'Panama' entered the chart June 23, 1984 at #52, peaked August 18, 1984 at #13, and left the chart October 6, 1984 after
a 15-week chart run.
FunFact: There are 22 recorded versions featuring different lead singers.
Saturday, August 15, 2026
'Panama'
How to appear smarter than you are
When someone asks "Where's that from?" regarding something somebody just said, reply "The Bible or Shakespeare."
You'll be right 50% of the time.
Wait a sec — what's that song I'm hearing?
Friday, August 14, 2026
Helpful Hints from joeeze: How to make your champagne more bubbly
So simple even I can do it: Wipe the inside of the glasses with a cloth or paper towel.
A report by French scientists published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry showed that wiped glasses show "an excess of effervescence" due to the hollow cellulose fibers that get displaced from a cloth or towel acting as "nucleation" (bubble formation) sites.
Thursday, August 13, 2026
Wrap City Potato Chip Company: best.Potato Chips.EVER.
After an August 1 tip (below)
from madamjujujive, grand panjandrum of EVERLASTING BLÖRT, one of the very longest lived websites still standing (since 2001!), I took a flutter on Wrap City Chips.
Long crunchy story short: I agree with her assessment.
Full disclosure: I love potato chips and have long pursued and tried zillions of brands in search of greatness.
About 15 years ago I reported on an in-depth potato chip tasting (around 10 different small-batch/company brands) with another aficionado.
As best I recall, the winner was a company that sliced its potatoes (peel on) not in the customary way but rather along the long axis, yielding humongous slices that when fried were incredibly good.
Alas, they went out of business.
I wish I could remember the company's name... they were based somewhere in the east, New Jersey/Pennsylvania....
But I digress.
Today and henceforth, these are my potato chips of choice.
Lagniappe: My chips arrived around 5pm during a thunderstorm; the delivery guy put the box on my front stoop where it sat overnight, only coming to my attention the next morning when I saw the delivery confirmation in my email.
"Yikes!", I thought — "What if they were all wet and soggy from the rain?"
The box was plenty damp and soft; to my delight, however, Wrap City's packaging consists of a heavy paper bag completely lined with the same clear plastic they use for the front window (see video up top).
The chips were perfectly crunchy, no moisture effects whatsover.
Casio Started With Ring Pipes
Say what?
joe, you've been watching too many concert films.
Casio's history can be traced back to its roots: the "ring cigarette holder" (top) invented by Kashio [see what they did there?] Seisakusho.
Launched in 1946, it caused a sensation in Japan in the early postwar period, achieving great commercial success and providing crucial financial support for the later development of Casio calculators.
Today, Casio's new CRW001-1 Ring Watch (below)
marks a return to ring-centric design.
$135.
Mycorrhizal Infrastructure Map
"This map show the predicted density of underground networks created by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. These networks form one of Earth's circulatory systems, moving massive amounts of carbon, nutrients, and water across plant communities."
Wednesday, August 12, 2026
Europa or Frying Pan?
One of these images is of Europa, Jupiter's ice moon: the other eight are frying pans.
Can you pick out Europa?
Hint: frying pans don't have impact craters.
[via NASA]
'Billie Eilish — Hit Me Hard And Soft: The Tour'
This new concert film was the first time I'd ever heard a Billie Eilish song.
Long story short: I loved the movie.
I have a jones for live concert films, most of all those featuring Taylor Swift but also past ones like "Stop Making Sense," "Gimme Shelter," "Woodstock," "The Song Remains The Same," etc.
James Cameron — yes, that James Cameron — was actively involved in the making of this movie and often appears on camera, filming Eilish as he interviews her.
I warmed to her songs and performance as the concert progressed (unlike the concert films of Taylor Swift, which feature many shows across continents as she makes her world tours, Eilish's features just one concert along with the entire day's preparation, sound checks, etc.).
She is really something, holding the stage for the most part completely alone, unlike Swift without a highly choreographed troupe of dancers and singers surrounding her and complete changes of outfit and mood and stage sets and lighting between songs.
The bond between her arena audience and her is amazing to see.
She's also quite articulate and insightful during the Cameron interviews.
