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 

Supercuts are fun, but supercuts that make a melodic song are even better. Dustin Ballard, also known as There I Ruined It (previously at Neatorama) compiled incidences of the term "cold beer" in country songs, and there are a lot of them, particularly in "Bro-country" from recent years. 

The notion that country music is full of cliches goes way back. Recall the 1975 song "You Never Even Called Me By My Name" with the bonus verse. Then in 2015, Gregory Todd demonstrated how formulaic the music itself had become with his 6-song mashup. It turned out those songs were written by the same group of composers. Probably on an assembly line. 

Meanwhile, enjoy this short but amusing mashup that serves as a tribute to the importance of cold beer. If you pay attention, you'll see a clip from Bo Burnham at :37. It's from his 2016 parody song that makes the same point. 

The first time I saw Devil's Tower was in 1977 in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In 2013, I finally got to see it in person. The mountain in Wyoming is a national monument, but it's less of a mountain than a 867-foot stone pillar rising from the relatively flat land around it. Its sheer sides draw 20,000 mountain climbers every year, and many more tourists. The Lakota Sioux call it Mato Tipila or Bear’s Lodge. How did this amazing rock come to be there?

The scientific answer is that it's a laccolith. It's not a volcano, but it was still formed by volcanic activity in a convoluted process around 50 million years ago. The Lakota story behind the rise of the sacred Mato Tipila is even more interesting, involving seven little girls who were being chased by bears. Read both stories and more about Devil's Tower at Atlas Obscura. 

(Image credit: Justin Meissen) 

Rakugo is a Japanese form of comic storytelling. Katsura Sunshine, originally from Toronto, spent years in an apprenticeship learning the art of Rakugo, and now lives and performs in both New York City and Tokyo. He is in a special position to compare and contrast Japanese culture with Western culture with humor in both places. What seems like a lesson about whichever nation he's not in at the time comes with a punch line.  

After watching this funny tutorial on language, I went to Sunshine's Instagram page and watched lots of clips that were just as funny. Some of his stories are about the language and social mistakes he made when he first went to Japan, and how strange his cross-cultural life is now. For example, people are surprised at how well Sunshine speaks English. They guess he's from some European country that is known for blonde hair (although his hair can be any color). Even explaining the art of Rakugo becomes a funny sketch. -via Laughing Squid 

We rarely get to see an x-ray of a broken bone that cannot be straightened at least a little for the picture. This one has two broken bones, but the metal plates inside just bent at a 90 degree angle. Redditor tubatheist shared this image late last night. How did it happen?

Was on a nice leisurely bike ride - shoe laces got stuck on my bike pedal and wrapped around multiple times over. Fell off as I was braking to get them unstuck. I never want to get on a bike again 😫

Ouch. The plates were from four years ago, when he broke that arm slipping on ice. The real kicker is that this is the third time this arm has been broken. The first time was when he was only nine years old. The next time tubatheist renews his health insurance plan, they are liable to require a separate policy for this arm since it has proven to be a risky limb. Always double tie your shoes before riding a bike, and tuck the ends into the shoe. Read more reactions at reddit. 

'Tis the season for British retailers to roll out their expensive and lovingly-crafted Christmas ads, for which they've spent the majority of their advertising budget for the year. They are usually designed to tug at our heartstrings. This one is a "mini rom-com" featuring British comedian Joe Wilkinson and movie star Kiera Knightly. 

Phil is mourning his previous love, who must have died because of the line "It's what Shelly would have wanted." Then a miraculous meeting happens in front of a grocery store cheese counter. As their relationship blossoms, it appears to be centered around food, down to Kiera making cookies that look like Phil. That's because this is an ad for Waitrose, an upscale British supermarket. The unlikely but heartwarming story, with some understated British humor, even has a Star Wars touch at the end. The comments are full of Joe Wilkinson fans who congratulate Knightly on being cast alongside him.