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British singer Boyinaband recorded this song about what he learned in school and what he didn’t learn. In a comment, he clarified:

"Don't Stay in School" isn't inferring students shouldn't stay in school, it's saying topics which aren't practically useful shouldn't stay in school. There are obviously a lot of benefits to getting an education, I'm just concerned that the topics are not prioritized well at all.

Now, I’m all for learning things you won’t need in your everyday life, but not at the expense of things you will need to know. You could say that money management, law, politics, first aid, and sex education are things that young people should learn from their parents, but that’s pretty difficult in modern families where everyone’s working or in school, or the parents don’t know that much about those things themselves. Besides, no one explains to parents that they are expected to take up the slack in real world education. Maybe someone should.

There’s a lot to be said about building up basic knowledge of how the world works in literature, history, math, and science, so can we really drop those? I don’t know about other countries, but in America, if a subject is not on the standardized tests, schools most likely won’t be teaching it. What do you think? -Thanks, Edward!

This past weekend, Seoul, South Korea, was turned into a giant playground for the 2015 City Slide Festa. The city set up a 350-meter-long water slide on the Yonsei-ro road -that’s almost a quarter mile! The festival also featured other games and amusements and live music.   

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This kind of festival started about a year ago, and giant water slides have been temporarily set up in cities from Las Vegas to Sydney. See more pictures of the event in a slideshow at the Washington Post. Now what will it take to get something this cool set up for my little town’s local harvest festival? -Thanks, Daniel Kim!  

(Image credit: Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

Los Angeles received their first rain in, like, forever the other day. Redditor YungDemon’s kitten had never seen rain nor heard thunder before, and she was quite scared. When he came home, he found his roommate’s dog protecting and comforting the worried kitten. Isn’t that adorable?

Of course, the dog doesn’t like storms, either, so he could’ve been using the kitten as a comfort object himself. -via Buzzfeed

Food artist Mike Kravanis (previously at Neatorama) makes delightful bento versions of Disney and other characters out of lunch foods. When the New Horizons probe passed by Pluto, he was inspired to whip up this rice and nori illustration, which he posted to Facebook. You can see more of Kravanis’ bento artworks at his blog OMGiri.

Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead comics and TV show, gave us hints in a podcast that the series might end on a hopeful note. Not that he’s anxious to end it.

Don’t expect that to come anytime soon, although Kirkman doesn’t want the series to run forever. “Let’s all be honest. season 16? I’m not even going to be watching this show. I’ll be on a boat. Oh, [season 17]? I don’t care! I’ve transcended television.”

He also joked that more spin-offs aren’t out of the question. “We’re doing [Fear the Walking Dead], and I’m sure that, if it does well, we’ll do The Walking Dead: China eventually. [And then] The Walking Dead: SVU.”

But everything must end sooner or later, and it’s usually better to end a TV series before it completely runs out of steam. So Kirkman has an ending in mind that will turn the usual zombie stories around and have humanity actually winning. Read some details of this plan at Uproxx. It would certainly be a turnaround for the series so far, which has already given us five seasons of of violence, despair, and death.

(Image credit: AMC)

Tara Carson was traveling through Maine with her husband and daughter and ate at Marcy’s Diner in Portland. Carson’s daughter, who is not quite two years old, had a meltdown. Darla Neugebauer, the owner of the diner, reacted to the noise. It’s not really clear what was said and done before Neugebauer lost her temper and screamed at the child. Carson complained on Marcy’s Diner’s Facebook page. Carson’s original post was deleted, but since it went viral, you can see a screenshot of it and Neugebauer’s response (in colorful language) here. Neugebauer left another response the next day, which has also been deleted, but you can see it at Buzzfeed.

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The response from the public was so fierce that the local news got involved. You can hear both sides in a WCSH news report that includes a response from the Carsons. 

Despite getting backlash on social media from people who claim they will never eat at the restaurant again, Neugebauer is standing by her actions. "Life's full of choices and you've got to live with all of them. I chose to yell at a kid, it made her shut-up, which made me happy, it made my staff happy, it made the 75 other people dining here happy, and they left, they may never come back, other people may not come in. Their loss really," she said.

The last few posts at the Marcy’s Diner’s Facebook page have thousands of comments and reviews, leaning heavily toward support of the diner owner’s actions. And no matter who is at fault for the brouhaha blowing up all out of proportion, commenters make it clear that they can’t stand misbehaving kids in restaurants. Neugebauer is not backing off, and has enjoyed a packed house since the Facebook posts went viral.

(Image credit: video screenshot from WCSH)

The Brothers McLeod made a cartoon for the Nickelodeon Shorts Program featuring a flying moose, a talking volcano, broccoli ice cream, red-hot fish, a singing helicopter, and a purple cat who reports it all for TV.

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Can they save the annual Lava Fish Festival from a nefarious (or possibly just incompetent) villain? Pay attention, this goes really fast. -Thanks, Myles!   

