While delivering an inspiring yet humorous commencement speech for the class of 2026 at Emerson College in Boston, the great Henry Winker encouraged the new graduates to act with empathy so they could live fulfilling lives.

You can live a life. You can accomplish. You can accumulate a lot of stuff. You can fill your house and then fill your garage and fill your basement. But you cannot live a rich life if you don’t have empathy.

Winkler also spoke about recognizing one’s inner power and using it to contribute to the world.

I want to tell you, you are powerful, and in you is a great gift. And your job is to figure out what your gift is, because this world needs every single one of you, and your job is  to find that gift and give it to the world. It doesn’t matter what it is; we need it. Go.

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While appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, guest David Letterman gleefully joined the host in recreating one of his favorite activities, dropping random objects off the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City. With the long-running Late Show franchise nearing its end, Letterman saw fit to send set furniture and other CBS property over the edge and onto a target with the CBS open-eyed logo.

David Letterman invites Stephen Colbert to reprise one of the most cherished and satisfying bits from Letterman’s “Late Show.”

Letterman was quite blunt in his send-off to the show he helped create.

To the folks at CBS. In the words of the great Ed Murrow, “Good night and Good Luck” motherf*@kers”

Prior to the toss, Letterman spoke with Colbert about his profound disappointment over the series’ cancellation, his new dog, and how the theater evolved from one host to the other.

“I have every right to be pissed off,….You can take a man’s show, you can’t take a man’s voice

While sitting in the audience, Letterman talked with Colbert about his mother, Dorothy, who was a recurring guest on the show.

Letterman recalls how his mother Dorothy’s many appearances on the show kept them connected in a unique way. Keep watching for the conclusion of Stephen’s interview with David Letterman!

Dave Letterman Dropping Stuff Off the Roof

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The science fiction channel Picard Looking hilariously reimagined the computers aboard the USS Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation and the USS Voyager in Star Trek: Voyager, in a blunt Australian persona, which led to a bit of confusion amongst the crew.

That time on Star Trek when a maintenance update glitched the computer into being Australian.

In this context, the crew struggled to obtain accurate data, navigate, or even perform basic functions with the sarcastic AI, which preferred drinking, cricket, mocking the captain, and demanding smoking breaks.

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The incredibly talented musician Luca Stricagnoli performed a gorgeous, multitonal fingerstyle acoustic cover of the classic Dire Straits song “Walk of Life” on his unique, custom triple-neck, reverse-slide acoustic guitar.

“Walk Of Life” by DIRE STRAITS, arranged on my Reversed Triple Neck guitar, featuring a WX-503 wireless system by Swiff Audio.

Stricagnoli Explains the Guitar

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The great Harrison Ford delivered an incredibly powerful and highly inspiring commencement speech for the undergraduate class of 2026 at Arizona State University, where he also received an honorary Doctorate of Arts and Humane Letters.

Actor and conservationist Harrison Ford delivers the commencement address during Arizona State University’s Undergraduate Commencement at Mountain America Stadium in Tempe on May 11, 2026.

Ford spoke passionately about living a life of purpose and understanding that their generation has the power to address social injustice and environmental challenges because there is power in a unified voice.

Whatever talent or ambition you have, find some way to put it to work. Build something that didn’t exist yesterday. Stand up for someone who can’t stand up for themselves. Bring people together who weren’t talking before. That’s leadership. That’s what moves the needle. Your generation has far more power than you may realize, and if you harness that power, if you find your leadership, your issues, your voice, the world will not be able to ignore you. You will have to be accommodated. 

Ford also talked about recognizing opportunity and living without regrets.

When opportunity presents, recognize it. This is your time. Own it. Enjoy every second of it. Because what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing that you haven’t fully lived it?

His final words to the class of 2026 were “Go Change the World”.

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A tiny baby sloth, who was only four days old when her mother was killed by stray dogs, was rescued by the Funcionarios de Protección Civil Baruta in Venezuela, who found her sitting alone next to her mother’s body.

(translated) Baruta Civil Protection officials rescued this little sloth baby in Los Guayabitos. …thanks to the quick action of neighbors and PC officials, the baby was rescued and immediately transported to a veterinary center.

After being seen by the veterinarian, the baby sloth was taken to Fundación Chuwie, where the incredible team nursed her back to health.

This little girl was found in late December of 2025. …She was literally days old and weighed about half a pound. No one knew if she would make it, but day by day, she got stronger. and started exploring the world around her. …As of April 2026, this little girl has reached her goal weight of 700 g, which is about 1 and 1/2 lbs.

Once this young sloth’s weight stabilizes, she will be released back into the wild.

The goal is to get her strong enough to be reintroduced to the forest and to live the way a healthy little sloth should.

Fundación Chuwie

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Linguist Patrick Foote of Name Explain talked about how Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, used street names from his native Portland, Oregon, to name several characters. These streets include NW Flanders Street (Ned Flanders), NW Quimby Street (Mayor Quimby), and Lovejoy Street (Reverend Lovejoy), to name just a few.

