Neatorama is proud to bring you a guest post from Ernie Smith, the editor of Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail. In another life, he ran ShortFormBlog.

From coupons to Zimbabwean dollars, sometimes currency turns out to be worth a lot less than it initially seems.

If you’re watching the right digital substation, the message is hard to ignore. Ron Paul says we’re facing a catastrophic financial crisis that could leave you screwed. That’s a weird message to hear from any former politician, even one with the libertarian bonafides of Ron Paul. (His son Rand must be psyched that this is how he’s spending his retirement.) But the paid ads, which are designed to get you to buy some financial services you don’t need, nonetheless offer a funhouse mirror from which to consider the market forces that cause currency to lose its value. Today, we talk about worthless currency. (Image credit: Flickr user Sandor Weisz)

Daniel Titz and Dorian Lebherz, students at the Film Academy of Baden-Württemberg, made this spec ad for Johnny Walker Scotch. Be ready to feel some feelings.

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Watch it, and then go read the story behind the ad. The students haven’t formally shown it to Johnny Walker yet, but it’s already a hit at YouTube. -via Digg  

Golf carts are a joke from the start, because what kind of “sport” require a vehicle to ease the stress of walking? You only get a pass on that if you are over the age of retirement. But golf carts, small electric vehicles, come in handy for getting around large areas like campuses, airports, farms, and retirement communities. And when golf carts became more popular, manufacturers began to compete for the luxury market. How else will you stand out as a conspicuous consumer among all the other golfers who can afford a country club membership? Check this out: 

The California Roadster Limo is another custom luxury golf cart from Cool Carts of Texas. This is the larger, convertible version that they sell and it is priced at $13,595 dollars. The vehicle is powered by electricity and it can drive 45 to 50 miles on a single charge, however they sell an upgraded battery pack allowing you to travel 70 miles. It has an all aluminum chassis, killer looks, hydraulic disk brakes, and it can hold four people. Like their Cadillac Escalade, Cool Carts of Texas also has a range of added options for the Roadster.

That’s only one of ten over-the-top luxury golf carts that you can see at Worthly.

The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research, now in all-pdf form! Get a subscription now for only $25 a year.

Research in, on, or about cats
by Stephen Drew, Improbable Research staff

The Social Function of Tail Up
“The Social Function of Tail Up in the Domestic Cat (Felis silvestris catus),” S. Cafazzoa and E. Natoli, Behavioural Processes, vol. 80, 2009, pp. 60–66. The authors, at Università degli Studi di Parma, Parma, Italy, and at Area Dipartimentale Sanità Pubblica Veterinaria, Roma, report:

Kittens displayed the tail up when greeting their mother; this behaviour can also be observed in wild species. But in the domestic cat, the tail up can be also observed when an adult individual meets another one and it signals the intention to interact amicably. Rank order affected the display of the tail up posture: it was more frequently displayed by low-ranking cats, and high-ranking individuals received it more often than other members of the social group. Then, tail up seems to be a signal by means of which a cat shows the recognition of the higher social status of the individual to whom is directed.

Cats Prefer Species-Appropriate Music
“Cats Prefer Species-Appropriate Music,” Charles T. Snowdon, David Teie, and Megan Savage, Applied Animal Behaviour Science, vol. 166, 2015, pp. 106-111. The authors, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of Maryland, College Park, report (with what appears to be a most curious typographical error, given that the article is about cats): 

Journalist and sailor Olivier Le Carrer released a book called Atlas of Cursed Places: A Travel Guide to Dangerous and Frightful Destinations full lot maps and stories that appears to be catnip for geography nerds. It contains the stories of 40 unfortunate places and the stories behind them, along with detailed period maps. Here’s a taste of one such place.  

Gur-Emir: The Malevolent Mausoleum

The site of this cursed edifice lies in modern-day Uzbekistan in a region formerly known as Transoxiana. Timur, ruler of the region in the 14th century, went around and slayed everyone in his kingdom who he felt served him no purpose—a total of 17 million apparently purposeless citizens. Timur commissioned this mausoleum for his grandson, who was killed in combat, with the intention of joining later on. While the mausoleum is elegant and impressive in its grandeur, don't forget that the man behind it sent 17 million people to their very arbitrary deaths. Skipping ahead a whole bunch of centuries: On June 22, 1941, a few hours after a Russian forensic scientist opened the tomb to exhume and study Timur’s remains, Germany launched an attack on the Soviet Union. Curse or coincidence? You decide.

Here’s what that mausoleum looks like. Read about seven other places from the book at Atlas Obscura.

A good dance beat is classic. In this masterful mashup, the greatest dance scenes in movie history are synched to the song "Uptown Funk." You’ll see Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse, the Nicholas Brothers, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Jimmy Cagney, Eleanor Powell, and even Groucho Marx!

(YouTube link)

There are 66 different movies represented here. Turn on the closed captioning, and you’ll see the title of each movie and the year it was released. -via Viral Viral Videos

How many questions can a 6-year-old ask? The answer is close to infinite. Andy Herald of How to Be a Dad watched the original Star Wars with his son, who had never seen it before. Anyone who’s ever watched a movie with a child that age can relate.

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Since then, they have watched The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. No prequels yet, but you really don’t need them, I think, to be ready for The Force Awakens. I have to marvel at the difference ion seeing the movie now as opposed to 1977 in a theater. Like George Lucas, we didn’t know about Luke’s parentage until the second movie years later. And this generation has no idea what it was like to see that crawl, hear that music, and become aware of the Imperial Star Destroyer looming in the context of what movies were really like in 1977. -via Gamma Squad

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is different from other TV shows in that it makes most of its content available on YouTube the day after it airs on HBO. That’s pretty generous for a premium channel.

