How does this even happen??? pic.twitter.com/gEHesbYxq8

— Springfield Cardinals (@Sgf_Cardinals) January 15, 2025

This guy had the best seat in the house for a Springfield Cardinals game. He was sitting in the front row, behind home plate. He was ready for the action with a beer that probably cost fifteen dollars. And then a foul ball arced over and landed right in that beer, splashing foam all over him. One in a million shot! He wasn't hurt, and his instant reaction was to laugh at the situation. He knows he'll get over the wet face and the lost beer, but he gained a great new story to tell. One redditor mentioned he surely told at least 38 people before the video hit the internet. But it's not just a story, it's a viral video, which is made even greater by his laughter. It's sure to make the ESPN highlight reel. This is a fellow who knows how to enjoy a baseball game. And a beer. -via reddit

Experts say it's best to clean your winter coat at least twice a season. And the rest of us laugh. As Mitch Hedberg once said, "My jacket says 'Dry clean only' on it. Which means ...it's dirty." That label deters many of us from doing anything about it, but even if your winter coat is completely washable, it's easy to put it off until you don't need that coat anymore in the spring.

But you can get your winter coat clean; it just takes getting around to it and knowing how. If your coat is wool or natural fur, it really should go to a professional cleaner. Down, fleece, and leather can be cleaned at home. But don't just throw them into the washing machine, because different materials require different techniques. And don't be intimidated by the idea of washing a winter coat by hand in the sink. It could take some time, but your friends, family, and co-workers will appreciate you showing up without the smell of coat that is years overdue for a cleaning. Read the best methods for cleaning each kind of winter coat at Mental Floss.

In every movie, there's an extra character that never gets mentioned, but that character's point of view is crucial. That's the camera, because the camera is the viewer. A filmmaker has to make a choice as to what the viewer will see, what they will focus on, and what that point of view means to moving the story along. That decision is also affected by the way the characters in the scene move around, and the way you want the camera to move around, because after all, the camera is representing the viewer.

So many of us watch movies and either enjoy them or not, but never think about the hundreds of different decisions filmmakers have to make with every scene. But those decisions together drive how well a film incorporates the viewer into the story. Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou of Every Frame a Painting (previously at Neatorama) takes us into the nuts and bolts of the rigorous decision-making process behind every film. Or at least, every good film. -via Nag on the Lake

In the 1920s, the role of women in public life was changing. They could vote, drive, and hold jobs formerly reserved for men, and they reflected this freedom by wearing short hair and shorter skirts than their mothers. Most noticeable were the party girls who drank and danced and were known as flappers. Rebecca Bradley wasn't that kind of woman. She was a graduate student who also held a job and took care of her elderly mother, but she wore her hair short, so the newspapers branded her as a flapper when she was caught robbing two banks -by herself- in Texas. Her very appearance led bank employees to trust her up until the moment she made off with the money.

Newspapers recognized a sensational story when they saw it. Bradley was pretty and petite, and the sexy headlines about her crime sold a lot of papers. She wasn't even the only "flapper bandit" of the time, because who needs facts when you've got a sympathetic criminal to write about? Even the justice system was confused. How could such a pretty young woman pull of these crimes? Read about Rebecca Bradley and her criminal activities at Atlas Obscura.

Over the history of civilization, rats traveled wherever humans traveled. That is, if you count "civilization" as the time beginning when we started growing our own grains. Rats love those things. But furthermore, rats traveled to places where people didn't migrate as much, so they managed to spread fleas and disease to far-flung populations of people, like the plague, which changed Europe forever. They are also invasive species to places all over the world, takemn there by people, who you have to admit are also an invasive species.

But the misery that rats spread among humans and various ecosystems wasn't because they are evil. They've just become dependent on humans to provide their food, and we are very good at that. This TED-Ed lesson from Max G. Levy tells us the good things about rats, too. The video was directed by Ukrainian illustrator and animator Denys Spolitak. -via Laughing Squid

When you're suffering a cold or flu, you eat nutritious chicken soup to feel all warm inside, and you suck on lemon honey lozenges to sooth your cough. But now Progresso has flipped that idea on its head. For a limited time, they are offering "Soup Drops," which are cough drops that taste like chicken soup. The tag line is "Soup you can suck on."

