Laughing Squid

An adorably determined dog eagerly bounced up and down as if he were on a trampoline, all in a futile attempt to reach at the piece of yummy pizza that was left out on the counter. This hungry little dog looks just like Chong, one of my father’s very very determined dachshunds, who bounces just...

In a ominously informative animated essay, the ever-philosophical design house Kurzgesagt explains why the arrival of extra-terrestrial alien life upon Earth would be bad news for all of humanity. This newly arrived civilization may require a specific environment to survive, which may not be compatible with the existing civilization. If the newcomers are stronger, then...

Vanessa Hill, host of the PBS Digital Studios series Braincraft, took a fascinating look into the popularity of remixes and specifically what makes them so very appealing. As with the principles that make pop music so catchy, the perception of a collaborative environment and the comfort of familiarity helps drive the creative process in a...

Fellisimo, the clever Japanese novelty company, has created a wonderfully snuggly sleeping bag that is shaped like a giant pair of jeans and can easily fit two people (or a person and a bear) – one in each furry lined leg. The bag also comes with a pair of bandana patterned pillows that are perfectly...

Actress Reese Witherspoon sat on the stage of the Vanity Fair‘s Secret Talent Theatre and just like previous episodes of Celebrity Slang Lesson, very charmingly defined the Southern slang and expressions that she heard and used while growing up in Nashville, Tennessee. On this episode of “Secret Talent Theatre,” Reese Witherspoon teaches you Southern slang...

In a wonderfully animated episode of the NPR series SkunkBear, host Adam Cole amiably explains the physiology that causes many a domesticated dog to possess both floppy ears, shorter snouts and spotted patterns more so than their ancient ancestors. The specific question of these specific features proved quite vexing to Charles Darwin, even as he...

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Ethen of the Sideways has created a brilliant video essay that explores the four chord arrangement that exists in most modern pop music, its gorgeous classical history and why this combination, when played in a certain way, makes the music so darn catchy. If you have four chords that loop over and over and over...

Adam Savage of Tested visited Aardman Animations‘ workshop in Bristol, UK and got a good look at the gorgeous stop-motion animation puppets and sculpting material used in their upcoming film, Early Man. Savage chatted with senior model maker Jimmy Young about their “model making processes for the puppets’ sculpts, clothes, and armatures.” Early Man is...

Melbourne, Australia artist Isaac Moores (a.k.a. “Izac Less“) has created “Pop Culture Typography,” a wonderful mashup of iconic logos and fonts from pop culture set to the mashup song “Pop Culture” by Madeon. We previously wrote about Moores’ face folding video series. Here is Isaac’s mashup with references. Fan.tasia, A Video Mashup That Seamlessly Blends...

Lauri Vuohensilta of the Hydraulic Press Channel released a new video where he easily slices through a huge stack of paper, a frying pan, and a barbie doll using his hydraulic press that is equipped with sharp blades. Folding a Piece of Paper More Than Seven Times Using a Hydraulic PressCrushing an Ancient Nokia 3310...

Patton Oswalt sat down with Wired to answer the web’s most searched questions about himself during an Autocomplete Interview. Is Patton Oswalt Albanian? What college did Patton go to? Can Patton Oswalt cook? Chris Evans Answer the Web’s Most Searched Questions About HimselfMatt Damon and Julianne Moore Answer the Web’s Most Searched Questions About ThemselvesMatthew...

The BooBuddy Ghost Hunter Interactive Bear is an adorable teddy bear that senses changes in the environment such as EMF, movement, temperature and vibration and responds to those changes with a cute, non-threatening voice and strategically placed lights. BooBuddy is also able to respond to questions as well. The paranormal may be spooky, but this...

Bleecker Street released a creepy trailer for Unsane, an unnerving psychological horror-thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh that was shot entirely on an iPhone 7 Plus. The trailer features a young lady, Sawyer Valentini (Claire Foy), who can do nothing other than dwell on the fact that she thinks that she is being stalked. Unsane will...

In the humorous Amazon Super Bowl LII commercial, the omnipresent Alexa suddenly lost her voice. In a panic, Jeff Bezos asked his team what they planned to do. The team had a backup plan in place to employ several celebrities whom they believed to be subject matter experts. While Gordon Ramsay was an obvious albeit...

A post shared by Dexter The Peacock (@dexterthepeacock) on Jan 27, 2018 at 7:01pm PST A proud trained peacock named Dexter who lives in Brooklyn and provides emotional support for his human, artist Ventiko, was on his way to Los Angeles with her when was denied entry onto a United Airlines flight at Newark Airport,...

Hasbro will be releasing a special cheaters edition of their classic Monopoly board game franchise sometime in fall 2018 that will come with handcuffs for players who are caught cheating. According to INSIDER, the game will encourage players to cheat and come with 15 cheat cards that ask them to carry out sneaky tasks behind...

