This is Chesnut. He is a photogenic cat who has his own Instagram account. His human, ChazaySSB, posted these pics of Chestnut smiling for the camera on reddit last week, and they became an instant meme. See, it looks as if Chesnut is telling a joke that he thinks is uproariously funny. So everyone began putting words in his mouth. Here are a few examples- click to the right to see them.



There's always another bad Dad joke that Chesnut can tell. See 21 of them at Bored Panda.

In 1835, Captain Charles C. Stannard was surprised to find a shallow reef way out in the middle of Lake Superior. Something had to be done to warn lake traffic away from the mountain underneath the surface, but it took years and patient engineering to build a lighthouse. The Stannard Rock Light stands 40 kilometers from the nearest island, and even further from the mainland, making it the most distant lighthouse in the world. It also earned the title “the loneliest place in the world.”  

Life in this remote outpost was lonely and harsh. The keepers were not allowed to have wives, girlfriends and families, which increased homesickness. The men spent time playing cribbage and ate whatever came out of the can. Often, they went days without speaking to each other. To combat the terrible isolation, the men were rotated off the Rock, typically after three weeks. Louis Wilks, who was the lighthouse keeper for twenty long years from 1936 to 1956, spent a record 99 consecutive days on the Rock—a feat no other keeper were able to even approach. The solitude was so crushing that many keepers had no idea what they signed up for until they arrived at the Rock. One keeper threatened to swim ashore if a boat did not come immediately to get him. Another one—as the legend goes—became deranged and had to carried off the Rock in a straitjacket.

You might not think that three weeks on a rock is all that bad, but there was no scenery to look at, much less internet access. The work was hard and dangerous, and sometimes the scheduled boats did not show up. The lighthouse was manned from 1882 to 1962. Read about the hard life on Stannard Rock Light at Amusing Planet. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Lt. Kristopher Thornburg, U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Alder)

Brazil produces more coffee than any other country in the world. Who comes in second? Not Colombia, as you might think. Nor any other nation in South America. The second biggest coffee producer is Vietnam.

For visitors and locals alike, it’s clear that coffee is an incredibly important and integral part of modern Vietnamese culture. The plant was introduced by the French in 1857, and, when it was discovered that the central highlands of Vietnam provided excellent growing conditions, production ramped up exponentially. Small-scale production shifted to plantations at the beginning of the 20th century, but the industry stalled after a century of growth just prior to and during the Vietnam War.

In the two decades following the war, the coffee industry experienced an incredible rebound, becoming Vietnam’s chief export as well as the second biggest coffee exporter in the world (Brazil is No. 1). It’s also the main global supplier of Robusta coffee, the bean used widely in instant coffee and espressos. Economically, the coffee sector accounts for around 3 percent of the national gross domestic product (GDP) and provides jobs for almost 3 million people.

While most of Vietnam's coffee is exported, the drink has become part of Vietnamese culture, and it's served very differently than what Americans are used to. Read about coffee in Vietnam at Coffe or Die.
-via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: (WT-shared) Shoestring)

Milk has a peculiar history. It's baby food for mammals, but humans continue to drink it way past infancy. We've learned to make cheese, yogurt, butter, and ice cream with it. And we drink milk from species other than our own, which is all kinds of weird. Is there any harm in that? The answer, of course, is "it depends." Which is the answer to pretty much all dietary controversies. Kurzgesagt gives us the state of the research about drinking milk. -via reddit

A buffet line can be tempting, and they are particularly handy when trying to expose young children to a variety of foods, but there comes a time when you have to ask yourself "Can I really eat $20 worth of food in one sitting?" A lot of people take an all-you-can-eat offer as a challenge, and it's a wonder that the restaurant can make any money at all. You better believe they have the numbers and risks down to a science. For example, they save on staffing compared to a full-service restaurant.

Self-service allows a buffet to bypass a wait staff, and all-you-can-eat dishes (which are generally less complex and prepped in enormous batches) can be made by a “skeleton crew” of line cooks.

“At a typical restaurant, a cook can service 25 customers per hour — and that’s at best,” says Joe Ericsson, a managing partner at the food consultancy Restaurant Owner. “In the same amount of time, a single buffet cook might be able to prep enough food for 200 people.”

Because margins are so slim, buffets rely on high foot traffic: At Golden Corral, a buffet chain with 498 locations in 42 states, dining floors are 5k-square-feet and seat 475 people. On a typical Saturday, it’s not uncommon for 900 diners to come through the door.

The amount of food served per customer is also broken down, with diners categorized by how profitable they are. Read the statistics of how buffets make money at the Hustle. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Zachary Crockett/The Hustle)

We think of plane crashes as long drops from high altitudes that leave no survivors. But plane crashes, as rare as they are, happen in all kinds of ways, and many are survivable. In fact, 95% of those involved in plane accidents survive. So you may as well learn what to do in that situation instead of assuming you're a goner. -via Digg

In the summer of 2011, brothers Morgan and Mason McGrew (previously at Neatorama) had an idea to shoot their own stop-motion version of Toy Story 3. They were just kids then, but they jumped in and never gave up on the project. Joe magazine tells their story.

