The subreddit No Stupid Questions implies a judgement-free place to ask about what you don't know. One reader posted, "In pre-cell phone movies, parents are shown giving babysitters numbers to restaurants to reach them in case of emergency. Is this a real thing and how did it work? How would the restaurant know who I am to hand me the phone?" This is not a stupid question, just one outside of their experience. And it sure makes us feel old. 

Yes, this was a thing back in the prehistoric time of land lines. Restaurants knew about babysitters. If they got such a call, they would either find the parents by a description, or call out a name, or check the reservation list. But no, they wouldn't just hand you the phone. The parent would go to the front desk to take the call. Sure, in the swankiest of restaurants, like in the movies, they might have a long phone cord or extra plugs in the dining area, but that was rare. The post at reddit has more than 350 responses, and some of those are stories of such emergency calls that are very much worth sharing. Continue reading to see them.

Cats love to stroll along kitchen counters because they are human-high and often contain tasty or at least interesting things. People have tried many methods to stop them, but all cats are different, so nothing works consistently. I have one cat who roams the counter, leaving evidence that she scratches herself with my cactus garden. I cope by putting dirty dishes away quickly and not leaving uncovered food out. And cleaning the counter often. She has me trained. 

Cookie is a hard case, though. He roamed the whole kitchen and was not susceptible to human tricks. The guy behind the YouTube channel Lab-X is an engineer, so he built an AI-assisted robot with a squirt gun built in, and trained it to recognize Cookie and deter him. He named it Puffy. There were plenty of tests and failures and tweaks to be made before it actually worked. If you don't care about the tech stuff, you'll still get a kick out of Cookie's antics. My cat would spot the robot and knock him off the counter immediately.    

Pissing off my friends in valheim by building dollar generals pic.twitter.com/zjAZNPdauh

— Greg the Sorcerer (@gregthesorcerer) January 11, 2026

Valheim is an open-world multiplayer survival and sandbox game set in the era of the Vikings. You use natural resources to build your own tools, weapons, and shelters. What could possibly go wrong? Well, you could get killed, but besides that, you might find yourself playing with Greg. 

Greg The Sorcerer saw a need in the Valheim world, and filled it by building a Dollar General Store, complete with bad fluorescent lighting. And you know when one Dollar General pops up, there's always going to be more, so he continued to populate the Viking set with more Dollar General stores. It's a genius trolling strategy, designed to pull other players out of the fantasy world and back to reality. In other words, he is spoiling everything. Twitter, excuse me, X users joined in to suggest a Waffle House, and so Greg The Sorcerer made it happen. And he kept building Dollar General stores. PC Gamer tells the story, and suggests that of any of the businesses go belly up, a Spirit Halloween should replace them. -via Metafilter   

Can you think of a more unpleasant science task than to collect and analyze the buildup of scum on someone's else's bathtub? That's a job for grad students, but what they found gives us a good look at life in ancient Pompeii. In the city's public baths, researchers found traces of lead and other dangerous metals, and a good amount of human skin cells and bodily fluids. 

But that doesn't tell the whole story. Pompeii was only under Roman rule for about 160 years before the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius buried the town. Before that, the public baths of the Samnite people were fed from contaminated wells. The Romans installed aqueducts that brought fresh water from distant springs. However, the fact that so much buildup was left behind makes one wonder if they ever cleaned the pools, and how often they changed the water. If you picture how these baths looked when they were being used by many people, it's no wonder that some ancient folk got the idea that bathing was bad for you. Read about the research into the baths of Pompeii at Science Focus. -via Strange Company 

In the 17th century, the city of Edo (modern day Tokyo) had almost a million residents, but was suffering on the brink of ecological collapse due to the cascading effects of deforestation, which affected housing and food supplies, and threatened the very ground beneath it. 

Japan was ruled by the Tokugawa shogunate, which ruled with an iron hand but mostly with an eye toward the long-term benefits to the country and its residents. The government enacted a series of reforms that were difficult, but over time turned Edo into a recovering and sustainable city. One has to wonder how well the people who lived there at the time understood the long-term goals of the sacrifices they had to make- especially those with few resources of their own. The reforms of that period went a long way toward making Tokyo what it is today. 

