パッカーン！でも、ドレスドでもない
ちょっと変わった卵の包み方🍳

【無慈悲】生まれたてのひよこオムライス🐣 pic.twitter.com/t2MBs6u1qU

— テイストメイド ジャパン (@Tastemade_japan) April 24, 2024

Twitter* user @Tastemade_japan shows this clever omurice dish that begins with rice balls decorated to resemble chicks, then fried into a gentle nest made of the flesh of their lost siblings. Next, it is devoured whole by feckless gods who laugh at the terror of the birds. The rice birds realize all too late that the only purpose of their existence was to be consumed.

-via The Best

*None of this "X" nonsense. If the name "Twitter" was good enough for our forefathers, it's good enough for ourselves and our posterity.

In the 1940s, Lali Sokolov met Gita Furman when he tattooed her arm at Auschwitz. The two fell in love, and after liberation, they moved to Australia where they spent the rest of their lives together. Furman didn't want to talk about the Holocaust, so Sokolov didn't, either. After Gita's death in 2003, he told his story to Heather Morris, a non-Jew from New Zealand who didn't know much about the Holocaust. Morris spent three years hearing Sokolov's recollections, and then another ten years trying to option the story as a play. Then she made it into a novel instead. The Tattooist of Auschwitz became a worldwide best seller in 2018.

Although classified as fiction, the book was based on Sokolov's story. Historians from the Shoah Foundation and the the Auschwitz Memorial Research Center, among others, found numerous historical inconsistencies and errors in the account of the tattooist. The story was like a game of telephone, passed from the subject 50 years after the fact, to a young writer with little historical background and no corroboration from Furman. Sokolov died years before the book was published. However, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is far from the only story fictionalized from the Holocaust, and as the generation of survivors disappears, there will only be more.  

The Tattooist of Auschwitz premieres today as a six-episode miniseries on Peacock. The TV adaptation addresses the inconsistencies in Sokolov's story by illustrating how he told it to Morris as an elderly man who suppressed those memories for 50 years. Read up on Sokolov's story, the controversial novel, and the TV series The Tattooist of Auschwitz at Smithsonian.  

(Image credit: Martin Mlaka/Sky UK)

It's always fun to see how other countries title American movies. They can be literal translations, but often the marketing team wants to convey what the movie is about, and Hollywood titles often don't do that. So a new title is created to work in whatever country the movie is shown in.

The Norwegians learned a shortcut. For almost a hundred years, American comedies were retitled with the word Help! plus whatever the movie was about. They didn't have to do that with the Beatles' movie Help! The titles became a kind of shorthand to let the viewer know this is an American comedy with just one word. YouTuber SindrElf shows us how many Hollywood comedies got the Norwegian title treatment, which will have you giggling like a little kid eventually. You can read more about the titling trick at Mental Floss. Sadly, they don't do this anymore because almost all Norwegians read enough English to keep the American titles.  

Fingerprints have been used to identify people since at least 220 BC -in China. They weren't used for solving crimes, but for signing documents (and they still do that). The Western world was slow to pick up the importance of fingerprints, but by the late 19th century, the idea of keeping track of criminals by their fingerprints led to printing arrestees for their records, and the concept of finding a perpetrator by fingerprint evidence was beginning to take off.

On June 29, 1892, two children in Necochea, Argentina, were murdered. Their mother, Francesca Rojas, was injured and identified the murderer as her neighbor Ramón Velázquez. Velázquez was arrested, grilled, and reportedly even tortured, but refused to confess to the crime. What's more, he had an alibi.

Then investigators found a fingerprint in blood on a doorway at the crime scene. They had the fingerprint removed by cutting the piece of wood from the doorway. Read how the first murder case was solved by fingerprint evidence, and how that case changed forensics around the world at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: National Library of Medicine)

Dudes playing fruit machine on king's day
byu/Bridimum infunny

Pay your euro and pull the lever! This human slot machine was set up during the Koningsdag (King's Day) celebrations last weekend in the Netherlands. The holiday is observed every April 27th for the king's birthday. Slot machines are called fruit machines in parts of Europe.

