Major League Baseball has unveiled a new line of hats for their teams from New Era. These are called "overlap" hats because of the way they were designed. Every year, they hope to create collector's items with new hat designs, and this year will probably be a banner year. But it won't be because they are great. The general idea was to take the team's logo and lay it overtop the team name or the city. But most of those logos are initials, and you should never overlap letters with other letters, because it changes the word. When the human eye sees these hats, they will read them as the Tetas Rangers, Houston Ashos, Seattle Masers, Los Angeles Anaels, Bobon Red Sox, Mmmi Marlins, and the Washington Nawals. SB Nation has a few things to say about these hats. The Texas Rangers hats have already been pulled from stores.  

But was it truly a careless mistake or a marketing ploy? The whole league seems to have taken a page out of last year's Oakland A's hat design disaster that became collector's items. Some of the new hats look fine because the overlaid team logo is a pictures instead of a letter. You can buy them here. -via Metafilter

If you loved Parasite and are looking forward to (or have already seen) Mickey 17, you know how good a movie written and directed by Bong Joon-ho can be. That's why Screen Junkies went back to make an Honest Trailer for Bong's first English language feature film, 2013's Snowpiercer. Like all of Bong's biggest films, Snowpiercer explores the themes of class and privilege while telling a story that will allow you to think you are ignoring those themes- until the story demands that you pay attention.

Snowpiercer is dystopian science fiction, so its success depends on the viewer finding the premise believable, no matter how ridiculous. And this one is quite ridiculous, as this Honest Trailer makes clear. Yet the movie is enjoyable and thought-provoking, causing you to buy into it, so you might be surprised to confront how weird the elements really are. Yeah, that's if you've seen the movie. If you haven't, rest assured that all this weirdness comes together to tell a thrilling story and make a point as well.   

Mexican illustrator José Guadalupe Posada became well-known for his satirical and political drawings featuring calaveras, or skulls, around the turn of the 20th century. Indeed, Posada is one of the reasons that decorated skulls became associated with Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. But Posada had interests beyond those calaveras.

Posada illustrated newspapers and magazines that would be referred to as tabloids today- literature aimed at entertaining the general public, and the more sensational a story, the better. When a photograph wasn't available, or wasn't as exciting as an illustration, Posada would draw a picture and create an engraving. Among those were many stories of unusual births, often referred to as monsters or freaks in those days. These included children with extra limbs, conjoined twins, and stories that are hard to swallow. The illustration above accompanied a story of a woman who gave birth to three children and four animals. See more of Posada's illustrations of what were called "freaks of nature" at the Public Domain Review. -via Nag on the Lake

When we explain pollen as "plant sperm," that's just a simple shortcut to saying it's part of the sexual reproduction process of plants; specifically, it's the part that moves. So you might be surprised to learn that pollen is not like sperm at all in the way it works. And that could be a relief to those who have to deal with the side effects of getting pollen in your nasal cavities, at least psychologically. No, pollen is way weirder than that, and so is the female side of plant reproduction. It's true we rarely talk about a plant's embryo sac, the female side of the reproductive process, and that's because it doesn't cause hay fever or cover our cars with dust the way pollen does. While it's easy to say that plants and animals are just way different, MinuteEarth goes into detail to explain how plants really reproduce and why. Keep in mind that there are exceptions, because there always are.

If you venture out to Dolores Park in San Francisco in the evening, you are liable to encounter a dinosaur that looks like Jurassic Park crashed into the movie Tron. Resembling a T. rex, the dino glows a neon blue-green color and makes odd sounds like a meow, a fart, or a musical interlude. Kids love it. Check out the dinosaur dancing at Burning Man in this video. Underneath the seven-foot-long costume is artist and lawyer Trevor Mead.

Mead was into costumes and building art long before he became a lawyer- in fact, he went to law school as a way of financing his hobbies. He began building the dinosaur costume two years ago, and later added electroluminescent wire for the lights, and then sounds to calm fearful children and make them laugh. The action is controlled from inside by a steering wheel, levers, and a couple of old cell phones. Now Mead makes his way out to Dolores Park as the creature called the Doloresaurus at least a couple of times a week, during daytime as well as the evenings. Read how the Doloresaurus came out. -via Everlasting Blort

(Image credit: Trevor Mead)

It has come to my attention that we haven't posted the annual Minnesota State High School All Hockey Hair Team for the last couple of years. We're going to correct that oversight right now. The unnamed YouTuber that once went by Game On Minnesota is now called Pulltab Hockey, and he has selected the Minnesota high school players with the most glorious flow from the season that just ended. These students take hockey seriously, but they also take their hair seriously. After all, they're going to be on TV and any of them have a chance to be in the annual video, which is seen by people who've never been to Minnesota and who don't care about hockey. Everyone can admire a great head of hair!  

