The skies over America are suffering the effects of inflation. Har har. Right now there are at least seven dirigibles dispatched over parts of the US. Some of them are actual blimps, which are non-rigid and are shaped by the air inside, and others are airships with internal frameworks. Those terms get confusing when you talk about the Goodyear Blimps, which used to be blimps but are now airships with frames, yet they still use the term blimps because everyone knows them like that. 

Anyway, three of the currently flying airships are Goodyear Blimps as they travel to various events. Two more are advertising blimps, and two are from LTA Research. One of those is a blimp, and the other is an experimental rigid airship that's 406.5 feet long, making it the biggest modern aircraft in the world. Read about these airships, and where you might spot them, at The Autopian.   

(Image credit: Mercedes Streeter/LTA Research) 

We all know that there is a big difference between adopting a dog and adopting a cat. Everyone who has a cat will tell you its story, which often is just "He showed up one day and never left." This is commonly called the Cat Distribution System. A thorough investigation by Cat Lovers Forum has uncovered how the system works, and it will blow your mind. Since the discoveries were all under the cover of darkness, the results of the investigation are explained in this weirdly animated video. The covert operations may remind you of an international spy operation, or at least Men in Black. This is the only way the Cat Distribution System could possibly be as successful as it is. 

Once you understand how it works, those cat stories all make sense. And now we know why dogs dig in the yard. While the main headquarters has yet to be identified, those in the know suggest looking in Istanbul. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

In a post last week, we learned that were 6,000 shipwrecks on the Great lakes, and that was just in one century. The first documented shipwreck was in 1679 when the Griffon went down. But the lakes have revealed dugout canoes that go back as far as 5,000 years. How do we know this? The Wisconsin Historical Society’s Maritime Preservation and Archaeology program has been identifying, studying, and mapping the remains of ships found in the Great Lakes. This work is carried out by people like underwater archaeologist Tamara Thomsen.

Shipwrecks are better preserved in the lakes than they would be in an ocean, due to the fresh cold water. New technology like GPS and personal aircraft make finding the wrecks easier. So Thomsen no longer looks for shipwrecks, but she dives down to those that have been reported to study and document them. The ship remains, and any artifacts, are left in place to become memorials. Some are added to the National Register of Historical Places. It's a really cool job for someone who's passionate about diving. Read what that job involves at Smithsonian. 

(Image credit: Tamara Thomsen) 

Friendsgiving is the custom of having a Thanksgiving feast among friends instead of family. It has become pretty popular in the 21st century because of a few trends in modern society. Young adults live far away from family because of their jobs, and often can't get enough time off to travel home (or can't afford to). They are postponing starting their own families. And sometimes they just can't go home because their family is toxic. But they still want to indulge in the traditional harvest feast, so a circle of friends make it happen. It sure beats watching TV and eating ramen all alone on Thanksgiving.

In fact, Friendsgiving is so popular that even people who celebrate with their family often have a separate feast for friends on another day. The idea isn't new, but it has exploded in recent years due to social media. Vox has the story of how Friendsgiving became what it is today.  -via Laughing Squid 

The title of the article is Why Do Diners Across America All Use the Same Mugs? I instantly knew the answer- it's because they don't break. Well, they might if you threw them hard against a concrete wall, but in everyday use, they are super sturdy. I use one every day because it's tough, well-insulated, and most importantly, it fits in my car's cup holder, unlike all other coffee cups. 

But the story is really about how this particular coffee cup came to be, and it's more interesting than just someone getting a good idea. Their first manufacturer was Victor Insulators of Victor, New York, who made porcelain insulators for high voltage electrical transmission. Their founder had developed a special method of producing porcelain that was dense enough to produce the high resistivity needed and withstand plenty of current. Victor Insulators did not set out to make coffee cups as a side gig, but they jumped at the opportunity when it was presented. Read the story of the common ceramic diner mug at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Quercus acuta)  

I don't normally post product review videos, and I know nothing about game playing tables, but you will enjoy this. First we learn that there are tables made specially for people who are serious about tabletop games, and they are quite expensive. Jeff Kornberg of The Dragon's Tomb makes videos about tabletop games, such as how to play them, and his reviews can be hilariously scathing. Seemingly unaware of this, a company called Starmork offered to send him their new deluxe game table to review. Note that the table isn't actually for sale in the normal manner; it's a Kickstarter project. 

