About spells, charms and incantations. #spells pic.twitter.com/ydVXIBUHSB

— Roger Acosta Villanueva (@1989rav) January 29, 2021

The above picture, taken from the 1971 book The Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft by Kathryn Paulsen, has been making the rounds of the internet over the past week or so. You have to admit that cheese is magical -it can turn a hamburger into a cheeseburger and make nachos irresistible. The spell as written seems a bit dumb, but it is only out of date. Cheese has been thought of in supernatural terms for a long, long time.

It’s not entirely clear why cheese is seen to have magical properties. It might be to do with the fact it’s made from milk, a powerful substance in itself, with the ability to give life and strength to the young. It might also be because the process by which cheese is made is a little bit magical. The 12th-century mystic, Hildegard von Bingen, compared cheese making to the miracle of life in the way that it forms curds (or solid matter) from something insubstantial.

In the early modern period (roughly 1450-1750) the creation of the universe was also thought of by some in terms of cheesemaking: “all was chaos, that is, earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and out of that bulk a mass formed – just as cheese is made out of milk – and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels.” The connection with life and the mysterious way that cheese is made, therefore, puts it in a good position to claim magical properties.

Cheese has been used to produce dreams, to reveal those guilty of crimes, and to tempt people into sin. Witches were blamed for stealing milk or spoiling it, and were accused of using cheese in their nefarious magic.

I like cheese. pic.twitter.com/VxBrxewlVK

— Jay Gravatte (@thatKYWitch) January 29, 2021

Read the details of how cheese and witchcraft go together at The Conversation. -via Strange Company

Also check out the previous post 4 Holy Women Transformed by Cheese.

The TV doctor answers your questions about covid vaccines until the real world starts to creep in. The parody PSA is only 3.5 minutes long; the rest is outtakes. -via reddit

How about a nice relaxing game? The game called Knots is a series of puzzles in which you are challenged to move tiles around to reveal continuous outlines, revealing loops that can take any shape. As you'd expect, they start out simple and become harder as you go. Level eight presents the above mess that you rearrange by clicking a tile and then its destination to reveal this image.

I don't know how many levels there are, since I haven't made it to the end yet, but there are at least 32, and somewhere along the way, you are confronted with more than one shape of the same color. You can turn the music off with a button in the lower left. -via Metafilter

In 2018, an Ig Nobel Prize was awarded to researchers who studied why wombat poop comes out in cubes. The full research paper has now been published in the journal Soft Matter (even though wombat poop is hard matter). The 2018 paper was based on a necropsy of one wombat.

In the new study, the researchers dissected two further wombats and tested the guts’ layers of muscle and tissue, finding regions of varied thickness and stiffness. They then created a 2D mathematical model to simulate how the regions expand and contract with the rhythms of digestion. The intestinal sections contract over several days, squeezing the poop as the gut pulls nutrients and water out of the feces, the team reports today in the aptly titled journal Soft Matter.

The stiffer portions are “like a stiff rubber band—[they’re] going to contract faster than the soft regions,” says David Hu, a biomechanics researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology and author on the study. Softer intestinal regions squeeze slowly and mold the final corners of the cube, the team found. In other mammals, the wavelike peristalsis of the intestinal muscles are consistent in all directions. But in the wombat, the grooved tissue and the irregular contractions over many cycles shape firm, flat-sided cubes.

So in short, the wombat's intestines have muscles that squeeze hard on four sides, but less so between those muscles in the region that will become the corners. Read more about wombat poop at Science magazine.

(Imagecredit: JJ Harrison)

Penn Holderness (previously at Neatorama) sings a song about his Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) to the tune of "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid. It's the most cheerful description you'll ever hear. He has learned to channel his differences into creativity, which he refers to a "superpower." Holderness is lucky to have a supportive wife to keep him on track. -via Metafilter

Hold your stomach, Kraft macaroni and cheese has a Valentines Day promotion that will turn your dinner into something completely different. Forget steak or homemade spaghetti, or even takeout food, because what your sweetheart really wants is a serving of hot pink macaroni and cheese with sweetener. The limited edition Candy Kraft Macaroni & Cheese is a regular box of mac and cheese that comes with a flavor packet you can add to turn it pink and impart candy flavoring.

So, what makes the powder pink? Is it crushed-up conversation hearts? Is it a special dust from Cupid's arrow? Actually, according to a Kraft-Heinz spokesperson, the vibrant pink hue comes from beetroot and carrot concentrates. As for what makes it tastes like candy, the extra packet of powder contains fructose, natural flavors and vanilla extract, they said.

The company is only making 1,000 boxes, and you'll have to enter a sweepstakes to possibly get one. I'm wondering how many people will enter the contest to really try eating this, and how many just want the box for a future social media post.

If you've ever seen a movie built around your own area of expertise, you most likely cringed at the portrayal of your work. Movies and TV shows are made by writers and actors with an eye toward drama and not so much accuracy. The guy running the YouTube channel Fire Department Chronicles used green screen tech to put himself into the action and give the actors a little lesson in what really happens in a fire.



Once again, I am glad that we'll never see a drama about the life of a blogger, because it would be too boring for broadcast. Or even streaming. Fire Department Chronicles has more of these videos about the real work of firefighters and EMTs vs. the pop culture versions. -via reddit

Passports are travel documents that vary across the world and over time. Some are proof of citizenship, some aren't, but all are identification for travelers. While they were used here and there thousands of years ago, they were fairly rare before World War I. Only after World War II did they become universal, and even then enforcement varied.

