This is short and sweet and might put a smile on your face or even make you laugh. Artist Rudy Willingham, who finds creative ways to make street art (previously at Neatorama), has taken a simple pun and made it work in the real world. He took 133 pieces of bread, toasted each one, and then burned onto each one an image of Post Malone in the process of singing. These 133 slices of toast were assembled in order to make the bread lip-sync Malone's song "Circles." The resulting animation, this magnificant work of art, is entitled "Toast Malone," of course.

This wordless project could be considered a video version of a shaggy dog story of sorts, as it goes to great lengths to eventually lead us to a simple pun as a punch line. You have to admire the ridiculous amount of effort that went into this. -via Laughing Squid

Barry Enderwick makes a sandwich every day on video for his YouTube and other social media platforms under the name Sandwiches of History. We've featured him here before. Since he started his daily sandwich project, Enderwick has made more than 700 videos of more than 700 sandwiches, and hasn't had to make one up yet. These sandwiches are all from published or otherwise documented recipes dating back as far as 2,000 years ago. They can be pretty strange, like a 1909 sandwich recipe with popcorn, cayenne pepper, sardines, ketchup and parmesan. In an article at The Guardian, Enderwick explains how his channel got started and makes us hungry with his picks for the five best sandwiches featured so far. That will make you crave a sandwich, but then you can read his list of the five worst sandwiches and lose your appetite. Or you can skip that one. -via Metafilter

Probably no tomb has been studied more than King Tutankhamen's, and studies show he was a young king who was fabulously wealthy but suffered from disabilities and early death due to royal inbreeding. However, the many royal possessions he was buried with still amaze us. The most mysterious and surprising among them is a "space dagger." It's a finely crafted dagger made of iron from a meteorite, made using technology that the Egyptians didn't have at the time. That doesn't mean that aliens gifted him the knife, but it's pretty impressive anyway. How do we know the iron in the dagger came from outer space? That requires some really modern science tech, like X-ray fluorescence that reveals nickel content and Widmanstätten patterns. And if you don't know what Widmanstätten patterns are, well, I didn't either until now. They're from outer space! SciShow is glad to explain them to us.

You'd know an elephant when you see one, wouldn't you? Today we have African elephants and Asian elephants, and we are all familiar with the extinct mammoths and mastodons. But there were once many more species of the order Proboscidea, from which elephants and other long-nosed species came. The strange-looking elephant shown above is Stegotetrabelodon, which really did have super-long and fairly straight tusks on both the upper and lower jaw. These tusks could be up to nine feet long! Can you imagine what and how they ate with those teeth in the way?

Stegotetrabelodon is just one example of the many Proboscidea, or what we would recognize as elephants today, that roamed the world over the past 60 million years or so. Meet some of the most notable and unusual elephant species, including the earliest short-trunked ancestor, the ones whose tusks curved backwards, and ones who used their bottom jaw as a shovel, at Smithsonian.

Last December we showed you the teaser for James Gunn's Superman, which will open in theaters on July 11. We were quite delighted to see that this Superman film shows the heroics of Krypto the Superdog as he saves an injured Superman, played by David Corenswet. Now we have a sneak preview that makes clear the teaser scene was heavily edited. In this expanded version, we find that the rescue scene was not quite as simple as we might have thought. Krypto is certainly Superman's best friend, has super powers, and loves his human very much. But he's a dog after all, and acts the way you might expect your loving dog to act. Which doesn't help a bit until Superman comes up with specific orders.

Notice this sneak preview doesn't mention the name of the movie at all. It doesn't have to, since everyone knows Superman. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Does your country have more immigrants or emigrants? Immigrants are people who move in from another nation, while emigrants are people born in a country and then move out. Brilliant Maps crunched the numbers for all the nations of the world to see who has the most of each, and who has the biggest ratios of people arriving and leaving. You might be surprised to learn that North Korea has a better ratio of arrivals to departures than South Korea. Then you think, well, that's because no one is allowed to leave North Korea. However, records show that 46,379 people moved out of North Korea in 2024, while 50,439 moved into North Korea. There's a story there, I'm sure. While the ratio is puzzling, South Korea records both immigrants and emigrants in the millions.  

The United States, as of 2024, is still the most common destination for people moving to a new country, while India is the country the most people are leaving. That still doesn't tell the whole story, because smaller countries may have more extreme percentages and ratios. Check out the stats for nations around the globe at Brilliant Maps. -via Nag on the Lake

Churches are built as an act of faith and worship, but some builders also know the value of novelty. If you can get people to come and visit out of curiosity, they may stay for worship. That's not the only reason some churches end up being extreme, but it works to draw people in. Several churches built high on top of barely accessible rock pillars in different parts of the world make the statement that just getting there is an act of sacrifice. Some people think that way, while others just take it as a challenge. Some churches are unusual because of events in their history, like the cathedral in St. Petersburg that the Soviets spent a half century pretending its not a church- yet they couldn't bring themselves to tear it down. Great Big Story looks at seven of the most unusual churches in the world, any of which would make a great vacation destination or an adventurous pilgrimage for the faithful.  

