My latest YouTube obsession is Ethan Chlebowski.

The guy does these deep, deep dives into food in a way that's informative and entertaining.

His latest video is on rice... a staple of my diet. And it's fascinating. I just use a rice cooker and always wash my rice. It turns out perfect every time. But there's an interesting take here that made me do a double-take...

His video on onions has me re-thinking how I use them...

Then there's garlic. One of my favorite ingredients...

But my all-time favorite? Potatoes...

If you enjoy learning about food, I can't recommend this channel strongly enough.

If you've read this blog for even a short amount of time, you know I love maps. Especially maps that present their information in a unique or clever way.

Simon shows you maps (which is an essential follow for map nerds) shared this incredible old map poster from Quantas Empire Airways, which puts their hub at Sydney in the center, then unfolds the world around it with mile-markers so you can know how far away they fly...

On top of being unique and clever... it's also gorgeous. Truly top-notch map-making and design.

If you want to see the poster in all its hi-res glory, you can go right here.

The older I get, the more I find myself appreciating the little things that make life worth living.

The other day I was taking a break from the horrors of existence and scrolling through Instagram. Their algorithm is crap (repeating stuff way, way too often that I've already seen many times), but every once in a while something new pops up that makes a visit worthwhile.

Yesterday it was this...

I want a snow duck mold! Can you imagine running across something like this on a snowy day?

And so our bought-and-paid-for "Supreme" Court has unanimously said that Americans don't have the fucking freedom to decide for themselves what they can and cannot access on the internet, making a decision for all of us that TikTok can be actually be banned. Turns out that only American companies are allowed to promote misinformation, exploit our personal information, and send our data to China! Anybody else does it and it's a "matter of National Security." Despite some valid concerns, this is some stupid shit right here. Guess TikTok didn't buy off the right politicians...

The entire TikTok fiasco is both straightforward and complex. President Trump is the one who set out to ban it. Then Democrats got into power and President Biden co-signed it, but passed the buck back to Trump as he returns to power. So now Trump is in a position to either save TikTok or sink it thanks to the "Supreme" Court (making Democrats look fucking stupid as usual, regadless of which way he goes). That's the simple version. The complexity comes from all the political shit surrounding the simple version. Take for example Senator Tom Cotton, Republican from Arkansas. He's the guy who torpedoed an extension to TikTok shutting down. He's very aggressive about it. But why? Well, the corrupt asshole has a book coming out called Seven Things You Can't Say About China. Him being able to claim that he's the guy who took a tough stand against China by banning TikTok is great promotion for his book (which I'm assuming is about taking a tough stand against China). This is a total conflict of interest, but that's hardly surprising coming from a politician. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. All those politicians taking money from Facebook have to repay that favor somehow, and what better way than to shut down a huge competitor? It goes on and on. And until we start executing politicians who fuck over American citizens to serve their own lust for money and power, it's going to continue.

   
And speaking of seriously stupid shit... I have written about the flerfer (flat earther) movement many, many times on Blogography. I just don't get it. We had this shit figured out before the time of Jesus Christ. It's an easily verifiable fact that the earth is a globe. Shoot a rifle or mortar over a long distance. You'll have to adjust for the curvature of the earth and its Coriolis force to hit your target. Or, even easier, just watch a ship disappear over the horizon because it's going behind the curvature of the earth. Or you can do something like this simple two minute experiment where flerfers debunked themselves...

Fast forward to The Final Experiment. A guy flew some flerfers to Antarctica to observe the 24-hour sun, something that's impossible on a flat earth. And something I know is real, BECAUSE I'VE BEEN THERE AND HAVE FUCKING SEEN IT FIRST-HAND! And of course the flerfers are calling the whole "Final Experiment" a lie, which is beyond stupid.

And then today, finally, the video I've been waiting for has finally arrived. Professor Dave weighed in. It's certified gold. ..

   
Blergh. I was going to write about a few other stupid things... including, but not limited to, Apple "Intelligence," a teacher who left their cocaine in an elementary school bathroom in Vegas, and go off on social media influencers yet again... but stupidity is exhausting enough.

My cats have been even more lazy than usual today and I'm following their lead. Instead of cleaning the house, doing laundry, and taking care of all the boring and mundane human crap that I should be doing... I'm laying in bed and scrolling through the internet.

Which, as you probably realize, is mostly cat videos and cat content.

I saw this post from last August and it couldn't be more authentic cat...

   
This one killed me. Be sure to watch with the sound on because the hilarity is worth the effort...

