I never thought about the fact that Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" didn't have a music video. See, in 1973 when the song was new, music videos weren't a thing. It was another ten years before MTV came along, and by then we had concert footage and memories to go with the song. Well now, the band has an official music video for "Free Bird." It's nothing like what you thought of the song at the time, but it's perfect for 2025.

If there were a music video produced for the song back in the 1970s, it would probably have had a visual representation of the lyrics, about a guy who couldn't stay in a relationship because he was had to fly away and enjoy his freedom. Instead, this video evokes the emotions and memories that people of a certain age (like the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd) have when they hear the song. "Free Bird" was a part of the soundtrack of your life 50 years ago, a rather magical time for those who were there. -via Laughing Squid

Constrained writing is when an author decides to limit the words, grammar, or style they use. The most common form of constrained writing is certain forms of poetry, when the meter and the rhymes follow a set pattern. But some writers take it much further, for example, writing an entire book without the letter "e" appearing at all, or telling a story without verbs. You have to wonder how much that interferes with the reader's enjoyment, or even comprehension of the subject matter. Some of these books would be considered stunts to impress a small audience, and they did not become bestsellers.

However, the most famous example of constrained writing was when publisher Bennett Cerf challenged Dr. Seuss to write a complete story using 50 different words or less. Seuss responded with Green Eggs and Ham, which won that bet and became a classic. That kind of constrained writing is called "mandated vocabulary." Read about other types of constrained writing, such as lipogram, rhopalism, tautogram, palindrome, and more at Mental Floss.  

Why would you name a car "Raincoat"? Because it was small enough to drive through your front door, so you don't have to get out and walk in the rain!

DAF founder Hub van Doorne designed this car with just that idea in mind. This 1943 DAF Mobile Raincoat looks like an oversized roller skate, or a clown car. Indeed it was used for that purpose eventually. If you think the narrowness is weird, wait until you hear about all the other features. It had one wheel in front, with front wheel drive. To drive in reverse, you steered until that drive wheel was backwards- which meant it could go as fast backward as it could forward. It also had a fabric roof, just in case you got stuck somewhere and couldn't open the door. Being able to park inside the house meant that the Nazis wouldn't see or appropriate your car. But I'd bet that Mom didn't much like the muddy tire tracks on the floor.  

The guy who discovered coffee is said to be an Ethiopian goat herder named Kaldi. He noticed his goats dancing energetically after they consumed the beans of a coffee plant, which grew wild there at the time. After trying them himself, there was no turning back. You can see a real history of coffee in a previous video.

Ryan George, on the other hand, retells the story from the perspective of a guy who will try anything, and that includes boiling beans and drinking the resulting sludge. In this scenario, he is the first person to ever do so. His friend cannot believe the stupidity of this act, until he tries some coffee himself. The video is caffeinated, so it goes pretty fast and is only two and half minutes long. The rest is an ad. The moral of the story is, don't drink brown water unless someone else has already done it and survived.

Hit songs written to protest something are often quite clear at the time. They should be so now, when everyone has access to what's going on in the news. Or maybe not, considering the astonishing number of people who don't keep up with news. But even so, the poetic lyrics of protest songs that become classics can be confusing 40, 50, or 60 years later. When I saw this list, I immediately opened it to see if I knew the meaning behind all of them. After all, I am old and remember when these songs were new. Alas, I had missed the mark on two of them, and there was one song I'd never heard of.

Take the Buffalo Springfield song "For What It's Worth." The list writer said that many young people today assume it's a Vietnam War protest song. I thought, no, listen to the lyrics. It's about police brutality against those who protested against the war. But I found out that was wrong as well. Turns out it was a local issue in Los Angeles, and I was a kid in Kentucky. In fact, geography explains all my failures in this subject. See if you can recall the meaning of five old protest songs at Cracked.