It shouldn't surprise us that records of money and court cases are so often prioritized over records of human lives, which is the case of Eulalie Mandeville. No documented records of her life exist outside of the three-year court fight over her money, but those records tell a gripping tale. Eulalie Mandeville was a free woman of color in New Orleans who became one of the richest Black women in America. Born enslaved, she was manumitted by her white father and raised in his white family. In 1793, she was already a successful young businesswoman when she met Eugene Macarty, who was white and would become her life partner. They were prohibited by law from marrying, and their children were therefore considered illegitimate. Neither Mandeville nor their children could inherit anything when Macarty died in 1846. He was found to have an estate of only $12,000, when his brother and other relatives thought he was rich. The couple had prepared for this situation for many years, transferring wealth and property to Mandeville in different ways, resulting in her fortune of $155,000 (worth around five million today). Macarty's relatives cried fraud, and took Mandeville to court. Read the not-too-long story of that long court case that tells us what we know about the life of Eulalie Mandeville at Jstor Daily. -via Strange Company

(Image source: New York Public Library)

You've heard the phrase "don't think about an elephant." It is impossible to achieve, because the word elephant implants that concept in our heads, despite the word "don't" that we understand. Understanding that negative word in context and obeying the sentence is two very different things, and artificial intelligence has not mastered the idea of negation. It's a good thing that humans can separate uncontrolled thoughts from controlled actions, because we can draw a room without putting an elephant in it -and even when it's there, we can ignore it. But maybe that's taking the elephant analogy too far.

Dr. Erica Brozovski (previously at Neatorama) explains negation and the words we use for it in English. We don't always use these words correctly, but we understand them and we can usually parse what someone is saying to us even when the words are misused, as in double and triple negatives. However, there are rare cases when language is so confusing that we really have to stop and ask, "What are you really trying to say?" Even so, we are better than AI.

Many British castles earn their maintenance costs by flaunting their ancient history. If a king once lived there, or a famous battle took place there, the more tourists that a castle will draw, even if it is in ruins. However, there is one castle that doesn't rely all that much on its ancient origins to draw tourists. Doune Castle in Scotland was built in the 13th and 14th centuries, but what keeps it attracting tourists is the fact that Monty Python and the Holy Grail was filmed there.

You see, when the movie was filmed in 1974 (it is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week), many different castles were scouted, but they were governed by agencies, and the National Trust for Scotland withdrew permission for any castle to be used as a film set, especially since it was Monty Python asking. But Doune Castle was in private hands and said yes. In fact, Doune Castle was the actual setting for several of the castles in the story, filmed from different angles. That decision paid off well, since people are still visiting just because their favorite Monty Python movie was filmed there. Read more about the ancient history of Doune Castle at Wikipedia and its pop culture legacy at Cracked.

(Image credit: Wikifan75)

Passover, or Pesach, is April 12 through the 20th this year. The Jewish a cappella group Six13 (previously at Neatorama) has released their annual Passover pop parody song, and this one is set to the tune of "Apt." by Rosé and Bruno Mars. They call it "PSVR." This video tells of the exodus from Egypt that was the origin of Passover and describes the seder meal, and actually makes a lot more sense than the Rosé song (which has a sort of an explanation in the first comment here). At any rate, this song fits nicely with Six13's extensive collection of pop songs converted to Jewish holiday anthems.

In their What If? video series (previously at Neatorama), Randall Munroe of XKCD and Henry Reich of MinutePhysics look into wild theoretical questions from fans, no matter how stupid they are. Now, we know that the earth rotates 360° every day. But this question is about rotating it in a different direction, sideways to be exact, changing its orientation completely. To see what would happen, they theoretically made the Greenwich Meridian into the equator. That changes everything, especially the way we see the globe. London is suddenly in the tropics, and India is where Siberia used to be. Antarctica would be a much smaller island without its ice cap. Some places, like where I live, wouldn't change its climate or weather too much, we'd just be in a different hemisphere. If this change were to happen gradually, the earth would adapt, but it it were sudden, it could be a mass extinction event.

With all the medicines, remedies, and supplements available to cure what ails ya, the name Dr. Buckland’s Scotch Oats Essence stands out as being particularly benign and natural. What could be more wholesome for your body than oats? And Scotch oats, to be exact! This patent medicine, introduced in 1886, promised to relieve the pain of "sciatica, headaches, neurasthenia, hysteria, ovarian neuralgia, epilepsy" and even alcoholism and drug addiction. That's a pretty broad range for any medicine. It was quite popular for a short time.

But in 1888, a pharmaceutical magazine published an analysis of Dr. Buckland’s Scotch Oats Essence that revealed its active ingredients were alcohol and morphine. Alcoholics and drug addicts who took it appeared to get better, because they didn't have to seek out other sources of drugs! Further research revealed that there was no such person as Dr. Buckland. Read the story of Dr. Buckland’s Scotch Oats Essence and the medical practitioner who was really behind it at The Quack Doctor. -via Strange Company

(Image source: Boston Public Library)

The Grand Prize winner in the 22nd annual Smithsonian Photography Contest shows us a scene from a horror film, in which a giant praying mantis has won a battle against another of its species, having bitten its head off. But this photo hasn't been manipulated; photographer Takuya Ishiguro got down on the ground to shoot pictures of the macabre scene between two normal-sized insects. The closeup shot shows the praying mantises in detail, while the pavement takes on an otherworldly texture. The truck and the signs in the background help to bend the reality of scale.

Click to the right on the Instagram post above to see more winners from the competition in different categories such as People, Travel, the Natural World, and the Reader's Choice Award. Read about the contest and the stories behind the images at Smithsonian. There were more than 30,000 entries, and you can see the 60 finalists here. 

The explosion of channels that came with cable TV more than 40 years ago meant that suddenly there were hundreds and hundreds of people on TV every day, working to fill those channels with 24/7 content. It only stands to reason that some of those folks would end up being arrested for murder, even multiple murders. In some cases, it was only after they were arrested that their TV appearances were discovered in the archives and took on a whole new aura. No, you didn't know there was something suspicious about that fellow when you saw him on a game show- you just think that now that we know the truth. The implication is that any one of those people you see on TV on any given day could be harboring secrets that would give you the willies. Weird History tells us the stories of seven killers who had previously been on TV, mostly for something completely different.