Once upon a time, wolves were the stand-ins for any evil in folklore. There was a good reason for that, since hungry wolves were dangerous for small villages, and children had to be warned to stay out of the dark forest lest they become dinner. But when it's just a story and not a literal life lesson, wolves can be anything. The danger still comes from the dark and mysterious forest. 

Lesllie Pulsifer reworked the folk tale of Little Red Riding Hood into a new story titled The Wolves Are All Gone. It's an allegory about strangers with malicious intent upending the established way of life by frightening the populace. You have to let go of the traditional reputation of wolves in such stories to really understand the metaphor. Relating the tale to modern times, who the wolves are and who the stranger is all depends on your preconceived notions of friend and foe.

Pulsifer wrote the story, created the animation, and wrote and performed the music, which will give you an earworm. 

The movie Fantastic Four: First Steps will hit theaters on July 25th, and the marketing is ratcheting up quickly. Leading the pack is a pizza from Little Caesars that is a four-in-one combo. Each quadrant has different toppings: cheese, pepperoni, Italian sausage and bacon, and pepperoni and jalapeño. The jalapeño quadrant obviously represents the Human Torch, and the sausage quadrant looks like rocks, so it should represent The Thing. But which quadrant is Mr. Fantastic and which is The Invisible Woman? More importantly, how are we going to split this pizza when everyone wants the pepperoni and jalapeño slices? 

But that's just the beginning. The Fantastic Four will also appear on cereal boxes on grocery shelves, on boxes of limited edition Pop Tarts, on jugs of flavored blue milk, and on Snapple tea. Read about all of these food tie-ins that appear to tell us this movie is a kids film at io9.  

Mack Roesch was riding his bike near his home in Florida when he saw a raccoon with an aluminum can stuck on his head! The raccoon couldn't see and was wandering near the road, so he would have eventually become roadkill. Mack tried to pull the can off, but it was securely jammed on the raccoon's head. Not only that, but the scared creature was keen to attack anyone who touched him. But other strangers got involved. A woman used a yoga mat to pin the raccoon down while Mack went to get some tin snips. Then a construction worker stopped and used a truck mat. It took all three to free the raccoon, who didn't so much as say thanks before he scurried off into the woods. That's a lot of work for one raccoon, but saving the little fella made everyone feel warm all over. And Mack got a video. 

The picture above is of actor Pedro Pascal. You might know him from his roles in Game of Thrones, The Mandalorian, or The Last of Us. In 2023, Pascal was quoted as saying there is no good Mexican food in New York City. Annisha Garcia, owner of Son Del North Mexican restaurant in Manhattan's Lower East Side begs to differ, and he got the idea to stage a Pedro Pascal lookalike contest. The contest was yesterday. You'll have to click right on the picture to the third image to see the winner. He is George Gountas of Brooklyn, whose family and friends noted his resemblance to Pascal back in the days of Game of Thrones. His family insisted he enter the contest. 

Gountas, a lighting designer at The Daily Show, won $50 and a year's supply of burritos. We don't know how many burritos that is, but it's a nice haul for Fathers Day. At The New York Post, you can see all the contestants, a couple of whom actually have a passing resemblance to Pascal. -via Fark 

Update: get a better look at Gountas in the comments. 

A paradox is a statement that is internally self-contradicting. A conundrum is a confusing or difficult question. An unanswerable question can be either a paradox or a conundrum, or something different. In this compilation of such questions, there are a couple that depend on the way we use language, like how much is a heap, and whether a hot dog is a sandwich. Some refer to fictional scenarios, like the transporter on Star Trek. But others, even though they are dressed up in absurd situations, present a bend in logic as we know it. Oh sure, you can explain a few things by assuming that someone is lying, which is anything but illogical. Or you can spend way too much time overthinking the question. Besides, it's already too late to not do drugs in the 1970s. Kelevin presents nine different paradoxes that may keep you up at night. Which one you choose to obsess on is up to you, or you can spent nine sleepless nights pondering each one. This video contains some NSFW language. -via the Awesomer 

Lorkulup was a lion who lived in Kenya’s Maasai Mara wildlife reserve. The name Lorkulup means "runny nose" in Swahili. The lion's distinctive disheveled look came from the fact that he had a hole in his palate that made drinking difficult. He wasn't a dominant male as we think of the term, but the lionesses of his pride loved him. He was a mighty hunter who made sure his pride ate before he did, and he was gentle and attentive with the cubs. Lorkulup became a viral sensation in China, where he is called Quan Quan, loosely translated as "radio collar." Hundreds of fans began following Lorkulup and his pride via internet.  