Kornberg tells the tale of their correspondence, which took months, but he finally received the table. Here he presents it to you in all its glory. As far as we know, it's the only such table in existence. That may be a good thing. As funny as the review is, the punch line at the end is delivered by someone besides Kornberg. -via Metafilter 

The photos above were taken by  Peter Fisher on assignment for National Geographic. This is Volcán de Fuego, an active volcano in Guatemala. Its eruptions killed a couple of hundred people in 2018, and has caused mass evacuations several times since then. 

Fisher spent several days on this photoshoot. He tells about climbing up the mountain to the camp, then walking several hours each day to get to the volcano, hoping for a good shot at an eruption. At 12,000 feet of elevation, the days are brutally hot and the nights are very cold. Each step forward means sliding back on the volcanic ash. Ash gets into your airways and clings to your skin. And the volcano is a dangerous place be, yet you have to get near it. "It’s pure moth-to-flame energy."   



Once an eruption begins, there is no time to set up shots, you just take them. Fisher explains that the squiggly lines in his photographs are because of the ground shaking beneath his feet. Read more about the experience of photographing an active volcano at A Time of Gifts. -via kottke 

In 2003, there was a Broadway musical called Wicked based on the two witches from the movie The Wizard of Oz. As happens a lot in the 21st century, the story was retrofitted to tell the tragic backstory of a classic villain and make them a sympathetic character. Wicked the Broadway musical proved to be very popular, so it was made into a movie in 2024, also called Wicked. But not quite, because that was only the first part of the story. The second part, titled Wicked: For Good, is opening across the US this weekend. So it's about time that Screen Junkies gave us an Honest Trailer for the first film.  

The best part of an Honest Trailer for a musical is the disrespectfully self-aware parody lyrics they give to the songs. You won't hear them until halfway through this trailer, but they are worth the wait. Otherwise, they had to stretch to say anything truly critical about Wicked. My impression was that the movie went way overboard with the special effects in an effort to make it look less like a stage musical, and it still looks like a stage musical. A lot of people actually like that. Screen Junkies appears to have also liked Wicked.  

Film buffs will tell you that Westerns can be sorted into everything before Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film Seven Samurai and everything that came after. Seven Samurai wasn't even a Western; it was set in feudal Japan, but the authenticity, cinematography, and action sequences influenced Hollywood to take it up a notch. That quality came with a cost- the movie took a year to shoot, and the budget ended up at ten times what was originally planned.

The plot in which a village hires a ragtag group of mercenaries, each with a particular set of skills, to battle the bad guys, will be familiar to you from the many other films that used elements of it, or even all of it. The simple story leaves plenty of room for the development of each character's personality and for meticulously choreographed action scenes. Seven Samurai was a big hit and has since become a classic, often regaled as one of the best films of all time. Read how Seven Samurai came about, and what it meant for filmmaking in the long run, at Smithsonian. 

A few months ago, MinuteEarth gave us a video about all the different kinds of dogs, and as you would expect, they were inundated with requests to do the same for cats. So we get the whole feline family tree, going back to Proailurus, the first cat, which lived around 30 million years ago. 

From Proailurus, we got all the other cats, from extinct saber-toothed tigers to exotic big cats to domestic kitties. The cats that still live in the wild come in more shapes, sizes, and species than you know. Even the familiar wild cats are not as closely related as you might think. Domestic cats are pretty much all the same species today, although some of the more exotic breeds are deliberate hybrids. Even so, domestic cats come in different breeds the same way dogs do, and they each have their own distinct charms. The vast majority, however, are just generic domestic cats, which are all lovable. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

Before synthetic fabrics, most raincoats were made of fabric coated with wax or rubber, which made them stiff and heavy. Meanwhile, the Inuit people of the far north had lightweight, flexible, breathable, waterproof outerwear made out of the intestines of seals, walrus, whales, and sometimes even bears. As you can imagine, whales provided the most usable material. 

