Enjoy these fun outtakes from Jim Henson's hour-long Christmas special from 1977, Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas. They give "drum roll" a whole new meaning.By the way, that's Frank Oz (AKA Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Animal, Sam Eagle, Cookie Monster, Bert, Grover and Yoda) puppeteering the increasingly-frustrated mother.Jerry Nelson, Frank Oz, Dave Goelz and Jim Hensonimage via Gribbaziggy

Low-poly sculpturist Pellegrino Cucciniello of Italy has rethought the ordinary. He's taken an icon of outdoor kitsch, the garden gnome, and stripped it of its details and paint job. His angular, concrete creation is named Nino.Nino is produced by Rome-based studio Plato Design who sells the 14-inch indoor/outdoor figures in three monochromatic colors for $108.46 each.

We'll find out soon what might happen when if lesbians run the country.Deadline is reporting that Jennifer Aniston and Tig Notaro will star as the first same-sex couple in the White House in an upcoming political comedy film on Netflix:

How low can you go?NPR is reporting that brides are willing to go really low with the cut of their wedding gowns:

I'm one of several guests appearing at the first-ever Interplanetary Festival, coming up Jun 7/8 in Santa Fe, New Mexico; it's a science festival that's part of the larger Futurition|Santa Fe festival, which includes live music, open air events, gaming, art installations, performances, and all-ages events. (more…)

Mugshots.com works like this: they post pictures of your mugshots, publicize them as part of a public database of criminals and such, then charge you money to remove them. Here are the mugshots of two guys arrested on charges of extortion who are reportedly the site's owners—not coming down at any price.West Palm Beach TV:

This is why the internet was invented.Watch this squirrel come in like a wrecking ball as it tries to launch itself onto a backyard bird feeder.(Gabrielle Geno)

It's still a few months down the road but, if you're an Android user, like I am more and more, these days, there's reason for celebration: Fortnite is finally coming to the platform.Fortnight has been at the top of the hot game dog pile in the iOS App Store for some time now. And no wonder: it's accessible, fun, looks great and, at least on more recent iPhone handsets, plays like a dream. According to TechCrunch, prior to bringing the game to iOS, Epic Games was making $126 million in revenue off the title. With this being the case, it makes sense that they'd throw all of the resources possible to make Fortnight playable on every single platform on the planet. That Android users would soon be able to crush any hope they have of being productive throughout their day wasn't the only thing that Epic had to say about the game, either.From TechCrunch:

How can you tell when a star is actually singing or just moving their lips to a recorded track? This Slate video uncovers the many ways you can tell if they're actually performing or faking it.(reddit)

Bandai created armored cats ("Nekobusou") as a jokey tweet whose unexpected popularity inspired the toymaker to go into production with a like of armored cat figurines ranging from $5-14 each. (more…)

Aaron Schlossberg has spent years showering his fellow New Yorkers with racist abuse, but it wasn't until he went on an unprovoked racist tirade against a server and customers at a restaurant near his law office that he became infamous. (more…)

https://youtu.be/y3jXyq6B2i4Aaron Schlossberg is the triggered snowflake who became internet famous when he went on an unhinged racist rant against some customers and servers at a restaurant near his law office, who had been speaking Spanish. (more…)

Henry Kissinger -- the war-criminal who abetted Pinochet's coup in Chile, supported the genocide of Bangledeshis by Pakistan, and architected the US's secret bombing campaigns in Indochina -- is worried about AI. (more…)

Back in March, the House passed the Music Modernization Act, a welcome bill made it easier for musicians to get paid reliably for digital streaming. (more…)

Rushing Past Willow: It took me a few moments to realize that Nick Zoulek (Twitter) was playing the alto sax. The dancer is Mauriah Kraker, and the film is by Cody Laplant with Damien Klavern, Jason Charney and Mark Bunce.

The YouTube channel of Magnetic Games ("all the ways to have fun with magnets") posted high-powered neodymium magnets with names like "The Death Magnet" and "Big Magnet" colliding with one another in high-FPS slo-mo footage. [via]

For her "True Stories" series, cartoonist Lauren eLL (Lorenzo) gives us a candid look into her dysfunctional (her words, though it's hard to disagree) family's life by secretly recording their conversations and then animating them.Her latest one is called A Family Dinner and we're all welcome to take a "seat" at the table with Lauren (who's portrayed as male, for some reason), her brother (who "hates everyone"), her "troublemaker" sister, her mom (who "tries"), her short-tempered dad, and her 99-year-old grandmother Nanny.Lauren's most popular video in this gem of a series is "Alexa Ruins Families" from March:https://youtu.be/5xvOk7fo-K8(reddit)

Adafruit Industries has created a tutorial to upgrade an ordinary trampoline by adding fun, interactive NeoPixel LEDs.