I wondered if these were like chicken bouillon cubes, or sugary candy with a chicken flavor. Dennis Lee at The Takeout volunteered to try a Soup Drop so we don't have to. He says they resemble candy cough lozenges, but they are made with the sugar substitute isomalt, which is not as sweet as sugar. He didn't exactly describe how sweet the Soup Drops are, because he got busy telling us how they really taste. It's not a pretty picture. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Dennis Lee/The Takeout)

When several inches of snow piles up, many of us just think about how to get to work, or how to even get down the stairs without slipping. Then there are those who take advantage of the situation for fun.

Woodworker Matt Thompson describes himself at his YouTube channel as a "Maker of mostly ridiculous and unnecessary things." He makes things to sell as well. Recently he solidified his reputation as the coolest guy in the neighborhood after a snowfall, rigging up his model train with a snowplow on the front to clear the tracks as any full-size train would do. Only this track is along his fence. When the snow is this deep, what else would you do with a train? Right, most of us would just stay inside to play with our toys. Kudos to Thompson for selecting the perfect music to accompany this video, too.  -via Born in Space

Every two years, the World Monuments Fund releases a list of the cultural sites that are in most danger of disappearing due to war, environmental damage, or other causes. The "other causes" come into play for 2025 because one of the sites listed is the moon.

On a relative scale, there are not that many cultural sites on the moon, but the legacy that humans have left there are is monumentally historic. It's been almost 56 years since Neil Armstrong set foot on Tranquility Base. Will future historians be able to even find that spot after we've landed more missions on the moon? When the space junk calls to the surface? Saving such sites will require international cooperation between myriad organizations.

But the moon is only one of 250 sites listed in the document. Read about the danger to the moon's historic sites and other endangered places at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: NASA/Neil A. Armstrong)

No one was really surprised that Squid Game came back; the audience loved the death and destruction ands wanted more. But we were surprised that the character Seong Gi-hun would return to play the game again. It works for the show itself to draw back fans from the first game, but logically, who would go through that again? However, the biggest surprise is that the game doesn't conclude in season two, making season three necessary. Score! And that twist provides longer contracts for more actors.

Season two delivers more fright and carnage, but the confusing multiple storylines and overall plot strain credulity to the max. Despite its hit status, Screen Junkies was keen to tear Squid Game's second season apart to show us why it's not all that it's cracked up to be. But if you're like me and waiting for some Netflix customer to help you watch it, this Honest Trailer will give you enough footage of Squid Game season two to learn about the major players, as flawed as they are, and keep you thinking about watching it. -via Geeks Are Sexy

The new film Wolf Man opens nationwide this weekend. Fans of cinematic werewolves have been waiting quite some time for the new Universal monster movie, directed and co-written by Leigh Whannell. Werewolf films aren't as common as superhero or vampire films, but there have been quite a few over the past century. How will this new film compare? Before you go to the theater this weekend, you'll want to revisit the history of cinematic wolf men in their various incarnations, and especially in their transformations.  

It's been 84 years since Lon Chaney, Jr. first turned into a werewolf in the 1941 film The Wolf Man. You might not remember, but the movie also starred Claude Raines and Bela Lugosi. That set off a line of Universal films featuring the Wolf Man, even though the character was often relegated to taking a second string role to Dracula or Frankenstein's monster or both. A few attempts followed to regain Universal's original glory, but often fell short. Will the new movie improve the Wolf Man's reputation? To know for sure, you'll have to relive the previous eleven films featuring the Universal Wolf Man. Video samples are included for most of them.

(Image credit: monstersforsale)

He'll never forget this interview pic.twitter.com/JeE3vC8QRp

— non aesthetic things (@PicturesFoIder) January 15, 2025

Do yourself a favor and watch the above video before reading the rest of this post.

