Eric Carr is a master percussionist. At his YouTube channel EMC Productions, he teaches the world how to play drums and not how to play drums, as well as inventively uses drums for unconventional purposes. In the latter category, Carr recently compiled a few dozen drums into a mostly QWERTY-arranged keyboard.

In this video, Carr never speaks a word. He instead dictates his narration into his drum kit as he describes the project, tells a percussion joke, and performs songs, the most challenging of which is "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" from Mary Poppins.

In the comments, Carr notes that the hardest words for him to spell were "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" and, a YouTuber's favorite, "subscribe".

-via The Awesomer

Twitter user @WSBChairman made this map using data from Google Trends. Huge crowds are going to see the new movie about Barbie as well as the biopic of Robert Oppenheimer. There's crossover marketing involved as people blend the two movies. Many people are going to see both films.

But, ultimately, you have to choose which movie to see first even if you are going to watch both. These data might suggest which movie holds dominance in different states. Right now, New Mexico is going hard for the site of Oppenheimer's most famous project. Mississippi, which has never experienced an atomic detonation, is bright pink for Barbie.

-via Terrible Maps

Stockholm Syndrome is the name given to the psychological phenomenon of captives emotionally bonding with their captors. It's named after a particular bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden in 1973. During and after their captivity, the hostages criticized police and supported the robbers.

Stockholm Syndrome is not the only psychological condition named after a city. At Atlas Obscura, Frank Jacobs lists other conditions named after Detroit, Boston, Lima, London, Brooklyn, Paris, Florence, Venice, Amsterdam, and Jerusalem.

Paris, Florence, and Venice have peculiar conditions experienced by tourists. Lima Syndrome, which refers to the 1996 hostage crisis at the Japanese ambassadorial residence, is the opposite of Stockholm Syndrome in that the captors become too sympathetic with their captives.

The most interesting on the list is, perhaps, Brooklyn Syndrome. It refers to being argumentative and obstinate with other people, a trait identified with people from Brooklyn, New York.

Photo of the Lima hostage crisis by César Astudillo.

If you're traveling back in time to Sixteenth Century London, where are you most likely to be murdered? It's a good idea to know before you make the trip. Fortunately, the University of Cambridge's Violence Research Centre has an interactive guide for that time period, as well as the Thirteenth Century.

Each pin on the map represents a recorded murder. Click on one (at the site, not here) to read details about the case. You can sort results by the gender of the victim, the type of weapon used (quarterstaffs were surprisingly common), and the year of the murder.

-via David Thompson

It's called the Bumpair. We receive a history of the development of this invention at Core 77. An early version was paired with a scooter rental company that stored one of these self-inflating helmets with each bike. Checking out a scooter on an app triggered the helmet's inflation.

The new version is available for individual consumers. You can inflate it by mouth or hand pump when needed. I realize that it sounds like you're wearing a pool float on your head, but the Bumpair 2.0 passes Europe's official safety standards for bike helmets. And, of course, it looks really cool.

Photos: Bumpair

"Well, I deserved that."

This warrior is a master archer. She's shooting perhaps 100 feet from across her backyard through a ring that is about an inch wide. She nails three shots, one right after another. A victory dance ensues after each. Her phone records the hits to great visual effect due to its proximity to the target.

Then, with her final shot for the night, she nails her phone itself. The rest of the video (after the decisive blow at the 2:10 mark) shows her laments and attempts at repair.

Content warning: foul language. You'd swear, too, if you just shot your phone.

-via Born in Space

I decided today that I’m going to see if I can find the restaurant with the highest number of brothers. I am on strike and have nothing better to do with my time. Please join me. pic.twitter.com/BGY3r04PyX

— Dan Amira (@DanAmira) July 17, 2023

Dan Amira, a humor writer for The Daily Show and modern-day Renaissance man, recently decided to expand our knowledge of the human condition by locating the largest number of brothers attributed to any restaurant in the world.

The resulting Twitter thread shows an escalating number of brothers that either founded, worked at, or serve as mascots for eateries. Okay, so two brothers can start a pizzeria. That's fine. But let's add another brother and another until it's brothers all the way down. The vast number of brothers eventually stops looking like a family and more closely resembles a clone army.

Rob Worling is an extreme ice skater who likes to push winter sports to their limits and beyond. It's not enough for him to just play hockey in the winter and tennis in the summer. He has to combine them by setting up a tennis court on an ice rink. I find it amusing, but also compelling because I can see it thriving as a competitive sport.

Worling's other adventures on ice include playing ice basketball, ice football, and ice soccer. The last of these adapted sports looks particularly demanding because of the need to dribble the ball and skate simultaneously without falling over.

-via @Figensport

Why do teeth decay? In our modern, enlightened times, we know that tooth decay is caused by acids created by bacteria that live in the mouth. But in Ancient and Medieval Europe, dentistry attributed tooth decay to worms that resided inside teeth and ate at them from the inside out.

Geraldine Gnych, a British scholar who holds a doctorate in history from Swansea University, wrote a blog post in 2017 describing the myth of tooth worms. The idea dates back to at least the First Century A.D. in the Roman Empire. Treatments included the use of henbane, a poison, in order to kill the worms. In small amounts, henbane acts as a sedative to ease the pain in the tooth without—hopefully—killing the patient.

