Since The Rise of Skywalker in 2019, Disney and Lucasfilm have stepped back from feature films to concentrate on TV series, with varying results. But now they think they have their ducks in a row, and have told the participants at Star Wars Celebration in London that they have plans for three new films. It won't be a trilogy, but will span the vast timeline of the Jedi order long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away.

One film will be set 25,000 years before the events of the original Star Wars trilogy, when the very first Jedi harnessed the Force. Dawn of the Jedi will be directed by James Mangold, who recently directed Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Dave Filoni, who you know from The Mandalorian and The Clone Wars, will direct a film set in the time of The Mandalorian that deals with the conflict between the Imperial Remnant and the New Republic. It will wrap up several story lines from the TV shows The Mandalorian, the Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka.  

The other movie is, uh, a sequel to The Rise of Skywalker. Daisy Ridley will return as Ray Skywalker as she revives the Jedi order, 15 years after her previous adventures. The film will be directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who did Ms. Marvel. The script is from Peaky Blinders writer Steven Knight.

There are no projected release dates for these films, as far as we know. Star Wars Celebration Europe will continue through Monday.

The latest song from Brian David Gilbert (previously at Neatorama) is about those trashily alluring 18+ game ads you see all over the internet (and will probably see more of them after watching this). I don't know exactly what will happen when you download them, but they have to be inevitably disappointing, if not altogether malicious. I don't click on ads for stuff I know I'm not going to buy, so they might be great, but you can't expect them to live up to the lurid hype. Anyway, the silly song is an unexpected earworm.

But then, as you listen to the song, you gradually start to realize that it's not about those ads at all, but something much more profound. Yes, there are some things that are more important than games. But you'll have to discover that for yourself. I will tell you that you'll get a kick out of the clever editing tricks and BDG in a whole wardrobe of new fashions.

The non-religious side of Easter celebrations are all about cute spring symbols. There are Easter eggs, flowers, bunny rabbits, baby chicks, and frankly babies of all kinds, mostly in pastel colors. However, those symbols are difficult to recreate in mass-produced cakes by rushed grocery store clerks who have neither the talent nor the proper materials to do it. And so Jen Yates of Cake Wrecks has yet another year's worth of funny-looking desserts to share with us. I think the cake above is supposed to be a bunny, but it has the nose of a pig and the eyes of a serious trauma victim. I have no idea what's going on with those feet. You'll find it in a roundup called 7 Reasons To Avoid The Bakery This Easter.

Oh, but there's more! Another post concentrates on chicks, with a few bunnies thrown in. This cake may have looked really nice before it was dropped, but I somehow get the idea that the jostling may have improved it. See plenty more of these Easter disasters that probably taste pretty good when you've finished laughing at Cake Wrecks.

We've heard that the dodo went extinct because it was ugly, stupid, and edible, and no one really cared when the species died out. At least that was the story we were told in the 20th century. There are misconceptions that arise when you so much. It's true that by the time anyone thought about studying the dodo, they were all gone with little evidence of the bird that once was. The dodo wasn't cute, tasty, and mysterious like the woggin. Well, maybe mysterious, but what can you do when there are none left? It was only in 2005 that we finally found enough dodo bones to really figure out what they were all about. Dodos were actually pretty well adapted to their environment on the island of Mauritius, at least before humans came along. What happened then might just surprise you. The story of the dodo is only seven minutes long, despite the video length. -via Damn Interesting

Our closest neighboring planet is entirely populated by robots, and is constantly under surveillance by a satellite taking pictures. And you can see it! NASA has released an interactive map of Mars created by CalTech that has an astonishing amount of detail. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been at work for 17 years photographing the planet, which gave us the 110,000 images used in the map. A choice of destinations at the bottom will lead you to the rovers, past and present, plus standout locations like Mars' biggest mountain, Olympus Mons. You can zoom in and out to see more detail. A hamburger menu on the upper right will toggle some neat features, like labeled names for the places you're seeing. Click those location dots, and you'll get information about the place names. For example, Pangboche is a crater named in 2006 for a village in Nepal. You can imagine the scientist who named it proudly honoring his hometown.  

It's wild to see such a detailed map of a place that no one has ever ever been to. Gizmodo has more information about the project and warns us that  the 5.7 trillion pixel map may load slowly on older computers.

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

Rainbows are what happens when sunlight is split into its various colors by the prismatic action of moisture in the air. You are most likely to see one after a rain shower, when the sunlight returns and shines on the storm that's headed off to the east, or when the air retains enough water to act as a prism. We call it a rainbow because it is an arc, or bow, in the sky. The thing is that we are only seeing a small portion of the rainbow as an arc. The full phenomenon is a circle, but we can't see it because it's so big. The earth gets in the way. You might even see a rainbow as an almost-straight line if it's big enough, and is either obstructed or has gaps in the moisture.

