It was inevitable. || A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1785. || A compendium of Victorian magazines. (h/t, drb) || Oh Canada, what have you done? (h/t, Jon) || It just isn’t tricky enough unless it’s also on fire. || Experimental flight videos, over 400 of them. || The future is now. || Photo roulette. || A decade in the life of a Ukrainian park bench. || How to make a wooden knife. || It was the Nineties, everyone was doing it. || Dog and pony show. || Slow-mo sumo. || Tractor pull mishaps. || I don’t think he had a plan. || This is one of these. || That. || Jupiter. || Geometric tarts. || Cow eats mail. || Caterpillars. || Lord Paget and his leg. || And finally, as a warning to us all, a brief history of spermatorrhea, a beastly, life-threatening affliction caused by “abuse of the genital organs.”

As I’m pushed for time this week, you’re getting another chance to throw together your own pile of links and oddities in the comments. I’ll set the ball rolling with a speck you may want to magnify; a symbolic modern dialogue; some serpentine feathers; what someone apparently needed; the poorly-made shirts of William Shatner; and a brief history of deadly hats, killer bras and crinoline conflagrations. 

Oh, and here we see our betters, including several educators, demonstrating why they’re just more evolved than we are. 

Local toughs. (h/t, Ben) || Lucas has been captured. || The London time machine. || The mothership wasn’t the first thing to land there. || “How big would the Solar System be if Earth were the size of a basketball?” || “His basketball game got better.” || Why dogs don’t rule the… Oh bugger. || Bond versus Bond in… Die Spy Kill Kill. || Acoustic tractor beam. || Hot steel malfunction. || It tells you quite a lot about who they are. || Lighthouse interior. || Best not to, really. || “Not a sweet smile.” || If she didn’t have double standards, she’d have no standards at all. || Gastro Obscura. || That star over there is much, much bigger than ours. || Owl buddies. || Bathroom scenes. (h/t, dicentra) || Birds in fog. || And finally, via Elephants Gerald, “I felt like my hands were just too big for this task.”

Curses. || Art rock. || Russian dashcam road movie. || Scenes from a pencil factory. || Minguk, Manse and Daehan are triplets. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || Bruce is handy with a pair. || These memo pads are much fancier than yours. || The pig war of 1859. || The shortest borders in the world. || Bark and soil. || A brief history of bread. || Tim Newman has written a novel. || We live in strange times. || A typical Alaskan street fight. (h/t, Darleen) || Dead malls. || Seagulls in Delhi. || 1477 glasses. || Flashback of note. || The fox and the owl. || Wee. (h/t, Damian) || This. || It can happen. (h/t, dicentra) || I need 100 Yen and I need it now. || And finally, because you demanded it, posture-correcting, hydration-sensing, Bluetooth-enabled biometric underpants. iOS and Android compatible.

Autocorrect of note. (h/t, dicentra) || Unwanted caller. || Oh, Waitrose, never change. || Why blue is rare in nature. || 8-bit cat. || Abandoned castles. || “What a cute little chicken.” || How to take a photo of a stealth bomber flying over the Rose Bowl, from above. || Flying bathtub. Well, a hovering bathtub, but still. || The Bourne Identity (1988), starring… er, Richard Chamberlain and Jaclyn Smith. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || Japanese people attempt to eat Marmite. || The future is now. || Pretty fish. || Action figures. || This. || They do this better than you do. (h/t, Obnoxio) || The thrill of Bismuth. || Cardboard beings. || The Great Hedge of India. || Night light. || Norwegian train-driver cam. || A holiday memory to cherish. || And finally, painstakingly, marbles, magnets and music.

I’m easing into the new year much as one might lower one’s buttocks into an overly warm bath. Which, for you, means another thrilling opportunity to throw together your own pile of links and oddities in the comments. I’ll set the ball rolling with an extensive archive of Sherlock Holmes radio shows, over 500 of them; a jellyfish of note; a superhydrophobic surface; The Art of Ornamental Orange Peeling, circa 1905; a nineteenth century spy camera; and, via Elephants Gerald, “Black Man Super Bikini” and other sub-optimal translations. 

Oh, and a reminder that snow makes people stupid.

The fierce and mighty warriors of professional wrestling. (h/t, Obnoxio) || According to the ladies at Marie Claire, this is now a thing. || Tortoise teamwork. || How do machines learn? Or, the thrill of algorithms. || Siberian farm cats. || The frugal Mrs Thatcher. || Heist. || Hard, harder, hardest. || “Comprised of ten organs covering nine metres, this is one of the most complicated systems in the body.” || Just type stuff. || Cats’ eyes. || Christmas spirit. || Classy as all hell. (h/t, Julia) || Auld Lang Syne interactive music box. || Where railways are. || You are still allowed to swear in Rochdale. || Vintage jackhammer restoration. || The dog copes remarkably well. || Seven wonders in 360. || More tiny worlds. || And finally, in shiny, revamped product news, you want one and you know it.

Why dogs don’t rule the Earth, part 2. || Kid’s got skills. || Lucas wants to warm his legs. || Liverpool’s public wash-houses, 1959. || Feminist scholarship, part 209. || The future is now. || 30 Die Hard factoids. || On stealing Einstein’s brain and keeping it in a beer cooler. || Bunny Lewis in A Couple of Beauties, 1972. Also starring Bernard Manning. || “Radio broadcasts leave Earth at the speed of light. Hear how far the biggest hits of the past have travelled.” || The Hubble advent calendar. || Three-player chess. || The medical effects of Marmite. || Grand Canyon time-lapse. || Disrespected pizza. || Snow in Amsterdam. || John McWhorter on the modishness of Ta-Nehisi Coates. (h/t, Damian) || Hats. || Rokshok. || An oral history of Viagra. || And finally, a short story featuring cats.

Seduction is afoot. 

Via Holborn. 

Heavy metal weather. || Murmuration. || The molecular mechanics of cell division. || A world of data. || In search of hidden dimensions. || The man who created Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future. (h/t, Obnoxio) || The first man-made nuclear chain reaction. || Sunken villages. || When mum dips her toe in virtual reality. (h/t, Damian) || Thickening time. || No offensively dirty faces. || “The time is fastly approaching where the tables are going to turn.” || Winter. (h/t, Ben) || The Great Smog of ‘52. || Impatient dog. || Punks share their wisdom via the medium of leather jackets. || This is one of these. || Big ‘uns. || Berezka. || Zinnia is woke. Don’t be like Zinnia. || And finally, at long last, a site for those who know the visceral thrill of milk floats. It has audio files and everything.