When the first Avatar movie came out in 2009, we had to explain to people that the James Cameron film had nothing to do with the animated show Avatar: The Last Airbender. But 16 years later, it is clear that Jake Sully is on his way to mastering the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Avatar: Fire and Ash is the third film in the series, following Avatar: The Way of Water from 2022. As in that film, our favorite Na'vi encounters a new culture. Cameron is portraying Pandora like Earth in that while the Na'vi are one species, they come in all flavors with varying traditions and motivations. They still have to contend with the invaders from Earth.

Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, and Sigourney Weaver return in their Sully family roles, and the movie will also feature Kate Winslet and Oona Chaplin as new characters in the saga. Avatar: Fire and Ash is scheduled to land in theaters on December 19th.  -via Gizmodo 

The Instagram account Amazing Maps has a never-ending supply of maps focusing on details you probably wouldn't have thought of on your own, but are quite interesting. Most of them either show Europe or the entire world, but there are US and New World maps occasionally. Bored Panda picked a few dozen to present for your education or entertainment.



The maps cover a wide variety of subjects, from the historical (countries Britain once owned) to the mundane (how to say "frog") to the whimsical (where capybaras live) to the scary (in which countries do men live longer than women). Of the world maps shown, there is a thread that commenters had a lot of fun with- the location of New Zealand. It appears variously in the Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean, up near Japan, and sometimes cannot be found at all. It might be fun to check for our Kiwi friends in the Instagram account. See 49 such maps at Bored Panda. 

The Chinese auto company BYD shows off their Yangwang U9 model, an electric supercar with four motors, fast charging, a top speed of 243 mph, and individual wheel drive system. It also doesn't need a driver. Yes, it's a good-looking car, but the point of this video is to show us the Yangwang U9's ability to leap. Watch carefully, and you'll see the wheels retract into the body like a low rider, and then suddenly extend while at speed to leap over obstacles or holes in the road.

That's pretty cool, both to watch and as a technological innovation. It's like Mario Kart come to life. But the Yangwang U9 costs around $233,000, and you can't buy one if you live in the United States. Still, if you could spend that kind of money on a car, would you sit in the passenger seat and let it drive you around? Would you take it to top speed on roads that have potholes? Meanwhile, Ferrari and Lamborghini are working on electric models, if that's what you've been looking for. -via kottke 

When Adam Aaronson turned 21, he started a list of cocktails he's tried out. He called it Legal Cocktails. A few years later, he discovered that the International Bartenders Association (IBA) has an official list of cocktails that currently has 102 recipes. Aaronson edited his list to conform with the IBA list, and discovered he'd already tried 33 of the 89 cocktails listed at the time. Thereafter, his goal was to try all of them. In 2025, he has achieved that goal.  

At first it was easy, but as Aaronson eliminated the most common drinks, he ran into the more obscure recipes that didn't appear on cocktail menus or required ingredients bars don't keep in stock. Sometimes it was easier to just share his unfulfilled drink list with a bartender. Sometimes it required traveling to distant locations. And he even had a few instances of giving a recipe to a bartender for a drink he or she never mixed before. Most frustratingly, the IBA added cocktails to the list as he was closing in on completion. Read the highlights of Aaronson's adventures in IBA cocktails as he celebrates its completion. -via Nag on the Lake 

(Image credit: Sam Howzit) 

When human civilization and wildlife compete over limited territory, there will be problems. Japan has seen several bear attacks and some deaths this year. In certain mountainous areas, bear sightings have tripled over last year. 

In response, the police in Tochigi Prefecture, 100 kilometers north of Tokyo, are taking a page from the training that Japanese zoos have always conducted. They partnered with a local hunters club to stage a bear attack drill, featuring a man dressed as a bear. Or at least he had a bear head, designating his role in the drill. Without the head, he'd look like a portly movie ninja. They practiced scaring the bear away with fireworks and the proper way to approach a bear that has been shot or tranquilized. Apparently, that involves poking it in the butt with a stick. It's good that the video is clearly labeled "drill," as otherwise it would be terrifying. -via Metafilter 

On August 6, the world will mark 80 years since the first nuclear weapon was deployed, an atom bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The 509th Composite Group landed at Tinian Island air base three days before and went over the mission plans in various detail, according to the recipient's need to know. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tibbets was the commander of Special Bombing Mission No. 13. He supervised the re-assignment of call signs and plane markings, inspected the bomb called Little Boy, reviewed the mission with his crew, and played poker late into the night of August 5th. After all, none of his crew could sleep anyway. 