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What? It’s off air until February? Well, at least John is doing some exclusive web videos to keep us aware of his existence. This one is seasonally appropriate, about the habit of regifting. Personally, I think buying gifts for all the adults in your family is a custom that is past its time. I’ve already been to one Christmas party where there was a gift swap and I ended up with the gift I brought, which I will rewrap and give to someone else. Luckily, no one involved in that scheme uses the internet.

The following is an article from the book Uncle John's Canoramic Bathroom Reader.

Today, Portland, Oregon is known as one of the most liberal cities in America. How did it get that way? Begrudgingly, when it had to welcome thousands of African-Americans displaced by a horrible flood.

FROM OREGON WITH HATE

Oregon became a state in 1859, stayed with the U.S. during the Civil War, and anti-slavery Abraham Lincoln carried the state in the 1860 and 1864 presidential elections. That belies deep institutional racism in early Oregon. The state’s first constitution expressly prohibited black people from even entering the state. The Supreme Court struck down those provisions in 1926, but blacks were still persona non grata.

That was due in no small part to the Oregon chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, one of the most active branches in the nation. In the 1920s, the KKK in Oregon counted 20,000 members. Among them was governor William M. Pierce, who openly acknowledged his involvement with the hate group, going so far as to appear on the front page of The Portland Oregonian with local Klan leaders.

By contrast: In 1940, only about 2,000 black people lived in Oregon, most of them in the state’s largest city, Portland… although they were restricted to the Albina neighborhood due to the “code of ethics” established by the city’s real estate. The only jobs available: railroad work or as domestics.

WAR BABIES 

Dyker Heights is a neighborhood in Brooklyn where the neighbors try to outdo each other in Christmas lights and decorations. People come from all over New York City to see them.

There are a few who do not participate in the tradition, and others who keep things simple, but mostly you'll get big, bright, and gaudy... as it should be. A lot of the neighborhood residents rely on professionals to get their displays just right, like B&R Christmas Decorators, who will bedazzle your home with a billion bulbs and animatronics. Others seem to have hoarded away a variety of seasonal lawn ornaments over the years, and simply toss them all out there when the time is right. There is no wrong way to participate.

In case you can’t get there in person, Gaothamist has 28 pictures of the houses lit up in all their glory. If you can get there, they have some advice about your excursion. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Tod Seeley/Gothamist)

The weirdest state in the nation didn’t disappoint us in 2015. Mashable sorted through the headlines of the past year and picked the 25 most thought-provoking. Each have links to the story, like this one about an attempted robbery by Darth Vader. There is a video clip of the incident. See all the weird headlines here. -via Pleated-Jeans

This cat makes his feelings very clear to a stuffed tiger. The interloper is not welcome in his territory! Take that! And that!

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It’s pretty easy to make yourself dominant over an opponent that doesn’t fight back. Things would be a bit different it it was a real tiger. As it is, the tiger is not to scale. -via Tastefully Offensive

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor band of crazed turkeys will stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

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A mailman in Falmouth, Massachusetts, has to deal with a gang of turkeys that menace him every day in one particular neighborhood. Every day. You can say they’ve gone postal. He carries a stick to keep them at bay. Every day. He should probably put in a request for combat pay. -via reddit

A business named Wholesale Clearance UK unearthed a shipment of bootleg figures from the movie The Phantom Menace. It’s no wonder that these toys were shipped off in a clearance lot. They were labeled, and possibly even designed and manufactured, by someone who hadn’t seen the movie, or might not speak English. Probably both. How else would you explain Mace Window, Toby-One, Fly-Gone-Gin, What, and Conehead? The only one of the set that was accurate in both name and appearance is Jar Jar Binks.

They are supposed to talk. Whether they still do after, what, twenty years, is a mystery. Whoever buys these will want to keep the packages intact, but you'd have to resist the urge to find out what they say. See them all at the business’s blog. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Canadian lawyer Charles Vance Millar was a multimillionaire when he died in 1926. He had no heirs, but his will found ways to dispose of his money that were unorthodox, to say the least.  

But he wanted to do it in as roguish a way as possible. Millar started off by giving shares in a jockey club to gambling opponents and shares in a brewery to teetotalling religious leaders. Then he left his house in Jamaica to three men who hated one another, on the condition that they own it together. But those were just a prelude to the big finish. In clause 10, Millar revealed a biology and math challenge that would change the lives of dozens of Toronto families. The remainder of his fortune — about $9 million — would be bequeathed a decade later to “the mother who has since my death given birth in Toronto to the greatest number of children as shown by the registrations under the Vital Statistics Act.” If there were a tie, he wanted his fortune to be divided equally among the winners.

Would a chance at millions, with unknown odds, affect your family planning? We don’t know how many women actually tried to win, but by the time the ten-year period was up, we were in the middle of the Great Depression. It was not a great time to have a lot of children. One contender had a baby who died from rat bites because the family was so poor. Of 32 mothers who filed claims after the deadline, one was disqualified because some of her ten children were born out of wedlock, and another because some of her eleven children were stillborn. A few families won big, but imagine giving birth to eight children for the contest and receiving nothing for it! Read about what the press dubbed “The Stork Derby” at FiveThirtyEight. -via Metafilter