In February, the news came that Lorkulup was dead. His head was severed from his body, supposedly by animal scavengers, although some believe he was killed by a human. The outcry from his fans in China was immediate. They have donated money for an investigation into Lorkulup's death, and for publicity to demand justice for the lion. Read about the unfortunate lion and his fans' response at Sixth Tone. 

-via Nag on the Lake 

We are used to seeing the Muppets on a studio set, where the puppeteers are beneath the floor- although we habitually suspend our disbelief and don't think about them. So who's controlling the Muppets when they go outside and show their entire bodies? Today, they might use GCI, but that wasn't really a thing when Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas aired in 1977 or when The Muppet Movie came out in 1979. Jim Henson and his crew had to think outside the box, literally, to put the Muppets in the real world. How did they do it? In many different ways, depending on the scene. They might come up with a brand new elaborate method just for a few seconds of film, but it was worth it in the end. Alex Boucher shows us how Kermit sang in a swamp, how Fozzie Bear drove a car, and how a group of Muppets rode bicycles. The real wonder is that even when we know how it's done, even when we can see the puppeteers at work, we still consider the Muppets as distinct characters with their own personalities. 

On June 8, 1708, a fleet of 18 ships left Cartagena, Colombia, headed for Spain. They were intercepted by five British warships and a battle broke out. In the fight, a large supply of gunpowder on the galleon San José exploded, sending the ship to the bottom of the ocean. What was significant about the San José was that it was carrying around 200 tons of gold, silver, and gemstones, with a value of about $17 billion in today's dollars. 

It took more than 300 years for the ship to be found, when a wrecked galleon resembling the San José was spotted at almost 2000 feet below the surface in 2015. But is this shipwreck really the San José? Recent exploration with ROVs seems to indicate that it is. Photographs of gold coins scattered on the ocean floor sport evidence that they were mined and minted in Lima, Peru, in the appropriate era. Pending identification, ownership of the wreckage is the subject of a court battle between Colombia and Spain. Read the story of the San José and the remains that may prove to be the most valuable shipwreck in history at Popular Mechanics.  -via Damn Interesting 

(Unrelated image credit: Alberto Cutileiro) 

Max Fosh made some prison wine, known as pruno in the US. His first attempt wasn't fit for human consumption, because these things take practice. So he enlisted Kevin, a self-made expert on prison wine who has been perfecting his technique for twenty years. That did the trick, but how good is it? Fosh invited three expert wine critics, or at least influencers, to try it out, along with five samples of commercial wine, selected for a variety of price points. All are unidentified. What would they think of his homemade hooch? 

The wine tasters were asked to rank all six wines, but Fosh settled for getting their most and least favorite pick. How many sips of wine does it take before you have a hard time keeping them straight? Only afterward did he reveal that one of the choices was his prison wine, made in a cooler and fermented in the bathroom. There's a one-minute skippable ad at 3:43.   -via Boing Boing 

We think of Lucille Ball as the queen of television -after all, she had four TV series with her name in the title. But before I Love Lucy, she was a model, a dancer, and a movie actress. In the 1940s, she had a hit radio show called My Favorite Husband. Television was in its infancy, no one knew for sure whether it would take off. CBS wanted Lucy to try a television series, which she considered to be a step down. 

However, Lucy's husband Desi Arnaz was a bandleader who was off on tour most of the time, and was famous for cavorting with women on the road. Theirs was a volatile relationship, and she'd already tried to divorce him once. If she could get Arnaz a role on the TV show, he'd have to quit touring. CBS didn't think much of Arnaz, and they didn't think American viewers would take to her being married to a "foreigner." But the network executives valued Lucy enough to agree to all kinds of demands to get her on the small screen. Read how Lucy got her way at Cracked. 

