A challenge you can't resist! Or at least I couldn't. Turn your head away as each song starts and see if you can name that tune before you look at the title onscreen. Describing the Bugs Bunny scene doesn't count.  

I thought I would do better than I did. I knew some, and couldn't bring up the name of others. When composers just give their compositions numbers instead of unique names, it's hard to commit them to memory. But there were a few I don't think I've ever even heard before. I could identify the Nokia ringtone, but I didn't know it was based on an existing song. If you enjoyed that, here's round two.



I could name more of them in the second round. How did you do?

A Finnish cruise line bought a ship in 1980 and named it the Viking Sally. Its first six years as a cruise ship were uneventful, but in 1986, a man met two strangers in a bar, and was brutally murdered in his cabin later that night. Police found the perpetrator, who later escaped from prison and murdered again. In 1987, two passengers were sleeping on the deck when they were attacked. They were taken to a hospital where one of them died of his injuries. It was 30 years before the perpetrator was discovered, but he was never convicted.

Was the Viking Sally cursed? The ship was sold and renamed, but it was the same boat that ran into a massive storm in 1994 and sank, killing 852 people. It was the second worst European maritime disaster outside of war, only surpassed by the Titanic. Only 137 people survived. Read the story of the Viking Sally at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Mark Markefelt)

The fast-moving, action-packed animated short A Brief Disagreement by Steve Cutts (previously at Neatorama) is basically about two cavemen fighting -"mankind's favourite pastime" as the YouTube description puts it. They begin with rocks and progress to clubs, and get their friends to join in. Their weapons get ever more sophisticated, but their feelings toward each other are stuck in a stubborn battle where the goal is winning at any cost. I suppose that's why they remain cavemen, even armed with today's high-tech killing machines. -via Laughing Squid

The top websites in the world are Google, YouTube, and Facebook. It's been like that for years. But what if you eliminated those, and ranked websites within nations? Then you'd end up learning something new about the world. Hostinger did just that. In fact, they eliminated all search engines, since they are a "middle man" to get you to other websites. They also eliminated porn sites, which are now ranked fourth and fifth globally. After that, we find out that Wikipedia is the top websites in 43 countries, which is very believable. But not the US! Americans like to buy things, so Amazon is at the top. Reddit is the go-to website in Canada, New Zealand, and the Philippines. You might not know Delfi; it is a news site based in Estonia that operates in Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian, Polish, and English.

You can see and enlarge the world map greatly here. Then you'll find some interesting data, like how Blogspot is number one in Bolivia, 9GAG is tops in Nicaraugua, and IMDb is the most popular website in Liberia. Hostinger also has maps for the top news sites, banking sites, and food sites around the world (DoorDash beats all recipe sites in the US). You can see the global reach of websites that were eliminated at Open.Trends. Data is not available from every country in the world. -via Metafilter

Yes his name is Steeve Ho You Fat pic.twitter.com/B3A9YFHI3O

— SB Nation (@SBNation) October 5, 2022

If you recall the erstwhile Name of the Year tournament, you are no stranger to odd sports names. We've almost gotten used to them. But in a world where people travel from different cultures, some legitimate names can still surprise us. The internet lit up today over a French professional basketball player who shone brightly in an exhibition game between Metropolitans 92 and G League Ignite. The game was broadcast to showcase the future top draft picks Victor Wembanyama and Scoot Henderson. But all anyone can talk about today is Steeve Ho You Fat. 

Ho You Fat was born in French Guiana, where his father, of Chinese descent, runs a logistics company and his mother is an African dance teacher. He has been playing professionally since 2008. Ho You Fat is 6' 8" and weights a mere 198 pounds. His is a fascinating story, but what everyone wants is a jersey with his name. Ho You Fat might be able to monetize that desire and retire.