Pictured above is a replica of an Eighteenth Century sculpture from France fancifully illustrating the tooth worms at work.

-via Museum of Curiosities | Photo: Michael Kowalski

Customs officials working a post between Hong Kong and mainland China were suspicious when a woman crossed the border. There was something off about her breasts. Their shape, at least as visible through her clothes, was unusual. When they conducted a search, the South China Morning Post reports, they found 5 live snakes concealed in her bra.

These were corn snakes, which originate in the United States. They're popular with reptile collectors in China. The woman kept the snakes in stockings (not just loose) in her bra. The South China Morning Post reports that the customs officials seized the snakes, but does not report on what happened to the woman.

-via Dave Barry

If someone says "classic American diner", a lot of us instantly form a shared mental image. Why? What goes into this motif? In this video from Architectural Digest, architect Michael Wyetzner traces the history of the American diner.

It begins with railroad dining cars, from which the "diner" gets its name. Many of the common design elements of the diner, such as the open kitchen, booth seating, and steel construction, originate from the necessities of rail travel. Some of these dining cars were parked offtrack, becoming the first proper diners.

After World War II, car travel overtook rail travel and diners adapted to the needs of people on the road. Many new diners were built with circular designs to maximize parking space. These geometric patterns matched up with images from the Space Race in a style that came to be called "Googie" after one particular diner.

Googie architecture culminated in the 1964 World's Fair in New York City. But the late 60s saw increased pessimism in American life and the end of this stylistic development. Buildings constructed in the Googie diner style thereafter were intended to have retro rather than futuristic aesthetics.

-via Kottke

Weird Universe introduces us to the works of John G. Bourke, an American professional soldier during and after the Civil War. He was a prolific writer throughout his career and took detailed notes about his observations of the Native American peoples that he encountered in the United States' wars against them.

In 1891, he compiled his own observations and those of other writers into his most famous work, Scatalogical Rites of All Nations: A Dissertation upon the Employment of Excrementicious Remedial Agents in Religion, Therapeutics, Divination, Witch-Craft, Love-Philters, etc. in All Parts of the Globe.

It's a book about how different cultures view, make use of, or separate themselves from urine and feces to remain physical and/or ritualistically clean. You can read it online here.

While in the US Army, Bourke was able to observe a lengthy Zuni ritualistic dance that included the drinking of urine.

Men of a certain age may appreciate helpful tips that Bourke accumulated through sources that reflect folklore across the world. There is no indication that the various medicinal uses of excretory materials were subjected to empirical testing, but that is certainly an option for modern scientists.

On Feb. 14, 1904, someone curious about the emerging possibilities of a key force of nature checked out James Clerk Maxwell's “An Elementary Treatise on Electricity” from a Massachusetts library. After 119 years, the book was finally returned. https://t.co/VdsAMMh9CF

— AP Oddities (@AP_Oddities) July 8, 2023

British scientist James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) really knew how to write a work of compelling scientific exposition. His book An Elementary Treatise on Electricity (available in full text on Google Books) can't stay on the shelves of the New Bedford Free Public Library in Massachusetts. After being checked out 119 years ago, it was just returned to that library.

A rare books librarian at another library found it among donations and noticed that there were no indications that the library-marked book had been formally withdrawn from the collection (such as the word WITHDRAWN ink-stamped on the title page). He sent it off to the New Bedford Free Library.

That library charges 5 cents a day for overdue materials. Thus the total fine should be about $2,100. But the library caps fines at $2 and the responsible patron is unknown, so the library is unlikely to recover either amount.

That time I hung my lovely gold Barney Gumble sign in the kitchen but quickly had to find a new place for it thanks to its terrifying reflection pic.twitter.com/LneUnYrheO

— Emily Cook (@Emelemy) July 7, 2023

Emily Cook, a video game producer, owns this lovely portrait of Barney Gumble from The Simpsons. Barney, the town drunk of Springfield, is delivering an ordinary beer-induced belch in the image, but its reflection resembles the haunted and terrorized soul of this broken man, whose potential is often alluded to but also shattered by alcohol.

The art is by British artist Alex May Hughes, who is noted for her shiny decorative signs. On her Instagram page, you can see psychedelic twists on The Simpsons and other sources of pop culture.

.@Outkast #HeyYa in the weather! #outkast #andre3000 @BigBoi pic.twitter.com/JIFbpRyJua

— Adam Krueger 💯 (@AdamKrueger) June 6, 2023

Adam Krueger is a television meteorologist in Houston, Texas. The common joke in Houston is "If you don't like the weather, just wait a moment." The weather is always volatile, except for the constant heat. Krueger thus has a lot to say while reporting from CW 39 News.

He has a lof fun on the job and his novel presenting style encourages many Houstonians to pay attention to his reports. Krueger finds ways to work song lyrics into his broadcasts. Embedded above is, for example, is "Hey Ya!" by Outkast.

On his Instagram page, you can find similar reports with "Uptown Funk" by Bruno Mars, "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen, and "Bust a Move" by Young MC.