One thing all cinematic time travelers have in common is that they are thoroughly surprised by what they see when they get to the future. Not all futuristic movies have time travelers; some are just set in the future. In those cases, we, the audience, are the time travelers, and we are usually quite surprised by the film’s vision of the future.

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The latest movie supercut from Robert Jones looks to the future (even when it’s technically now in the past), with clips from dozens of movies. The future is quite variable, from hi-tech (2001: A Space Oddysey) to apocalyptic (Planet of the Apes) to ridiculous (Idiocracy). How many of them have you seen? -Thanks, Robert!

The movies:

Back to the Future 2
Lost in Space
I, Robot
A.I. - Artifical Intelligence
Cloud Atlas
Idiocracy
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
Hot Tub Time Machine 2
The Fifth Element
Click
Death Race 2000 (1975)
Barbarella
Judge Dredd (1995)
Forbidden Planet
Blade Runner
A Clockwork Orange
Tomorrowland
The Terminator
The Time Machine (2002)
2001: A Space Odyssey
Metropolis
Johnny Mnemonic
Minority Report
The Ice Pirates
Total Recall (1990)
Her
Fahrenheit 451
Logan's Run
The Running Man
Demolition Man
Bicentennial Man
Starship Troopers
Snowpiercer
Prometheus
Oblivion
Elysium
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
Star Trek: First Contact
The Time Machine (1960)
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Battlefield Earth
Tank Girl
Spaceballs
12 Monkeys

Brandy is made by distilling wine. Cognac is a very specific brandy, which legally must be made in a very specific manner from specific grapes, and only in the Cognac region of France. So from the get-go, cognac is pretty pretentious. Add an artsy bottle, a few extra years of aging, and a prestigious name, and you have the ultimate in conspicuous consumption. For example:

10. Hennessy Ellipse

Our number ten spot comes from one of the most well known names in cognac production, Hennessy. Bottled in an updated version of the classic Thomas Bastide crafted Baccarat crystal decanter, which was made popular by another member of the Hennessy family and predecessor to Ellipse, Hennessy Timeless, Ellipse is said to taste of crystallized fruit, wild roses, and earth tones, a whittling down of Hennessy’s trademark taste to its barest, most essential, and most wonderful. Blending the most Spectacular eaux-de-vie Hennessy Ellipse is made by seven generations of blend masters. Bottles of Hennessy Ellipse can range from $12,000 to $13,000 online.

That’s just number ten. The prices get astronomical as you go up the list of the 10 Most Expensive Cognac Bottles of All-Time.

I’ve got news for you. Your cat is always judging you. Lucky for you, he’s only judging you on things cats care about, like the quality of food you give him and how warm your lap is. What makes them such good confidants is the fact that they don’t speak English, and so their judgements won’t cross the species border. This is the latest from Lunarbaboon.

Forty years ago today, on November 10, 1975, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank under the waters of Lake Superior. All 29 of her crew perished the evening. The people of the Great Lakes area will never forget, and are holding their annual memorial service today. The wreck was enshrined in many minds because of the Gordon Lighfoot song about it. But there’s plenty more to learn about the Edmund Fitzgerald, like,  

1. IT WAS THE LARGEST SHIP ON THE GREAT LAKES.

The large cargo vessels that roamed the five Great Lakes were known as lakers, and the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald was, at the time, the biggest ever built. It was constructed as a “maximum sized” bulk carrier and spanned 729 feet—the first laker to reach that length—sat 39 feet high with a width of 75 feet, and weighed more than 13,000 tons without cargo. It was christened on June 8, 1958, and made its first voyage on September 24 the same year.

5. "THE FITZ" WAS WELL-KNOWN EVEN BEFORE IT SANK.

Its impressive size made the ship popular with boat-watchers, and over the years it garnered many nicknames, including “The Queen of the Great Lakes,” “The Toledo Express,” and the unfortunate “Titanic of the Great Lakes.” Crowds would watch as the massive freighter moved through the locks at Sault Ste. Marie in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The “Soo” Locks, which connect Lake Superior to Lake Huron, allowed the Fitz to reach ports on the lower Great Lakes.

Read what we know and what we don't know about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald at mental_floss.

(Image credit: Greenmars)

Adam Ruins Everything by explaining how the electoral college works, meaning it really doesn’t work the way it should, and the way it should is kinda screwy. Adam Conover tells Betsy Randle (from Boy Meets World) the way it is.

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I suppose you’d need to watch the TV show to know what happened with the Founding Fathers. If that doesn’t make you mad enough, he goes on to explain how gerrymandering works.

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-via Tastefully Offensive

The fracturing of modern communication methods has made the standard political poll almost worthless. Polls conducted by landline phone tend to skew toward older, more conservative voters. Internet polls tend to skew toward younger, more liberal voters. And it’s harder than ever to get anyone to participate at all.  

The modern public-opinion poll has been around since the Great Depression, when the response rate—the number of people who take a survey as a percentage of those who were asked—was more than ninety. The participation rate—the number of people who take a survey as a percentage of the population—is far lower. Election pollsters sample only a minuscule portion of the electorate, not uncommonly something on the order of a couple of thousand people out of the more than two hundred million Americans who are eligible to vote. The promise of this work is that the sample is exquisitely representative. But the lower the response rate the harder and more expensive it becomes to realize that promise, which requires both calling many more people and trying to correct for “non-response bias” by giving greater weight to the answers of people from demographic groups that are less likely to respond. Pollster.com’s Mark Blumenthal has recalled how, in the nineteen-eighties, when the response rate at the firm where he was working had fallen to about sixty per cent, people in his office said, “What will happen when it’s only twenty? We won’t be able to be in business!” A typical response rate is now in the single digits.

