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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The post Little Dog Learns to Say I Love You to His Human was originally published on Laughing Squid.

Thomas Dambo, the talented artist behind giant wooden trolls that magically interact with their natural woodland surroundings worldwide, took the filmmakers from Exploredinary on a tour of Rancho Dambo, his studio on an old farm outside Copenhagen, Denmark, where he and his crew build his lovable giants from recycled materials.

So this is my farm. It’s a 200 years old farm or something like that. It has 55 acres. Everything on the farm is made of trash, with trash, or leftovers, scraps, and that’s what my art is about is to show the world that we can build big, beautiful things that can make people come together and can teach us not to drown in our trash, but to learn to love it so it can become a solution rather than a problem.

Exploredinary also accompanied Dambo to a forest outside Charlotte, North Carolina, for the build of “Big Pete”, a sensitive soul who reclines in the forest because he worries his big feet will crush the flowers he loves.

via Kraftfuttermischwerk

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Wildlife photographer Robert Martinez of Parliament of Owls captured heartwarming trail cam footage of a frolicking family of four black bears having a little pool party on a hot day in Angeles National Forest. The three adorable cubs were particularly playful, splashing around and wrestling one another while the adult attempted to relax in the cool water.

It’s a pool party in the Angeles National Forest and you all are invited! Spend a few minutes with this frolicking family of four bears as they enjoy the soothing water on a summer afternoon. I actually encountered them less than an hour before their swim on September 18, 2026.

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As part of his annual Halloween tradition, the very creative Tom BetGeorge of Magical Light Shows created another incredible Halloween light show at his home in Linden, California.

Pumpkins Patch, Jackie, and Gordon were joined by a giant jack-o’-lantern who loomed over the home to introduce “This Is Halloween” from the stop-motion animated film The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Our 2026 Halloween show features a 400-foot-tall singing jack-o’-lantern, giant Jack Skellington, 210 drones, 4 x 10,000 lumen projectors, 12 x 30w lasers, water, fire, cold sparks, and thousands of synchronized lights.

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EmperorTigerstar created an animated timeline tracing the history of chemical elements, from classical elements and alchemy to Mendeleev’s 1869 periodic table and later discoveries. The creator notes that some discovery dates are uncertain and includes selected substances once mistaken for elements to illustrate how our understanding of chemistry evolved.

The history of humanity’s scientific discovery of the elements from the classical elements to alchemy to the modern periodic table.

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The post An Animated Timeline Tracing the Discovery of Chemical Elements Year by Year was originally published on Laughing Squid.

French beatbox and a cappella group Berywam, who previously performed a beatbox cover of The Simpsons Theme, demonstrated how each member imitates a specific instrument to create a cohesive song.

How We Create Music Step By Step

Other Demonstrations

Other Vocal Beatbox Covers

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The post How Beatboxers Imitate Specific Instruments to Create a Cohesive Song was originally published on Laughing Squid.

BBC Earth shared a fantastic compilation of the diverse strategies that birds use to find food, secure a home, and raise a family. It features courtship dances, cooperative feeding behaviors, and other remarkable adaptations.

From a resplendent quetzal feeding his young to a turquoise-browed motmot searching for the perfect nest site, these remarkable birds face the challenges of finding food, securing a home and raising a family.

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The post A Fantastic BBC Earth Compilation Focusing on the Extraordinary Lives of Birds was originally published on Laughing Squid.

Ted Lasso stars Jason Sudeikis, Brendan Hunt, and series newcomer Tanya Reynolds took on Esquire UK’s humorous challenges about British culture to determine who was the most British of them all. The result wasn’t as obvious as expected.

The trio go up against a series of very British challenges, from decoding confusing slang and finishing iconic football chants, to debating the nation’s biggest cultural dilemmas. But who will reign supreme and win the trophy?

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James Cook, a British artist who creates “typictions”, used a portable typewriter to create astonishingly detailed depictions of different Manhattan views from his perches at Top of the Rock and Edge NYC.

The entire artwork is made using thousands of individually typed letters, numbers and symbols. I even switched between different coloured typewriter ribbons to add small flashes of colour amongst the monochrome skyline.

Limited prints of his New York City artwork are available for purchase on Cook’s website.

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The post Detailed Typewriter Drawings of the Manhattan Skyline From High Above the City was originally published on Laughing Squid.

Actor Laurence Fishburne delivered an animated reading of a prescient 2018 letter by comedy writer Connor Relyea, addressed to the robots that would eventually replace him. In the humorous letter, Relyea challenged the perceived superiority of robots, arguing they would never understand the nuance of human creativity and comedy.

Laurence Fishburne reads a warning letter to the robots that will eventually replace us.

This reading took place at a Letters Live event at the Royal Festival Hall in London.

Laurence Fishburne joined us to read at Letters Live at the Royal Festival Hall in London in September 2026.

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Legendary Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson performed an a cappella rendition of the “Star-Spangled Banner” before an NFL game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Seattle Seahawks on September 14, 2025. Only Dickinson could give the US national anthem a respectful heavy metal edge.

