Creative musician Anthony Vincent of Ten Second Songs seamlessly paired the lyrics of Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” with the music of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs”. Somehow, Vincent made this odd combination sound like it was always meant to be this way, even though the two songs come from drastically different genres.

Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” Meets Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” 

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The brilliant dancer/choreographer Yoann Bourgeois and his talented dance company performed a gorgeous visual piece on his rotating staircase-trampoline, bathed in pink light, in front of the Eiffel Tower.

Set against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower illuminated in pink, Yoann Bourgeois, his dancers, and about ten amateur performers presented a new choreographed piece using a rotating staircase-trampoline structure.

The accompanying breast cancer awareness campaign film depicted the emotional stages that can follow a diagnosis.

(translated) The staging conveys the lived experience of a woman facing illness and the various stages following her diagnosis: fear, denial, withdrawal, and then—thanks to a helping hand—a surge of vitality, a comeback, and life itself.

After the piece ended, approximately 20 women affected by breast cancer joined the dancers on the rotating stage.

Around twenty women affected by breast cancer then joined them on this rotating stage, forming—for a brief moment—a small, moving community of humanity.

The performance took place on September 30, 2026, at the launch of the 2026 Pink October campaign organized by l’Association Ruban Rose, a French breast cancer awareness organization.

After collaborating with the Ruban Rose Association on the creation of the Pink October 2026 campaign film, the Yoann Bourgeois Art Company had the honor of participating in its launch event on September 30th.

Ruban Rose’s 2026 Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign

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Filmmaker Andrew Muir of The Art of Storytelling examined seven storytelling techniques Apple co-founder Steve Jobs used in his presentations, from the early 1980s through the 2007 iPhone launch. Muir also explored how Jobs used storytelling to build enthusiasm for Apple‘s products.

Watching old Apple keynotes is a guilty pleasure of mine. But why? I shouldn’t care about 20-year old smartphone launch events. What is it about Steve Jobs that made him such a compelling and influential storyteller?

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Culinary channel The Process examined how spaghetti is made, from traditional pasta production in Gragnano, a town near Naples, Italy, to modern manufacturing. While durum wheat semolina and water remain the basic ingredients, modern methods use vacuum mixing, different extrusion dies, and controlled drying.

How spaghetti is made, from golden semolina and vacuum mixing to bronze dies, teflon dies, slow drying, and the structure that gives pasta its al dente bite.

The narrator also examined chickpea spaghetti, explaining why it has a much narrower cooking window than traditional durum-wheat pasta.

Chickpea pasta doesn’t have that internal structure from the Durum. There’s nothing holding the inside together. So once it’s been hot long enough, the whole thing softens at once. The window between al dente and falling apart shrinks to about 1 minute. Miss it, and it disintegrates in the pot.

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Craven Moorhaus and Zak Koonce, the prolific team behind Auralnauts, settled the long-running debate over whether Han Solo or Greedo shot first in the Mos Eisley Cantina scene in Star Wars: A New Hope using “definitive evidence” from “newly resurfaced” video footage.

George Lucas worked overtime to make sure we knew Han Solo would never shoot a guy without giving him a sporting chance.

The Original Scene

The 2019 Revision

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The Philadelphia Parallel Parking Association held its inaugural championship at Headhouse Plaza, where talented drivers squeezed into tiny parking spaces. The top three finalists were judged on competency, flair, and style.

The organization described the three preliminary challenges:

One attempt, no corrections. A textbook parallel park, scored on distance to the curb. Eighteen inches of clearance. Park within six inches of the curb in as few moves as possible. Park under active pressure from distractions and barriers as parallel as you can.

Mario “1 Shot Mar” Zucca won the competition in his 2012 Mazda3.

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Christian Ivan of City 3D Timelapse, who previously created an enchanting 3D timelapse of Manhattan Island from 1600 to 2026, did the same for Rome, showing its evolution from 1000 BCE to 2026. This fascinating timelapse was created using information from Euratlas, Bibliotheca Hertziana, and Nollimap.

3D Evolution of Rome from -1000 to 2026.

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Grady Hillhouse of Practical Engineering examined how beavers build dams, comparing their construction methods with human-built dams. Hillhouse notes that the two share a similar design philosophy but differ significantly in how they are built and maintained.

I’ve spent a lot of time considering the differences between the professional practices that have culminated from centuries of human progress and the innate behaviors of these cute but unusual creatures. There are some surprising similarities, some glaring discrepancies, and a growing admission around the world that the rodents might have a better dam system.

via Nag on the Lake

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Professor Jeff Podos and former graduate student João C.T. Menezes of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst measured the calls of 123 bird species and found that the loudest came from the bare-throated bellbird and red-legged seriema.

Both birds emitted calls as loud as jackhammers, reaching more than 120 peak decibels. The researchers found that larger bodies and wider beak openings were associated with louder calls, but why some birds evolved such powerful voices remains unclear.

Here, we set out to answer two such questions: to what degree do birds vary in how loud they can vocalize, and what evolutionary factors drive this variation? 

Podos had previously researched the call of the dove-sized male white bellbird, which has an amazing call at 125 peak decibels and is considered the loudest of them all.

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Irvin Koch, a 103-year-old World War II veteran, has been serving drinks from an unassuming, cash-only bar in the basement of his Pasadena, Maryland, home since 1963. Koch and his brother bought the house with a grandfathered legal bar in the basement.

For more than six decades, 103-year-old Irvin Koch has been pouring drinks for customers out of the basement of his home in Maryland.

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Andreas Schellenberg of Space Explainer illustrated the physics behind the universe’s most extreme temperatures, from the extreme cold of deep space and laboratory experiments to the intense heat in stellar cores and the early universe.