Tuesday, August 11, 2026
Surge Protector Protector
Say what?
From websites:
........................................
Conceal the clutter and haphazard appearance of your surge protectors.
Don't be dismayed about tangled wires, bulky plugs, and bright power indicator lights.
Simply close the lid and make the mess disappear.
Two lids provide access to power switch or outlets and protect from dust.
14.5" x 3.5" x 3".
Polypropylene.
........................................
See This on Your Trip to Mars in 2060
Make sure you livestream it to your friends back on Earth (allow 3-24 minutes travel time, depending on where the two planets are in their respective orbits).
NASA's Curiosity Rover saw this on June 11, 2026.
It initially captured 11 individual photos of a sand-capped butte, nicknamed "Miraflores," with its mast camera.
The isolated feature is about 20 feet tall.
It was left behind when surrounding rock eroded, deepening the broad valley Curiosity was in.
The photos were sent back to Earth and stitched together, producing a high-resolution (6,162 x 2,576 pixels) image.
The color was adjusted to match the lighting conditions as the human eye would see if a person were standing on the surface of the Red Planet next to Curiosity.
In the photo below, you can see the butte in the distance.
The area pictured is inside the 96-mile-wide Gale Crater, in which sits Mount Sharp, an 18,000-foot-high central peak that rises from the crater.
"Billions of years ago, lakes and streams dappled the lower foothills of Mount Sharp, which Curiosity has been ascending since 2014," noted NASA.
[via PetaPixel]
Monday, August 10, 2026
World's Most Tricked-Out Manhole Cover
From websites:
...............................
This unique access hatch featuring a six-part cover over a built-in spiral staircase is located on Bahnhofsplatz/Gustav-Stresemann-Ring in Wiesbaden, Germany.
It opens down into the historic Salzbachkanal (Salzbach Canal) — the main underground stormwater and drainage sewer system for Wiesbaden's city center.
The staircase is roughly seven meters high, opening into the brick-arched canal below.
According to the city's own records, the subterranean canal was built between 1900 and 1907, following typhus epidemics that pushed the city to modernize its sewage system.
It was designed by engineers Josef Brix and Martin Frensch.
The heavy metal cover features segmented triangular folding lids that open outward, revealing a cylindrical brick-lined shaft with a tightly fitted spiral staircase.
The cover was designed specifically to fit this construction's access shaft.
It serves as a specialized maintenance and descent shaft for municipal engineers inspecting or working within the subterranean drainage network.
The city has an annual "Day of the Open Canal" on which public tours are offered.
Best Investment I Ever Made
Out there on the patio — it's a bird, it's a plane, it's... my can holder?
Yes.
I saw it in a Seven-11 many years ago and instantly raced to grab it before anyone else could.
No better summary exists of my take on things — then or now.
For $1.99 or whatever it cost I get at least one laugh and many smiles each day, every time I see it — which is often since I drink a lot of Caffeine-Free Diet Coke and as a result visit the WC frequently.
My philosophy (long story short): If you can't laugh at yourself, you have no business laughing at anyone else.
fable — How fast can you identify the animal as the image zooms out?
4) Guess the animal as the image zooms out
“Fable” is a fun game: It starts with a close-up zoom of an animal, and it slowly zooms out. Your goal is to guess the correct animal as quickly as possible.
It’s fun! By forcing you to look so closely at the zoomed-in features of these critters, it gets you to see them with fresh eyes … a nice aesthetic and existential effect.
You can pick a category of “birds”, “dogs”, or “all animals”, which I picked above. You can play against friends, racing to see who’s first to identify the game, or just do it in solo mode.
[via Clive Thompson]
Sunday, August 9, 2026
8K Cinematic Tribute to the Artemis II Mission
Using high-definition open source videos and photos from NASA, John Boswell created this 8-minute-long video recap of this past April's Artemis II mission that executed a flyby of the moon, marking the furthest man has ever been from Earth.
Can't wait to watch this on Vision Pro's YouTube app: the device's micro-OLED panels each produce a 4K image which together deliver 6K resolution — not 8K, a common misconception since two 4K panels don't yield 8K in pixel-count terms.
[via Kottke]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)