The Late Show with Stephen Colbert took a week's vacation, and returned Monday ...for one night. Now that vacation is extended indefinitely as the Writers Guild of America has gone on strike. In addition to Colbert, the strike affects Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Tonight Show, Late Night with Seth Meyers, The Daily Show, Saturday Night Live, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Last Week Tonight.  

The writer's union was in talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) until Monday when negotiations about film and scripted TV writing contracts broke down. Talk shows are only the most immediate victims of the negotiation failure; other shows with longer production lag times will be affected if an agreement isn't reached. The reasons behind the contract disagreements are complicated, but mainly comes down to the money involved in streaming platforms.

A protracted writer's strike in 1988 led the industry to develop reality TV, which isn't exactly real, but replaced scripted TV with improvised plots using non-actors and no professional writers. Some worry that if the current strike isn't resolved soon, it could lead to TV and movies being written by artificial intelligence algorithms.

(Image credit: The Late Late Show with James Corden)

The coronation of King Charles III of the United Kingdom will be this Saturday, although he's already been the king for months. The ceremony will be dripping with tradition and pageantry, and that includes the rather weird custom of installing the Stone of Destiny underneath the coronation chair. The coronation chair was built around the year 1300 and is only used for coronations. The stone, also known as the Stone of Scone, has its own story.

The legend is that it is the stone Jacob rested his head upon when he dreamed of a ladder to heaven in the Bible. It then traveled to many countries before ending up in Scotland. But those stories have no documentation. Experts say the sandstone block is the same as other stones from the quarry at Scone in Scotland. The documented history of the Stone of Scone has plenty of details, from the Scottish and later English kings who used it in their coronations to the suffragists who attacked it to its theft in 1950. The Stone of Scone traveled from Edinburgh Castle to London this past Saturday, and will be installed underneath the coronation chair in time for the ceremonies this weekend. Read about the history and traditions of the Stone of Scone at Mental Floss.

In the age of mass communication on the internet, scamming people is a cottage industry that mainly consists of identifying the most gullible section of a population. Some people will fall for anything. It wasn't so easy in earlier times, when you had a limited number of marks to choose from, yet there have always been gullible people, and there have always been smooth-talking con artists who could talk them into doing something they shouldn't. Really, who wouldn't trust the smiling face you see above? Lucky for us, sometimes these talented talkers could perform some really amazing acts.

Con artists are usually after your money, but they also talk people into other tasks like committing crimes or or publicly embarrassing themselves just for giggles or the satisfaction of accomplishment. Read about twelve of those talented scammers in a pictofacts list at Cracked.

Predator and prey only live together in Disney movies and Biblical prophesies, right? Also in real life at times. Researchers studying five hyena dens at a nature preserve in Kenya documented two dens that had three species living in them: hyenas, warthogs, and porcupines! Camera traps recorded the comings and goings of the residents, often within minutes of each other. The hyenas in those two dens did not eat porcupines and warthogs, although other hyenas in the same area did.  

Maybe it's the housing crisis that causes very different kinds of creatures to share dens, as anyone who must endure a bad roommate will tell you. During the dry season, digging dens out of the hard soil is more difficult, so it might be a matter of accepting housemates rather than doing without a den. The scientists behind the study don't know the exact reason for the housing arrangement. But when the rainy season began, all the animals who were cohabiting went their separate ways. Hakuna matata. -via Fark

The Galactic Menagerie is a parody trailer for a Wes Anderson Star Wars film. I have honestly never seen a Wes Anderson film, but I have read enough of the internet to know that his visual style is formal, symmetrical, pastel, and a bit art deco. Oh yeah, it's quite pretty, with unexpected humor in places. The casting is sublime, too. It's been a long time since we've had a memorable Star Wars comedy, like Hardware Wars, Spaceballs, or The Star Wars Holiday Special. The Galactic Menagerie would certainly be a movie worth going to the theater for. -via Geeks Are Sexy

When a clergyman is kicked out of the priesthood against his will, we say he has been "defrocked." That term came about in a very literal way. In Medieval Europe, the Roman Catholic Church was extremely powerful and priests were the local authority, although still subject to the church hierarchy. When one was rejected from the clergy by the higher-ups, he underwent the "rite of degradation," which sounds bad enough, but the ceremony entailed having him take his clothes off. When a man became a priest, he was dressed in layers of holy vestments, and the reverse was stripping him of his frock. He would also have his hair cut and his hands scraped.  

