Who is the most illogical person to portray a superhero? The same person who portrayed Arnold Sharzeneggar's twin brother, Danny DeVito, so why not make him an an X-man? Corridor Digital edited DeVito's character Frank Reynolds  from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia into the world of the Wolverine movies. Contains NSFW language and partial nudity, but that's from the TV show, not the movies! His origin story is included, and Frank reacts about the way you'd expect him to. It works well, but you have to wonder about the mind who came up with this idea in the first place. It had to start with one realization while listening to the dialogue of It's Always Sunny, and then led to excruciating research to find more places to use DeVito's character. -via Born in Space

Do you know where your state or hometown got its name? Or the original meaning behind it? Some have pretty wild stories. Manchester is a name that means "breast-like hill," but you might not find such a landmark in New Hampshire because that city was named for the city in the UK, where there was such a hill when it was founded as a Roman fort in 79 CE. Kansas City was named for the Kansas River, which was named for the Kanza people, which means "people of the South wind." And Kansas City, Kansas, was named after Kansas City, Missouri, even though it's in Kansas state. And speaking of Kansas, Topeka means "a good place to dig potatoes."

WordTips looked up and researched the history and the meaning of all 50 US states, plus each state capital, and for good measure, 179 of the country's biggest cities. You can enlarge the above map of the state and state capital names at WordTips. You'll also find maps of the major cities by region with their name meanings, and read some of the better stories, too. While many place names came from Native American languages, some place names were appropriated then re-translated. Honolulu was originally called Ke ʻAwa O Kou (the harbor of Kou), but British Captain William Brown named it Fair Haven when he arrived. It reverted to the Hawaiian language, but kept Brown's impression by becoming hono (port) and lulu (calm). My hometown was named after the guy who founded it, but hey, it's still a story. -Thanks, Taylor Tomita!

The 96th Academy Awards will be announced this coming Sunday night, March 10. There are ten films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, and Screen Junkies has a word to say about each one of them. They are not necessarily good words, but it is SFW. You can tell when they really like a movie, yet they can always find something to poke fun at.

There are only nine entries, because Barbie and Oppenheimer are combined into one, as they are essentially the same movie with a different tone. While I haven't yet seen any of these movies, there is a big chasm between the ones I've written about enough to feel familiar with and those I'd never heard of before the nominations were announced. The short vignettes on the Best Picture nominees are followed by a few quick supercuts of what they have in common, and an inexplicable segment about The Beekeeper.

This is called the Coffer illusion.

In this image there are 16 circles. Can you find them? pic.twitter.com/b0bOZkQDD5

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) March 4, 2024

Can you count how many circles are in this image? No? Can you see any circles at all? What seems to be a series of rectangular boxes does contain circles, but you have to look for them, because there are no curved lines in the image. Try concentrating on the vertical bars and ignore the horizontal bars for a minute. If that doesn't help, look at this visual aid at imgur. Still can't see them? That's okay, it doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you.   

The Coffer Illusion is not named after Dr. Coffer, but for the appearance of decorative panels in a door, called coffers. This illusion was created by Anthony Norcia, psychology professor at Stanford University. It was a finalist in the 2006 Illusion of the Year competition. While there are explanations for the visual perception involved, they all mostly boil down to the fact that we identify what we are looking at quickly, and once that identification is made, we have a hard time shifting our brains to see something different. -via Digg

Linguist Dr. Erica Brozovsky (previously at Neatorama) makes us feel a little better about mispronouncing words. First, we are not alone, and there are quite a few words that the majority of us mispronounce, which over time will lead to our way of saying them becoming correct. That's how language evolves, after all. And second, there are common and logical reasons why we don't just intuitively know how to pronounce a word. The rules for English have more exceptions than it has rules, so even native speakers can't keep up all the time. Then there are times when a mispronunciation actually communicates what you mean better. For example, I know how to pronounce schadenfreude, because I looked it up, but it always comes out scootin fruity. You may laugh, but you also know what I'm saying.

