There is a $5,000 reward offered for information leading to the capture of an escaped giraffe in Texas. Gracie is a 3- to 4-year-old reticulated giraffe who went missing from Cedar Hollow Ranch, an exotic animal facility in Real County, Texas. Gracie is described as 10 to 11 feet tall with a case of wanderlust. She managed to escape from an area of the ranch that had an eight-foot gate and a rock slab barrier, although no damage to the gate was reported. A search by helicopter covered a 7,500-acre area, but no sign of the giraffe was found.

Ranch manager Vick Jones is not too concerned with Gracie's wellbeing while on the lam. The surrounding area offers plenty of vegetation a giraffe could eat, and she is unlikely to be bothered by native wildlife. One would imagine that native wildlife would be terrified by an 11-foot animal. The question that remains is how she managed to remain free for this long. Read about the case of the escaped giraffe at Smithsonian.  

(Image credit: Real County Sheriff's Office) 

The usual way to make classic cartoons is to record the voices first, and then draw the animation to match. When Robin Williams recorded lines for the Genie in the 1992 film Aladdin, the crew knew that letting him loose with the script would produce magic. Williams recorded hours and hours of sound, playing around with each joke, adding his own ad libs, and doing them all over and over with different recognizable character voices. It had to be a real trip to witness, and a real struggle not to ruin every take with uncontrollable laughing.  

Of course, they didn't use all those hours of voice recordings, but they were too funny to discard. They were well worth adding artwork to them anyway. In this video, two directors and the supervising animator from Aladdin remember Robin Williams and bring us the Genie treasures we didn't get to see in the movie.  

In case you didn't know it, the 1972 movie Jeremiah Johnson was based on a real person. The character was somewhat fictionalized, because no one wanted to see Robert Redford eating human livers. 

John Jeremiah Garrison, who later took the name Johnston and eventually dropped the "t," was born in New Jersey in 1824 and headed out west after deserting the military. He wanted to find gold, but instead sold wood in the mountains of Montana. He married a woman from the Flathead people, but she was killed by a band of Crow hunters. That's when Johnson went nuclear, and he spent the next 25 years hunting and killing Crow tribesmen. It was said that he killed more than 300 Crow and devoured their livers afterward, earning him the name "Liver-eating Johnson." He once escaped capture by the Blackfoot people by cutting off his guard's leg and beating everyone else with it. As hard to believe as that is, even more incredible is the story that all this brought Johnson respect among the Crow, and he eventually made peace with them.  

You can read a "just the facts" version of Johnson's story at Wikipedia, or a more dramatic and gruesome version at OldWest.  -via Boing Boing 

Your first bird feeder seems like a nice gift, but it can lead to some lifestyle changes. Suddenly, you are obsessed with the birds that actually come visit. You're taking pictures of them, identifying them, studying their favorite foods, and that leads to a serious obsession. There's nothing wrong with birdwatching, and I'm sure the birds appreciate the food. But you may start to seem a little odd to the neighbors and any friends that visit. 

Comedian Matt Lyons noticed this in his own neighborhood. He knows about as much about birds as you or I do- notice that the bird feeder in this video is empty, and no serious backyard birder would let that happen except to give it a good cleaning. You can also tell by the names of the birds, like the eastern bilirobin and the benihana boobies. He's glad to share knowledge with you, because it's all about that symbiotomy in the phylum, whatever that means. -via Laughing Squid 

In the mid-20th century, Cadillacs were the flashy car you bought when you wanted everyone to know you could afford a Cadillac. Elvis Presley bought an entire fleet of Cadillacs after he made it big, including a purple one and two pink Caddys. But it was a gold Eldorado that he deemed worthy of execution. 

Elvis was known to shoot his TV sets if he didn't like what it was showing. This habit became a comedy trope, but it also reveals a disturbing lack of self control. Elvis didn't need self control when he saw a '68 Cadillac Eldorado convertible painted in Topaz Gold Firemist at a Memphis dealership in December of 1967. He bought it on the spot and drove it for the next year. But one day it wouldn't start, so he pulled out a handgun and shot it, right in the fender. 

That single bullet hole branded the car as an authentic Elvis Cadillac to this day. Read the story of the car that was shot, and what happened to it afterward at Jalopnik. You can see pictures of the car here.  

