What could possibly go wrong? Absolutely everything in this commercial for Etisalat, a telecommunications company. Helsinki-based filmmaker Nalle Sjoblad made this ad titled Moonwalk.

It makes no obvious sense at all. Why is it called Moonwalk? How does it promote Etisalat's services? Why are the people featured in 1 minute and 9 seconds of video making so many poor life choices?

I don't know the answers to any of these questions, but I want to watch this commercial over and over again.

-via Colossal

Anchorage, Alaska — We expect to be relieved when we go to the toilet, and that’s what Shannon Stevens expected as well when she went to the outhouse. But, as she sat down on the toilet, she felt something bite her butt, causing her to jump up and scream. Her brother Erik heard her scream from their yurt (which was about 150 feet away) and immediately carried with him his headlamp, and went to the outhouse.

“I opened the toilet seat and there’s just a bear face just right there at the level of the toilet seat, just looking right back up through the hole, right at me,” he said.

Once safely inside, they treated Shannon with a first aid kit. They determined it wasn’t that serious, but they would head to Haines if it worsened.

The next morning, they found bear tracks all over the property, but the bear had left the area. “You could see them across the snow, coming up to the side of the outhouse,” she said.

They figure the bear got inside the outhouse through an opening at the bottom of the back door.

Carl Koch, a biologist from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Wildlife Management, suspects that the bear who bit Shannon might have been a black bear. He also suspects that the bear did not really bite Shannon, but rather only swatted her with a paw. Nevertheless, Koch states that Shannon’s case is unique.

“As far as getting swatted on the butt when you’re sitting down in winter, she could be the only person on Earth that this has ever happened to, for all I know,” Koch said.

Read more about this unusual story over at AP News.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Julia Heinz MD via AP)

You’ve seen pizzas filled with pepperoni, cheese, or pineapples, but you might not have seen a pizza filled with marshmallows and bubble tea. That’s right. Something like that exists, but only for a limited time. Pizza Hut Singapore is offering the Bubble Tea Blossom Pizza until March 30, 2021. Of course, “but why?” would be a normal question to such weirdness.

Pizza Hut Singapore's Head of Marketing and Food Innovation Jayss Rajoo said the team put in some thought into the creation of the pizza.

“The team at Pizza Hut, Singapore’s leading pizza restaurant, takes pride in offering customers a moment’s relaxation from their busy, complex lives with a slice of simple, delicious pizza.

"We know that pizza is a firm family favorite of Singaporeans; so, we thought, why not combine it with another great Singaporean love – bubble tea?" he said in a statement.

Would you eat this pizza?

(Image Credit: AsiaOne/ Mashable)

You might expect that imported pop culture would be changed somewhat in order to be better understood in a different country, or to make it more relatable. That's not the only reason things get changed. Sometimes it's to make the finished product more lucrative, as in getting enough episodes of a TV show to sell in syndication. But one movie in this list was changed beyond all reason.

It's mind-blowing to think of Casablanca without Nazis, and without World War II. That's the whole point of the story! You can imagine it turned out to be about ten minutes long. I had to look that story up, and it's true. The German version of Casablanca brought the movie down from an hour and 42 minutes to an hour and 17 minutes, and wasn't particularly well received. See other movies and TV shows that changed dramatically when they crossed borders at Cracked.

Only a few people know about this, but Calvin Klein has a long-lost brother who grew up in another place. Cailv Kailun is also a designer, and has also designed his own apparel under his own name.

Image via Engrish.com

Last week, NASA landed another robot on Mars, one with its own helicopter, using a sky crane, 131 million miles away, after a journey of a year and a half. Now, NASA has released a video that shows the Perseverance rover landing on the red planet. Even if you watched the coverage live, this is something special. The point of view is from several GoPro-type cameras installed on the various components.

The views include a camera looking down from the spacecraft's descent stage (a kind of rocket-powered jet pack that helps fly the rover to its landing site), a camera on the rover looking up at the descent stage, a camera on the top of the aeroshell (a capsule protecting the rover) looking up at that parachute, and a camera on the bottom of the rover looking down at the Martian surface.

Notice the graphics at the bottom to keep us up on what stage the descent is in. It also contains audio from Mission Control and a reaction shot when it's all said and done. If all that's not exciting enough for you, there's also a fan version with music.    -via reddit

British YouTuber Tom Scott takes his audience on tours of strange places, events, and historical relics. Every video is an adventure in new knowledge.

Scott, like a lot of Britons, is in lockdown. So he can't travel widely, especially to indoor locations. He has run out of ideas that he can carry out while still in lockdown.

So Scott asked the AI program GPT-3 to create titles for videos based on his previous work, as well as a complete script for one of them. At the 5:32 mark, he reads a completely fictitious script given to him by GPT-3 about a Russian utopia built in Yorkshire by Nineteenth Century eccentrics.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly providing content creation, management, and curation tasks. Our own resident AI, a program called "Miss Cellania" does an excellent job of automatically searching for neat content and posting it here. We should expect to see similar AI encroachments in the future.

