Guitar virtuoso Kent Nishimura performed an exceptional fingerstyle rendition of Michael Jackson‘s “Thriller” on his acoustic guitar in Mannheim, Germany, where the song’s writer, Rod Temperton, once lived.

I filmed this in Mannheim, Germany. The late Rod Temperton, who wrote this song, He used to live around this area before he started working with Quincy Jones. It was such a beautiful place to film.

Nishimura arranged the song, making it his own while staying true to the original.

This is my new arrangement of Michael Jackson’s Thriller with a new tuning I created specifically for this arrangement.

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The Oregon Zoo gave busy beavers yummy Halloween pumpkins as part of its annual autumn tradition. The adorable rodents inspected a smiling jack-o’-lantern before bringing it into the pool for a tasty snack.

you gnaw it’s pumpkin time

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Musician Nahum Smith paired the incredibly melodious sound of a sonic toothbrush with his classical guitar to jam along with Radiohead‘s “Idioteque”. The duo sounded great together, but sadly, the vibrations made the toothbrush fall off the table.

It’s going to fall off. It’s going to fall off. It’s going to fall off. It’s going to fall off. I got to play another song in C.

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In a cost-conscious TED-Ed lesson written by Ella Feldman and animated by Josh Pilch of Augenblick Studios, narrator Addison Anderson explores the pros and cons of buying or renting a home through the example of twins who choose different paths.

Morgan and her twin sister Lisa moved into identical houses right next to each other. The only difference? Morgan bought her house, while Lisa is renting hers.

While conventional wisdom says buying is always better than renting, both options can have benefits over time.

After 30 years, Morgan is finally done paying off her mortgage. To get there, she spent about $1 million, including the house price, interest, taxes, and insurance. But she’s also had to pay for repairs and upkeep, bringing her total to $1.4 million. Meanwhile, Lisa’s rent is now $3,300 a month, and she’s spent around $900,000 on rent. … When Morgan chose to spend $40,000 on a down payment, she missed out on putting that $40,000 into a stable, diversified retirement account. That’s what Lisa did, and it’s grown into $500,000.

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The science fiction channel Picard Looking cleverly re-edited footage from Star Trek: The Next Generation into a dizzying supercut of the characters citing percentages, from smallest to largest. Examples include reporting technical diagnostics, efficiency ratings, and rising alert levels.

Every instance of the word “percent” from Star Trek: The Next Generation, arranged from smallest to largest.

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One day, while a caring woman named Desiree was outside, a tiny wayward baby blue jay flew onto her deck and demanded food. She didn’t have any birdseed, but she did have cat food, which she fed the bird with chopsticks. He ate it all up and came back the next day for more, until it became a daily routine.

This bird came out of nowhere. It just swooped down with its mouth open making these sounds and with its wings flapping, it came back. …I don’t have anything in my house to feed birds, right? I mean, I’m just sitting here minding my own business, not expecting this to happen. The only thing I could think of is cat food because we have cats.

As “Birdie” grew, he became more independent, even visiting without wanting food.

I found out he was molting, which is a normal, you know, growing-up behavior. He was like a teenager already, and it had only been a couple of months. Eventually, Birdie wasn’t even coming back for food anymore. … It just became like, you know, like a friendship.

Eventually, Birdie stopped coming around as much, but Desiree is convinced that he still remembers her.

As Birdie grew up, his visits became less frequent. When I say “Birdie”, he knows my voice. …He’s still in my trees. He comes to visit. He dropped a feather right in front of me. It just came floating down, you know, from the sky.

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Rivian released a very amusing Halloween ad featuring Bill Murray reprising his role as Dr. Peter Venkman from Ghostbusters, this time posing as a food-delivery driver. Venkman cleverly lures Slimer outside with the promise of food, then traps the hungry ghost in the front trunk of his modified “Ecto-R1” with the press of a button. The ad promotes Rivian’s new Ghostbusters-themed Halloween software update.

PKE readings were off the charts. Good thing Dr. Peter Venkman and the Ecto-R1 were ready to take the call. This year, we teamed up with Sony Pictures to bring Ghostbusters to every Rivian. With the press of a button, Halloween mode turns your vehicle into an all-electric ghost-busting ride, with eerie lighting, iconic sounds and a few special tricks.

Rivian owners can access this humorous software update until November 2, 2026.

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KhingExp created a Hot Wheels diorama with a tiny motorized treadmill that serves as a moving road, paired with a parallax background that makes the display cars look like they’re driving. KhingExp also shared how he combined mechanical design with creative problem-solving to bring his beloved collection to life.

In this video, I decided to make my own Hot Wheels display/diorama because I thought Hot Wheels displays were boring.

via The Awesomer

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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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