From the coldest temperature that can ever exist to the hottest limit where physics itself breaks down: a journey through every crazy temperature in the universe, and where you stand on that scale.

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Jean-Charles Foyer, the HatHistorian, explored the possible origins of the iconic pointed, wide-brimmed hat associated with witchcraft and sorcery. Foyer examined possible connections to historical religious headgear, noting how cultural scapegoating and accusations of heresy may have helped shape the stereotypical witch’s appearance.

A very famous hat, recognizable by its tall cone shape, it has become one of the most distinctive attributes of the stereotypical witch in popular culture. While it actually appeared relatively recently in the history of folklore, its roots go back to various outcast and discriminated groups.

via Miss Cellania

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As part of his 2026 Halloween light show, Tom BetGeorge of Magical Light Shows created a giant 400-foot DJ made out of drones that scratched above pumpkins Patch and Gordon as they performed “Sabotage” by the Beastie Boys.

Who doesn’t love a 400′ DJ in the sky?

The 2026 show also included “My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up)” by Fall Out Boy, “Bangarang” by Skrillex featuring Sirah, and “This Is Halloween” from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

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Musician Prazul invited saxophone players from across New York City to play the classic George Michael song “Careless Whisper” together at Washington Square Park on Saturday, September 26, 2026. More than 30 saxophonists showed up, along with musicians playing other instruments.

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An adorable little kitten named Herbie has a triangular-looking head due to rare bilateral facial nerve paralysis and can’t close his outer eyelids, even when he sleeps. According to his human, Herbie also has mild cerebellar hypoplasia, but despite both conditions, he is a very happy, playful cat.

When we got him, they said he doesn’t blink, but he blinks with his inner eyelids. As soon as he came into the house, he just started just relaxing and playing and just becoming his full self. I fostered him for about a week and decided to adopt him. He doesn’t bump into anything. He just has mild wobbles and mild tremors. He’s not in any pain.

His human also described adopting Herbie as a “foster fail” and is confident he can help future foster kittens come out of their shells.

So he’s just the goofiest, most loving guy. … Even though I foster failed, I still want to continue fostering. And I think Herbie will be a good older brother and sidekick to bring the kittens out of their shell.

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The Black Sabbath tribute band Jack Sabbath, fronted by Jack Black and featuring Roman Morello (Tom Morello’s son), Revel Ian (Scott Ian’s son), Yoyoka Soma, and Hugo Weiss, performed the classic “War Pigs” with original Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler.

The performance took place during the incredible Power To The People Festival at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, on October 3, 2026.

The band also played “The Wizard” and Ozzy Osbourne’s “Mr. Crowley”. Notably, Roman Morello played a black Flying V guitar with white polka dots, just like the one Randy Rhoads played in the original 1981 live video.

Jack Black returned to the stage in his finest regalia and joined DMC for “Walk This Way”, which was originally performed by Aerosmith and later became a landmark 1986 collaboration with Run-DMC. Black paid a colorful tribute to singer Steven Tyler by draping numerous scarves over his mic stand.

The Original ‘Mr. Crowley’

Jack Sabbath’s 2025 Debut

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Musician Alexandr Misko performed a beautifully percussive cover of the classic song by The Police, “Every Breath You Take”, on two instruments at once. His right hand played the main riff on a steel tongue drum, while his left hand handled the guitar part on his modified “Frankenstein” guitar.

The iconic “Every Breath You Take” turned out to be the perfect specimen: the main riff is played on the drum with my right hand, while everything else is handled on the guitar with my left.

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Propmakers Jaimie and Jay of Wicked Makers, who are massive Halloween fans, transformed a quadruped robot from its friendly dog form into a vicious-looking animatronic raccoon named CH1PP13 for its debut at Hundred Acres Manor near Pittsburgh. The pair documented CH1PP13’s fabrication, finishing, and badass entrance at the haunted attraction.

Jaimie and Jay turn a robot dog into a NIGHTMARE animatronic!

Six Foot Halloween Candy Slide

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The post Robot Dog Is Turned Into a Nightmarish Animatronic Raccoon for a Haunted House was originally published on Laughing Squid.

In a chapter from his book, Immigrant Tongues, Patrick Foote of Name Explain traced how European colonization of much of Africa and the resulting colonial administration and education established non-indigenous languages such as English, French, and Portuguese as official or widely used languages in many countries.

When we think of African languages, I’m sure many of us will think of the land’s indigenous tongues like Swahili, Zulu, and Yoruba. …If you look into the official tongues of African countries, in many cases, you’ll notice that European languages like English, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese often get these titles.

Despite the spread of colonial languages, African languages remain widely spoken across the continent.

Immigrant tongues are spoken by millions up and down the continent due to the quick and brutal colonization of the land in the late 19th century. …Africa’s native tongues have survived. …Homegrown languages like Yoruba, Swahili, and Hausa are still spoken by millions.

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A little Chihuahua named Louie learned to vocalize what sounds like “I love you” to his adoring human, Lydia. It came as quite a surprise, but she was happy to hear it. Once he started, he kept doing it.

One time when my husband wasn’t at home and he was just starting to cry and for some reason it sounded like I love you. So I just asked him I love you and he was starting to say I love you back. …And then sometimes he, just before even I say anything, he was just like already saying I love you.

Lydia adopted Louie as a tiny pup from a neighbor.

He was one and a half months old from a house of a Chihuahua. The owner was very very overwhelmed. And they were like, “Whoever want to take them, just take them.” And I was like, “Okay, I will love this guy forever. So, I’ll just get the tiniest guy”. And he’s 11 years old now.

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