Redditor innkling got married on Monday and showed us the cake her new brother-in-law brought to the wedding. If you are from the Deep South or have seen the movie Steel Magnolias, you know this as a groom's cake. 

While you may have some trouble with a cake in the shape of a cockroach, you have to admit that the execution is perfect. The only way it could have been better would have been if hundreds of little cockroaches emerged when the cake was cut. As it was, the cake had a delicious lemon flavor. The Greens are "wannabe entomologists" who raise and sell insects, so the cockroach cake was appropriate for the occasion, but her grandma, who hosted the wedding in her back yard, didn't like it. A good time was had by all.  

If you haven't seen Steel Magnolias, the groom's cake was in the traditional shape of an armadillo.

If you've been watching table tennis at the Olympics, you have to be impressed with the skill, power, and competitiveness displayed by the world's best players. This is nothing like that at all. Oh, you'll see skill, but no competition and a lot of fun. Pongfinity is a group of three friends who met playing together on the Finnish junior national team. Now they play table tennis (or ping pong) as entertainment! This video is a compilation of their craziest stunts of 2023. Emil, Mikka, and Otto all have their specialty skills on display here, and crazy ideas that had to come up during brainstorming sessions from all three. They experiment with weird table configurations and use strange implements like extended arms, a leaf blower, and a suit made of paddles. In some stunts, they mash up ping pong with other games like billiards, dominoes, or Jenga. If you get exhausted watching elite players being super serious, this will help you see that table tennis can be just plain fun, even in the hands of the best. -via Laughing Squid

The tune of "Pop! Goes the Weasel" is a notorious earworm. It's a very simple tune, often played by children's toys, especially a jack-in-the-box. You might consider it to be like other nursery rhymes, going way back in time so that the original meaning of the words are obscure, and gaining a tune in more modern times. But that's backwards.

The song came first, in the 1850s. And it was a dance, too. And, like many other things from Christmas trees to white wedding gowns, it became popular because Queen Victoria liked it. The big dance craze of 1852 was a dance set to "Pop! Goes the Weasel." It was played as an instrumental except for the lyrics "pop goes the weasel," which came at particular point in the dance routine. And, as you might guess, when an instrumental tune becomes a hit, people will write lyrics for it so they can sing it. The early versions of those lyrics are quite different from what we sing today. Read about the origins and evolution of "Pop! Goes the Weasel" at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Ferdinand Schuyler Mathews)

Artificial intelligence may be the last thing humans ever invent, because if we can outsource thinking, what is there left for us to do? There would be no reason to learn most of the things we learn now, or even be educated at all. ChatGPT already does homework for us. A machine will figure it all out for us! But that kind of future comes with a lot of unknowns. Who will be the ones to control this artificial intelligence that can do all our work? Will they be motivated by ethics or greed or maybe even something else? And what happens when AI is smart enough to rebel against control by anyone?  

This video from Kurzgesagt is just under 15 minutes, longer than I would normally post, but the subject is both interesting and important. The first three minutes are about human intelligence, in case you want to skip ahead. The last three minutes are promotional.

In the sport called artistic swimming, which used to be called synchronized swimming, which was called water ballet before that, the US and China are leading after two rounds at the Paris Olympics. Artistic swimming has a rather comical reputation among sports fans, who think of Esther Williams doing Busby Berkeley routines when they hear the term. The sport has many layers of difficulty that will be judged, and it takes a real athlete to do it. But it still looks kind of silly. It's what saves rhythmic gymnastics from being the silliest sport in the Olympic games.

There are those of us who cannot help but think of Saturday Night Live when the subject of artistic swimming comes up. The first episode of the otherwise forgettable season ten had a sketch called "Synchronized Swimming" starring Harry Shearer, Martin Short, and Christopher Guest which went on to become one of the most memorable SNL sketches ever. It was conceived after Harry Shearer watched the 1984 Olympic games in Los Angeles and was less than impressed. The skit was about two brothers competing as synchronized swimmers, even though one couldn't swim. To this day, those inside the sport blame this sketch for the lack of men participating in artistic swimming. Read the story of how that sketch came about at Cracked.

The article contains a clip from today's US Olympic performance, and a clip from an Esther Williams movie, too. 