As witnessed throughout history, the rules don’t always apply to everyone. Take Paul McCartney, who in 1967 was travelling to France and forgot his passport. As the story goes, he allegedly pulled the “you know who I am” card and was allowed to board his flight. Meanwhile in 1976, due to a law that anybody (dead or alive) travelling into France officially requires a passport, Rameses II (who died sometime in 1213 BC) required one so that his remains could travel to Paris for study. The Egyptian government did indeed issue the ancient pharaoh a passport.

An article on passports at Messy Nessy Chic doesn't pretend to be a comprehensive history of the passport, but contains plenty of fascinating tidbits about passports in history.  

(Image credit: Flickr user Ken Mayer)

This bonkers ad is rather amusing as a parody of both supermarket ads and deep fake technology. But it's not really a fake ad. It's a teaser for a new immersive art installation now open in Las Vegas from Meow Wolf (previously at Neatorama). Omega Mart is a combination of theme park, virtual reality game, art museum, and shopping. It's an experience in weirdness, let's say. -via reddit

You might ask yourself if a movie that makes a "best of" list can be a cult film at all. Why yes, in the internet age it's quite likely. Once upon a time, a box office failure would only live on in late night TV, but with home video and online group chat, any movie can have a second life by finding its audience.

To kick things off: a ranking. This ranking was assembled through the votes of Ringer staff members. And though there is no official definition for a cult movie—most times, you know it when you see it—voters were asked to consider only films that (a) were not successful at the box office, (b) were not widely and initially praised by critics, and (c) gained popularity only after they left theaters, whether by word of mouth, midnight screenings, or home-video success.

A cult movie may be the "so bad its funny" kind, but most of the films on this list were ignored by first-run audiences for other reasons, like not being the feel-good feature audiences expected, or being too confusing to appreciate in a single viewing. Still, there are points to argue, for example, you can't really call Monty Python and the Holy Grail a box office failure. Check out the list and the reasons why each movie became a cult film at The Ringer. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Adam Villacin)

To stay healthy and in shape, it is recommended that we take 10,000 steps a day. That may seem like an awful lot of walking and running, but when you do it by dancing, it's more fun and just as healthful. The Swedish nonprofit Generation Pep recruited 9-year-old French dancer Lilyana Ilunga to demonstrate how those steps add up in a joyful dance sequence. -via Nag on the Lake

When governments need money, they often go for a new tax wherever the money is. That makes sense, even when it is flagrantly unfair or even corrupt. But sometimes a tax can be used as a method for changing behavior, which was the impetus for a Russian tax on beards a few hundred years ago.

It’s often claimed that King Henry VIII of England introduced a tax on beards, despite there being no records to prove it. Russia’s Peter the Great, however, did place a tax on his bearded subjects. In 1698, in a bid to bring Russia up to speed with Western Europe’s trend for cleaner shaves, he imposed an annual beard tax. His poorer subjects were allowed to wear a beard for just two kopeks a year, while wealthy citizens had to pay 100 rubles. Bearded tax-dodgers could be forcibly shaved by the police, while those who paid the tax were given a copper token to carry, which proved that their beard was fully paid for.

Whatever the reason, there have been some pretty strange taxes imposed on various societies throughout history. Read about taxes imposed on single men, political enemies, and urine, among other things at Mental Floss.

Every year, one book wins the Diagram Prize for the oddest book title of the year. The year 2020 is the 42nd such competition, and a Canadian author has won for the first time. That would be anthropologist Gregory Forth of the University of Alberta.

A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path showed a remarkably clean pair of paws to the rest of the field, notching up 49% of the public vote—26 percentage points clear of second-place finisher, Introducing the Medieval Ass.   

Horace Bent, The Bookseller legendary diarist and The Diagram Prize administrator, said: “There has been little to shout about in a difficult year, but A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path is something to cherish, as long as you stay a good metre or two away and, perhaps, wear some stout wellies. Congratulations to Gregory Forth and McGill-Queen’s University Press: I am sure the champagne—or I guess something else—will certainly be flowing as they celebrate A Dog Pissing’s hard-earned victory."   

The book is about animal metaphors in Indonesia. Other titles in the shortlist were Classical Antiquity in Heavy Metal Music, Lawnmowers: An Illustrated History, The Slaughter of Farmed Animals: Practical Ways of Enhancing Animal Welfare, and How to Make Love to a Despot. Read more on the award at The Bookseller. -via Kottke

Two and a half years ago, we posted the lovely story of a guy who found a cat and her four newborn kittens under his bed. British filmmaker Paris Zarcilla was astonished, and soon fell in love. He promised to protect them, and he's kept that promise by keeping all five cats. He named the mother Forever, and the kittens Pancake, Ronin, Mac, and Dobby. Zarcilla posts regular updates on the cats' antics at Twitter, and you can catch up on their story so far at Bored Panda.

This cat was just looking for a soft warm place to sit, but he suddenly became a horseback rider in the process. And it wasn't long before he was riding a bucking bronco! Maybe rodeo isn't in this cat's future, since he was eventually tossed off with a fairly gentle bucking. But these critters are friends, and the horse was obviously reacting to the cat's natural inclination to hang on with their claws. -via Boing Boing