This year's video sports the theme of Hollywood and the Oscars, but what really stands out is that the players' hair isn't all that long, but it's often fluffy and comes in many colors. The team is introduced in the first six minutes, then we hear about the organization this video supports, and then from about the seven-minute mark, it's all highlights from Minnesota high school hockey season. -via Metafilter

See the all-hockey hair teams from previous years.

The game 368 Chickens sounds really simple. All you have to do is place chickens on a grid and line up three matching chickens in a row (horizontally or vertically, but not diagonally) so they will disappear, over and over, until you've placed 368 chickens. And there's only four kinds of chickens! When I first read the instructions, I thought it might be like Stack the Cats, but no. It's easier because there's no time limit, but it's harder because you cannot change the orientation of the two chickens you must place together. When there is no room left to match up chickens, you've lost the game.

It's honestly easier to try it out than to explain the game. Move the two chickens from the bottom of the screen up to the grid, and it will soon be clear that 368 Chickens is a lot of chickens, and it is not all that easy to sort them. You have to wonder if anyone has ever won this game. -via Boing Boing

Longtime Neatorama readers know that the game Monopoly was developed by Lizzie Magie in 1904. That's why I came close to dumping out of this video when they said it was invented by Charles Darrow. But they quickly course-corrected, so I continued (despite the narrator mispronouncing the word attributed) and found out a lot about Monopoly. Great Big Story talked to Jason Bunn, the 1985 Monopoly world champion, who shows us his collection of more than 400 Monopoly games from all over the world. Not only that, but he shares eight strategies and tips for improving your chances of winning a Monopoly game. If you're cutthroat enough to play Monopoly to win, you should pay attention. -via Laughing Squid

It's been a while since we checked in on the hand-painted movie poster industry in Ghana. That's one country that skips using Hollywood posters in order to customize advertising for the enticement of the local culture. In reality, they often add violence where there is none in the film, such as the non-existing scene in Mrs. Doubtfire of Robin Williams impaling his ex-wife's boyfriend through the eye with a broom. At least that's who we think the victim is. The quality of the artwork takes a backseat to the concept of a thrilling film, accurate or not. If the artist can't find enough violence in a particular movie, they may borrow from another. So why not put facehuggers into the poster for E.T.: The Extraterrestrial? 

Oh yeah, and Michael Jackson just for funsies. But The Godfather already has plenty of violence, so why not add a cat to make the poster more interesting? A Twitter thread from All The Right Movies showcases 25 of their favorite Ghanian posters for Hollywood movies collected from an art exhibit. -via Cracked

Your children might ask you what a head shop is, and you might have told them that's where you bought blacklight posters and tie-dyed t-shirts. Or bongs, if you want to be honest. Or you might have told them that head shops sold skulls, especially in New York City. You can even show them the documentary.

The short film The Last Headshop by Matt Lenski and artist Sy Goldstein with some assistance from artificial intelligence, is a project that conjures up Lenski's memories of New York City prior to Rudy Giuliani's "broken windows" clean up operation in the mid-'90s that started the ongoing gentrification movement. The city was a collection of gritty subcultures and businesses in which a skull shop could believably fit in. But there really wasn't such a thing, so this is an imaginary documentary that evokes the flavor of the city in those days. The first time I visited New York City was in 1979, and I know of which he speaks. You can read about the inspirations and the meaning of the film in this interview with Lenski. -via The Awesomer

For around 75 years, the USSR isolated itself from the decadent capitalist nations of the West. Some Western influences snuck in, but they were altered in order to be made appropriate for a communist society. In 1939, the Soviet Union got a translation of The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, called The Wizard of the Emerald City. The translation by Aleksandr Melentievich Volkov was pretty faithful to the original, with fifteen pages of new material. In the 1950s, Volkov completely rewrote the story, changing the characters' names and motivations and adding a few new scenes, like the one in which the main character, named Elli instead of Dorothy, gets kidnapped by a cannibal.