And yes, these were toys that Morgan and Mason had played with when they were young. “We had some of the toys from when we were kids,” Morgan tells me over email. “Others we found elsewhere - school, day-cares, parks, etc.” It gives the film a whole extra level – when the Woody and Buzz memorably face the existential crisis of their owners growing up and no longer being played with, some of these are real discarded toys that have actually had that happen to them.

Their film is a combination of various techniques, and has all been shot on iPhones. Woody, Buzz and the rest mostly move in stop-motion, with the brothers having customised and modified the off-the-shelf toys to be poseable for their animation needs.

The human characters are played by their friends, family and school teachers. Morgan plays Andy, and Mason is grown-up garbage man Sid. Kids from a local day-care fill in as extras.

The result of that work is a shot-for-shot recreation of the Pixar film. The eight-year production was completed about a month ago. McGrew and McGrew sought permission from Disney before posting the finished movie on YouTube Saturday. If you want to watch it, continue reading.

Dolly Parton posted a collage of four images on Instagram and started a meme. The original caption is "Get you a woman who can do it all." However, people were impressed at how well she pegged the different moods of the various photo-based social media platforms. It wasn't long before others joined in.



The funniest are of actors and other celebrities who have a bank of roles or phases to draw on. I really like this one. The pictures don't even have to be human to be funny.

@HamillHimself I am your father#addMe#Hamemeable #StarWars https://t.co/kwc3EY31p0 pic.twitter.com/FdW4uDL8Oe

— Peskito y Medio卩ㄖᗪ匚卂丂ㄒ (@peskito3) January 24, 2020

Anyone can join in by using their imagination.



See more of these at Bored Panda, or follow the Dolly Parton Challenge on Twitter, Twitter, or Instagram.

This isn't a sea monster walking the bottom of the ocean- it's a school of juvenile striped eel catfish working in unison to look menacing enough to ward off predators. This was filmed off the coast of Bali. The Kid Should See This has more:

Try rewatching the video, picking one fish and following it the entire time. Then pick another fish and watch the video again. The juvenile striped eel catfish seem to cycle through positions within the school as the entire swarm moves forward.

I was captivated by the ones at the bottom, that seem like pixels in an animation of a creature walking on thick legs. -via Kottke

Before the 19th century, most workers put in a six-day week. It was only the influence of the church that mandated the Sabbath as a non-working day. In Britain, there were some people who knew that six days a week was more than enough work.    

For much of the 19th century, for example, skilled artisan workers adopted their own work rhythms as they often hired workshop space and were responsible for producing items for their buyer on a weekly basis. This gave rise to the practice of “Saint Monday”. While Saint Monday mimicked the religious Saint Day holidays, it was in fact an entirely secular practice, instigated by workers to provide an extended break in the working week.

They worked intensively from Tuesday to finish products by Saturday night so they could then enjoy Sunday as a legitimate holiday but also took Mondays off to recover from Saturday night and the previous day’s excesses. By the mid-19th century, Saint Monday was a popular institution in British society. So much so that commercial leisure – like music halls, theatres and singing saloons – staged events on this unofficial holiday.

But taking Monday off wasn't universal, nor was it mandated. Campaigns arose to make Saturday a half-day, and then a full day off, which was championed by the leisure industry as well as trade unions. Read the story of how the two-day weekend came into being at the Conversation. -via Damn Interesting

If you know England only through crime novels, you're probably terrified to set foot in the country, despite it having a murder rate way below that of the US. The most dangerous place, according to those novels, is the quaint English village. The blog Crime Reads is all about the literature of crime, whether it's true crime, novels, mysteries, or related genres. They have some advice for fans of these books, if they were to travel to such a village. First of all, you must avoid these things:

The village fête

The village fête is a fair, a celebration on the village green. They toss coconuts, judge cakes, drink tea, and whack toy rats with mallets. It’s a nice way to spend a summer’s day and thin out the local population, because where there is a fête, there is murder. If you enter a town while the fête is happening, you are already dead. The tea urn is filled with poison. The sponge cakes are full of glass. There’s an axe in the fortune telling tent. The coconuts are bombs. It’s like the Hunger Games, but dangerous.

Anywhere with a vat

In English villages, vats only exist for drowning people—in beer, in pickling brine, in whiskey, in jam. This is doubly true if the vat was built by 14th century monks. If anyone offers to show you a vat, say you need to get something from your car, then start the engine and run them over. The police understand this sort of thing. Tell them about the vat.