-via The Awesomer

In the summer of 1959, polio swept across Canada, causing panic among parents who feared for their children's lives and health. In Quebec, there were thousands of cases, and 88 people died. Folks lined up for vaccinations, but the supply of vaccine could not keep up.

By August, Montréal was waiting desperately for more vaccines. It was a great relief when a huge shipment of the cherry-red vials arrived from Connaught Labs at the end of the month. The supply was enough to cover the city, and the surplus was planned for redistribution across the province.

Yet the redistribution never came to pass. One man by the name of Jean Paul Robinson, a temporary vaccine worker, had found the circumstances too enticing. Robinson had been tasked with running vials between the various clinics. He knew there was a shortage and that people were desperate. He also knew where the main supply of vaccine was stored: at the Microbiology Institute in the University of Montréal.

At 3 a.m. on Aug. 31, 1959, Robinson and two accomplices broke into the university armed with revolvers. They first locked the night guard in a cage with 500 lab monkeys. The thieves then broke the lock on the massive refrigerator, looted all the cases of the vaccine and stole the guard’s car as the getaway vehicle. In the end, they made away with 75,000 vials, valued at $50,000 (equivalent to almost $500,000 today). Robinson rented an empty apartment building and stashed his prize.

The crime shocked the country. The next day, the city announced it had completely run out of its vaccine supplies. Reporters seized on the situation, publishing reports of desperate mothers turned away from vaccine clinics in vain.

While the vaccine was infinitely valuable, one has to wonder what Robinson thought he was going to do with 75,000 vials of it. The vaccine had to be kept cold, or it would lose effectiveness. Selling it would only draw scrutiny. It turns out that Robinson hadn't really thought his cunning plan all the way through. Read the story of the polio vaccine heist at The Conversation. -via Damn Interesting

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Instagram's @zillowgonewild posted the other day that John Travolta's home came on the market for $5,000,000. The house is located in Islesboro, Maine, and has 20 bedrooms. Travolta and his wife who passed away last year bought the said house as newlyweds in 1991, as reported by Press Herald.

I find this news to be bizarre since personally, I wouldn't want to sell something that has sentimental value and is a place with many memories. But what do you think?

Image Credits to zillowgonewild / Instagram

"I wish sleeping was a lucrative job."

Say no more! This LA-based content creator streamed himself sleeping on Twitch for a night, and earned $16,000! The stream lasted for 7 hours and as it turned out, this is a new trend on Twitch.

The LA-based content creator hopped on a new trend on the streaming platform, Twitch. People have been filming themselves sleeping where viewers are able to tip them in order to leave messages that disrupt their slumber. Andy set up text-to-speech recognition for his audience to trigger his Alexa to play loud music, imitate a dog barking, or make his alarm clock go off.

Viewers clearly had a good time messing around with Andy because he ended up with a whopping number of donations by the end of the stream. A memorable moment from his 7-hour broadcast was when a user scared him by saying someone was at the window.

Very tempting...

Video Credit: Asian Andy / Youtube

Daft Punk released their first video in five years today. "Epilogue" is mostly a clip from their 2006 film Electroma, and it serves as a goodbye to everyone. This video may be disturbing to sensitive viewers. Yes, the duo have broken up, or maybe just retired after 28 years. Read more about it at Pitchfork.  -via Metafilter

A supercut of people using typewriter in film and TV.

"You Give Love a Bad Name" by Bon Jovi was a catchy song, but you know what it needs? A disco beat!  Shahar Varshal mashed it up with Boney M's "Rasputin." Oh, those Russians...  -via Metafilter

For some reason I've been offered my first covid jab and am now wondering whether I'm actually much older than I think I am

— Liam Thorp 💙 (@LiamThorpECHO) February 16, 2021

Liam Thorp, the political editor of the Liverpool Echo, got a notice from the National Health Service that he needed to come in for a COVID vaccine. Thorp is 32 years old and has no condition that would warrant a vaccine at this stage of the rollout. Why was he flagged to get one? He called to ask if it were really his turn, which led to some checking. His doctor later called back to say there had been a mistake and he wasn't due for a shot yet.

I mean I’ve put on a few pounds in lockdown but not that many

— Liam Thorp 💙 (@LiamThorpECHO) February 17, 2021

For reference, a BMI of 40 or more is considered morbidly obese - so I'm not sure what this would have made me.

The man's nervous tone cracked into a laugh when I joked about putting on weight and losing a significant amount of height during the lockdown.

If I had been less stunned, I would have asked why no one was more concerned that a man of these remarkable dimensions was slithering around south Liverpool.

Of course, the story went viral, and Thorp is now known as "the Morbidly Obese Pancake Man." You can read the entire story at the Liverpool Echo. -via Nag on the Lake

Who doesn’t love a good and intentionally set up tragedy in a story? Tragedies in storytelling are usually associated with the ending of a story. However, it makes readers emotionally invested when their favorite characters have a good ending. People will talk more though, if a story ends tragically. Overly Sarcastic Productions discuss the different aspects of the well-used trope we all enjoy to read in fiction or watch unravel in shows.