In this book, the land of Oz became Magic Land, the Tin Man becomes Iron Man, and Elli's return home is contingent on her helping make three people's dreams come true instead of bringing back the witch's broom. Baum's magical fantasy became infused with the important tenets of Soviet-style communism, particularly collective action and a devotion to hard work. Read how the Soviet version of The Wizard of Oz reflected that society at Jstor Daily. -via Strange Company

The region called Bougainville is made of several islands in the Pacific Ocean. Geographically, they are part of the Solomon Islands archipelago, but during colonial times, Bougainville was lumped in with Papua New Guinea. The Bougainvillians have little in common with the rest of Papua New Guinea, however, and fought their own war for independence, which by treaty is supposed to be accomplished in 2027. But a man named Noah Musingku appears to be throwing a wrench into the plans, since he has declared himself king of his home village of Tonu, which he calls the Kingdom of Papaala. Musingku has a lot of local support, since he is able to provide services that the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) could not afford.

Musingku is able to do that because of the Ponzi scheme he ran in the 1990s, called U-Vistract, which was a combination get-rich-quick investment scheme and prosperity gospel cult. He made at least $232 million from U-Vistract before he retreated to Bougainville and declared himself king. Musingku has been in seclusion in his heavily-secured compound since he was shot in 2006, but has been busy consolidating his power by issuing his own currency and promoting himself as a religious leader. But the story is much more bizarre in the details, since the people of Bougainville have never been treated fairly by any governing authorities. Read about Noah Musingku, who goes by His Majesty King David Peii Upeii 2nd, at the Guardian. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Daniel Liévano)

Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant Beaker of Muppet Labs not only explain gravity, but perform field experiments that mainly consist of dropping things that satisfyingly smash to pieces. And who better to assist with such experiments than Adam Savage? They are trying to recreate Galileo's Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment, more or less, and make their point in the first half of the video. That involves dropping a tugboat on Beaker, but it's an animated sequence, so he wasn't hurt- that time. The rest is nonsense, but a lot of fun, as the three TV scientists channel David Letterman and come up with more and more things that are just fun to drop and smash. What else could you want in a science show? Savage even tries to hire Beaker away from Honeydew, which sets up more mayhem. You might not learn anything about gravity that you didn't already know, but you will enjoy the glorious mess they make.

Zillow Gone Wild tells us about a home in Scottsdale, Arizona, that's on the market for $19.5 million. The interior living space is 21,410 square feet, with five bedrooms and 16 bathrooms in the main house, plus a guest house with another two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The number and size of the rooms make it seem more like a facility than a home to me, but we're just getting started.

The main feature is a full-size gym built underground. The listing tells us of famous NBA players who have played in it. It has a professional scoreboard and a locker room featuring five bathrooms. There's also a museum holding a collection of 290 pairs of Michael Jordan sneakers. There's a golf practice range, a nine-hole putting green, and a golf simulator. There's a jogging track around the perimeter of the property. Yeah, there's also a pool, theater, pickleball court, and spa. And it was only built in 2017. I wondered if it belonged to some NBA team owner or maybe a basketball player, so I did some digging.   

The owner is entrepreneur Brett Hardt, who is a huge basketball fan. He built this house to incorporate the dreams of all his family members, and the gym was the first thing built. Word got around about the luxurious underground gym in a private home, and it became a getaway for NBA stars. The size of the home and the amenities make it perfect for hosting guests. But now it's for sale, furnishings included, and if you have a few million to put into a sports dream house, you'll find the particulars at Zillow.

What we have here is an electric bicycle driven by artificial intelligence. In other words, it's a robot. Developed by the Robotics and AI Institute, it's called the Ultra Mobile Vehicle, or UMV. It's a marvel of balance, and it can do tricks! So it's high in entertainment value, but wouldn't it be more fun to actually ride the bike yourself? Oh well, that requires some effort, so we may as well have a robot do it for us. Besides the tricks, there's a sequence at the end that shows how this robot avoids obstacles like a dog and the ball he is carrying, but it comes across as showing us how the robot doesn't like to play with dogs.  

What RAI built this for, besides to impress us with a viral video, is to demonstrate how the UMV learns by feedback. Children learn to balance on a bicycle by feeling what it's like to get it right, and also experiencing what it feels like to lose their balance. On the YouTube page, this learning technique is called reinforcement, which is a psychological term for rewarding desired behavior. You have to wonder what kind of reward works with an AI algorithm. Still, cool robot. -via Born in Space