Yeah, you can't always judge a book by its cover. Now that you've seen the funny part, meet John bin London. You might think he is a Saudi who has been raised in the UK, but no. This Nottingham native only began learning Arabic in the last few years. He started off with the language, and then wanted to learn the Arabic alphabet and then got into the history and culture of Saudi Arabia. He finally got to visit that land a couple of years ago. Those who know say John's Arabic is fluent but not perfect, and very good for someone who wasn't raised speaking it. He has also mastered different Arabic dialects. Learn more about his journey in this video. The documentary is mostly in Arabic, so you'll need to turn on the closed captions for English. The English parts have Arabic captions.



 -via reddit

In the late 19th century, con men of all kinds made money traveling from town to town promising to cure all manner of problems. A rainmaker, using various methods, could redeem a desperate drought-stricken town. It had long been observed that rain often follows a military battle. Or was it just that those incidences were noticed and recorded? Civil War general Edward Powers noticed, and published a book about it in 1871. He proposed experiments on inducing rain with heavy artillery, with lots of noise, flash, and reverberation. Twenty years after his request, the US government finally authorized a budget for such experiments, led by lawyer and engineer Robert G. Dyrenforth.

Dyrenforth set up his experiments with mortars, electrical kites, and hydrogen balloons. In a series of noisy deployments, some were followed by rain. But if you look out a window every Thursday morning, some mornings you will see rain. While the government didn't find his results convincing, Dyrenforth did, and took his show on the road to drought-stricken places in the West, with mixed results. Was it a matter of a good idea unevenly executed? Or was it wishful thinking on Dyrenforth's part? Or did the desire to succeed (and make money) color his thinking? Read about Robert G. Dyrenforth and his rainmaking experiments at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: Harper's Weekly 1891 via Texas State Library and Archives Commission)

Have you ever seen a truck rolling around on balloon tires this big? This 1953 British Pathé newsreel introduces us to the Rolligon, and gives the impression that it's a vehicle. But the name Rolligon actually refer to the tires that make this vehicle special. Inventor William Albee designed the tires after watching the Inuit roll heavy boats on inflated seal hides. Rolligon tires only need pressure of about seven psi because there are a lot of square inches on tires that are five to nine feet wide. They are great for rolling over soft terrain, no matter how uneven it is, and they do very little damage to plants and animals in their way. Rolligon tires never made much headway with the military because these vehicles can't go fast enough. As far as consumer use, well, any vehicle using them would be too high to easily get in and out of, and too wide for standard lanes. But they are being used today, in the oilfields of Canada and Alaska. See a modern truck on Rolligon tires here.  -via Nag on the Lake

Astronaut Don Pettit (previously at Neatorama) took this image on January 11 from the International Space Station (ISS), or more specifically, from a window of the SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle docked to it. They are both 254 miles above the earth. Pettit is an avid space photographer and a talented educator as well as an astronaut. In this picture, he was focusing on deep space, so the city lights of earth rotating below at night show up as a series of streaks. The closer stars are pinpoints of light, while the further stars illustrate why our galaxy is called the Milky Way. The horizontal streaks are Starlink satellites. The bright bands on the horizon are the sun about to rise. You can also see zodiacal light and emissions from the ISS. All this in one photo that Pettit posted to X (formerly Twitter), therefore completing an Elon Musk trifecta. -via Ars Technica

(Image credit: NASA/Don Pettit)

Certain species of frogs appear to hop across the surface of water in a process that's been called "skittering." It's like watching someone skipping a stone across the surface. While the frogs go pretty fast, it would be pretty rough to hit the water as hard as a stone does. So how do they do it? A team led by engineer Talia Weiss of Virginia Tech put some northern cricket frogs to the test and filmed them with a high-speed camera. When the film was slowed to 5%, they could see that the frogs actually become submerged in a kind of belly-flop. They don't sink all that deep, though, and use their webbed feet to re-launch themselves into another belly-flop. This kind of motion is seen in cetaceans, so it's less skittering and more like "porpoising." Read more about this research at ScienceAlert. And if you see a remix of this video with the appropriate sound effects (whee! plop) let me know. -via Damn Interesting