV came along, and by then we had concert footage and memories to go with the song. Well now, the band has an official music video for "Free Bird." It's nothing like what you thought of the song at the time, but it's perfect for 2025.

If there were a music video produced for the song back in the 1970s, it would probably have had a visual representation of the lyrics, about a guy who couldn't stay in a relationship because he was had to fly away and enjoy his freedom. Instead, this video evokes the emotions and memories that people of a certain age (like the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd) have when they hear the song. "Free Bird" was a part of the soundtrack of your life 50 years ago, a rather magical time for those who were there. -via Laughing Squid

In 1973, Gary Gygax and Don Kaye founded the firm TSR -- Tactical Strategic Rules. The next year, this company created Dungeons & Dragons.

This cultural phenomenon had humble origins. Those origins include a hobby shop named the Dungeon Hobby Shop which Gygax established in 1976 at 723 Williams Street in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. TSR went through varied fortunes before Wizards of the Coast purchased the company in 1997. So did the hobby shop, which eventually became a museum about Dungeons & Dragons. It closed several months ago.

Now the building is for sale. You can see more photos of this magnificent historical landmark at the realtor's website.

-via @DungeonNoir

Constrained writing is when an author decides to limit the words, grammar, or style they use. The most common form of constrained writing is certain forms of poetry, when the meter and the rhymes follow a set pattern. But some writers take it much further, for example, writing an entire book without the letter "e" appearing at all, or telling a story without verbs. You have to wonder how much that interferes with the reader's enjoyment, or even comprehension of the subject matter. Some of these books would be considered stunts to impress a small audience, and they did not become bestsellers.

However, the most famous example of constrained writing was when publisher Bennett Cerf challenged Dr. Seuss to write a complete story using 50 different words or less. Seuss responded with Green Eggs and Ham, which won that bet and became a classic. That kind of constrained writing is called "mandated vocabulary." Read about other types of constrained writing, such as lipogram, rhopalism, tautogram, palindrome, and more at Mental Floss.  

Why would you name a car "Raincoat"? Because it was small enough to drive through your front door, so you don't have to get out and walk in the rain!

DAF founder Hub van Doorne designed this car with just that idea in mind. This 1943 DAF Mobile Raincoat looks like an oversized roller skate, or a clown car. Indeed it was used for that purpose eventually. If you think the narrowness is weird, wait until you hear about all the other features. It had one wheel in front, with front wheel drive. To drive in reverse, you steered until that drive wheel was backwards- which meant it could go as fast backward as it could forward. It also had a fabric roof, just in case you got stuck somewhere and couldn't open the door. Being able to park inside the house meant that the Nazis wouldn't see or appropriate your car. But I'd bet that Mom didn't much like the muddy tire tracks on the floor.  

I'm glad you asked!

Cutter Wood has a new book out titled Earthly Materials: Journeys through Our Bodies' Emissions, Excretions, and Disintegrations. It examines the science of our excretory systems. An exerpt available at Harper's Magazine summarizes the numbers.

3,500 kilograms of feces will pass out of your body, assuming that you live 75 years. That would overflow a 20-foot long shipping container. These deposited feces will be matched with 38,000 liters of urine.

Wood also provides numbers for total amounts of hair, semen, menses, tears, and energy measured in joules. This is all information that you will need for future conversation starters.

-via TYWKIWDBI | Photo: Jason Unbound

Singer Michael Geier, better known as his clownish persona Puddles Pity Party, was a friend of the late Paul Reubens--now gone from us nearly two years. In his latest music video, Puddles offers a melancholy version of the theme song to Reubens's iconic show Pee-wee's Playhouse.

The original theme had Cindi Lauper's sped-up voice cheerfully welcoming audiences to Saturday morning joy with Pee-wee Herman. Puddles, though, mourns the passing of Reubens. He offers slow lamentations, then uses an enormous balloon to make fart noises.