While watching this video, I realized that I don't ever recall hearing anyone say the word "dour" out loud, correctly or incorrectly. I don't even use it, but when reading it, I imagined it pronounced "dower." That's a word that we have plenty of other, easier terms we can use instead, like stink-eye or RBF. The comments under the YouTube page for this video are full of amusing stories of mispronunciations. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Last year, McDonald's decided not to put their Filet-o-Fish sandwiches on sale for Lent, and people were upset. This year, they are on special at two for $6, which is underwhelming for those of us who used to buy them for 35 cents. Besides, if you can only eat one before they cool off, you are out of luck. But on Fridays during Lent, you should be able to find a community fish fry somewhere to pick up a full meal of fish, potatoes, hushpuppies, and cole slaw served piping hot to raise funds for churches, charities, or community organizations, especially in the Midwest. What was once seen as a sacrifice, giving up meat on Fridays, is now a treat and a beloved tradition that brings people together. In fact, there are so many fish frys that several cities have fish fry maps or lists shared online, that can direct you to a fish fry nearby. Read about the tradition of community fish frys and how to find one at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Steve Snodgrass)

Bookworms read all kinds of literature, and over time they can recognize certain authors just by the way they put words together.  But it takes a literature expert or linguist to see exactly how an author's language is different from the next talented writer, and to explain it to the rest of us. This talent has even been used to solve crimes. For example, Jane Austen wrote in a very different style from previous novelists in that she used what linguists call "free indirective speech." It's a technique for connecting the narrator with the character and the reader all at the same time, yet separating them all enough to allow the freedom to critique that character. Even if you're a Jane Austen fan, you might not have ever noticed this, and even if you did, you probably couldn't explain it as well as Nerdwriter1 does. It's one of the many devices that gives an author a distinct voice and a distinct feel for the way she tells a story. -via Kottke

There are plenty of riddles in literature and pop culture, not to mention in dad jokes and those lists your aunt sends by email. Most have an answer that will make you laugh or groan, but some have no answer at all, or at least no answer that makes sense in the real world. In Lewis Carroll's book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter asks Alice, "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" Alice tries to answer, but she doesn't know. It turns out that the Mad Hatter doesn't know, either. In the more than 150 years since the book was published, plenty of people have come up with plausible but not-so-funny answers, and even Carroll explained it (nonsensically) at one point. But the fact that there is no answer is there to illustrate that the Hatter is, indeed, mad.

But that's just one example. Read about the raven and the writing desk and four other literary riddles that can't be solved because there is no definitive answer at Cracked. 

A best man's speech can be fraught even if it's your brother giving it, because you never know what he's going to say. At this wedding, captured by Tali Joy Photography, Dave's little brother is the best man. The speech is intended as a thank you for taking the fall for the younger brother's frustrated screwup twenty years ago when they were young boys. However, the twist is that the groom had no idea what really went on all those years ago, and why he was in trouble. The look on his face when he realizes what really happened is priceless! Several of his friends from back then were there and remembered the exact incident. Yet this was the perfect time to set the record straight, since the statute of limitations has surely passed. A good time was had by all. -via Laughing Squid

Long before Pepper Anderson, Maddie Hayes, Dana Scully, and Olivia Benson solved fictional crimes, there were real women opening doors in the crime-fighting arena as detectives. On the one hand, it was unseemly work for a lady, as were most professional careers before the 20th century. On the other hand, women made great undercover officers and spies because no one paid all that much attention to them. They were few, but they opened the door to generations of detectives to follow.   

Kate Warne talked the Pinkerton Agency into hiring her, and proved her mettle by single-handedly foiling a plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln as he traveled to his inauguration. Antonia Moser learned her craft from a master detective, then lived with him as his lover, then competed with him when she opened her own agency. Maud West (shown above) was a master of disguise and was so good at it she showed the newspapers, knowing she'd never be recognized. Read about these women and more, seven in all, who became detectives when such work was considered out of reach of most women. -via Nag on the Lake

Wayne Kusy is a shipbuilder, but he builds neither seafaring ships nor small models, not even tiny ships in a bottle. His preferred material is toothpicks! Actually, that's his only material besides glue and some accessories. And his ships are big, and have gotten larger over time. Kusy has been building ships out of toothpicks for 50 years now (in his spare time, as he does have a regular job), and his latest accomplishment is a 25-foot-long model of the Queen Mary made of more than 815,000 toothpicks. That project took five years. He's also built replicas of the Titanic, the Lusitania, and the America, all containing many thousands of toothpicks each. Kusy does commissions, in case you want a model of your own boat made of toothpicks. You can see the time-lapse of a shipbuilding project that he referenced at his website, as well as other projects he's done.   -via Geeks Are Sexy