(Image credit: TV Guide) 

This is not a skit, but just a straightforward version of the Star Trek: The Next Generation main theme by a bluegrass band, featuring Gordon Lustig on his five-string banjo, guitar, and mandolin as well. Lustig credits composer Jerry Goldsmith, noting that the tune was originally written for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The music will make you smile, but the video of a starship shaped like a banjo might make you giggle. What's really funny are the comments at the YouTube page. Here's an example:

Space:
The Last Place I Reckon Will Go To.
These are Them There Adventures of the Starship Banjo-rpise.
It's contin-ya-in mission: to look fer new worlds, to russle us up some critters, and find like minded folks.
To go where none of y'all ain't ever been to!

Another imagines the cast of The Andy Griffith Show as the crew of the Enterprise. See more at the YouTube page. 

Princess Natalia Pavlovna Paley was the granddaughter of Tsar Alexander II and first cousin of Tsar Nicholas II. Born in 1905 in Paris, her exiled family moved back to Russia just a few years before the revolution. After the Tsar abdicated in 1916, the Paleys were placed under house arrest, and Natalia's brother Vladimir was arrested. Vladimir was executed the day after the Tsar and his immediate family were shot in 1918. Her father was arrested and killed later. Meanwhile, Natalia and her sister Irina escaped, riding a cattle car, then a horse-drawn sleigh, then walking the last miles to the Finnish border. Their mother joined them the next month. 

Natalie Paley moved from Finland to Sweden to France, where she married a French fashion designer and became a model, then moved to the US to become a Hollywood actress. Read up on the adventurous life of this Russian princess at Smithsonian. -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: unknown)

People have been talking about it for years. Indeed, the original Star Wars parody Spaceballs set up a sequel called Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money. We don't know if that will be the actual title, but Spaceballs 2 is coming out in 2027. Mel Brooks himself, who will turn 101 years old in 2027, makes the announcement. Brooks will not direct this time, but he will reprise his role as Yogurt. Rick Moranis is coming out of this 30-year retirement to play Dark Helmet, and Bill Pullman will once again play Lone Starr. In addition, Keke Palmer has been cast, as well as Lewis Pullman, Bill Pullman's son. Their roles are as yet undisclosed. Amazon MGM Studios describes the film as “A Non-Prequel Non-Reboot Sequel Part Two but with Reboot Elements Franchise Expansion Film.” Which tells us nothing, but we'll find out more bit by bit over the next two years. 

After the American Civil War, there was some attempt to help formerly-enslaved people (40 acres and mule), not so much as compensation, but to help them start an independent life. Sadly, those efforts didn't last long. The intention, though, was a far cry from what happened during the Haitian Revolution, when France demanded that the newly-free Haitians pay French slaveholders as compensation for the loss of their "property." In between those events, Britain abolished slavery in 1833. You don't hear much about how that was settled. 

These enslaved people were held in far-flung colonies, while their slaveholders mainly resided back home in Britain. To make the transition smoother, the British government offered monetary compensation- not to the newly-freed people, but to the slaveholders. These former slaveholders included many with titles who would just as soon forget about the whole thing once they got the money. Abolition was fashionable at the time, and who wants to be on the wrong side of history? Read about the British aristocrats who pretended their slaveholding history never happened at Jstor Daily.  -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: William Clark) 

A couple of years ago, a meme from a Swedish Instagram influencer went around about how men think of ancient Rome a lot, many of them reporting thinking about it every day, and how that was baffling to women. Once translated to English, that idea went viral. Whether that's true or not, thinking about Rome back in the day when the empire thought it ruled the world is a far cry from studying it. If your knowledge about the Roman Empire comes from movies or memes, this TED-Ed video quiz might surprise you. On the other hand, if you learned about ancient Rome from Neatorama, like I did, you might ace this quiz like I did. It's rather easy, since you just select from multiple choice answers. Can you spot the myth or untruth? You don't have to share your score with us, but you are welcome to if you like.