Early on the 6th, everyone on Tinian knew that something historic was happening, because lights, cameras, and military journalists were there to document the moment. Tibbets secretly tucked a packet of cyanide pills into his pocket. The Enola Gay and three other planes took off at 2:45 AM, following three weather planes that left an hour earlier. They were six hours and 15 minutes from Japan. Meanwhile, people in Hiroshima were going about their morning as they had for the past few years during wartime. Read about the hours leading up to the bombing of Hiroshima in a book excerpt at LitHub. -via Damn Interesting  

(Image credit: US Air Force) 

Ringo Starr and Buddy Rich impressed people with a bass drum, two tom-toms, and a snare, plus a couple of cymbals. Rich had more cymbals than he really needed, but they weren't too many. But ever since then, drummers seem to have become drum collectors, with ever larger kits. Are they experimenting, expanding what a drummer can do for a band, just showing off, or are they hiding from the audience? Carl Palmer enhanced his drum set with tympani, triangle, tubular bells, and gongs. Terry Bozzio tuned his numerous drums so that he could play songs on them like a piano. Other drummers built kits that tilted, rotated, or flew up into the air. In this video, Loudwire presents ten of the biggest and most extreme drum kits ever assembled. Some of these kits appear massively redundant, but they can impress an audience. We always need more cowbell. -via Laughing Squid 

The temperance movement was already declining in the UK in 1925 as the US experimented with Prohibition. In the photo above, John Grantham, the Sheriff of Newcastle, doesn't look happy about attending a temperance festival -or being photographed on a carousel horse. His wife Violet, however, seems to be having a good time. She would later become the Sheriff herself, and then later became the first woman Lord Mayor of Newcastle‑upon‑Tyne.  

In the grand scheme of things, 100 years is not that long ago. My grandmother was in high school, and had not yet met my grandfather, who was ten years older. In a gallery of painstakingly researched photographs, we get a glimpse into the lives of people 100 years ago. Some were, or became, famous, like John Scopes who went on trial that year for teaching evolution. Some were caught up in the events of history, like the boxer who made a living in Europe until the Nazis arrested him in 1940 for being Black and American. And many just lived their lives and left their legacy to the people who loved them. 

Eleanor Chiles (standing) was crowned Princess Shenandoah at the 1925 Apple Blossom Festival in Winchester, Virginia. Nine years later, after she married and had two children, she died of a short illness at the age of 28, only a few days after mother's death. Read her story, and those of a few dozen other people of 1925 at Kuriositas. 

Have you noticed the proliferation of the word "unalive" on the 'net as a substitute for "kill" or "die"? It's not just a fad- there's a reason behind it. 

When you tell people they cannot say certain words, they will come up with new words that say the same thing. It's always been this way, which is why we say "golly" or "gee" instead of something that could be considered offensive or blasphemous. These polite terms evolved slowly enough that everyone knows how to use them. But in the internet age, the administrators of popular platforms (TikTok in this case) can make their own rules about what words are not allowed. Users then find substitutes, or make up new words like "unalive," but those terms are complete nonsense to people who don't use that platform. Five years on, I had no idea that "panini" means "pandemic," because why would that word be banned? Linguist Dr. Erica Brozovsky (previously at Neatorama) explains why internet language has become this incomprehensible. 

Although some people can do it better than others, everyone can draw a fish. That's the point of Draw a Fish. Go head and draw your fish, but don't let the algorithm below throw you off. I ended up with only a 60% chance of my drawing being a fish, but Bright Fish turned out better than a lot of other people's attempts.