Here where I live in Alameda, California, there's a Chinese restaurant where they hand-pull noodles behind a window in the back of the room. The atmosphere at Ark feels dated but the food's pretty good and watching the guy swinging around noodle dough makes it worth the trip. However, there's no opportunity to talk to the noodle maker and learn his story.So, I was thrilled to see this Tasty video show up today. It gives insight on the artistry of hand-pulling noodles by two noodle masters, Peter Song of Kung Fu Kitchen in New York City and Shuichi Kotani, the CEO of Worldwide-Soba. Come for their stories but stay for the awesome footage of two pros making noodles dance (or vice versa).

What's a little harsh interrogation between friends? President Donald Trump's pick Gina Haspel was today voted in by the Senate as the new head of the CIA, despite playing a key part in post-9/11 torture programs under President George W. Bush.Her role in destroying the CIA's damning torture tapes in earlier years makes her the perfect spy boss for Trump, the President for whom force, secrecy, and lies are solutions to every problem.(more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfmCk8SwKnQEdward Suazo recorded and posted a video of a white man harassing his wife and the cashier at a NYC deli; the Caucasian fellow was triggered by hearing people speaking in Spanish, prompting him to loudly, grossly insult several strangers, accusing them of being undocumented immigrants and vowing to have them deported. (more…)

CFC-11 was phased out under 1987's Montreal Protocol and the immediate halt of its usage has done much to reverse ozone depletion in the years since; but since 2012, atmospheric levels of CFC-11 have risen by 25%, eroding the still-healing ozone layer and suggesting that someone, somewhere, has started manufacturing the substance again. (more…)

Kaitlin Cawley finished grad school with $95,000 in student loans, including a $24,000 variable-rate loan that started at 9.4% and now stands at 11%, a loan that the US government lender Sallie Mae brokered for her when she was 20. (more…)

For nearly 30 years, there was only one full-time gynecologist on staff at the University of Southern California's student health clinic: Dr. George Tyndall, about whom there was a widespread understanding among staff and students that he sexualized his examinations, making overt sexual remarks to the teenagers under his care, fondling them, and waxing creepy about his predilection for Asian women. (more…)

A kindergarten teacher noticed a small plastic bag in one of her student's mouths. The girl was chewing on the bag, thinking the white stuff inside was sugar – but it was actually crack cocaine.Luckily the teacher, at Mastery Charter Hardy Williams Elementary school in southwest Philadelphia, grabbed the bag before the girl had broken through the plastic. She thought it looked like drugs and called the police. When she asked where the kindergartner got the bag, the girl said she found it in another student's backpack.According to USA Today:

Twitter draws a lot of fire for making it easy for anyone to set up an anonymous account or a bot; the argument against this says that making it easy to be anonymous also makes it easy to be shady. (more…)

LEWISINK, a 27-year-old artist based in France, does amazing geometric tattoos.(more…)

The Econ-SF wiki is a new, annotated collaborative bibliography of science fiction that delves into economic topics -- remember that Paul Krugman was inspired to get into economics after reading Asimov's "Foundation" novels, to say nothing of all the people whose brains were colonized by Atlas Shrugged. It's brand new and has some notable omissions, and could use your contributions.

Two gentleman in the UK attempted to pull a fake collision scam on a driver by backing a scooter into her car. When the car driver told the scooterist and his "witness" that she'd recorded everything on her dashcam, the "injured" scooterist, who made a good show of being crippled, recovered instantly and both he and his accomplice made a hasty exit. I just wish she would have waited to say something about the dashcam until after the police arrived.

Carrillion was the UK government's go-to outsourcing partner, a company with a long and disgraceful history of putting profits before people -- perhaps that's why HM Government was so ready to believe in the company's robust financial health as it amassed £7B in debts and then collapsed, spectacularly, leaving the UK in financial and infrastructural disarray. (more…)

Donald Bell of Maker Project Lab interviewed Becky Stern about Tinkercad's new and very cool Arduino simulator. It's a good way to teach a bunch of people Arduino in a classroom setting.

In this episode of Periodic Videos, professor Sir Martyn Poliakoff from the School of Chemistry at The University of Nottingham describes the process of making a spoon from an alloy that melts in a cup of hot tea. The alloy is called Field's Alloy and it has a melting temperature of 62 °C (144 °F). It was named after its inventor, Simon Quellen Field of SciToys and is made from bismuth, lead, and tin. Here's Simon's article about the alloy.

Quirkologist Richard Wiseman has a new book out called How to Remember Everything. In this video, Richard shares 10 mnemonics for remembering various bits of useful information.

Microsoft's new accessible game controller has a retro vibe, enormous buttons, and a range of attachments tailored to specific disabilities.