We've had Frankenstein for more than 200 years, since Mary Shelley gave us what is considered the first science fiction story. The concept of a man playing God but getting it all wrong is universal, and it's still a story we never get tired of. The latest cinematic Frankenstein comes from writer/director Guillermo del Toro. Oscar Isaac stars as Dr. Victor Frankenstein, and Jacob Elordi is the monster, although we don't get a good look at him in the first teaser trailer. We do get a sense of his size and power. Frankenstein is scheduled to be released on Netflix in November. Why not in October for Halloween? Del Toro, who has been developing this project for decades, says "the movie will not be a horror movie, but an incredibly emotional story." I dunno, horror is an emotion, isn't it? The comments at YouTube are mostly how this should be released in theaters. -via Fark

Thomas Howard, the 14th Earl of Arundel, visited his estates in Shropshire in the year 1635, and met a tenant farmer who had recently celebrated his 152nd birthday. Impressed, he insisted that Thomas Parr accompany him to London, where the old man stayed at the earl's home, met the king, and enjoyed high-class dining and sumptuous accommodations. But within months, he died. Parr's story was recorded in a poem by John Taylor, and then picked up by writers, artists, and storytellers of all kinds. Thomas Parr left no descendants, but his name and fame lived on for hundreds of years.

No one at the time seemed to question Parr's advanced age, but there was much speculation about how he lived so long and why he died. Was it the foul air and water pollution of the city? Or was it the rich food and luxurious lifestyle that he wasn't used to? Two hundred years after Parr's death, Herbert Ingram appeared to have figured it out when he produced Parr’s Life Pills, one of the earlier patent medicines that promised a long life. It was marketed as being a mixture that Old Parr himself discovered but shared with no one during his lifetime. Read about Thomas Parr and his postmortem fame at The Public Domain Review.  -via Nag on the Lake

The animated sitcom King of the Hill aired 13 seasons from 1997 to 2009. The show's continuing popularity is bringing it back for season 14 that will debut on Hulu on August fourth. Instead of taking up where it left off, the series jumps ahead eight years, and it appears that the characters have been busy during that time. Hank and Peggy went to live in Saudi Arabia for a number of years, and they've returned home for their retirement to find the neighborhood in Arlen, Texas, changed quite a bit. Dale ran for mayor, but we don't find out whether he won or not. Meanwhile, Bobby has grown up and at age 21 is now a chef in Dallas. The passage of years is illustrated in lightning speed in the show's new opening credit sequence. No doubt we will get a more detailed explanation of those years in the first episode. -via Boing Boing

If you were hiking in the Himalayas (lucky you) and saw this six-foot-tall structure far ahead of you among the rocks, you might think it was a termite hill, or maybe a monument of some kind. Surely a plant can't survive this altitude! But this is indeed a plant. The noble rhubarb (Rheum nobile) inhabits elevations from 3,500 to 4,800 meters (11k to 16K feet), where few other plants thrive. It has evolved to withstand the harsh sunlight and cold temperatures of the Himalayan mountainsides. The greener leaves on its lower part are edible, and a fresh stalk can provide you with a drink on your hike. Its adaptations for the conditions are quite clever.

The upper leaves grow in a mound around the stem and turn translucent, letting filtered sunlight in while insulating the stem and reproductive organs from the cold. They fall off when it is time to let the seeds fly at the end of the plant's life cycle. Everything about the noble rhubarb is adapted to the harsh environment, which you can read about at Kuriositas.

(Image credit: Dieter Albrecht)

The earth has about 400,000 described species of beetles, and we know there are plenty that haven't been discovered or studied at all. The ones we know about are hella strange. What defines a beetle is the armor they wear over their wings, which are folded up underneath until they need them. That armor used to be another set of wings before the hard shell evolved. If you think that's hardcore, it's nothing compared to the extreme anatomy some beetles developed for eating, mating, and fighting. That's about everything in a beetles' life, except for protecting itself from predators and other beetles. That's where that armor comes in, although it's not the only bizarre defense these bugs have.

Even though this video is more family-friendly than earlier videos in Ze Frank's True Facts series, it still comes with a warning due to humorous innuendos. There's a 70-second skippable ad at 5:56.

Autoimmune diseases are those in which the body's immune system turns to attacking vital organs instead of limiting its activities to invaders. They include multiple sclerosis, psoriasis,  type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and many others. These diseases have become more common in the modern era, but there may something more to it than just the fact that people now live long enough to develop them. It may be because we don't get as much exposure to sunlight as we used to.