Once you are finished drawing, the real fun begins. You can name and save your fish, and then watch it swim in a tank with the others of the last 50 fish drawn- but hurry, mine was eclipsed by 50 others in a few minutes. Or you can watch the most popular fish swim together. Your saved fish will also go into the gallery, where other people can upvote or downvote it, and that rarely has anything to do with it being recognizable as a fish. Check out the gallery for an amazing assortment of fish drawings. -via Metafilter 

We're getting the band back together! It's been 41 years since we were introduced to the band Spinal Tap, and their 1984 film is finally getting a sequel. In Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest ), David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) are much older, and look even older than the actors who play them. Not so much with the documentary filmmaker Martin "Marty" Di Bergi (Rob Reiner). The youngest of these actors is 77. Anyway, the plot is that Spinal Tap disbanded 15 years ago, but now they are reuniting for one last show. The movie also gives us a glimpse of what's they've been doing in retirement. They still don't have a drummer, and you can imagine that their reputation is making it hard to recruit one. Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is scheduled to open nationwide on September 12. 

Hay fever used to be an illness associated with aristocrats, but now it's pretty widespread. Cases of asthma, eczema, and food allergies have risen exponentially in the last few decades. But not for the Amish. While 8-10% of children have asthma, that rate is only 1-2% for Amish children. About half the general population is allergic to something, but a recent pinprick study shows only 7% of Amish children have those same common allergies. 

American children who grow up on farms have lower allergy rates than urban and suburban children, but the Amish rates are still much lower. In fact, when childhood allergies in Amish children were compared to Hutterite children, also raised on farms with similar ancestry, the Hutterite children had an allergy rate six times higher. Read what scientists have learned about allergy development -or non-development- in Amish children and how it could lead to better allergy relief for the rest of us.  -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: Gadjoboy) 

If you thought cats were manipulative, you obviously haven't had a ferret. I haven't owned a ferret, either, but I've heard enough stories from family members. Ferrets are known for their amazing flexibility and never-ending energy. They can fill your home with chaos, if you like that sort of thing. And underneath all that frantic activity, ferrets are pretty clever in getting what they want. YouTuber William Snekspeare got two ferrets, and before he knew what happened, he had five ferrets. Only then did he figure out how conniving they can be. They each have their separate personalities: Princess hates pork, Steve likes pork, and Toast plays video games, and they are all smarter than they look. William tries to keep their behavior under control, but they managed to turn the tables on him with their wits until it became clear who's the boss of the house. It ain't William. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

In 1979, a stuck valve led to a loss of water in a nuclear facility and ended in a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Pennsylvania. Coincidentally, the movie The China Syndrome had opened 12 days earlier. It concerned a journalist who witnessed a stuck gauge leading to loss of water in a commercial nuclear power plant. I saw the movie after the Three Mile Island incident hit the news, and I recall a scene when someone described a nuclear meltdown as being able to flatten an area the size of Pennsylvania -and the whole audience giggled nervously. 

Younger people today would be forgiven for thinking that The China Syndrome was made about the Three Mile Island incident. But in 1979, the real disaster drove more people to see the movie, and it explained the danger better than the news did. Public support for nuclear power plunged, and the increase in nuclear power plants stopped in its tracks, with only a few projects being completed in the next thirty years. The China Syndrome wasn't the only film that swayed public opinion or otherwise changed history- read about seven such movies at Mental Floss. 

People who have pools or dumpsters know how dangerous they are for small animals- they can fall in, but it's hard to get out. A board added as a ramp can fix the problem. The city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands is tackling the problem in a grand way, by installing kitty steps in the city's concrete canals. When they determined that 19 cats had drowned in the last six months because they could not escape, the city council allocated €100,000 to build the wooden ramps. This is what they will look like. 

The escape ramps are officially called "wildlife exit sites," since cats aren't the only animals that have trouble escaping the canals. The first step is to determine where cats have been drowning, so that the most effective locations can be targeted. Amsterdam cares about its kitties. 

-via Metafilter, where I also learned about Amsterdam's Cat Boat, Animal Ambulance, and Cat Cabinet museum. 

(Image credit: Massimo Catarinella)