For those who love Die Hard but think it's just not Christmassy enough, the new film Violent Night will fill that hole in your holidays. This is no Bad Santa, but rather an action movie centered around Kris Kringle. David Harbour stars as a depressed, burned out Santa Claus who rises to the occasion when a child on his nice list is threatened. The movie also stars John Leguizamo and Beverly D'Angelo, among a group of younger stars. Someone described the movie after seeing the trailer as "if Die Hard and Home Alone had a baby." Violent Night will stage its world premiere at New York Comic Con on Friday, and open nationwide in theaters on December 2.  -via reddit

Katmai National Park in Alaska is holding their annual Fat Bear Week tournament today through October 11th. Which of the park's brown bears have gained the most weight during the summer to ensure a safe and healthy winter hibernation? You can't just ask a bear to step on the scales, so these bears are judged on appearance (from a safe distance). People who have been following the bears all summer have their favorites, but if you don't, you can read up on the contenders in their profiles. The bears that have been around long enough have names, like Holly, Otis, Grazer, Walker, and Chunk, but they all have numbers.

The first round matchups today pit Bear 335 against Bear 164, and Bear 747 against Bear 856. If either advance far enough in the tournament, they will probably earn their own nicknames. Voting begins at noon Eastern Time. Cast your vote for both matchups here. You can vote in different matchups each day as the tournament advances. The final championship round will be Tuesday the 11th, and the winner will be announced some time after that.

Whether you vote or not, you'll enjoy checking out the bears on the park's live webcams. 

Two hours later pic.twitter.com/rjRqvltV8k

— Chosen One (@BlueMyrtle1) October 1, 2022

In the wake of hurricane Ian, a boat washed ashore on the coastline near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. To warn people away from the wreck, the local police Tweeted what surely seems like a sociology experiment. They should have known what would happen. Or maybe they did.

You win.

— kathy catanzaro (@kicatanzaro) October 2, 2022

The rest of the Twitter thread is filled with people who really want to go near the boat, mainly because of the warning.

pic.twitter.com/KDEsDwRBFQ

— Cameron Bennett (@Cameroneous) October 1, 2022

From the comments, we can assume that the boat is now the site of the world's largest party, filled with people from all over who didn't know where Myrtle Beach was until this warning was posted.

pic.twitter.com/FyIHPhqA74

— Greg David (@IAmGregDavid) October 4, 2022

You can read the entire thread here. -via Everlasting Blort

Four women to run post office and count penguins in Antarctica https://t.co/13H4wIdkdP pic.twitter.com/609O8GNEKz

— Morning Sentinel (@sentinelmorning) October 4, 2022

Remember the job openings for workers at Port Lockroy in Antarctica? Running a post office and gift shop and counting penguins for the Antarctic Heritage Trust sounds like a great position until you read there is no running water or internet and you'd have to sleep with your co-workers. But 6,000 people applied for those jobs anyway. Sorry, you were not selected. The slots have been filled by four women ready for adventure.

Lucy Bruzzone earned the position of Base Leader. She is a scientist who already spent three months in the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean.

Mairi Hilton is a conservation biologist from Scotland, and will be monitoring the gentoo penguin colony.

Clare Ballantyne recently earned her master's degree in earth science at Oxford University. She will be in charge of the post office, which sends out around 80,000 cards a year from tourists who visit Port Lockroy on Goudier Island.

Natalie Corbett will run the gift shop and museum and count penguins. She's an experienced retail worker who just got married in June. Her new husband George is supportive of her leaving for five months.

The four are looking forward to subzero temperatures and constant daylight for their five-month contract in Antarctica.

Sometimes we ponder the infinite size of the cosmos and think about how insignificant we and all our problems are. Will we ever travel beyond our physical limits? But that's all relative. If we were to shrink down to an exponentially smaller size, we would be in a whole different universe, where we will never move beyond our physical limits even if they are the size of a small patch of lawn. We might escape human world problems, but we would encounter other problems dealing with physics and the influence of the wider world that microscopic life can never even perceive. As mind-blowing as that is, this video from Kurzgesagt takes us down to exponentially smaller sizes to see what those worlds are like.

While we are sure to learn something new about the physics of the tiny worlds around us, it also might remind you of the kinds of things you ponder during a psychedelic experience (or is that just me?). Once we are back to our normal scale, you can't help but think about the parts of our universe that are so large we cannot imagine them while we inhabit the world we know. What if some intelligent life form were experimenting with us right now, but we could never detect it because they are  bigger than our known universe? In other words, size matters.

The main video is only a little over ten minutes long, the rest an ad, although an interesting one.