-via Laughing Squid

These Dominican friars take their name from a line by Southern writer Flannery O'Connor, who described herself as a "hillbilly Thomist" -- a woman of the Deep South steeped in the thought of theologian Thomas Aquinas.

Based out of a Dominican center in Washington, D.C., the men began recreationally playing together in 2014. They then used their music a means to evangelize their faith while connecting with secular audiences who appreciate traditional bluegrasss music.

The Hillbilly Thomists have released four albums from 2017 to 2024. Much of their music is available on the YouTube channel of an official Dominican publication.

-via J.R.R. TolKee

The guy who discovered coffee is said to be an Ethiopian goat herder named Kaldi. He noticed his goats dancing energetically after they consumed the beans of a coffee plant, which grew wild there at the time. After trying them himself, there was no turning back. You can see a real history of coffee in a previous video.

Ryan George, on the other hand, retells the story from the perspective of a guy who will try anything, and that includes boiling beans and drinking the resulting sludge. In this scenario, he is the first person to ever do so. His friend cannot believe the stupidity of this act, until he tries some coffee himself. The video is caffeinated, so it goes pretty fast and is only two and half minutes long. The rest is an ad. The moral of the story is, don't drink brown water unless someone else has already done it and survived.

Hit songs written to protest something are often quite clear at the time. They should be so now, when everyone has access to what's going on in the news. Or maybe not, considering the astonishing number of people who don't keep up with news. But even so, the poetic lyrics of protest songs that become classics can be confusing 40, 50, or 60 years later. When I saw this list, I immediately opened it to see if I knew the meaning behind all of them. After all, I am old and remember when these songs were new. Alas, I had missed the mark on two of them, and there was one song I'd never heard of.

Take the Buffalo Springfield song "For What It's Worth." The list writer said that many young people today assume it's a Vietnam War protest song. I thought, no, listen to the lyrics. It's about police brutality against those who protested against the war. But I found out that was wrong as well. Turns out it was a local issue in Los Angeles, and I was a kid in Kentucky. In fact, geography explains all my failures in this subject. See if you can recall the meaning of five old protest songs at Cracked.

We've had Frankenstein for more than 200 years, since Mary Shelley gave us what is considered the first science fiction story. The concept of a man playing God but getting it all wrong is universal, and it's still a story we never get tired of. The latest cinematic Frankenstein comes from writer/director Guillermo del Toro. Oscar Isaac stars as Dr. Victor Frankenstein, and Jacob Elordi is the monster, although we don't get a good look at him in the first teaser trailer. We do get a sense of his size and power. Frankenstein is scheduled to be released on Netflix in November. Why not in October for Halloween? Del Toro, who has been developing this project for decades, says "the movie will not be a horror movie, but an incredibly emotional story." I dunno, horror is an emotion, isn't it? The comments at YouTube are mostly how this should be released in theaters. -via Fark

Thomas Howard, the 14th Earl of Arundel, visited his estates in Shropshire in the year 1635, and met a tenant farmer who had recently celebrated his 152nd birthday. Impressed, he insisted that Thomas Parr accompany him to London, where the old man stayed at the earl's home, met the king, and enjoyed high-class dining and sumptuous accommodations. But within months, he died. Parr's story was recorded in a poem by John Taylor, and then picked up by writers, artists, and storytellers of all kinds. Thomas Parr left no descendants, but his name and fame lived on for hundreds of years.

No one at the time seemed to question Parr's advanced age, but there was much speculation about how he lived so long and why he died. Was it the foul air and water pollution of the city? Or was it the rich food and luxurious lifestyle that he wasn't used to? Two hundred years after Parr's death, Herbert Ingram appeared to have figured it out when he produced Parr’s Life Pills, one of the earlier patent medicines that promised a long life. It was marketed as being a mixture that Old Parr himself discovered but shared with no one during his lifetime. Read about Thomas Parr and his postmortem fame at The Public Domain Review.  -via Nag on the Lake