The procedure was first chronicled in the 14th century, but may have borrowed the process from an earlier similar ritual to degrade a knight by publicly removing his armor. The rite of degradation could backfire, however. If the priest was popular, lay people could see the ceremony as analogous to the treatment of Christ before his crucifixion, and transform him into a martyr if he was deemed to be treated unfairly. Read about the rite of degradation at The Public Domain Review.  -via Strange Company

You can tell someone important information using a lot of numbers, but you're liable to put the majority of your audience to sleep. Showing people the relationship between those numbers without having to do even the simplest math is way more effective, and that's the value of graphs and charts. Presenting dry data in visual form can make a trend very clear when the numbers don't, and sometimes those visualizations have an impact that changes the world.

The Royal Society shows us how these charts and graphs made information available to many more people than would have otherwise learned of the data they contain. Of the five examples explained here, I had only never heard of the fictional Kallikak family tree, used for nefarious purposes. But as soon as that section began, I thought of the family tree at the beginning of the movie Idiocracy. Also fictional, of course. -via Kottke


See also: Florence Nightingale’s Statistical Diagrams and John Snow's Cholera Map.

Absinthe, sometimes referred to as "the green fairy" became quite well known among the artistic elite of Paris and elsewhere in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Artists who illustrated the drink and authors who wrote glowingly of the joy it brought made absinthe oh-so fashionable and gave it the cachet that still mesmerizes us. Never mind that these same artistic types of the era were also indulging in opium, laudanum, cocaine, and other various drugs that were legal medicine at the time. Absinthe was their muse, and it eventually caused a moral panic.

But what is absinthe, anyway? It is green because it was steeped in a mixtures of natural herbs, which included the classic toxin wormwood. Wormwood was reportedly what caused hallucinations. Its flavor came from anise, which made the liquor taste like licorice. And its kick came from between 45% and 90% alcohol (that's 90-180 proof). The one ingredient that was missing was sugar, which led to the performative serving of absinthe with a sugar cube. Learn what absinthe was all about, and why it gained a reputation as the downfall of humanity at Today I Found Out.

(Image credit: Viktor Oliva)

The evolution of birds has always seemed puzzling to me. There were once dinosaurs with feathers that didn't fly. There were once reptiles that flew (pterodactyls), and if they had feathers they didn't use them for flight. Why would an animal grow feathers if not for flying? And why did dinosaurs start to fly, anyway? A fossil discovery in 2007 shows us a weird transitional dinosaur/bird that illustrates how feathers really had nothing to do with the urge to fly. Birds developed the wing first, and in fact some resembled bats more than they resembled the reptiles they were. Or were they? The boundary between dinosaur and bird was blurred for an awful long time while they decided what they would use those feathers for. The fact that they ever got it together long enough to develop true wings and become flying birds is an astonishing turn in evolution. PBS Eons explains this strange transitionary species. This video is only eight and a half minutes long; the rest is an ad.

Where do you find gold in the United States? I know! Fort Knox! But you can't just go there and take that gold. And if you think that you can strike it rich by prospecting, remember the lesson of the California Gold Rush- the people who made the most money off of it were the ones who bought city property, shipped people and supplies to California, made jeans for, and sold tools to those prospectors. But there are people today who see prospecting for gold as a hobby, and one with the potential for excitement. Some use the classic panning method, while most use metal detectors. They know where to go for gold, and you can, too.    

