Some people don't get out of the house much because they suffer from depression, loneliness, social anxiety, or they don't have the means to go anywhere. And then there are those who are fine but they just prefer to stay home. There's nothing wrong with that, and this video explains what's going on their heads.
But this is a short video, and only looks at people who have friends and social opportunities and live alone. If you live with friends or family, it's likely you have all the social interaction you need. You might also have little control and no peace and quiet, or maybe you have both. While I loved the challenge and chaos of raising a family, I also appreciate the peace and quiet of living alone, not to mention the freedom to make my own schedule and cover a room with a project whenever I want to. -via Laughing Squid
Let's say that you passed on while alone at home, perhaps due to a fatal blogging accident. Would your dog or cat, cut off from outside support, eat you? How soon would they reclassify you from human companion to food source?
Popular Science examined the scientific literature and consulted animal behavior experts. Dogs in particular may start feeding immediately, as dogs are more natural scavengers. Cats tend toward predatory behavior, and so would hesitate before eating carrion.
Dr. Lena DeTar of Cornell University says that cats will likely to persist with hunting behaviors in these extreme scenarios, whereas dogs, who are wholly dependent on humans for food will just, uh, continue to depend upon humans for food.
-via Instapundit | Photo: PickPic
Some people who live in cold regions like to celebrate the new year by going for a swim in icy waters. In Canada, they've been doing the Vancouver Polar Bear Swim on New Year's Day for 105 years now! Similar traditions take place in Boston and Toronto and many places in northern Europe as well. To those people who return year after year to participate, it's a lot of fun, but what does it do to your body?
Swimming in cold water puts your body through several processes, such as the cold shock, cold water incapacitation, hypothermia, and recovery, when your core temperature continues to drop after you get out of the water. Body temperature experts recommend limiting a polar swim to 30 seconds, especially for beginners. Never do this by yourself, and be aware of the symptoms of adverse results. Learn what to expect in cold-water swimming, the danger signals, and the mental health benefits that people report when they go for a New Year's swim at Smithsonian. None of this applies if you're heading for a tropical beach for the holiday.
How reliable and safe is Tesla's autonomous driving program? The New York Post reports that one owner recently traveled in a completely autonomous mode from Los Angeles to South Carolina, thus completing the first coast-to-coast autonomous trip in the United States.
David Moss, the owner of the Tesla FSD V14.2 never disengaged the autonomous mode--even to park during rest stops. He charged 30 times along the way for the 10,638.8-mile journey. Moss's trip also set a record as the first use of an autonomous Tesla FSD for over 10,000 miles. You can read his X thread about the voyage here.
-via Instapundit
Matt Nelson of We Rate Dogs has been introducing us to the goodest boys and girls for ten years now. Yes, every dog gets a rating, but they are never less than 10/10, and usually much higher. Every week he ranks the top ten dogs of the week (which often include dogs just being funny on video), and now he's ranking the top ten dogs of 2025. Some are hero dogs that risked life and limb for the people they love. Others used their intelligence. Some are inspirational comeback stories. Some were even martyrs. You'll find links to more information on each story at the YouTube page, but you'll have to supply your own hankies. As Matt would say, the dogs have been very good this year.
But a top ten list cannot contain enough of the good dogs of 2025. So here's the megamix you've been waiting for.
Because dogs don't have to be heroes. If they are only cute, funny, loyal, or loved, that is plenty, and more than we deserve.
Risk is a fun board game, but Instructables user madkins9 suggests building a spherical board for a "more frustrated, expensive, and time-consuming" experience. Fortunately, he's done the planning work, which is where most of the difficulty comes from.
madkins9 used steel hemispheres to make the globe and glued magnets to the game pieces from an original 1962 set.
His stained and polished wooden base comes with hexagonal drawers for each of the six player colors.
The final product must make for a more realistic game, as, for example, Alaska and Kamchatka are no longer on opposite sides of the board. Thus the spherical design provides for superior practical training for world conquest.
-via Hack-A-Day
In a fan-favorite scene of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jones must flee from a huge boulder rolling toward him as he, er, performs archaeological research in a tomb.
That stunt came remarkably close to reality during a recent show at Disney World in Florida. The New York Post reports that a 400-pound rubber ball serving as the boulder fell off its planned track at an actor playing Indiana Jones and toward the audience.
Heroically, a staff member intercepted it, blocking its movement with his own body. He was injured but, Disney World asserts, is recovering. The show schedule is continuing unchanged.
-via Super Punch
Neatorama readers are familiar with Led Zeppelin's habit of covering old songs and taking writing credit, from "When the Levee Breaks" to "Stairway to Heaven." You most certainly know about the time that George Harrison was sued for plagiarizing "He's So Fine" by The Chiffons. But that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to songs that ripped off other songs. Sometimes it's just a sample that was used without permission, but sometimes it's the entire tune or even lyrics. Did you know that "Crocodile Rock" by Elton John was a direct ripoff of a Pat Boone number? Or that "Come Together" by the Beatles has some eerie resemblance to a much faster Chuck Berry song? The 1979 Rod Stewart song "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" sounds suspiciously like a Brazilian song that you just have to hear. You know the hits, but in a list at Cracked, you'll hear the originals for comparison. You know, the ones that brought the lawsuits.