Thomas Edison didn't have much in the way of a formal education. Once he learned to read, his mother encouraged him to learn on his own. And he read a lot, about a wide variety of subjects. As a business owner, Edison hired plenty of employees, but didn't really care whether they had a college degree, as he thought higher education was overrated. Instead, he screened potential employees with a test he made up himself. Edison's tests varied over time, and he never made them public. But they usually had 140 questions or more. Not many of the questions had anything to do with engineering, salesmanship, or the science behind the position. They were trivia questions, supposedly to reveal a well-rounded education. 

It wasn't easy. Out of 718 applicants, only 32 scored 90% or higher. While we don't have any copies of them, many who took the tests were happy to share questions they recalled from it when New York Times reporters asked. You wouldn't be able to pass the test, either, since 100 years have passed and many answers have changed or are hopelessly period-specific. But you might have fun trying, as you'll see at The Saturday Evening Post. -via Damn Interesting 

Can you describe a smell without referring to the possible source of that smell, or something that smells similar? There are such words, like fragrant, stinky, or musky and a few others, but compare that to the huge number of words we can use to describe something we see without referring the the exact object. Most of the time, we just rely on shared knowledge of smell sources, such as "this smells like (bananas, lilac, crap, etc)." In English, you can be on the phone, go outside, sniff, and say "someone's cooking out," and the person you're talking to will instantly know what you are smelling because of our shared experience. Imagine trying to describe that smell without referring to the probable source. 

However, this only applies to Western languages. Some languages have a wide vocabulary to describe smells. What makes the difference is codability, or the tendency for all speakers of the language to agree on descriptive words. Dr. Erica Brozovsky (previously at Neatorama) explains the linguistics of smell across different languages. 

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, they thought it would be a short war. Ukraine fought back fiercely, refusing to surrender their homeland. The smaller country had to think outside the box to defend against a never-ending supply of soldiers from Russia and its allies. One piece of that strategy is the Ukrainians caught inside Russian-occupied territory who risk their lives to send intelligence out to the Ukraine military. 

Many of these operatives are women, sometimes called vidma. The word translates to "witch," but in Ukrainian it carries the connotation of wisdom. Thousands of them have been training to defend their country since the seizure of Crimea in 2014. Those caught in occupied territory harness the Russians' view of them as harmless because of their age or gender. Russia disabled Ukrainian phones and replaced them with devices filled with surveillance apps, but they've learned to work around that. One of the schemes they use to smuggle intelligence out involves catfishing. Innocently flirt with a lonely Russian soldier just enough to solicit a picture, and the metadata from it can help a Ukrainian drone target his base for a bomb attack, even if it's deep inside Russia. Read about the modern tactics of the Ukrainian resistance in an article from The Atlantic.  -via Metafilter 

(Image credit: Iktsokh) 

The new Supergirl movie is set to open nationwide this weekend, so it's as good a time as any for Screen Junkies to go back and do an Honest  Trailer for the 1984  film Supergirl. What? You didn't see the movie? You don't even remember it? Theres a reason for that. Despite an all-star cast and a large budget for its time, Supergirl was a box office bomb, and did even worse with critics. The few who enjoyed it weren't quite sure whether the producers meant for it to turn out the way it did. The attempt to make a superhero adventure/comedy/teen movie with supernatural elements just fell flat under the weight of a plot that made no sense whatsover. 

If you are looking forward to the new Supergirl this weekend, but are also apprehensive about possible disappointment, maybe you should go back and watch the 1984 version. It will only make the 2026 Supergirl seem better than it is.

Early in the American Revolution, General George Washington saw a problem. As the Continental Army had problems getting supplies to its troops, the British Army saw a steady stream of unescorted supply ships crossing the Atlantic. The Americans needed a navy to intercept them. Officers couldn't spare any soldiers to form a naval force, and there was no time nor funds to build ships.  