It takes a while for the slots to start spinning as the guys say their arms are tired, but they still have their sense of humor. The beer certainly helps. You can tell that most of their patter is jokes, even if you don't understand Dutch. The language has been described as the uncanny valley of languages, halfway between English and German, so both English and German speakers feel they should understand it, but don't, and the effect is that these guys are very talented at speaking gibberish. Is it rigged? That's beside the point, as even a losing player gets a piece of candy.  -via reddit

File this under "things I assumed everyone knew but of course they don't," which becomes more of a thing the older you get. Some songs don't really have an ending, they just fade out while the artist repeats the chorus. I did not know that the fade out ending is rarely used these days. Taylor Swift's new album The Tortured Poets Department uses this technique, and some Swifties think it's a new thing. It used to be very common.

The fade out was not because the musicians didn't know how to end a song. They certainly do, as they make most of their money from live performances. In its heyday, the fade out was used for singles only; songs on an album rarely faded out before The Tortured Poets Department. However, the fade out has been performed live, in several instances before the advent of recorded music. Read about these historic performances and the modern use of the fade out at Mental Floss.

The post-apocalyptic Amazon Prime Video television series Fallout is based on the world of the video game series. It's become quite a hit among viewers, even those who've never heard of the video games. Now that the first season has wrapped up, Screen Junkies goes through it to give us their opinion. They give the premise in the video, but it's kind of like The Time Machine without the time travel. A lot of time has passed, which divided mankind in ways they will find hard to bridge. Their opinion? It seems Screen Junkies likes Fallout a lot. You can't point out a lot of tropes and errors when the whole story is so insane that we haven't seen anything like it before. Sure, they poke a little fun, but if this Honest Trailer were a review of a bad TV series, it would be way more scathing. It appears that Fallout is a shoe-in for renewal.

Let's all raise a glass and toast to Star Wars Day coming up this Saturday! Raise a glass of what? Blue milk, of course. The drink that made young Luke Skywalker grow up big and strong (well, at least strong) is now available at grocery stores for a limited time from the Dairy Farmers of America TruMoo. Star Wars milk contains sugar and vanilla flavor, and Nerdist says it's really good, "like a very delicate melted vanilla ice cream." TruMoo even offers Star Wars recipes to make from or serve with the milk. It's just the thing to take the edge off after you've tried Dark Side Hot Sauce.

While Star Wars milk will only be in stores until it runs out (and you may have to search for an outlet), blue milk has been served for quite some time at Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge in Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, where it is a permanent menu item.  -via Boing Boing

Redditor /u/ChangsManagement compiled this map with the Interactive ArcGIS tool and birthplace data from Hockey Reference. It shows all of the birthplaces of the National Hockey League within North America. It looks like the birthplaces concentrate heavily along Canada's own population, as well as a strip from Boston to Philadelphia.

As a patriotic Texan, I looked up the stats for my own state. 12 NHL players were born in Texas, 3 of from Arlington, a suburb of Dallas.

A worldwide map would also be interesting. It would appears that NHL players also hail from decidedly non-icy countries such as Brazil, the Bahamas, and Taiwan. An vastly disproportionate number were born in the former Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.

-via Flowing Data

The photorealistic remake of The Lion King in 2019 surprised fans of the 1994 original, even angered some, but kids loved it. In fact, it made a billion dollars in about three weeks. So of course Disney is going to do that again, with a prequel that tells the story of Simba's father. Mufasa: The Lion King will bring back many of the stars who voiced the previous movie in the same roles, this time listening as Rafiki tells Kiara (Simba and Nala's cub) how the orphaned Mufasa proved himself and became king of the Pride Lands. New voices include those of Mads Mikkelsen, Thandiwe Newton, Lennie James, and Blue Ivy Carter.