This TED-Ed lesson by social philosopher Roman Krznaric was directed and beautifully illustrated by Héloïse Dorsan Rachet.

If you saw this sight on a road trip, you'd never forget it. It would make you crave chocolate, don't you think? These three silos sit near the Malley’s Chocolates factory in Brook Park, a suburb of Cleveland. The silos are 88 feet tall and each is 12 feet wide. They can easily be seen from the nearby 480 freeway, and have become local landmarks. 

The silos were recycled from a bankrupt factory across the road in 2011. Is storing cocoa, milk, and sugar in silos even feasible? We don't know, but that was the original plan. There were to be tunnels underneath the silos to move the raw materials to the factory when needed. Moving the silos, setting them up, and painting them pink was quite a job. But the plan to store cocoa, milk, and sugar in them was scrapped before they were ever filled. Still, they serve as a long-term advertisement for Malley's Chocolates. -via Boing Boing 

The startup Galactic Resource Utilization Space (GRU) has launched a website to take reservations for a hotel on the moon. No, the hotel is not on the moon yet, but the plan is to have it in place by 2032. Availability dates will be subject to transportation, and of course, whether the hotel is ever built. Or we should say, installed, because it's going to be an inflatable structure. It will hold up to four people for multi-day vacations, which may include sightseeing, driving, and golf. Talk about an "out of this world" honeymoon! 

GRU is the brainchild of Skyler Chan, a 21-year-old Berkeley graduate, who has enlisted tech investors such as SpaceX and Nvidia. A big chunk of money is expected from the guests, though. Reservations range from $250,000 to $1 million, depending on the vacation package. What's in those packages? Who knows- it costs $1,000 just to apply for a reservation. It sounds like pie in the sky, although that metaphor seems a little too on the nose. -via Nag on the Lake 

Shane Martin has a construction business in Cobar, NSW, Australia. He arrived at his shopfront to find the glass shattered in the door and three windows. Was someone trying to break in? He watched the security footage and saw a feral goat head-butting the shop for about 20 minutes straight! 

They say all the wildlife in Australia is trying to kill you. However, goats are not native to Australia, but are an invasive species imported by humans. Maybe the environment has affected their instincts. The goats around Cobar usually stay near the reservoir, but dry conditions could have caused this one to roam into town. Martin surmises that the goat probably saw his reflection as a rival that needed to be challenged. The goat hasn't been found, and Martin is left with thousands of dollars in damage. You can see video footage of the goat attack at ABC News.  -via Metafilter 

(Image credit: Shane Martin)

At the end of World War II, Walt Disney thought his animation company might be on its last legs, so he was looking for something different. An amusement park? Okay, but it had to be better than what other amusement parks had to offer at the time. The design of Disneyland was an entirely new concept, with architecture created to immerse visitors into a fantasy world. And people would have to pay to get in, which was unheard of at the time. 

The story of Walt Disney World in Florida is pretty astounding, since it is so much bigger and has more features, but in pulling off that first park in 1954 was a bigger risk. Disney invested his personal fortune, and took out $17 millions in loans. The park was built in only a year! But no one knew whether it would go over with the public. Well, we know now, but it was a white-knuckle experience for Walt Disney. Too bad you can no longer get in for a dollar. -via Damn Interesting 

In 1860, New York City seriously considered leaving the United States and forming its own country. The mayor, Fernando Wood, consulted with the city's movers and shakers like William Astor, August Belmont, and Sam Tilden about the plan, which they considered would be peaceful. Their problem was not so much with the United States, but with the state of New York- the city had a completely different culture from upstate. New York City was focused on trade, and consisted of people from all different cultures. They saw the rest of the state as populated by New England "Puritans," who were too religious, monocultural, and intolerant -especially when it came to alcohol. Strangely, most city authorities had no problem with slavery, because of the trade thing. 

New York City's plan to secede from the Union was stopped short by the Civil War, but the rift between city and state continued for more than a hundred years. Read about the Big Apple's desire to secede at Smithsonian. 

(Image credit: Samuel Augustus Mitchell) 

To celebrate the anniversary of the 2001 movie The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, it's returning to theaters starting January 16th. The Two Towers will be released on January 17th, and The Return of the King hits theaters on January 18th. If you're in the right place, you can spend 12 hours of your weekend watching the trilogy. Yes, these are the extended editions, which makes The Fellowship of the Ring three hours and 48 minutes long. And it's the perfect excuse for an Honest Trailer. 

While Screen Junkies gently pokes fun at the characters, it's obvious they can find little fault with the movie. We do get to see some of the tropes pointed out, like how Frodo is constantly interrupted while trying to sleep. It's no wonder he never thought of just flying to Mordor like Gandalf did. At any rate, you can expect Honest Trailers for the other two films in the trilogy to come out soon.  

Isn't this little fighter jet cute? It is less than 15 feet long, and it has a wingspan of 21 feet. But those wings fold up, making the plane even tinier. This is the McDonnell Goblin XF-85 parasite fighter jet, developed during World War II. See, American bombers got bigger and bigger, and could fly missions further and further away. But they needed protection from fighter escorts, and those escorts could not carry enough fuel for long-range missions. So the Goblin was developed small enough to fit inside a bomber! 

When approaching a target area, the Goblins would be deployed from underneath the bomber, which must have looked like the jet was giving birth. What was really tricky was retrieving and stowing the Goblins after a mission. After all, the little jets didn't have the fuel to get back on their own, and they were too compact to carry landing gear anyway. Read about the Goblin XF-85 at New Atlas. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: US Air Force) 

Depression is a horrible malady that's often hard to pin down. Situational depression is when you feel awful with a reason, like personal loss, trauma, or the world is falling apart, and clinical depression is a mental illness, but these lie on a spectrum and it's hard to determine where the line is. Medical science has some standards for diagnosis, but they can be subjective. There are no biological injuries that point out clinical depression, and treatments vary in effectiveness from person to person. Still, the worst is no treatment at all. 

Adding to that, the very symptoms of depression make it hard to seek help. Then there's the stigma and expense attached to treatment. Sure, there are a few things you can do to fight depression, and those things are healthy whether you are experiencing depression or not. But it's very important to recognize the symptoms and seek help if you or someone you know is suffering from depression, no matter what form it takes.  -via Geeks Are Sexy 

It never occurred to me to try frying foods in a microwave, and it sounds kind of dangerous. Frying means oil, and oil gets extremely hot. But it is possible. So what would you fry in there, anyway? The Takeout explains that you might want to fry garnishes until they are crispy, like fried onions to put on your salad or a sandwich. That way, you can use a small amount of oil and a small dish for a small amount of food and not have to wash a frying pan. They also explain the proper way to do it. Just be sure that you avoid splashing any oil as you remove the dish from the microwave. 

But microwave frying will only work for a small amount of food- you won't get good results frying chicken in the microwave, for more reasons than one, which they also explain. But who fries just one piece of chicken at a time, anyway? Entrees for a family are worth pulling out the frying pan. Get a rundown on the practical way to fry some things in the a microwave at the Takeout.  

(Image credit: Famartin) 

Small arrowheads have been found in South Africa that date back 60,000 years, tens of thousands of years older than any other known poison arrows. What's even more intriguing, the traces of poison recovered from them are from the plant known as the Bushman's poison bulb (Boophone disticha). The poison extracted from the plant does not kill quickly, but will weaken prey over time. The small arrowheads indicate that they were made to deliver the poison instead of killing an animal outright. Such an arrow would slow the animal down, though, giving human hunters the advantage of their endurance and perseverance in taking down large prey. 

The implications of this technique are that early Homo sapiens hunters were strategic thinkers who understood cause-and-effect and delayed results, in addition to the practice of using poison to their own advantage. Read about the discovery and what it means at Smithsonian. 

(Image credit: Ton Rulkens)