Richard Kreitner and Steven Melendez have created an interactive map of literary road trips, complete with quotes about specific places from the books. If you are so inclined, you could recreate those trips in your own car, making all the pertinent stops along the way. or you could sit at your computer and make it a virtual tour.

The above map is the result of a painstaking and admittedly quixotic effort to catalog the country as it has been described in the American road-tripping literature. It includes every place-name reference in 12 books about cross-country travel, from Mark Twain’s Roughing It (1872) to Cheryl Strayed’s Wild (2012), and maps the authors’ routes on top of one another. You can track an individual writer’s descriptions of the landscape as they traveled across it, or you can zoom in to see how different authors have written about the same place at different times.

And if you haven’t read all twelve of the books, you might want to pick up a new one to enjoy the scenic route. The interactive (and bigger) version of the map is at Atlas Obscura.

In this short by Russian filmmaker Michael Tivikoff, a cute bunny rabbit is sent on a quest to deliver a magical object. You’ve seen that story before, in everything from The Lord of the Rings to The Wizard of Oz to The Forbidden Kingdom. Except this time, the star is a bunny rabbit. That’s different enough.

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Another difference between this and LOTR is that the bunny was smart enough to take the first available flying shortcut. And his reward at the end will tickle you. -via Tastefully Offensive

(Image credit: Google Maps)

The enduring image of the story Gulliver’s Travels is Gulliver tied down while tiny Lilliputians walk over his body. The scene is recreated well at Gulliver’s Park in Valencia, Spain. An enormous likeness of Gulliver serves as a playground for children, who climb over him just like in the book (or movie).

The Gulliver Park is probably the most inspired playground I’ve ever seen. Valencia’s Fallas artists have created a giant replica of Jonathan Swift’s hero in the Turia Riverbed, sprawled out on the ground and bound by ropes. The body is cleverly designed, with Gulliver’s hair and jacket serving as slides, folds in his sleeves and pants becoming stairs, and the ropes which trap him knotted for climbing.

(Image credit: Mike Powell and Juergen Horn)

Mike Powell and Juergen Horn got to see the park up close, and have plenty of photographs so you can get up close to this magnificent sculpture and see how much fun it is for kids.  

A computer geek goes through his entire checklist of things that happen to other people’s computers. He knows it’s something Mom did, so he’s ready to fix it and be a hero to her -again. And then he is hurled into The Twilight Zone. This is the latest comic from Invisible Bread by Justin Boyd. -via Geeks Are Sexy

The first time we saw Superman or Batman as children, we all wanted a cape so we could be a superhero, too. Some of us improvised with a towel; others had moms who would fashion a red or blue piece of fabric for the purpose. Then we were superheroes! Or maybe a scary vampire or Musketeer or some other fashionable rich and powerful person. But how did capes become associated with all this power? They’ve been worn for thousands of years -and that may give us a clue.

From the early days of the cape, when Latin was still spoken on the streets, capes spoke of battle, status, and statuses in battle. Military commanders of the Roman Empire donned paludamentum—a long, flowing cape fastened at one shoulder—as part of their ceremonial battle preparations. Centurions fighting under their command got to wear capes, too, but had to settle for the sagum, a less majestic, less flowy version that fastened with a clasp across the shoulders.

But the wearing of a cape continued through the Middle Ages and into modern comic books. Read about the evolution of the cape and what it represents at Atlas Obscura.  

(Image credit: Flickr user randychiu)

Took my daughter on an African safari but I won’t let her play on her iPad so I’m an asshole. #assholeparent via @kristenhowerton

Parents get blamed for every problem a kid has. Even when the problem is completely beyond our control. Even when the problem is completely caused by the child. Even when the problem is no problem at all. Parents have a place to vent, on a Tumblr blog called Asshole Parents, which was shared on my private parents group. Our kids are mostly teenagers, but believe me, we came up with a long list of reasons they consider us such. If you’ve ever expected your child to drink his favorite beverage from the wrong cup, you may be an asshole parent, too. There are 181 submissions so far, so first take the short tour by seeing some of my favorites.

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To do yoga, you need to get on the floor. To a dog or cat, a person getting on the floor is an invitation to play, obviously. These people should know better. They should do their yoga in the table! -via Tastefully Offensive

Dan Charles at The Salt was doing research on cottage cheese and was sent this photo of cottage cheese and canned pineapple on a presidential plate. It was the lunch President Richard Nixon ordered just before he resigned from the office. It was never a custom for the White House photographer to take pictures of meals, so you have to wonder what was going through photographer Robert Knudson’s mind at the time.   

The discussion on this meal at Metafilter covers Nixon and his crimes, the best way to eat cottage cheese, and the demise of ordering milk with a meal.

By the way, the original article he was researching is The Fall Of A Dairy Darling: How Cottage Cheese Got Eclipsed By Yogurt. 

(Image credit: Robert Knudson/Nixon Library)