YouTubers Tripp and Tyler (and friend) perform the Lip Quiverer, the Fugly, the Whaambulance, the Friend Just Fell Off a Cliff, and other styles of crying, all over the last Slim Jim.It's alright...https://youtu.be/8jzrSqgVL_A

South Georgia Island (population 20), due east off the tip of South America, had no rodents until 18th-century sailing ships accidentally introduced them. After seven years of work, the island is now rodent-free, allowing native birds to recover. (more…)

About a year ago, professional yo-yoist (and hand-knit Pac-Man Icelandic peysa wearer) Doc Pop submitted a proposal for a yo-yo emoji. He's just learned that it was approved!He explains how he made it happen (fascinating!) in his most recent PopCast:

This might be the most awkward thing I've seen in a while.It's a video by The Cut where people are rated how attractive they are on a scale from 1 to 10, by strangers, in person.

If you want to make a quick $5,000, all you have to do is help the United States Air Force find a box of grenades that some of their employees misplaced.According to the Washington Post, Airmen from the 91st Missile Wing Security Forces, one of the military units charged with protecting the nation's nuclear launch and storage sites, were traveling down the gravel back roads of North Dakota between one missile site and another when, apparently, a box full of belted MK-19 grenade launcher rounds fell out of the back of their vehicle.Honestly, who hasn't lost a can full of 40 mike-mike? It could happen to anyone.Understandably distressed by the loss of their high explosive munitions, the Air Force sent out 100 personnel from Minot Air Force Base to walk the six-mile stretch where it's believed that the grenades up and vanished. No dice.From the Washington Post:

Hipster quirkcore band Superorganism recorded this delightful live performance replete with sounds made by toy cars, apples, and soda cans. (more…)

Pour another one out for Sony's PlayStation Vita. Despite being a powerful, capable handheld that's great for a bit of fun on the go or as a companion to your PlayStation 3 or 4 when you're at home, Sony's all but ignored the diminutive gaming console over the past couple of years. In 2015, Sony told gamers that they didn't think it was worth making a successor to the Vita.Fair enough: mobile gaming is Nintendo's jelly. It still hurt to hear, though: I've always had a soft spot for Sony's portable systems (I may well be one of the few people that actually liked the PSP Go). But the death of the Vita didn't feel real to me until today. According to Kotaku, the production of PlayStation Vita game cards will soon be upon us.From Kotaku:

The US Senate has just voted in favor of REVERSING the #NetNeutrality rollback which Trump FCC chairman, Ajit Pai put in place. This is a major win for the internet, Net Neutrality, and the American people. (more…)

Flashing back on this video by Nathan Mazur set to a song written by Parry Gripp.

Matthew Heimbach has been sent to jail.You may remember him from such violent, bigoted hits such as physically assaulting a black protester at a Trump rally back in 2016 or his time leading the Traditionalist Worker Party--a delightful whack of scum described by the the Anti-Defamation League as a neo-Nazi group whose goal is to build a national socialist ethno-state for white people. All the cool bigots love the TWP: the hate group routinely plays footsies with Richard Spencer, skinheads and other white supremacists interests that are terrified of living in a world where their personal banality becomes apparent in the company of anyone who's skin's a shade or three darker than their own.Anyway, over achiever that he is, Heimbach is on his was to spend some time in the clink for violating the terms of the probation he had hung around his neck for the 2016 Trump rally assault. According to the Associated Press, Heimbach was arrested, thus breaking the terms of his probation,"on battery charges for allegedly assaulting his wife’s stepfather, David Matthew Parrott." It seems that Heimbach and Parrot were mixing it up over an alleged affair that Heimbach had been having with Parrot's wife. And the hits, literally, just keep on coming.From The Seattle Times:

Mexican artist Monica Robles Corzo created a cool mashup of modern monsters and Mayan iconography for her Mayanizations series, like this reimagining of the Alien Xenomorph. (more…)

Marcin Wichary, a wonderful designer/typographer/writer who I had the pleasure of working with at Medium years ago, created this fantastic "Segmented Type Playground." Learn more via Marcin's Twitter thread about the project. (Among many other prior projects, Marcin created the playable Pac-Man Google Doodle back in 2010.)

Beth Swarecki trained a neural net on the names of products from Gwyneth Paltrow's spiritual hygiene wellness lifestyle shop and its creations are surely good enough to brand.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan signed a bill into law protecting minors from "gay conversion therapy," a bullshit, discredited, harmful "method" of trying to psychologically change a person's sexual orientation. The new law prohibits health "professionals" from practicing the "treatment.""I think it's fantastic, because it will save the lives of young people in our state," said bill sponsor Sen. Richard Madaleno (D).From CBS News: