To celebrate the grand opening of a new shopping mall in Songdo, South Korea, a chorus line of Pikachus entertained the crowd with a song and dance routine. But a tragedy strikes right in the middle of the performance. It happens about a minute into this video.

(YouTube link)

What was that? Okay, when the Pikachu started deflating, his helper ran up to assist. The "men in black" didn't know that and thought the performer was being attacked. Who knew Pikachus were under Secret Service protection? Anyway, it was quickly sorted out and Pikachu went off to get repaired.

(YouTube link)

This video shows just the relevant parts of the drama. The poor Pikachu tried to rejoin his friends, but it was not meant to be. Poor Pikachu! -via Metafilter

Combine malapropisms and mixed metaphors, and you've got a malaphor. It's a "mixture of two idioms, creating a sort of malaprop in metaphor form." A famous example is the song "We'll Burn That Bridge When We Get There," although that was intentional. The unintentional ones are the funniest. The site Malaphors collects incidences of these idiosyncratic idioms. Here are some examples:

She called me every name under the book

I haven’t heard hide nor hair of that guy

He wasn’t the brightest bulb in the basket

Put your best face forward

Each example has the story of who said it and where. Check out more at Malaphors. This may keep me busy for a while. -via Daily of the Day

(Image credit: Skez)

(YouTube link)

Mazzy is two-and-a-half years old, but she is learning to cook. She even has a cooking show on YouTube! In this video, she helps her daddy make boba milk tea. It's a pretty straightforward recipe, but Mazzy makes it compelling. -via Digg

People around the world have stereotypes of Americans. We're overweight, rich, armed, loud, and we smile all the time. An exaggeration, of course, but Americans do smile more than other cultures. Why is that? Surely we aren't that much happier than other developed nations.

For a study published in 2015, an international group of researchers looked at the number of “source countries” that have fed into various nations since the year 1500. Places like Canada and the United States are very diverse, with 63 and 83 source countries, respectively, while countries like China and Zimbabwe are fairly homogenous, with just a few nationalities represented in their populations.

After polling people from 32 countries to learn how much they felt various feelings should be expressed openly, the authors found that emotional expressiveness was correlated with diversity. In other words, when there are a lot of immigrants around, you might have to smile more to build trust and cooperation, since you don’t all speak the same language.

That makes plenty of sense, especially since so many non-immigrant Americans only speak one language. It may also be because we spend so much money on our teeth, we want to show them off. Other reasons for the American smile are explored in an article at the Atlantic.  -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Flickr user Kristo)

In case you need a little more nightmare fuel, scientists have been studying a fish eyeball parasite. Diplostomum pseudospathaceum infects a fish's eye as a larva. While the larva grows, it causes the fish to swim slower than usual, which protects both the fish and the parasite from predators. But when the larva is mature, it makes the fish swim faster and closer to the water's surface. That's so the fish will be eaten by a bird!

The eye fluke Diplostomum pseudospathaceum has a life cycle that takes place in three different types of animal. First, parasites mate in a bird’s digestive tract, shedding their eggs in its faeces. The eggs hatch in the water into larvae that seek out freshwater snails to infect. They grow and multiply inside the snails before being released into the water, ready to track down their next host, fish. The parasites then penetrate the skin of fish, and travel to the lens of the eye to hide out and grow. The fish then get eaten by a bird – and the cycle starts again.

The current research is about fish eyes that contain both mature and immature parasites. How do those fish act? Read about Diplostomum pseudospathaceum at New Scientist. -via reddit 

(Image credit: winnu)

Flooding this week in Reyno, Arkansas, brought the river up as high as the bridge. That spelled trouble for a cabin that was floating downstream. It became stuck between a rock and a hard place. That is, between the rushing current and the concrete bridge!

(YouTube link)

This was no storage shed. It was clear that people lived there by what we see on the other side. See more of the flooding in Arkansas and Missouri here. -via Digg

If you need an excuse to watch the trailer for The Last Jedi again, we've got you covered. For Star Wars Day, Antonio Toscano (previously at Neatorama) redid the trailer for The Last Jedi in LEGO.

(YouTube link)

You can see a side-by-side comparison here. In case you need another excuse.  -via Tastefully Offensive

As someone who has worked third shift, and even now naps in the daylight hors, I consider blackout blinds a miracle. They sure beat taping aluminum foil over the windows (which I never did, but had to live with at one time). But look at how cool these blackout blinds are! Strategic small holes make them into a nighttime city skyline. The blinds are from a Ukrainian company named HoleRoll. A machine translation from the site says,

We are engaged in the development and production of exclusive roller blinds. The illusion of the night city or the night sky is created with holes in the fabric.