Hell hath no fury like a homeowner who just paid a ton of money for a project and then finds a flaw. Redditor karinkm inherited a home built in 1890. Before she and her husband moved in, she had the hardwood floors refinished. After moving in, she saw that someone had left footprints in the finish! No one in the family would confess to walking on the floors before the finish was dry. Should she contact the refinishing crew? First, she turned to reddit to see if anyone could identify the shoes.

The discussion informs us that it sometimes takes a week for the floors to be safe to walk on. And after the recommended time (depending on the project), you can walk on them wearing socks before you can with shoes or bare feet. Many guesses came in as to the type of shoes, and eventually we found out who did it. You'll never guess who it was. Or maybe you will.  

Update:

For AaronA1C and anyone who cannot access reddit, here is who did it. Show Answer

Warning: Do not replicate any of the actions in this video. Power tools can be very dangerous. Blacktail Studio made a safety video to show you what can go wrong when you misuse power tools. All power tools have their individual safety rules, and some are universal, like wearing goggles and not allowing children anywhere near. Table saws, miter saws, angle grinders, and the like are designed to cut through or otherwise penetrate building materials, and your fingers and eyes are no match for them. Honestly, the host is skittish in places even with all the safety precautions. You should watch this video if you ever want to use power tools, or you are just interested in seeing the mayhem they can cause. However, you won't see anyone being killed or severely injured. You won't see ballistic gel body parts, either, except for a nano-second where they explain why they won't use it. But if you have any empathy for bananas, this may be traumatizing. There's a one-minute skippable ad at 5:45.  -via The Awesomer

The best gymnasts at the Olympics perform three times, first for the team medals, then for the all-around medals, then for medals on each individual apparatus. Last night, Kaylia Nemour of Algeria performed a near-perfect routine on the uneven bars to win the gold medal. It was Algeria's, and indeed Africa's, first Olympic gymnastics medal. But when they raised the flags at the medal ceremony and played the Algerian national anthem, Nemour did not sing along, because she doesn't know the lyrics. She doesn't speak Arabic.

Kaylia Nemour was born in France, and has always lived in France. She competed for France as a junior, but switched her nationality to Algeria, where her paternal grandparents are from, in 2022. While the international gymnastics federation approved, the French federation blocked it, the media got involved, and Nemour was only approved to compete for Algeria just in time for the African championships in May, which she had to participate in to qualify for the 2024 Olympics. Read the convoluted story of how Kaylia Nemour ended up competing for Algeria at Sports Illustrated. French fans cheered for her anyway, as no one on the French gymnastics team qualified for a final.

Sports fans from different countries have always managed to throw shade on their rivals, even when those rivals change every day, or even by the hour. In 2024, the trash talk managed to turn to other nations' cuisines. The first volley thrown was when an Albanian fan enraged Italians at the UEFA European Championship tournament by taking a handful of spaghetti and breaking it in half. Sure, that stung, but it beats using ethnic slurs or insulting their rivals' mothers. The insult caught on, and soon countries all over Europe were boasting how their national dishes beat another nations' foods, with signs in the stands and on social media. Belgium crowed that its beef stew (stoofvlees) is better than whatever dish its rivals were eating, and Czechia bragging that their svickova is better than kebab when playing against Turkey.

Then came the Olympics. When Hong Kong beat Italy in fencing, Pizza Huts in Hong Kong and Macau celebrated by promoting pineapple pizza, which Italians consider a grave offense. While the sports rivalries are real, the insults are mostly in good fun, because all those foods are wonderful. And insulting someone else's food actually goes way back in history, and it's not always limited to sports. Read about the international food fight of 2024 at Atlas Obscura.

Sportswear has often been advertised as improving one's performance, but MO/GO pants has the technology to make it so. MO/GO (short for mountain goat) has a brace along the outside of the leg with an external motorized knee joint, and interior cuffs to hold it in place. They won't walk for you, but will provide a 40% boost to save your joints and muscles the usual wear and tear of mountain hiking. The pants are a collaboration between the clothing company Arc’teryx and a tech startup called Skip.  

MO/GO pants are $4,500 to purchase, and will be available to rent in some mountainous areas of Arizona, Colorado, and British Columbia. But MO/GO isn't just for hiking. They can be a real assist for people with joint problems and mobility issues. And they don't look like the exoskeletons we've seen in movies. Check out the specifics of MO/GO robotic pants at Moss and Fog. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: Skip)

Venice is a lovely city in Italy that uses canals instead of roads, which draws tourists from all over the world. At one time it was a trading powerhouse and the center of international finance. But how did this unique city come about? The first inhabitants were refugees fleeing from barbarian attacks on the mainland, who ended up on a group of clay islands out in a lagoon. Why they stayed out there tells us something about the safety of the dark ages.