Thank you to everyone at the NFLand all of the fans at the Steelers vs Seahawks game today… that was a huge honour!

Dickinson also performed the national anthem before the 2025-26 season opener between the Los Angeles Kings and the Colorado Avalanche on October 7, 2025.

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Bionic and the Wires, a British collective that finds new ways to make music with the natural world, connected sensors to a large wild mushroom in Snake Woodland near Glossop, Derbyshire, converting its bioelectrical fluctuations into signals that controlled bionic arms, which played a keyboard connected to a synthesizer. This creative outdoor setup resulted in a rather danceable electronic song.

This has got to be one of the funkiest mushrooms I’ve ever connected up. It was creating lots of signals, possibly due to the sun and wind and all the rain we’ve had recently.

They also used lion’s mane fungus to play the synthesizer and “sing” inside their studio.

Bio-electrical signals from the Lion’s Mane mushroom are controlling the bionic arms to play the synth and triggering 50 words based on the frequency of the signal.

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The post A Wild Mushroom With Bionic Arms Plays a Synthesizer in the Woods was originally published on Laughing Squid.

Ryan Socash of It’s History examined the long, tragic history of Dead Horse Bay, a small body of water off Barren Island between Gerritsen Inlet and Rockaway Inlet in Brooklyn. Beginning in the 1870s, the bay became a dumping ground for horse carcasses from nearby rendering plants, while New York City later filled part of the site with municipal solid waste between 1948 and the mid-1950s.

As erosion exposed the old landfill, thousands of bottles and other household artifacts appeared along the shoreline, earning it the nickname Glass Bottle Beach. The area’s history also includes the 1936 eviction of roughly 400 Barren Island residents to make way for the Marine Parkway Bridge.

From the rotting remains of 19th-century horses used to power the city’s streets to the millions of household artifacts discarded by a metropolis, Dead Horse Bay tells a dark story of urban expansion, forced evictions, and environmental disaster.

National Park Service surveys beginning in 2019 identified multiple locations with elevated radiation and recovered two leaking radium-226 deck markers buried about two feet below the surface. The agency closed approximately 84 acres of the southern site in August 2020 while the investigation continued.

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The post How Radioactive Debris Led to the Closure of Brooklyn’s Glass Bottle Beach in Dead Horse Bay was originally published on Laughing Squid.

Wildlife rescuer Meg Churches (Megabattie) was alerted to an injured pregnant grey-headed flying fox named Sully beside a road in Observatory Park near Sydney Harbour. She gently checked the bat for injuries and cared for her at home while monitoring whether the stress of the accident and unfamiliar environment could trigger an early birth.

She’s got some fur off her forehead (probably from friction and crash landing after glancing off a car), a few grazes, and bright clear eyes which have been assessing me and finding me wanting… I think she’ll be OK herself, however if she’s going to give birth early or lose her baby from the stress or the accident, it will probably be tonight.

Night One

Sully recovered over the next six weeks and was released back into the wild while still pregnant.

Other ‘Megabattie’ Rescues

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During a TED Talk in Vancouver, the incredibly talented multi-instrumentalist Jacob Collier told the audience that he sees music as a “wiggle” rather than a straight line, describing the wiggle as the fluid energy connecting melody, rhythm, and harmony. Collier demonstrated the concept using Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World”.

Grammy-winning musician Jacob Collier has a name for the feeling that moves through a great piece of music: the wiggle. Watch him break down the idea into its three parts — melody, rhythm and harmony — with nothing but his own voice, a grand piano and Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.” Turns out life, like music, was never made to run in straight lines.

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Sam Pilgrim, the professional freeride mountain biker who repeatedly tests unusual ways to ride a bicycle, joined other professional riders for a daring race down a mountain in Sölden, Austria, on three-wheeled mountain carts that looked like something out of Mario Kart during Swatch Nines Bike 2026.

Riders had to navigate challenging alpine terrain, narrow trails, and wooden features while maintaining speed and control in a fast-paced pack, which Pilgrim found quite invigorating.

THIS IS THE BEST FUN YOU CAN HAVE! These mountain karts in Sölden, Austria are crazy fast and absolutely dangerous but that’s what makes it fun! You get a gondola to the top of the mountain here and send it down as fast as possible, this was even better because we were out here with the Swatch Nines mountain bike crew and things got wild!

via The Awesomer

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The post A Real-Life Mario Kart Race Down an Austrian Mountain was originally published on Laughing Squid.

Rob Watts of RobWords explored the history of Norn, an extinct Scandinavian language once spoken in the northern Scottish islands of Orkney and Shetland. Through research into medieval runic inscriptions, local dialects, and cultural remnants, Watts explained how the language persisted for centuries before being gradually displaced by Scots.

As recently as the 1800s, part of Britain was speaking a language descended from that of the Vikings. On the islands of Orkney and Shetland, Norn was spoken for almost a thousand years – so why did it disappear?

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The post Norn, the Extinct Scandinavian Language of Scotland’s Northern Isles was originally published on Laughing Squid.