A24 released the official trailer for Hereditary, a terrifying upcoming horror film written and directed by Ari Aster. The terrifying movie will follow the peculiar Graham family and reveal how their nightmarish family secret slowly becomes unraveled. Hereditary is set to ravage theaters on June 8th, 2018. When Ellen, the matriarch of the Graham family,...

A very warm and welcoming Donatella Versace invited Joe Sabia of Condé Nast Entertainment into her beautiful home in Milan, Italy to answer 73 random questions for Vogue. Through these questions, Versace shared her thoughts and memories about her brother, her love for New York City, her admiration for former First Lady Michelle Obama, her...

Great Big Story visited with Yoshiko Hayama, the owner and proprietor of Chineskikan, a wonderfully unique museum in Chichibu, Saitama Japan. The museum is dedicated to the practice of “jinmenseki”, the practice of gathering rocks rocks of many different sizes that all appear to have faces in one way or another. The museum is where...

Adam Smith of Sarasota, Florida posted footage of his wife, Angelica Smith, being pulled over by Sarasota Police officer Cliff Cespedes for a completely unjustified reason. Talking Toy Hamster on Dashboard Mimics Russian Police OfficerFlorida State Trooper Pulls Over & Arrests Miami Police Officer for Driving 120 MPH on HighwayLauren Cohan of ‘The Walking Dead’...

Mountain Dew has released a great new commercial for Super Bowl LII commercial where Peter Dinklage and Morgan Freeman compete in a heated rap battle, alongside Busta Rhymes and Missy Elliot, about Doritos Blaze and Mountain Dew Ice. The rap battle to end all rap battles. #ICECOLD A post shared by Doritos® (@doritos) on Jan...

The music video for the fifth week of their rebooted year long project Dial-A-Song project, the band They Might Be Giants features the wonderful Nick Offerman perfectly embodying the insecure subject of the rather somber song “The Greatest“. The song is available on their new album entitled I Like Fun. they call me the greatest...

While riding down a Magalang, Philippines road in a car with the window open, a little dog named Moony engaged in a bit of road rage when a motorized tricycle came up right alongside her window with a yapping male version of herself in tow. At first Moony wasn’t impressed and didn’t engage, but the...

Viewers of the Train Driver’s View YouTube channel can take a virtual train ride from the perspective of driveras it navigates through the gorgeous Scandinavian winter landscape of the Norwegian countryside, making its legendarily mountainous way from Bergen to Oslo. This stunning ride is part of the NRK TV documentary “Bergensbanen Minutt for Minutt“, which...

Kayla Barham of Bird Memes posted an amusing compilation of an adorably mischievous white-faced cockatiel who evidently enjoys creating entropy wherever he goes. He achieves this feat quite effectively by knocking all sorts of items off of various surfaces around the house. It doesn’t seem to necessarily matter to the bird the size, weight or...

Just about half way through the 48 hours of HI8 video I shot related to @burningman 1996. A post shared by Scott Beale (@scottbeale) on Jan 30, 2018 at 12:35pm PST Way back in the early days of Laughing Squid, before I launched this blog, I used to shoot a lot of video, documenting events...

In Paws & Chores, a well-intentioned Simon’s Cat tries to do a bit of housekeeping without inflicting too much damage on Simon and/or the house. The animation is made up of a compilation of previous Simon’s Cat episodes including “Hidden Treasure“, “The Monster“, “Washed Up”, “The Box“, ““Lunch Break”, Shelf Life“, “DIY“, “Bed Sheets” and...

Musician and composer Andrey Vinogradov performed a gorgeously mournful original medieval tune on a beautiful hurdy-gurdy, which is also known as a wheel fiddle. The instrument is an unusual combination of strings and keys that are all played with the strategic turn of a crank. This original song is available through Vinogradov’s Bandcamp page. CDs...

In a humorous video essay, filmmaker Karsten Runquist explains the critical significance of a taking the time to create a good title so that the film will stay in the respective memories of audience members for a long time. Not only is making titles fun, I feel making titles is one of the most important...

Olek, the prolific crochet artist, yarn bomber and friend of Laughing Squid sat down with Great Big Story to share details about her life, her work, her inspirations, the people she’s worked with, the places she’s been and her vision for changing the world – one loop at a time. Crochet is not generally viewed...

During a 2011 TED Talk, renowned primatologist Frans de Waal spoke at great length regarding the subject of animals having morals that seem so specific to humanity. In doing so, de Waal offered up a couple of charming examples of such as he’d seen with elephants, chimps and apes, each of whom showed varying degrees...

Bill Hammack (a.k.a. “Engineer Guy“) takes an in-depth look at the engineering behind the Drinking Bird toy. The classic heat engine toy is available to purchase on Amazon. Bill reveals the operation and engineering design underlying the famous drinking bird toy. In this video he explores the role played by the water the bird “drinks,”...

Award-winning New York City street artist and filmmaker Humza Deas who previously captured seldom seen overhead views of his native city, has created Double Exposure: NYC, a gorgeous short film that perches mirror images of various points of the New York City skyline opposite from one another; one dropping from the sky, meeting the other...