However, in the lead up to the war, England had had responded to various tax protests by making it illegal for Americans to fish in the Atlantic! As soon as the war began, an estimated 4800 angry unemployed fishermen signed up to fight. Washington recognized the opportunity, and made them into an instant navy. The experienced seafarers needed no training, they just needed to be armed and paid. They even brought their own boats. Read how all this came about, and what American fishermen did to win the revolution at the Conversation. -via Smithsonian 

(Image credit: John F. Leavitt) 

British immigrant Laurence Brown has spent years comparing and contrasting Britain and the US in his series Lost in the Pond. Many times he's pointed out the many differences in British English and American English. But somewhere along the way, he discovered that there is also Canadian English, which is another thing altogether. This reminds me of when some French relatives visited Montreal and were shocked to find out that Quebecois is very different from French, but still understandable if you give it a few seconds. 

Americans and Canadians are used to each other's word usage and pronunciation, but seeing if from the perspective of one who used to be an outsider is illuminating. We've all heard about Americans traveling to Europe and telling people they are from Canada to avoid backlash, yet we've wondered how they got away with it. The differences in language are rather subtle, and often undetectable to anyone who speaks English as a second language, or even as a first language, as Brown does. 

By the way, I've never heard any American refer to a knit cap as a beanie, but I live near the South, where they are only worn a couple of months out of the year. This video has a skippable ad from 4:58 to 6:01. 

Humans since 1982 is a Swedish art studio that produces a series of works made of analog clocks that synchronize with each other to display the time digitally. This series is called A Million Times, and these masterpieces go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

Matt Zatorski and Patryk Zatorski created a version that you and I can afford- online. A Million Times Tribute is a grid of 288 analog clock faces that will display the time in digital numbers every minute, or whenever you reload it. But when it isn't displaying the time, it is a mesmerizing geometric artwork of rotating clocks. But that's not all! Run your mouse over the clocks and see them wake up and react in different ways. Click on them and make waves happen! Then find the star at the bottom right side of the page, and you can change the background, tempo, and choreography of the screen, and even bring up a version with 504 clocks. -via Everlasting Blort 

Alamo Drafthouse presents a new quiz show that challenges your ability to recognize or guess names. They give you a name, and you have to decide whether it's from the fictional kingdom of Eternia from the TV show He-Man and the Masters of the Universe,  or from the non-fictional kingdom of IKEA furniture. There is a certain demographic who should ace this quiz, since they grew up on He-Man and now buy IKEA furniture. For the rest of us, it's a toss up because each of these strange names can go either way. 

As the game progresses, you can start to see how these kingdoms are somewhat alike. IKEA gives its furniture names instead of simply stock numbers to enable customers to share their favorites, creating free publicity. He-Man named its characters so you can keep up with them in a TV show- but that TV show was born to promote a line of toy products. It might help you to know that some He-Man characters are named for their unique features, while IKEA doesn't do that- or if they do, it's in Swedish. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

No doubt you've seen pictures of this fairy tale tunnel through the forest. You may have wondered where it is, or even if it's real. It is very real. This forest sequence is in northwest Ukraine, near the town of Kevlan. It's called Tunel Kokhannia, or the Tunnel of Love. You might wonder who gets the job of maintaining such a beautiful passage, and the answer is... nobody. This is the result of not maintaining a railway. As the forest grew closer to the tracks, the train itself snips off any branches that extend too far or any plants that dare to grow too high on the tracks. Yes, a train passes by here three or four times a day, shaping the tunnel and its greenery. Just don't stick your hand out the train window! 

The Tunnel of Love doesn't look like this year-round, though. See what it looks like in pictures taken in autumn and winter, plus the story behind the tunnel and the folklore that's grown up around it at Kuriositas. 

(Image credit: iSavoch) 

People under 40 or so only know two things about Lady Diana Spencer, later known as Princess Diana. She was married to Prince Charles, the future King of England, until they were divorced. Then she died in a traffic accident in 1997 at the age of 36. Older people will remember the big news of the royal wedding in 1981 right after she turned 20. The way she was selected to be Charles' bride seemed a bit skeevy to Americans, but the young preschool assistant seemed happy. 

Yet underneath the royal trappings, Diana's life was no fairy tale. From the time she was born, her life was difficult, not financially, but psychologically. Still, she carried the weight of her family's expectations and then the world's expectations like a champ- until she couldn't. Then again, Diana's story contains elements of many stories we've heard before: the beautiful princess, absent parents, betrayal, a stiff upper lip, longing for love, and even a wicked stepmother. Maybe Princess Diana's life really was a fairy tale come true, just without the magic intervention and the "happily ever after" ending.