There are a lot more dos and don'ts to memorize if you want to survive your sojourn in a quaint English village, which you can read here. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Dennis Turner)

Perdita came into the care of Mitchell County Animal Rescue in North Carolina when her owner died. She's an attractive cat, but it didn't take long for the staff to figure out she was anti-social at best, and demon spawn at her worst.

Shelter Director Amber Lowery says 4-year-old Perdita came to the shelter on Christmas Eve like the Grinch and quickly asserted dominance.

“We are animal lovers here and very patient, but we’ve been concerned about her for awhile,” Lowery told McClatchy News.

“I’m looking at her right now, and she’s rolling around in her little bed, looking all sweet and cute, but the minute you try to rub her, she slaps you. We thought she was in pain and took her to the vet and he said: ‘No, this cat is just a jerk’.”

Since then, the shelter has had to warn visitors that Perdita’s shy, kitten-like attempts to draw passersby to her cage are, in fact, a ruse that will end badly.

The Facebook ad offering Perdita for adoption went viral. The shelter is waiving all fees for someone willing to take her. Arm & Hammer has offered free cat litter for a year. Some people recognize Perdita as a kindred spirit- so far, they have received 115 applications. -via Mental Floss

Marie Downing Williams led a unique life. A working class woman in England, she managed to become a dresser and confidant of both Queen Victoria and exiled Empress Eugenie of France. She fell in love with Harry Williams, a butler to the aristocracy, and they secretly wed -because the Queen's ladies-in-waiting were forbidden to marry. Harry wanted to be his own boss, so he emigrated to Manitoba and then to North Dakota to farm the prairie. A couple of years later, Marie left England to join him.   

She later said she arrived 28 December 1886 but this cannot be right – the only sailing for the Gallia that fits is one for 1887 that arrived in New York on 27 December. And now comes the most bizarre part of Marie’s story: on landing in New York and reclaiming her luggage, Marie was told, much to her surprise, by the customs inspectors at the port that ‘I had several more trunks than I claimed. Upon investigation I discovered the trunks were all labeled with my name and I knew that Her Majesty had sent them.’ The queen, it would appear, ‘had made sure that her favored maid-in-waiting should have many reminders of the regal days she had left behind her.’ Hm …

Marie’s recall might be faulty on some things but she never forgot the long and arduous train journey from New York to the bleak, snow-covered plains of the Dakota Territory in the dead of winter; it had been ‘much more terrifying than her trip with the Empress Eugenie to South Africa’. Harry was there to meet her on 1 January (Marie said 1887 but it must have been 1888) when she arrived at Minnewaukan, the terminus of the recently completed Northern Branch of the North Pacific Railroad.

Life on the prairie was hard, but Marie grew to love it. Besides, she had trunks full of dresses and gifts from the Queen that made her the envy of Rolla, South Dakota. Those gifts also came in handy as they were sold off when times were hard. Marie told her story to the local newspaper in 1930. Helen Rappaport researched the details of Marie's life and found discrepancies in the accounts that were, after all, related 40 years after the fact by an elderly woman. What she found hints at a somewhat more nefarious story that you can read about at Rappaport's blog. -via Strange Company

Valentines Day came about like other holidays: an ancient pagan festival was rebranded by the Catholic Church in honor of a saint, after which it turned into a celebration that had nothing to do with that saint. Simon Whistler of Today I Found Out explains the many details around that bare bones outline as they pertain to Valentines Day.

In December, the crew of the ISS baked the first cookies in space. They managed to thoroughly bake two cookies, which were not eaten, but were returned to earth on a SpaceX supply flight to be analyzed. That may seem disappointing, but there was no way to share those two cookies with the entire crew, anyway. The experimental baking process was time-consuming to say the least, as Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano reported.

The first cookie — in the oven for 25 minutes at 300 degrees Fahrenheit (149 degrees Celsius) — ended up seriously under-baked. He more than doubled the baking time for the next two, and the results were still so-so.

The fourth cookie stayed in the oven for two hours, and finally success.

“So this time, I do see some browning,” Parmitano radioed. “I can’t tell you whether it’s cooked all the way or not, but it certainly doesn’t look like cookie dough any more.”

Parmitano cranked the oven up to its maximum 325 degrees F (163 degrees C) for the fifth cookie and baked it for 130 minutes. He reported more success.

Additional testing is required to determine whether the three returned cookies are safe to eat.

Why did it take two hours to bake one cookie? A look at the oven's website has clues. They say convection cooking is not feasible in space. Then you remember that heat doesn't rise in microgravity the way it does on earth. A fan might help. And a maximum temperature of 325 degrees is low for cookies. But most pointedly, each cookie was enclosed in a silicon envelope to keep crumbs contained. Clearly, further research is needed. The upside of the experiment for the astronauts is that the baking session made the ISS smell better for a short time. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Christina H Koch)