   
I'd gladly go to Starbucks for a pup cup for my cats if it would make them like riding in the car. Just listen to this cat...

   
And now, this...

   
I'll stop there because I could drop dozens and dozens of other things that have been inundating my personal time lately.

And you, if you'll excuse me, I'm scrubbing the cat feeding station, cleaning the water fountains, filling the Litter-Robots, washing the kitty warming pad covers, and doing all the other cat-maintenance chores that Jake and Jenny demand of me.

Nothing happened today because I've been obsessing over a social media time-suck.

It's a tale as old as time.

A father, his two sons, and his son-in-law work together at a family realtor's office. One day, for whatever reason... be it boredom, nothing better to do, or an idea to "go viral" to drive more traffic to their firm... they make a video.

They apparently had fun doing it because then they made another. And another. And another. And eventually they're getting hundreds of thousands of views, and an occasional viral hit getting millions.

I've been following this group for quite a while, but this is the video which got me going back through their old videos this evening. Boy does it ring true right now...

   
So many of their ideas start from a mundane truth that's funny when viewed through the perspective they bring to it...

   
A lot of their best videos trade off their relationships as family...

   
As if that wasn't all enough... there's also surprisingly good dancing! And you can find it all right here.

As I mentioned yesterday, a few flat earthers who were not afraid to risk being proven wrong were flown to Antarctica so they could see that the sun doesn't set but instead circles around you. After two days of the sun going around them, they were indeed proven wrong.

To the shock of absolutely nobody with an analytical thought in their head...

But, hey. Even if you don't trust those globist shills, you can totally trust me! I experienced polar day first-hand. Of course I wasn't as close to the South Pole as the team is, so the sun was lower on the horizon for me than it was for them... but I was in Antarctica and I did see the sun circle around me without fully setting. So, yeah. Welcome to nighttime in the Antarctic Circle (which is even more amazing when there's clouds out like this...

Photo by ME... TAKEN IN ANTARCTICA!

The views in Antarctica are incredible.

Though they're even prettier when the sky is clear...

Photo by ME... TAKEN IN ANTARCTICA!

There's one flerfer who said that the team wouldn't even be able to get to Antarctica because people with guns would stop them and keep them from approaching. To what end? No fucking clue. But they got called from Antarctica by MCToon to hilarious effect...

And... I'm dead.

But of course the diehard flerfers lose their dipshit cult following if they admit that all possible evidence tells us the earth is a globe, so now they're all coming up with every wacky excuse they can think of to explain why what people see is not what's really happening.

Christ.

I'd probably feel better about this shit if people could just admit that they don't know how anything works and are too lazy to learn about it. But nope! You've got a subset of humanity that would rather twist logic in a pretzel than admit they're just being ignorant.

Though the whole "flat earth" deal needs a hell of a lot more than a pretzel given how insane it is.

I've spent every day this week wishing the week was over. That's no way to live, but it's the best I can do. Fortunately I only have one more day of the week before all my wishes come true.

Ive been watching Niall MacMillan do his awkward POV reacts for a while. And while they're always amusing, this was the first time I've LOL'd at one...

   
The guy is definitely a pro at reacting by now... but it's his kid's reaction here that slayed me.

Playing around with GeoSpy has revealed that AI isn't ready to take over the world yet.

This is an online app where you upload a photo and i will use AI to tell you where the photo was taken. It's been weirdly accurate on some photos that I wouldn't have thought would merit any results... but has also been even more weirdly inaccurate with photos that should have been a walk in the park.

As an example... I uploaded a photo of monks meditating in a Lao temple...

GeoSpy came back and said that it was taken in Chang Mai, Thailand. Which is not unreasonable, yet totally wrong.

BUT HERE'S THE THING... GeoSpy shows you the photos it found on the web that it used to determine the location. AND MOST OF THEM HAVE LUANG PRABANG LITERALLY IN THE TITLE!

So it managed to find the correct photos of what I uploaded, but then completely ignored the actual location being spelled out for it? And in some cases the name of the actual temple is there. How can an AI bot be given ALL the information... the actual answer, in fact... but still come to the wrong conclusion? Weird.

Guess humanity has a few more good years left after all.

Every once in a while I find a comic that I didn't write that I share here. It's rare, but if somebody has made me really laugh, then promoting their work is the absolute least I can do.

This particular strip is from Prolific Pen (Instagram: ProlificPenComics) by Yanni Davros, who says "My parents wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer but instead they got a cartoonist." This one's absolute gold...

IF. ONLY. Though there are plenty of other groups I'd love to give a one-way-ticket to deep space, flerfers are certainly on that list.