X user @Msamlam shares this map owned by the National Library of Australia. It dates back to 1932, when Japan felt quite confident of its ability to be a major power in the world and the dominant power in eastern Asia. The illustrators depict in detail stereotypes of the peoples of the world.
The image of the United States includes a reference to the 1932 Summer Olympics, where Japan did quite well in swimming events.
The unplanned welcome crew!
— NASA's Johnson Space Center (@NASA_Johnson) March 18, 2025
Crew-9 had some surprise visitors after splashing down this afternoon.🐬 pic.twitter.com/yuOxtTsSLV
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 home 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 these different languages originating around the world.
-via Flowing Data
🍕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
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.
On the marvelously curious subreddit /r/DiWHY, redditor /u/carrieminaj asks why this door is shaped this way. One potential answer lies beneath the fold.
On March 4, a 4-year old boy in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin called 911 with an urgent problem: his mom was being bad and he needed the police to take her to jail. Specifically, the villainous mother had eaten his ice cream.
People magazine reports that when officers arrived on the scene, the boy had changed his mind. He was okay with them not taking his mother to jail so as long as he got ice cream. The negotiations were productive for all parties involved. The next day, Officers Gardinier and Ostergaard brought the child ice cream.
-via Dave Barry | Photo: Mount Pleasant Police Department
Much equipment should be purchased prior to the arrival of a baby in a home. A stroller is essential for parents on the go. And if you really want to set your baby apart from slower children, consider this luxurious, high-performance stroller by Italian supercar manufacturer Lamborghini.
Fast Company tells us about the Reef AL Arancio on sale from babycare product designer Silver Cross. Only 500 of these superstrollers will be made for only the most discriminating infants. It features a polycarbonate carry cot, precisely engineered suspension wheels, a handlebar finished by hand, and a brake pedal modeled after those on Lamboghini's own cars.
This is how you tell the world that your child is going places.
In Act 5, Scene 1 of Shakespeare's Hamlet, the eponymous character ponders mortality while holding the skull of Yorick, the late jester to the king.
David Tennant, who was the Tenth Doctor (not the tenth actor to play the Doctor) on Doctor Who, is a classically trained actor who has played Hamlet in the past. He would like to benefit future generations of actors once he has shuffled off this mortal coil. The Daily Mail reports that Tennant would like to donate his skull so that he can play Yorick in future productions of Hamlet.
Tennant is following a great Shakespearean tradition. Polish musician André Tchaikowsky donated his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company to serve as Yorick and Tennant himself has used that skull on the stage.
-via @azirascrowley
I ordered a @counterparts905 Heaven Let Them Die vinyl from Amazon and I instead received Clay Aikens latest Christmas album. I went through the replacement process and you’ll never guess what showed up today. The exact same Clay Aiken album. @brendan905 pic.twitter.com/KtbP9PJ2v4
— Tj (@letmeliveanddie) March 5, 2025
X user @letmeliveanddie ordered from Amazon a vinyl record of "Heaven Let Them Die," a song by the Canadian punk band Counterparts. Instead, Amazon sent him a Christmas music album by the soft rock star Clay Aiken.
@letmeliveanddie processed the return. Amazon sent him the Clay Aiken album again. And then a third time.
It is a portent.
-via Brendan Murphy
YouTuber Generic Entertainment illustrates formal and informal logical fallacies who are busy attempting to organize a meeting and then the leadership of their group. He plays all roles with improvised costumes, such as No True Scotsman with a bagpipe made of a plaid shirt and painter's tape as blue facepaint.
Their argument persists until the supreme fallacy arrives on the scene to aggressively arbitrate what he sees as a petty, meaningless, and ultimately fallacious dispute. Be sure to read the comments at the YouTube video, which are filled with appropriate jokes about the fallacies that did not attend the meeting.
-Thanks, Bruce!
HOUS is a Korean design firm that offers fresh, modern designs for home furnishings. Its product lineup includes a table that looks like a goofy monster and a mirror that frames the user within the perspective of a digital camera.
The firm's most recent design is a set of four stools that, when stacked on top of each other, resemble a hamburger.
I'll sit on one of the buns, each of which is cushioned.
-via Fairy Club
Can you imagine Star Trek as a Western? It's not that hard. The original series had "Spectre of the Gun," which directly referenced the shootout at the O.K. Corral. The Next Generation had "A Fistful of Datas", one of the more forgetable malfunctioning holodeck episodes. The time travel episode "Time's Arrow" is arguably a Western.
This Starfleet science division (hence the blue) officer would fit right in at a Ten Forward set in Dodge City. Miss Molly Heart wears the fetching outfit for @StarfleetCosplay.
Alexandra Dillon is an artist in Los Angeles who paints human figures on everyday objects. These faces add personalities to the tools. I'm especially fond of this cleaver that, with a terrified face anthropomorphizing it, creates a sense of horror for the viewer.
For many years, innovative public libraries have offered physical objects that patrons can check out. These include household tools, fishing gear, and toys. Such a collection is often called a "library of things."
The Sturgis Library in Barnstable, Massachusetts has a variety of things available for checkout, including a ghost hunting kit. This particular kit is sold by Ghost Stop, a paranormal investigation supply firm in Virginia. I think it's the Spirit Box Ghost Hunting Kit, which is on sale for $219.95.
This addition to the library's collections is a prudent choice, given that the Barnstable area has a known ghost infestation problem.
-via reddit