Mufasa as a cub is adorable, although I still can't get over the lack of expression in the realistic CGI lions compared to the classically drawn 1994 cartoon. And we can bet that we will be treated to a graphic demise of Mufasa's parents in true Disney fashion. Mufasa: The Lion King will open in theaters on December 20. -via Digg

Abraham Lincoln had neither a law degree nor did he pass the bar exam, but he was granted a license to practice law. Daniel Jackson Oliver Wendell Holmes Morgan never had a license to practice in any state, but beginning in 1949, he tried lawsuits and defended the accused in many states, under many names. Morgan studied law on his own when he was in prison, and he was quite good at it. He would set up shop under the identity of another lawyer, argued his cases hard and won more than he lost, and when anyone got suspicious, would flee to another state and find another lawyer's name to use.

In 1960, he defended three teenagers accused of murder, and they were sentenced to death. But when Morgan ended up in the same prison, he continued giving his clients legal advice -and they trusted him still. In fact, when Morgan was confronted by more of his clients who had been sent to court from prison to testify against him, they all spoke of his legal skills in glowing terms. The fact was that his services were badly needed in the Black community in the mid-20th century. Still, Morgan was in and out of prison for identity theft and practicing law without a license in one state after another.

But the law allows a person to act as his own lawyer, and Morgan did so many times, once even arguing his case before the US Supreme Court, a feat that degreed and licensed lawyers dream of. Read the crazy story of Daniel Jackson Oliver Wendell Holmes Morgan at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Ebony magazine)

The Nakizumo Crying Baby Festival is an annual ritual conducted in Shinto shrines across Japan. Sumo wrestlers carry babies into a dohyo (a sumo ring). Then priests put on bird demon masks and taunt the babies. The first baby in a pairing to cry wins. If both cry at the same time, the baby that cries the loudest is the winner.

Why do Japanese families do this? Traditionally, an innocent baby's cry is thought to ward off evil spirits. But the mothers interviewed for this video seem to be participating just to have a good time. They attended the festival in the city of Asakusa neighborhood of Tokyo, which is so popular that babies have to enter a lottery for the chance to participate.

-via Dave Barry

Introducing the Thermonator, a robot dog that is equipped with a spotlight, laser guidance, and a flamethrower! The "first-ever flamethrowing quadruped robot dog" has a 30-foot firing range and is suggested for wildfire control (what?), snow and ice removal, and entertainment. What could possibly go wrong? Throwflame is taking orders for the Thermonator now. You can get one for just under $10K.   

If that sounds a little too evil for you, maybe this will make you feel better. Boston Dynamics has decided that its robot dog Spot has a brighter future in entertainment than anything else. After all, Spot's dance videos must be making bank at YouTube. Now they are looking to capture business from companies like Disney or even party rental rental places.



This is Sparkles, Spot's new robot dog friend that has the same structure underneath, but comes in a cute blue fur coat and enormous soulful eyes. Spot and Sparkles illustrate the magic of friendship by dancing! Now, does that make you feel better about the flamethrower? No? Me neither.

How wonderful would it be to get your order of french fries all fresh and hot with ketchup already applied? And better yet, the ketchup is on the inside of the fries, eliminating any danger of dripping ketchup on your clothing? It would certainly make eating them while driving easier. It doesn't even have to be ketchup- you might prefer cheese sauce, ranch, barbecue, or even mayonnaise if you are European.

Weird Universe tells us that Scott E. Brient of Roswell, Georgia, thought up a way to do just that, in 2006. He invented a device to inject sauce into individual cooked french fries on a conveyor belt, and received a patent for it in 2009. The device is thoroughly explained, and the injection is automatic, so wouldn't require more manpower than a fast-food outlet already has. There are 28 pictures if that makes it clearer.

So why aren't these in use already? One might suspect that the machine itself was never built. As it is, the patent is expired due to something about the fees, like they haven't been paid. -via Nag on the Lake

The runway model did not pee his pants.

Well, actually, that's possible. We don't know for certain. But the pants that he's wearing are made to look like he peed his pants. So it's possible he went ahead and peed in them anyway because, well, he's got nothing to lose at this point.

The revered journalistic outlet TMZ reports that the elite Jordanluca fashion house offers these luxuriously pre-stained (or pre-peed) jeans for a whopping $608--or it did until the jeans sold out of stock.