Tom Scott never liked monorails and didn't mind to tell us why. Then he heard from the German engineering company that builds the Doppelmayr Garaventa Monorack. It's a monorail system that addresses the problems Tom found with other monorails, and it is particularly suited for traveling up and down the Alps without wearing yourself out. I don'tknow all that much about engineering, but I hear that Germany is good at it.

Once a staple of everyday party-hosting, the punch bowl is rarely considered these days. You wouldn't buy one unless you were outfitting a restaurant or catering service, but I can guarantee if you live long enough, you will inherit one. Now, anything that is large enough to serve drinks to an entire party can be a punch bowl, and bowls made to serve parties can also be used for other things. Some of the world's most famous punch bowls (and there are some) have been used for other purposes, like to cool wine bottles, feed the dog, row a boat in, or baptize a baby, and they have served as swimming pools, sports trophies, and grave makers.

What makes a punch bowl famous? Using a punch bowl for a dog dish isn't enough, because anyone can do that. But some punch bowls are works of art, while others get their gleam from the celebrities who used them. Most notable are the epic parties they have served. Read the stories of four punchbowls that went down in history at Atlas Obscura.

When we read about incidences of sea monsters attacking ships, we think of the Age of Exploration, when sailing ships traveled oceans the sailors knew little about, and brought back amazing stories months later. But a US Navy ship was attacked by an unknown kraken in 1978! The USS Stein, being large and metal as modern destroyers are, suffered a mysterious technical breakdown that turned out to be an attack that no one witnessed. The sonar system went down, and the Stein returned to port to assess the damage. Upon examining the huge dome on the front of the ship that housed the sonar unit, they found scratches up to four feet long in its rubber coating. They also recovered several claws from underneath the rubber.



The most likely suspect is a colossal squid, the only known squid to have these kinds of claws on their tentacles. It's possible the squid identified the ship's dome as a sperm whale, its natural enemy. However, the size of the claws were big enough to indicate that the squid would have been larger than any colossal squid observed yet. And colossal squid are thought to inhabit the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. It seems that either colossal squid are larger and more free-ranging than previously thought, or else the creature that attacked the Stein is something else that we don't yet know.  Read the tale of the USS Stein attack at IFL Science.  -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: Gibson, J.)

I know you wouldn't want to take revenge on people for their rude, thoughtless, or even evil deeds, but the arc of justice will sometimes do it for you. The rest of us can sit back from a distance and enjoy the satisfaction in comeuppance for a slight we had nothing to do with. Redditor Veriera, who posted the picture above, said he was glad to have a dirty car when another driver rear-ended his son, and then left without identifying himself.

To the lady who flipped me off when I honked at you...your phone probably isn't still on top of your car anymore.

😅🤣😂

— Diane (@Resister4u) December 26, 2021

Some of these cases of eventual justice are even self-reported. This woman just had to take her lumps and chalk it up to experience.

Told my Dad I ran out of alcohol and didn’t have any money to buy any for the weekend..so he gave me the huge bottle of vodka from the cupboard that I stole and replaced with water when I was 16... life really does come back to bite u in the ass

— lizzie 𓃱 (@lizbeth_ellen) March 24, 2019

An alcohol-free weekend was probably good for her. See 50 ranked examples of karma that caught up with perpetrators in one way or another at Bored Panda. Be aware that some of these stories may be downright horrifying.  

Look at this beautiful oak table. Each wooden plank in the tabletop is 44 feet long! Vladimir Putin would be so envious.

This is a table like no other in the world. We know that Britain's peat bogs are full of prehistoric treasures preserved underneath. In 2012, a preserved oak tree trunk was discovered in a peat bog in Cambridgeshire. At 44 feet long, it is the longest oak trunk ever retrieved from such bogs, and it is only a portion of the original tree! Unearthed after 5,000 years, what would they do with this tree? The Fenland Black Oak Project was launched, with a goal that a massive table would be made from the bog oak's beautiful wood, blackened by thousands of years soaking in peat. The planks were carefully cut, then dried in a kiln that had to be specially built for the project. It took nine months to extract 1.8 tons of water from the planks. The estimated 2013 completion date for the project had to be abandoned, but earlier this year, ‘A Table for the Nation’ was installed in Ely Cathedral so people can see it. Read the story of the magnificent Fenland bog oak table at The History Blog. -via Strange Company