You might think that Outerbridge Crossing is called that because it is the most remote bridge in New York City, or maybe because it is the southernmost crossing in New York state. But it was named after Eugenius Harvey Outerbridge, the first chairman of the New York Port Authority. They might have named it Outerbridge Bridge, but then thought better of it. You might think that Baker's chocolate is called that because it is the preferred chocolate used by bakers. Wrong- it's made by a company founded by Walter Baker. And you might assume that Main Street is used as a name because it's the main street, but in San Francisco, the street was named for Charles Main. It was only appropriate.

In science, Southern blot is a process used in sequencing DNA. There is also Northern blot, Eastern blot, and Western blot. However, they were not named for Dr. Blot. Southern blot was named after biologist Edwin Southern, who developed it. When the other methods came along, they were named in sequence after Southern blot. There are other surprising things that were actually eponyms, meaning they were named after people, although you will be forgiven for thinking they were just named for what they are. Roland Crosby compiled a list of them with links to the story behind each name. Even when the inclusion in a list seems like a stretch, the stories are all rather interesting. -via Metafilter, which gives us even more of them.

(Image credit: Jason Eppink)

In the 1850s, New York City was looking for a new hangman. The profession came with a real drawback in that when people knew his identity, they didn't want to be around him. So another hangman retired, and a young man who had worked at a slaughterhouse took the position. He worked for the city for decades, and became known as Monsieur de New York.

This guy took his work seriously. He designed a new gallows that killed quickly and thoroughly, and kept improving upon it. Although public hangings were no longer done, any execution inside the walls of the justice system were standing room only as the public clamored to get a restricted number of tickets. Monsieur de New York put on a show, dressed nattily for the occasion, and acted as a master of ceremonies. His reputation grew, although no one knew who he was. He preferred it that way. As the executioner's fame grew, he was enlisted to carry out federal executions, design gallows for other departments across the country, and even lent his name, or pseudonym, to U.S. Grant's presidential campaign.

Although several men claimed to be Monsieur de New York, and others were accused of that identity but denied it, we still don't know who was the celebrity executioner of New York. Read about Monsieur de New York's work and fame at Atlas Obscura.  

To make a 15,000-egg omelet, you will need a 13-foot frying pan, a fork lift, a bunch of concrete mixing paddles, 70 liters of duck fat, and a battalion of chefs to break all those eggs. Oeuf! It happens on Easter Monday in Bessières, France, as it has for the past 50 years, as the pièce de résistance of a three-day festival. Once the giant omelet is ready, it will be given to festival attendees free of charge. The Festival of the Giant Omelet takes place in several places throughout the year, including the US! The American celebration is in Abbeville, Louisiana in November. But the biggest and best-known is the Easter festival in Bessières. These events are sponsored by the Brotherhood of the Giant Omelet, who have yet to update their page for 2024. Sometimes they go by the Knights of the Giant Omelet (Confrérie Mondiale de Chevaliers de l'Omelette Géante). Oeuf! -via Boing Boing

Silk is one of the strongest natural fibers on earth. Spider silk is stronger, but extremely hard to produce commercially. We learned about the first bulletproof vest that was made of silk and failed because it was biodegradable, but that very property makes silk a great tool for medical care, like sutures that do not have to be removed. Scientists have figured out how to purify silk down to its essential fibroin protein that can be reshaped for many uses.  

Imagine a vaccine that could be delivered in a simple patch. The underside contains many tiny needles made of silk protein that pierce only the very top layers of the skin, and these remain after the patch is removed. Those tiny silk needles are embedded with the vaccine, which is released into the body as the silk degrades. Furthermore, embedding the medicine into the silk protein preserves it, so these vaccine patches can be stored at room temperature for years until they are needed. Larger silk needles can be used to deliver cancer drugs to a tumor without affecting the healthy tissue around it.

Silk can also be used to make support mesh used in surgery that never has to be removed after the patient heals. It can even be used as a biodegradable wrapper to keep food fresh. There are a host of other possible uses for purified silk protein you can read about at Works In Progress. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: RG72)