You might never find the equivalent of the Comstock Lode, but there are places where you can give it a try, and not only enjoy prospecting as a hobby but take in awesome scenery and commune with nature. You might even pick up some nuggets, too! Read about five of those places at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: US Forest Service) 

In 2023, I’m creating an illustrated tiny sci-fi story every day. Here’s 001/365: pic.twitter.com/ofK2PkISSh

— small worlds (@smllwrlds) January 1, 2023

The Twitter account small worlds began 2023 with a pledge to post a tiny science fiction story in one image every day for an entire year. As of April 27, there are already 117 of these. Some of them will grab you where you least expected.

In 2023, I’m creating an illustrated tiny sci-fi story every day. Here’s 036/365: pic.twitter.com/0N8QgsSRcO

— small worlds (@smllwrlds) February 5, 2023

Yes, they are tiny, but that's the point. You'll want to say, "But what happened then?" That's completely up to you. These setups could serve as a writing prompt where you fill in the details.

It's still 42 https://t.co/Wr3AFwCvQ6

— σπιρκοτο* (@SookiCookie) April 12, 2023

This is particularly harrowing and I love it https://t.co/iITeHpXiUx

— MaxwellsDeamon, blm, 😷 (@MaxwellsDeamon) April 23, 2023

It might take you a while to read all 117 of them, but they are nested in order under this Tweet. You may want to bookmark it because there will be 365 of them by New Year's Eve. -via Geeks Are Sexy

If you've been around Neatorama for a long time, you know we've posted a lot of stories of parasites that turn animals into zombies, whether the parasites are from the plant, animal, and fungus kingdoms. Now we have Ze Frank bringing us up to speed on fungal parasites that do that to insects in his inimitable style. He starts off with fungal parasites in general before he moves onto how they've adapted to cause zombification. He shows us three types of fungal infection that take over and control the behavior of insects to their own ends. Yes, cordyceps is there, as you would expect. Beware that nature is metal, and what the fungus does to an insect can easily squick you out. In other words, this video may be disturbing for anyone who has empathy for insects. Also this video contains NSFW language. There's a one-minute internal ad at 5:17.

Thursday was "Take Your Child to Work" day at the White House. Reporters, Secret Service agents, and White House staff took their children in for a day of receptions, speeches, tours, and educational activities. Some of the kids were prepared ahead of time and took on or otherwise reflected their parents' roles, like press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre's son Andrew, who asked questions during a press briefing, and these temporary Secret Service agents. Oh yes, you better believe there was ice cream.

The comments at reddit were about how tired and fed up some of the kids in the pictures were, because that's the way all field trips are when you're in elementary school. Some joked about the states that have recently relaxed child labor laws. Sadly, the most common response to this picture is that these children are safer guarding the president than they are at school. A good time was had by all.

In Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre, it is revealed that Mr. Rochester kept his first wife hidden in the attic for decades. The "madwoman in the attic" literary device has been used quite a bit since then, but it was shocking when the book was published in 1847. Brontë was inspired by a 16th century home in North Yorkshire, England, called Norton Conyers. There had been rumors about the home in Brontë’s time, which she would have been aware of. And it has an attic. But the house is undergoing a 30-year renovation project. The workers removed the floorboards in the attic, and discovered a secret set of stairs that had been covered over a long time ago. Did someone really keep a family member locked in that attic?

This is just one of a list of 15 places that have hidden or secret passageways that either have a detailed history behind them or remain a mystery to this day. You can visit most of them. Read about the various reasons people have built secret passageways in their edifices at Messy Nessy Chic. 

(Image credit: David Rogers)

The new Star Wars video game drops Friday with much fanfare. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the sequel to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, featuring protagonist Cal Kestis. In this promo for the game, Cameron Monaghan is performing motion capture duties for Kestis (which he really did), and Mark Hamill is coaching him on how to be a Jedi, or at least play one in a computer game. You can almost see why Luke Skywalker's Jedi academy failed and drove him to hermithood on Ahch-To. Wait, no, that's a movie. This is the actor Mark Hamill, who always manages to draw us into the fictional world and then laughs and slaps us sideways to remind us of the difference between actors and characters. That's a valid reason to use the Force.  -via Boing Boing