I believe that means they aren't ready for retail sales. There's no price yet, or information about whether they will be shipped overseas. So far, they show skylines of New York and London, and a blind with no skyline, but tiny stars showing through. -via Laughing Squid

Jürgen Horn and Mike Powell are in Saigon For 91 Days. They got to take a peek at the Tay Son lacquer factory, which turned out to be more of an artist's studio than what we normally think of as a factory. They were tickled to see how those shiny, art-covered furniture pieces are made.

Lacquerwork has a long history in Vietnam, where it’s known as Sơn Mài. For centuries, it was purely decorative, used mainly to preserve wooden furniture from the tropic heat. But in the 1930s, a new generation of Vietnamese artists began to fuse French influences into their lacquer works. And since there’s nothing the West loves better than celebrating its own influence, lacquerware was soon being hailed as a newly-discovered Oriental style, and displayed at exhibitions around the world.

At For 91 Days, you get pictures of the factory tour, a gallery of artworks, and a video. Mike and Jürgen are getting ready to leave Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City. Where will they go next?

With eight movies now, the Star Wars cast has grown considerably. And they all went to school when they were young. Wasn't Ewan McGregor (Obi-Wan Kenobi) a cutie with his French horn? See more of the Star Wars casts, from A New Hope to Rogue One, in their school yearbook pictures at TVOM.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Star Wars. The world has changed a lot in those years, so it's nice to have a familiar world of light side vs. dark side, Jedi vs. Sith, and Rebel vs. Empire to submerge oneself in. Some of the first children who grew up with Star Wars are now introducing their grandchildren to a galaxy far, far away. Some of those first-generation fans are now working to send humans to Mars.

(YouTube link)

This film is an homage to not only the creators of this universe but to all the childhood imaginations that were changed forever. From Paul Constantakis. May the fourth be with you.  -Thanks, Paul!

For Star Wars Day, BL Burgers in Australia is offering a limited edition burger called "Return of the Chedi." For $17 (not that outrageous in Australia) you get a beef patty, smoked cheese kransky (that's a sausage), two other kinds of cheese, pickles, and ketchup, on a "galaxy milk bun," which is the strangest thing about this burger. Look at those colors! Buzzfeed sent a couple of people out to try it and give us their impressions of the burger. 

The real estate market is ridiculous these days. Even a dump costs way more than it should. What can a young adult do if they want to buy their own home? Save, shop, and still be rejected. The choices are unaffordable or uninhabitable. No one is building starter homes anymore -there's not enough profit in it.  

(YouTube link)

I hate to sound like a geezer, but the first house I bought was very much like the fixer-upper he was shown. I spent tons of time and money fixing it up little by little, and still lost my shirt trying to sell it after the housing bubble burst. And now I have a kid moving back in with me because her rent's too high, even with three roommates. -via Digg

We constantly make jokes about how cats hold humans in contempt, that they consider themselves our overlords. Recent research shows that ain't necessarily so. At least some of them are just acting like they don't care, so they can wrap us around their little finger. Or claw. 

Researchers at Oregon State University offered 38 cats a choice between food, a toy, an interesting smell (catnip, a gerbil) and attention from a human.

Thirty-seven percent preferred food to anything else. Eleven percent liked toys, and one cat was preoccupied with the smells of catnip and gerbils.

But 19 of them — half! — preferred the company of humans above all, choosing them over other entertainment possibilities.

But wait, my cats prefer my company because I will eventually feed them. They know that. Perhaps they know us too well. -via reddit

Mustaches and beards were common among men in the first decade of the 20th century, but military regulations had them shaved clean -because it made a gas mask fit better, and chemical warfare was a real danger to those the front lines. But there were other dangers, especially when the quality of shaving brushes went down.  

Before the war, shaving brushes were usually made with badger hair, the preferred bristles for lathering up. When the conflict interrupted the supply of high-quality badger bristles from Russia, suppliers cut a few corners. They switched to horsehair from Russia, China, and Japan—and skimped on a crucial step: disinfection. Instead of sending the hair to France or Germany to be cleaned and sanitized, they sent the tufts directly to brush manufacturers in the United States.

To find out what happened to some soldiers who used the uncleaned shaving brushes, read the scary story at Atlas Obscura.