As Matt Groening, “The Simpsons” creator, was a Portland native, he decided to take inspiration from the names of the streets he called home when it came to naming the plethora of characters who call Springfield home.

Visiting These Streets in Portland

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Sam Denby of Half as Interesting used the text of the Unabomber’s Manifesto to explain how forensic linguists can identify a suspect and determine where he could be found.

This manifesto is riddled with unintentional clues about its author. You can tell how old he is, where he grew up, what his education level is, and kind of his entire identity by reading in between the lines.

Denby explains that linguistic patterns in written texts serve as forensic evidence, further noting that distinctive phrases and idioms allow linguistic experts to identify authors, verify the authenticity of confessions, and uncover hidden clues in ransom notes. Tools such as Burrow’s Deta and the Jaccard Coefficient were developed to assist in forensic stylometry.

Obviously, the most common question that forensic linguistics wants to answer is who wrote this? It depends a lot on what this actually is. Is it a ransom note, a few text messages, or is it something longer? If you have a lot of text, like a book,

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Actress Tia Carrere joined the Middle Aged Jam Band to perform a powerhouse cover of the badass Pat Benatar song “Heartbreaker”, with vocal talent in spades.

‘Heartbreaker’ TIA CARRERE & Middle Aged Dad Jam Band

Band member Ken Marino noticed that drummer David Wain was looking and smelling extra spiffy for Carrere’s arrival.

Marino: David, why are you dressed like that?

Wain: I’m just getting ready to do the video that we’re doing.

Marino: Okay. Because Tia Carrera is coming, right?

Wain: Tira Carrera is coming today?

Middle Aged Jam Band previously played the classic Rick Springfield song “Jessie’s Girl” with Pat Benatar’s husband, Neil Girardo, on lead guitar. Girardo had produced the song for Springfield in 1981.

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In a humorous sketch for Saturday Night Live, a very unhappily married auctioneer couple, played by Matt Damon and Sarah Sherman, engage in a rapid-fire argument using the verbal tricks of their trade.

A woman (Sarah Sherman) confronts her husband (Matt Damon) about coming home late.

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Grandma Stand is a wonderful place where people can sit down and talk to a grandma for free whenever they need a comforting, nonjudgmental shoulder to cry on.

At a time when the lack of connection is epidemic, wise and witty grandmothers sit behind a lemonade-style stand in NYC’s Central Park, offering heartfelt life lessons to passersby.

This self-explanatory idea came about by accident in 2012, when a distraught co-worker went into Mike Matthews‘ office in New York City to talk about a recent breakup. Matthews suggested that the co-worker call his own grandmother, Eileen, who lived 3,000 miles away in Sammamish, Washington. The co-worker thought it was odd that Matthews was giving her his grandmother’s phone number, but the pairing turned out to be a great success.

The following week, the same co-worker came bouncing into Mike’s office, shut the door and said, “Grandma Eileen is incredible. I feel lifted. I can’t explain it, but she just made me feel like everything was going to be ok.” For the next several months, a 26 year-old hipster and a 96 year-old grandma spoke every week and became best friends.

Matthews and his grandmother were happy to share their love with thousands of New Yorkers at a converted lemonade stand in Central Park. After Eileen’s death in 2018 at the age of 2018, Matthews retired the Grandma Stand. Seeing a growing need for a little grandmotherly comfort, Matthews decided to bring the stand back again in 2024.

But, one afternoon in early 2024, Mike thought about how almost every friend he had was struggling some level of disruption in their family or with job insecurity, political division, loneliness, mental health, the list went on. It was time to bring back the Grandma Stand.

This time around, he painted the stand purple (Eileen’s favorite color) and invited a rotating roster of grandmas to listen while sitting next to Eileen’s enduringly kind face.

Every week there’s a rotation of grandmas, discussion prompts and locations where the Grandma Stand pops-up. So, anybody passing by can spend a couple minutes with an anonymous, non-judgemental grandma who is there to listen.

While Matthews is based in New York City, people in other cities can reach out to nominate a Grandma Stand for their neighborhood.

Thank you for your desire to spread grandma goodness and start a stand in your city. What began in NYC in 2012 has now spread to various cities in the U.S. and the world!

A documentary about this wonderful project aired on May 1, 2026, and is available to stream on PBS.

via Neatorama

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Axen explained, via stick-figure animation, how ancient humans occupied their time, noting that pre-agricultural society worked half as much as post-agricultural society. According to archeologists, these hunter-gatherers were found to also have better physcial health due to the amount of free time they had available.

Anthropologists studying modern hunter-gatherer societies have found something shocking: adults spent only 15-20 hours per week on survival activities. The rest of the time? They did whatever they wanted. And the archaeological evidence backs this up—skeletal remains show hunter-gatherers were healthier, taller, and stronger than early farmers who came after them.

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Musician David Hartley expertly broke down the many components that went into recording the Queen song “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the musical genius behind every track. Hartley also specifically noted how this iconic song was created by only four musicians deeply dedicated to their craft.

Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen is one of the most popular songs of all time, but the way it was created is just as incredible as the song itself.

via Miss Cellania

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Robotics company Figure shared a video of two of its Helix 02 humanoid robots autonomously tidying a bedroom by putting things away neatly, taking out the trash, and expertly making the bed together. This was all accomplished in under two minutes.

Like other Figure humanoid robots, this pair uses a single Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model to process verbal requests, respond, and perform general and logistical tasks, including both independent and cooperative behaviors.

They run a single learned Vision-Language-Action policy. There is no shared planner between them, no message passing, no central coordinator: each robot reads the room through its own cameras and infers its partner’s intent the way two people do when they fold a sheet, from motion alone.

Loading the Dishwasher

Folding Laundry

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Redditor Candid-Acadia-2301 shared photos of adorable dumplings that look just like little, squared-off goldfish. The cook shared that the shapes were created free-style without using any molds, but they did add a splash of orange food color to match the fish’s correct shade.

I used food colour, so divided a small portion of dough, added colour and then spread the orange part like polka dots on the white dough, rolled them all and divided to make each portion.  The filling is made of minced chicken! I had so much fun making it!

Another Version of Goldfish Dumplings

via Neaotrama

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Everything Explainer shared some of the strangest facts about the human body. This includes the strength of stomach acid, the length of our DNA, the miles and miles of veins coursing throughout our systems, why the human eye needs to blink so much, why humans are the only animals to cry, and how the amount of iron in our blood can equal that of a nail.

Did you know that you are literally glowing right now? Or that your stomach acid is strong enough to dissolve steel? Your body is a high-speed biological machine, and most of the time, you have no idea what’s happening inside.

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Talented musician Charles Berthoud donned a wig to perform a truly badass lightning-fast cover of Beethoven‘s famous “Moonlight Sonata” (Piano Sonata No. 14) on bass. This performance came after Ludwig’s “friends” staged an intervention about his use of electric instruments.

Ludvig, I’ve gathered some of your closest friends here today because, quite frankly, we’re worried about you. You won’t stop playing that ghastly electric guitar, and it’s really getting quite embarrassing.

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Devoted dog walker Hope Mehlberg of K9 Konvoy bought an old bus and converted it into the perfect paw-printed vehicle to ferry her more than 20 rolling doggie day care clients to a private dog park in Oconto, Wisconsin. Mehlberg said that some of her dogs didn’t do well in traditional daycare but are excelling under her care.

K9 Conboy is kind of like a doggy daycare on wheels. I have a lot of doggy daycare rejects. They all have families and parents.  My life involves dogs. No matter what I’m doing. …I could have anywhere from 22 to 28 dogs a day

Mehlberg picks up each dog at home and takes them to the park, where they play for two hours. When the dogs begin to tire, she gathers them up and gives them treats before bringing them home, all tuckered out from their exciting day.

Picking them up every morning is my favorite part of every day. …I created our own private dog park. They’re 2 hours. They can dig. They can run. They can literally do whatever they want. I let dogs be dogs. Then they all go back home for the day.

Doggie Schoolbus in Calgary, Canada

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The BBC created a heartfelt compilation in tribute to Sir David Attenborough, honoring the great filmmaker on his 100th birthday. This lovely compilation spanned decades of Attenborough’s natural history documentaries, programs, and broadcasts from around the world, as well as his hope for a better future for all humanity.

100 years of Sir David Attenborough “I’ve been lucky enough to live through the golden age of natural history filmmaking. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.” Happy birthday, Sir David – you are one of a kind.

Sir David Attenborough’s 100th birthday was celebrated on May 8, 2026, at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Held on his birthday at London’s Royal Albert Hall, the event will take audiences on a journey through a century of exploration and discovery in the natural world, seen through the prism of David’s extraordinary life.

King Charles III’s Message to Sir David Attenborough

Prince William’s Message for Sir David Attenborough

Sir David’s 90th Birthday Tribute

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Blake de Pastino of the PBS series EONS explained that aging is a biological paradox, noting that it is an inherited trait dating back to the earliest mammals of the Mesozoic era.

As we get older, our bodies begin to deteriorate, our fertility declines, and, eventually, we die. But while we take it for granted, from an evolutionary perspective, aging is actually something of a paradox. Why would a process like this evolve in the first place, seeing as it is so detrimental to survival and reproduction, and comes with no obvious upsides?

de Pastino also introduced the longevity bottleneck hypothesis by Jao Pedro de Magalhães to explain why mammalian life spans and aging processes differ significantly from those of other vertebrate groups.

The Longevity Bottleneck Hypothesis,  as it’s known, essentially proposes that for our first 100 million years-plus, we mammals lived fast and died young. … We mammals spent the first  two-thirds of our history this way: as short-lived prey in a dangerous world. And the Longevity Bottleneck hypothesis argues that spending so much of our history like this changed how we age, in ways that we’re still constrained by today.

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