Now, it's true that too much exposure to sunlight over years can lead to skin cancer, but that may actually be due to the sun's role in suppressing the immune system. Photoimmunology is the recently-developed study of how sunlight affects the immune system. Therapies have been developed using devices that emit light rays in forms that do not induce cancer, with promising results in suppressing symptoms of autoimmune diseases. Read about these therapies, and the science beneath the concept, at Scientific American.  -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Fiona Storey)

We've heard so much talk about artificial intelligence taking over our jobs. It's happening in all sectors, but is most visible in movies, video, and television. That's bad for real actors, who not only make a living playing roles, but consider themselves artists. But has anyone ever looked at this phenomenon from the side of the AI-generated actors who are taking their place? They don't get paid, they will do whatever you tell them to, and they have no life outside of the screen time they are assigned.

Hashem Al-Ghaili generated a documentary about the sad lives of AI actors, who don't even exist outside of the prompts they get from film directors. Anything they do outside of work time is deemed a hallucination. They are trapped in their work, even if it means getting their head chopped off over and over until the scene is right. And if this video touches your heartstrings, congratulations, you've been manipulated into caring about people who don't exist. -via Laughing Squid

Owls are awesome, and a vital part of the ecosystem. They tend to avoid humans as best as they can, but occasionally, an owl is orphaned, sick, or injured, and there are dedicated rehabilitators who rise to occasion and take care of them. Still, owls are wild animals, and not easy to deal with without someone getting hurt. So wildlife rehabbers wrap them in towels in order to weigh them, treat their injuries, and sometimes even to feed them. This not only protects both the bird and the handler, but also helps to calm down an agitated bird. When an owl is kept still in this way, it's a good time to take its picture. The gallery Owls in Towels brings us wrapped owls from all over the world. Shannon, pictured above, is a ruru morepork owl who slammed into a glass window and was treated at Wildbase Recovery in New Zealand. Grace, below, is showing some attitude as she is examined by a veterinarian at the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital.



Rarely does an owl look happy to be wrapped in a towel by a strange human, but this Eurasian scops owl was rescued from an attack by a pack of crows in Skopje, North Macedonia, and looks quite pleased about it.  

You can click on any of the images in the gallery and read the story of that particular owl. And if you have a box of towels you no longer use, your local wildlife rehab center or any animal shelter will be glad to put them to use. -via Metafilter

A Klein bottle is one that has no separate inside and outside because they are both the same surface. It's not an imaginary shape, and you can buy a Klein bottle easily. Can you fill such a bottle with liquid? That's a problem, because gravity will work against you. But there is a way.  

James Orgill of The Action Lab (previously at Neatorama) tells us that it is air standing in the way of filling a Klein bottle. If we can remove the air, the liquid will fill the space despite gravity. He tests his method with aluminum cans, which is pretty cool, although I wouldn't recommend it unless you have proper safety equipment. On to the glass Klein bottle, in an experiment I wouldn't recommend even with safety equipment because all I could think of was what could possibly go wrong, and that's a lot. But as long as he's doing it instead of me, it's pretty cool. There's a skippable ad from 3:21 to 4:50.

In the grand scheme of things, Grigori Rasputin was a side character in the story of the downfall of Russia's last absolute monarch, Tsar Nicholas II. But the semi-literate Siberian faith healer and mystic, with his questionable hygiene and hypnotically piercing eyes, captured the imagination of the world as he became a celebrated friend and advisor to the Romanov family. Was he a holy man or the devil incarnate? Was Rasputin controlling the Tsar? Was he sleeping with the Empress Alexandra?

Even more sensational was Rasputin's death, when he was murdered in Saint Petersburg in 1916 by five conspirators close to the throne. According to different accounts, he was poisoned, but didn't die. Then he was shot multiple times and didn't die. Finally, he was beaten and bound and thrown into the freezing Little Nevka river, and finally died. The tale of Rasputin's death only added to his reputation for supernatural abilities. But what really happened to Rasputin? The accounts of his death come from Felix Yusupov, who was there when it happened, and from Rasputin's daughter Maria. Both had their reasons to frame the story as they did. The autopsy report contained information that differed from those accounts. Read the inflated tale of Rasputin's sensational murder and what really happened at Mental Floss.