By nature, intestines are strong, barely permeable, and somewhat stretchy, perfect for sausage casing and even better for rainwear. The intestines were cleaned, inflated, dried, and cut into strips. Then they were stitched together using a special waterproof sewing method. The resulting garments were worn overtop the Inuits' usual warm clothing for outdoor chores in rainy weather, and especially used to protect hunters and fishermen in kayaks from a deadly cold soaking. The McCord Stewart Museum in Montreal studied and restored one of these coats a few years ago and documented their construction. Read more about the intestinal raincoats and see plenty of pictures at Vintage Everyday. -via Messy Nessy Chic 

Does anyone really say that a marshmallow is a vegetable? I've heard that, and the rationale is because they are made from a mallow plant. Well, duh, plant-derived doesn't mean vegetable unless you are playing "animal, vegetable, or mineral." After all, sugar is plant-derived. It's a joke for someone who wants to justify eating marshmallows. But the truth is that commercially available marshmallows are no longer made from the mallow plant, and not only are they not vegetables, they aren't even vegetarian. 

So what is a marshmallow? Believe it or not, a couple of thousand years ago, they were a remedy for all kinds of ailments (or maybe that was just an excuse to eat them). Today they hold your Rice Krispy Treats together. There's a lot of history in between, as Tom Blank of Weird History Food explains. We also learn what's in a marshmallow, how they are made, and what they can do to your body. 

Do you have any neighbors who are billionaires? I do not. Wesley Steubenbord created a map called Billionaire Migration, which shows where the world's billionaires were born and where they moved to. We can see that 118 billionaires live in New York City and 70 live in San Francisco. But if you zoom in, you'll find many more living in the suburbs of San Francisco, not so many in the suburbs of the Big Apple. 

You won't find any names on this map, however. I was curious as to which billionaire was born in Treheme, Manitoba. A little digging revealed it's actually Treherne (keming strikes again), and it was the birthplace of Clay Riddell, founder of a petroleum company who died in 2018. It wouldn't be as easy to look up billionaires from, say, Shantou, China, because there are 14 who were born there. Details on the map's data can be found here. -via Nag on the Lake 

We've posted videos of them before, but if you aren't familiar with Dutch artist and engineer Theo Jansen's Strandbeests, you are in for a treat. Strandbeests are lightweight wind-powered kinetic sculptures that walk down the beach on their own. Where they go and what they do depends on which way the wind is blowing. We know that, but it still seems that they each have a mind of their own. Jansen achieved a real breakthrough in 2016 when he developed a chair that slides on the sand, so he doesn't have to spend all his time and energy chasing his herd of unruly Strandbeests. 

Jansen's sculptures are doubly pleasing, first because you marvel at the mechanisms that make them work, and then because they are just beautiful. This new compilation video shows the different forms a Strandbeest can take, and the different ways they move. Whether you are familiar with Jansen's work or not, you will get a kick out of what the "beests" have been doing. -via Born in Space 

In Greek mythology, Daedalus made wings from bird feathers and beeswax. He and his son Icarus flew while wearing the wings, but Icarus, even though he had been warned, flew too high and got close to the sun. The sun melted the beeswax, and Icarus fell to his death. 

The image above is real. Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy captured a photograph on November 8th of Gabriel C. Brown falling from an aircraft against the backdrop of the sun before he opened his parachute. The shot required weeks of meticulous planning, as McCarthy and his camera were more than a mile away. It took six attempts to line up the aircraft with the sun, but once Brown jumped, that was the only chance to take the picture, because repacking the parachute would take too long for a second try. McCarthy, who specializes in photographing the sun, was quite pleased with the result. 

Read what went into capturing "The Fall of Icarus" at LiveScience. Brown has video clips of the photoshoot in an Instagram post. -via Metafilter