Theoretical astrophysicist Ethan Siegel explains how sunlight becomes separated into its component colors in a way that you don't have to be an astrophysicist to understand. He explains why all rainbows are alike, except for their size and the way they may be obstructed. And he gives us two ways to see one as a full circle: the first one involves flying over a rainbow, which may be beyond our ability. The second one only requires a water hose, which I find myself doing every time I use a hose in the middle of a sunny day. Read all about rainbows at Big Think. -via Kottke

Here we have an example of two subreddits mashing up just for fun. You are probably familiar with AITA (Am I The Asshole?) which can be pretty grim. But the Musicals subreddit is full of musical theater fans who know their stuff. Redditor DukeCummings launched a thread in which people post an AITA in the persona of a character from a well-known musical. The idea is that characters see themselves as the good guy even when they are doing awful things. The real kicker is that these are crafted so that the musical and the character are not named, and we are left to guess who they are. Broadway Baseball gives us an example. 

AITA for pitting guys against each other for my praise, and for letting kith kill their kin in my name? There’s this guy who pines so for me — he’s very dashing, and brave, and pure… anyway, he’s also really arrogant, so I thought I’d knock him down a peg or two. So I got three of the best fighters around to challenge him, hoping to show him some humility. Well, as I said, this particular guy is so brave and daring and strong, and he actually defeated all three fighters. He even killed one! He felt horribly bad about it. He’s so sensitive. Anyway, my husband says I was cruel to challenge him so. AITA?

Another from room317 may be easier to guess.

Recently took a job as a nanny. There are a LOT of kids. The parent is a widower, which, like, I feel for him. However, the dude is UNBEARABLE. He FREAKED when I used some fabric around the house to try out my sewing skills to make some dresses. And, THE WORST, he claims that since his wife sang around the house, I'm absolutely not allowed. Like, what is this? I like to sing. The man has children who like to sing. I can't possibly be TA, right?

What makes this so intriguing is that there are no answers given. Everyone in the subreddit knows these musicals. Some have a clue in the replies with a snippet of song lyrics you can look up, but otherwise you will only recognize the characters from the musicals you've seen, and the others will be a mystery. I only recognized the older ones. But it's a lot of fun to try and guess! -via Metafilter

In this stop-motion video, a guy who we assume is a slacker of sorts because he's messy, falls asleep and then his toy car comes to life and takes over his room, using his phone charger for power. That's a smart, spunky little car! It's only when the guy wakes up that we find out the dream (if it really was a dream) actually means something important- specifically a trip through the past. It wasn't a dream; it was a wake up call! 

Japanese YouTuber omozoc (previously at Neatorama) makes clever stop-motion animations and has built a subscriber base of two million. It seems to be starting to pay off for him, because even though you don't realize it until the end of this video, it's an ad for the Chinese electric car company Build Your Dreams. I guess it worked, because I've never heard of the company until today.  -via Nag on the Lake

Barnum Brown was named after P.T. Barnum, but his passion was more mundane than the showman's. As a young boy, he followed the machinery of his father's Kansas strip mine operation to search for fossils. Brown studied paleontology in college (a fairly new discipline at the time) and made a reputation for himself. Under the patronage of Henry Osborn of the American Museum of Natural History, Brown was able to find amazing dinosaur fossils and get his master's degree.

An expedition to Montana in the summer of 1902 yielded Brown's biggest discovery yet- a new species of dinosaur that may have been 40 feet long, which Osborn named Tyrannosaurus rex. Osborn also allowed others to credit him with the discovery. Brown remained in the background, and even found two more T. rexes while Osborn was publicizing the find. But the dinosaur itself was an even bigger star than either man. Read the story of the man behind T. rex at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Jon Parise)

There are many different reasons why people spend time in a coma: illness, injury, surgery, or a medically-induced coma for various reasons. Their memories of that time vary even more widely. Some don't recall anything. Some were not even aware of the passage of time. Some had very vivid and weird dreams that stayed with them for years. And some had experiences that strangely melded dreams with reality.

"I remember hearing a woman telling me to squeeze her hand. I found out later that they brought me out of the coma to see if I was brain dead. I squeezed her hand, and they put me back under for several more weeks. I remember being taken to a spaceship orbiting Earth so I could be repaired. I found out that I was actually a cyborg. While I was on the ship, something ruptured the hull, and the ship lost atmosphere and everything froze. I was frozen in place but fully aware that I was frozen and could not move. I was now certain that I would spend eternity fully awake and immobile on this ship, never able to shut down." —Keri1986

You'll also read strange cases of people whose personalities changed after a coma, and one patient who recovered to prove his brother wrong, in a list at Buzzfeed. There are even more such stories in the comments.