The Dad has created a hilarious commercial for “AphukenbrakE,” a fake prescription drug offered to adults who suffer from PAR•ENT•ING. Symptoms include: “having kids, children, tots, youngins, boys, girls, boys and girls of your own.” If you suffer from any of those symptoms, kick back and take AphukenbrakE. Do you suffer from headaches, chronic fatigue,...

The German sound design company ShakeUp has created a wonderfully cheerful cover version of the “Papageno and Papagena” duet from the Mozart opera The Magic Flute using the chirps, hoots and tweets from a forest full of various different birds. Enjoy the The Magic Flute “Papageno/Papagena Duet” recomposed into a colorful bird song aria. Listen...

A post shared by ????@????1? (@tanryug) on Jan 14, 2018 at 2:57pm PST The Ibaraki Prefecture in Japan has had a particularly cold 2018 winter season and one of its residents, an adorably big bellied cat named Busao, has appeared to ward off the chill by making it his life’s mission to never leave the...

Marvel has released the first trailer for Ant-Man and the Wasp, their upcoming superhero film directed by Peyton Reed and a sequel to Ant-Man from 2015. Scott Lang (Paul Rudd as Ant-Man) and Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly as Wasp) team up for some super shrinking action and to dig up secrets of the past....

The very talented pianist Lord Vinheteiro gave his fingers a rest and simply stared at the camera as he visually posited the question “Can You Recognize a Song Played at High Speed?” and then let a player piano do all the work. The piano would start a song at an extremely high BPM (beats per...

Master & Apprentice is a web series, created by Rooster Teeth, where production designer Marcus Gray LaPorte and novice cosplay-maker Adam Ellis make pop culture props from scratch. On episode three, LaPorte and Ellis show how they built their own custom Star Wars lightsabers. The Verge Sets Out to Build a Realistic Replica of Luke’s...

A pounce of real life, street smart cats hilariously sat around a game of Hungry, Hungry Hippos and settled in for a serious round of chasing marbles as they rolled around on the game board. According to their human, these rescued cats were having a fine time with a child’s toy. My cats that were...

Taras Kulakov the “Crazy Russian Hacker” takes a look at how a Levitating Light Bulb that he received magically floats over top of its base and gives off a decent amount of light with the press of a button. The light is currently available to purchase from Amazon. Flyte, A Levitating LED Light Bulb LampFather...

Bethesda, Maryland artist Mike Marrocco (a.k.a. “FunkBlast“) has built an amazing multicolored version of the LEGO Star Wars Ultimate Collector’s Millennium Falcon. images via Mike Marrocco via io9 A Scaled Version of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon Built Out of LEGO Bricks and MinifigsStar Wars Fan Spends a Year Building Detailed Millennium Falcon Out of...

For part five of their The Super Slow Show, Gavin Free and Dan Gruchy of The Slow Mo Guys teamed up with special guest Mayim Bialik (The Big Bang Theory, Blossom) to smash objects, drinks, and food with rare earth magnets in 4K slow motion. Super-Strong Neodymium Magnets Crushing a Series of Objects in Slow...

Filmmaker Kaipo Jones of Kaipotainment has created “Doctor Strange Cat,” a mind-bending special effects-filled Doctor Strange parody where “Benedict CumberCat” takes his human on a spectacular journey to another realm. More Magical Mind-Blowing Mysteries Are Revealed in the Second Trailer for Doctor StrangeDoctor Strange Retold as an Old School 8-Bit Animated Video GameHow Industrial Light...

Filmmaker Jacob T. Swinney has created a montage of the nine films that are nominated for Best Picture at the 2018 Oscars. He features scenes from Call Me by Your Name, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, Get Out, Lady Bird, Phantom Thread, The Post, The Shape of Water, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. A Montage Featuring...

I shot this video in 1996, prior to the official start of Burning Man, when Doc and Honeybadger invited a group of their closest friends to help them celebrate their recent marriage in a very unique way. In the Black Rock Desert, miles away from camp, a special wedding cake had been constructed that housed...

Onion Powder created a hilarious Dungeons & Dragons parody illustration, a module for “Escape From Flavortown”, which takes place in the delicious game Dungeons & Diners & Dragons & Drive-Ins & Dives, where adventurers battle a giant Guy Fieri dragon! Onion Powder is selling t-shirts with this wonderful illustration, which are avaible in his RedBubble...

While leading a Polar Bear Migration Fly-In Safari in Nunavut, Canada, expedition leader, Dave Briggs got a surprise visit from a friendly arctic fox who just wanted to say hello before taking a nearby nap in the snow. A rare occurrence, the curious fox approached Dave while he was sitting on the tundra photographing the...

In 2013, YouTuber CowProd posted a video of an amazing show in 1992 by a very young Rage Against the Machine at Zed Records in Long Beach, California. CowProd and friend Nanda captured the entire performance on two cameras, which was edited into a single amazing video by Chester Copperpot5. almost 21 [26] years ago...