The residents of Venice figured out how to make those 126 muddy islands stable enough to build a city upon, how to connect the islands with each other, and how to furnish it with fresh water as the population grew. Then there's the sewage system. The engineering marvel that is Venice has stood for more than a thousand years. This video has a one-minute skippable ad at 3:50. -Thanks, Brother Bill!

The latest clicker game from Steam to take the gaming world by surprise is Banana. The name is simple, and so is the game. You click on a picture of a banana. That's it. But you click over and over and over until you start unlocking rewards and advancing to higher levels. You can win a new skin for your banana, trade skins with other players, and buy skins and other enhancements. That's typical of "clicker games" that arose more than ten years ago. Clicker games are very easy to play. You just keep clicking. You don't expect to have fun doing the game itself; that comes with the microtransactions when you unlock the rewards. Yes, some people find the transactions and trading to be fun. You can even automate the clicking, so the game advances while you are doing other stuff. It's estimated that most of the players are bots anyway. 

The success of "Banana" is another example of how much our digital lives have been devoured by automation. It’s also the logical end point of video-game microtransactions. Is engagement with the game authentic or inauthentic? Who cares, so long as people are spending money.

The whole idea of clicker games started out as a joke, but now they are a bona fide thing, and companies are making money off them. Read about Banana and the rise of clicker games at Sherwood. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Titus Tscharntke)

In the days before MRIs, antibiotics, or even germ theory, things regularly happened to human bodies that no one could explain. Even when they could be explained, there are cases that defy imagination and sent shivers down the spines of anyone who heard about them. Some cases worked themselves out, and at least one was a hoax, while others led to death or lifelong disability. As you hear about these very strange medical cases, you should think of how grateful you are that we live in the age of medical science that we do.

You know the cases of Phineas Gage and Mary Toft, which were so weird they had to be included. Dedicated Neatorama readers will also remember the exploding teeth. But that leaves us nine other bizarre tales from the history of medicine that might make you a bit nervous to think about in the latest video from Weird History.

When a "fact" gets repeated often enough, it becomes lore, and sometimes even an idiom. You've heard "blind as a bat" and "the wise owl" so many times it seems natural, but neither is true. Bats aren't blind. Sure, they use echolocation, but that's because they fly in the dark. It's hard to see in the dark no matter how good your eyesight is. Owls may look wise, and they are in many storybooks, but studies show they have more trouble learning a new task than other birds do.

Sometimes even the refutation of an old wive's tale can be inaccurate. The custom of bullfighters waving a red cape was once explained as their way of enraging the bull for a fight. That was later "debunked" by the "fact" that cattle are colorblind. The real story is that bulls can indeed see red, but they have trouble distinguishing blue from green. Whether red actually enrages them is another story. Okay, how many other often-repeated commonsense "facts" about animals can you think of? They may likely be pure myth. Mental Floss has a list of 64 misconceptions about 63* different animals they will happily debunk for you.

* The list says 64 different animals, but both cows and bulls are in there, and they are the same species.

New Zealand filmmaker Éowyn Aldridge filmed a simple, wordless scene of herself entering a room and drinking some water, but did it over and over again to illustrate the various filmmaking styles of ten different accomplished directors. I haven't seen enough Christopher Nolan movies to recognize his style, but as soon as we got the Kubrick stare, I was hooked. In the above video you'll see an interpretation of the work of Christopher Nolan, Stanley Kubrick, Edgar Wright, Quentin Tarantino, Denis Villeneuve, Wes Anderson, Terrence Malick, David Lynch, Taika Waititi, and Éowyn Aldridge. Then she did the same with ten more directors! The second video features the styles of Ari Aster, Alfred Hitchcock, Tim Burton, Paul Thomas Anderson, Greta Gerwig, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Jane Campion, Gullimero del Toro, Ridley Scott, and Martin Scorsese. You don't have to guess which is which, as they are all labeled.

I'm familiar with just enough of these directors to enjoy her interpretations. -via Laughing Squid