(Image credit: Mohsen Atayi)

With egg prices still high, the potato industry is looking to scramble up Easter traditions with a budget-friendly alternative: Easter potatoes. https://t.co/fP2M9FEaE2

— Axios (@axios) April 2, 2023

It started out as a joke, an internet meme, then leaked into the real world- potatoes as an alternative to eggs for Easter egg hunts. The price of eggs has been historically high over the past year, but the price of potatoes has risen only 13%. So why not have children decorate potatoes and hunt them for the holiday? Once potato producers heard of the joke, they jumped on it, hoping to sell some potatoes and maybe start a new tradition. There are plenty of tutorials online on how to paint Easter potatoes.

Besides the difference in price, the benefits of using potatoes include less breakage, and the fact that if you use food-safe paint, the potatoes can be cooked and served afterward. People rarely do that with Easter eggs, which are ultimately out of the refrigerator for who knows how long. But overall, it's more of a meme than a reality, as egg hunts have nothing to do with the religious holiday, and so many people use plastic eggs anyway, which are cheap and can be used year after year. Personally, one chocolate egg is enough for me. -via Digg

New York's Hart Island, off the coast of the Bronx, contains the nation's largest cemetery on its 131 acres. But this is no Forest Lawn. This is New York's potter's field, where unidentified or unclaimed bodies are buried, in trenches three coffins deep. The practice has been going on since 1869, and it is estimated that more than a million people are now buried there. Run by the Department of Corrections, the island has been off-limits to the general public for years, except for supervised memorial services twice a month. But that is about to change.

In part by the efforts of the Hart Island Project, the administration of the island was transferred from the Corrections Department to the city's Parks Department. They've been busy cleaning up the island and dismantling some old buildings. Later this year, guided tours will begin as a pilot program, leading to eventual opening of Hart Island as a park. That doesn't mean it will no longer be a potter's field. Burials of New York's more unfortunate deceased will continue. Read about the new park on Hart Island at Smithsonian. -via Fark

When Furbys became the "it" toy 25 years ago, they creeped us out. These little toys spoke a language you couldn't understand, but over time they learned to communicate in the language they heard and said some pretty personal things to you or your child. All these years later, technology has given us open source coding, artificial intelligence, warfare drones, and robots that can shoot guns. But Furbys can still creep us out. Especially when they've been skinned.

i hooked up chatgpt to a furby and I think this may be the start of something bad for humanity pic.twitter.com/jximZe2qeG

— jessica card (@jessicard) April 2, 2023

That little robot had to think about it a minute, but then went ahead and told us exactly what we did not want to hear. In the Twitter thread, Jessica Card told us how she hooked up this nightmare.

hardware:

i’m not a hardware wiz so @kenkeiter really mentored me on this!

skinned the furby, isolated the DC motor wires, soldered on male extension to plug into breadboard. hooked up an h bridge on the breadboard to the pi. control motor via python and run it when it speaks

— jessica card (@jessicard) April 3, 2023

Just because you can do it, doesn't mean that you should. Card also referenced Roko's basilisk, which is another dimension of terrifying. Have we already sealed our fate? -Thanks, Brother Bill!

Every one of the 50 states has a flag, but you probably only know your own state's design. Yeah, Mississippi's flag redesign was featured here, and Utah's new design has been in the news, and New Mexico's flag is often ranked the best, but otherwise, they all seem to run together. You get the idea that they were all done in a hurry by someone with no design experience. Then you rarely saw your state flag because it's ugly, and no one was bothered by it and never thought about making it better. CGP Grey lays out some vexillology rules and standards, and then gives each state's flag a grade. Most of them fail, and deservedly so. A few are good for a laugh.

In the discussion at reddit, the biggest disagreement is with Grey's opinion of purple and the grade that Colorado got. The friend who sent me this video vastly underestimated its length, because he found it so interesting. -Thanks, Bicycle Bill!

The Colôrobètch is a bogey that personifies the bise or icy wind. Known from Namur, Belgium, it nips unprotected children with its red beak until their skin becomes red, cracked, and bleeding.

A Book of Creatures is a project by an artist named Emile. She draws legends, myths, and cryptids from all over the world and tells us their stories. As drawn, they're both whimsically cute and terrifying. You have to wonder at the imaginations that brought these animals to existence.  

Usilosimapundu is a colossal creature from Zulu folklore. He literally carries ecosystems on his back, and his head is an enormous boulder. A swallowing monster, he is a personification of landslides.

The Marool is the anglerfish or monkfish in Shetland folklore. It has many eyes and sings wildly with joy when a ship capsizes.

You can see the full collection of legendary creatures at A Book of Creatures at Instagram. Bored Panda has a roundup of 40 of them plus an interview with the artist.