They made sure to append the title of Wake Up Dead Man with A Knives Out Mystery in its marketing materials so that the fans of the previous two films would at least hear about it. The previous two were Knives Out in 2019 and Glass Onion in 2022. The third installment assures us that Daniel Craig has landed a steady job after leaving the 007 movies. Here he reprises his role as detective Benoit Blanc solving a mystery by talking his way through it, just like the classic whodunits we've seen so many times.
It's not really a spoiler to reveal that Blanc solves the murder mystery. That's pretty much a given. But beware that this Honest Trailer reveals whodunit right away, before they even introduce the many suspects (the Wikipedia plot summary does, too). If you are determined to see the movie without knowing who the killer is, then rest assured that Screen Junkies enjoyed Wake Up Dead Man, although they do poke fun at its over-the-top characterizations. So expect another Knives Out mystery in 2028.
You should have a new calendar by now, and you can start filling it up with important events: family birthdays, your next teeth cleaning, the Olympics, and some important stargazing events you won't want to miss.
If you live in Europe, you may be able to witness a total solar eclipse on August 12th, 2026. Depending on where you are, Americans have a chance at seeing a total lunar eclipse in March. But even in the right place, you'll need to adjust your sleep schedule. There's also a "parade of planets," when six of them appear at the same time, and another when five will align. You might want to observe a "full blood micromoon," which is when the moon seems small because of its distance while also being the second full moon of the month. Jupiter shows up in a spectacular manner in January, and of course there are the usual meteor showers you'll want to catch. Check out all these 2026 events and more with a rundown at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: NASA/STSCI (S.T.A.R.S))
I own a globe that could have only existed for 6 months in 1939 pic.twitter.com/IL6Slm4bOX
— DJ Branhamđź—˝ (@DJBranham) December 30, 2025
X user DJ Branham shares a photo of an unusual globe that he found at an antiques store in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He mentions that it would have been accurate for only about six months.
The globe shows then-recent annexations by Nazi Germany that were at least tolerated if not accepted by the major powers of Europe. Poland is still independent, but all of Czechoslovakia is in German hands, so the globe must date between March 16 and July 31, 1939.
One commenter dates the globe as prior to July 29, 1939, as it shows Hatay under the control of French Syria instead of Turkey.
The koala bear is not a bear, the raccoon dog is neither a raccoon nor a dog, and the horned toad is no toad at all. So is a red panda actually a panda? Yes! We call it a red panda to distinguish it from the giant panda, which is actually a bear. The giant panda was given its English name 40 years after the red panda was scientifically described, and besides it had already been called a panda long before that.
The species name Ailurus fulgens means "shining cat." But we call them red pandas, cat bears, Himalayan raccoons, fire foxes, lesser pandas, or wahs. Wah is a confusing name, but probably as accurate as calling them pandas. It feels derogatory to call them lesser pandas, since the giant panda is the one that's not a panda. You have to wonder how these two very different animals were associated with each other in the first place. The Chinese name for a giant panda means big bear cat, which is two-thirds accurate. The red panda's name in Chinese is small bear cat, which is only one-third accurate. They are small, but they are not lesser. They are pandas. -via The Ark in Space
You've heard about boys joining the army in the Civil War who were so young that they weren't given weapons but played a drum instead. Perhaps you saw the 1963 Disney TV movie Johnny Shiloh. The film was fictionalized, but was based on a real boy who ran away from home to join the Union Army in 1861 when he was only nine years old.
John Lincoln Clem was not accepted as a soldier at age nine, but he refused to go home and followed the 22nd Michigan Infantry Regiment. They had to feed the child, and the officers chipped in to pay him. The army officially accepted his enlistment a couple of years later. He was a drummer boy, but he also learned to shoot, and for his heroic deeds in the Battle of Chickamauga, he was promoted to sergeant. Johnny Clem was (and still is) the youngest soldier ever to become a noncommissioned officer in the US Army. He was twelve years old.
After the war, in which Clem was wounded twice and captured once, he left the army to go to high school. Then he rejoined in 1871 when U.S. Grant appointed him a second lieutenant. Clem retired as a brigadier general in 1915, the last Civil War soldier on active duty. On retirement, he was promoted to major general. Read more on Clem's adventures and accomplishments at Wikipedia. -Thanks, WTM!
Yesterday, French artist and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot died at the age of 91. Her passing prompted this X post:
Brigitte Bardot’s death means there are now just three people mentioned in @billyjoel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire who are still alive.
— Jon Hollis (@JonHollis9) December 28, 2025
Billy Joel's 1989 song "We Didn't Start the Fire" contains lengthy lists of people and major events from 1949, when Joel was born, until 1989. It's an anthem of Baby Boomer popular culture mixed with the politics of the United States during the Cold War.
Only three people listed in the song are still alive: Bob Dylan, Chubby Checker, and Bernhard Goetz.
Image: 20th Century Fox
Mary Berry is an English chef and food writer who's been on British TV for many years, including as a judge on The Great British Bake Off. Here she smoothly raps about anything and everything, thanks to the magic of editing. Listen carefully, and you'll hear a coherent narrative emerge.
Now, I wasn't familiar with Mary Berry until today, but this is a video by master editor Swedemason (previously at Neatorama), who can make anything interesting with his judicious cuts and deft timing. He's been absent from YouTube for seven years, due to the fact that he got a real job doing this. But his creative job was "indirectly" taken by artificial intelligence, a story that is referenced in the lyrics of this video. Bad news for Swedemason, but good news for us in that he's back making the videos he wants to in order to entertain us. It shouldn't be long before some other company snaps up his skills. -via b3ta