There are real-world consequences to political polls, no matter how inaccurate. For example, only the top-polling Republican candidates take part in the televised debates during prime time. And even worse, politicians use polls to determine what issues American voters care about and what they think the government should do about them. The New Yorker explains the problems with polling and had some examples of elections that number crunchers failed to predict.

(Image credit: Matt Chase)

Last night, Mumbai got @Slash'ed. Bengaluru, your turn now! #SlashAtXtreme Picture courtesy: Ridhiin Pancchmatia pic.twitter.com/v1OjkK0Ud9

— MTVi Xtreme (@MtviXtreme) November 8, 2015

Former Guns ’n’ Roses guitarist Slash is on tour with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. They played Reliance Jio Garden in Mumbai Saturday night and thousands showed up. They not only attended, they sang along, here with the song “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”

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Who needs Axl when you’ve got a crowd like that? The next concert is in Bangalore this weekend. -via Buzzfeed

Marty Cooper superimposes cartoon characters over real life with transparent overlays, in both still images and video. He made a visit to Adam Savage’s web series Tested to force “puppy bubbles” out of Savage’s mouth.  

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This video has its own behind-the-scenes sequence right in it. You’ll find more of Cooper’s work in previous Neatorama posts.  -via Laughing Squid

The University of Louisville Swimming and Diving Team passed the time at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina by having some fun with the moving sidewalk.

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Folks who know say they were quite entertaining, and they didn’t impeded anyone’s progress while putting on these stunts. The original video, posted to Facebook Saturday, already has over two million views. -via reddit

The Pizza Rat is getting more than his 15 minutes of fame! Here he shows his prowess in clearing a path through city crowds.

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Jesse Wellens and Dennis Roady converted a remote control toy car to resemble a rat carrying a piece of pizza, and set it loose on unsuspecting pedestrians. Contains NSFW language. You can see the behind the scenes video for the particulars. -via Tastefully Offensive

Adult women who use the internet already know this, and now Mallory Ortberg (previously at Neatorama) shares with everyone the comments you will see under any post about bras.

It sounds like you’re wearing the wrong bra size.

Did you know that 400% of American women are wearing the wrong bra size?

Most women don’t even realize that they’re wearing the wrong bra size.

If your breasts have leapt off of your torso, you’re probably not wearing the right bra size.

Honestly, it doesn’t matter if you have tried on every size that store sells, you will be told all your bra problems are the result of wearing the wrong size. Those aren’t the only comments, just the overwhelming majority. You can read the rest at The Toast.

In other news, Toast co-founder Mallory Ortberg is taking over the position of advice columnist Dear Prudence at Slate. And there was much rejoicing all along the internet. Commenters at Metafilter said,

She could do this for ten years and I'd never figure out whether she was offering earnest advice or satirizing the entire idea of advice columns.

Ortberg can just respond with some snarky medieval art.

Ortberg’s Dear Prudence advice column will debut next week.

(Image credit: David Stanley) 

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade has been bringing crowds to New York City since 1924. It was conceived to draw customers into the department store for Christmas shopping, and it was so popular that "let’s do it again next year" eventually became an annual tradition. Inflatable animals were introduced in 1927, partially to replace the cranky zoo animals that had previously marched. Mashable has a collection of vintage photographs from parades spanning from 1929 to 1964. Do not miss the 1937 giant reptile. -via Metafilter

Here, the Buzzfeed staff recreate the arcade game Snake using their rolling office chairs. It’s kind of like a lazy conga line, and it’s pretty neat when they turn off the lights.

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I never played Snake back in the arcade days, but I played a lot of Centipede. I can well understand why they called this exercise Snake, because who wants to see a human centipede -or even think about it? -via Digg

If you need a name for a metal band, you could do worse than to consult the British Mycological Society’s list of Recommended English Names for Fungi. There have been over 100,000 species of fungi described and named by scientists, and plenty more that have yet to be studied. Among them are some memorable common names to go along with their taxonomic names.  

Humpback Inkcap
Splitpea Shanklet
Bug Sputnik
Drumstick Truffleclub
Hairy Parachute
Seablight Microdot
Redleg Jellybaby
Weeping Toothcrust
Cramp Balls
Saxifrage Smut
Slimy Earthtongue
Salmon Salad
Sweet Poisonpie
Scurfy Deceiver
Ugly Milkcap
Hairy Nuts Disco
Sordid Blewit
Egghead Mottlegill
Bastard-toadflax Rust
Yellowing Curtain Crust
Gassy Knight

I had to stop collecting funny names because there are too many. I was scrolling pretty fast before I was even halfway through the alphabet. Shown above is the Drumstick Truffleclub (Elaphocordyceps capitata). -via Not Exactly Rocket Science

(Image credit: Andreas Kunze)

(Images generated at Flaming Text)

(Images generated by Cool Text)

Author Margaret Mitchell was born on November 8, 1900. To mark the occasion of what would have been her 115th birthday, there are trivia and tributes all over the internet today. Flavorwire brings you one focused on the movie based on Mitchell’s novel Gone With The Wind. It premiered in Atlanta on December 15th in 1939.

But the premiere was not without its controversy. Racial tensions in the city abounded, and black actors were banned from appearing at the gala, as well as all promotional material, due to segregation laws. This upset producer David O. Selznick who tried to include star Hattie McDaniel in the celebrations, but MGM advised against it. Clark Gable came to the defense of McDaniel and threatened to boycott the premiere, but the actress convinced him it would be better to attend.

You’ll also learn about the big stars who were rejected for roles, the egregious pay differential, and the real reason Clark Gable wouldn’t work with director George Cuckor, in a Gone With The Wind retrospective at Flavorwire.