2024 was certainly one of the years of all time and Phil Edwards made a supercut of some of the weirdest moments of that year. It’s very telling that there are a lot of white people in this, from a year where Trump got elected again so it’s par for the course these days I suppose.
Without fail, I’m astounded by all the unique Steamed Hams renditions; this meme has legs! This one is perhaps the most obscure and the least like Steamed Hams but that’s part of the charm. NintendoDuo used a Nintendo 64DD game called Mario Artist: Talent Studio to create Principal Skinner and Superintendent Chalmers and set the scenes. As I said, this isn’t a like-for-like version of Steamed Hams but the resemblances are remarkable given the technology and it has a very whimsical Japanese feel to it. You won’t be prepared for this unforgettable luncheon.
Firstly, happy new year to you all. I hope 2025 is even more prosperous than 2024. If you’re a creative or a lover of the arts, today’s events might help with that.
1st January is Public Domain Day as I’ve documented in 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. This year, that means that certain works of art from 1929 become free of copyright in the US and available to the public to do what they want with it and without permission.
From an internet perspective, The Skeleton Dance is probably the most notable work to enter the public domain this year. We also get access to Mickey’s first talking appearance in a cartoon. Oh, and Popeye and Tintin are now in the public domain which is awesome as I loved them both as a kid.
Below you will find a list of works from 1929 you might find interesting. As always, check works from any years prior to 1929 to make absolutely sure you follow any licence requirements (if there are any), particularly in other countries or regions such as the EU. That’s because copyrights may have been extended or follow slightly different laws outside of the US. Happy hunting!
In Europe (except Belarus where they were already in the public domain and Spain which has a life + 80 years if they died before 1987 law)
In countries with life + 50 years law
Did you know: Sonic’s footwear was inspired by Michael Jackson’s boots from the Bad album cover?
[…] Sonic’s blue pigmentation was chosen to match Sega’s cobalt blue logo, and his shoes evolved from a design inspired by both Santa Claus and Michael Jackson’s boots with the addition of the color red, which was inspired by the contrast of those colors on Jackson’s 1987 album Bad […]
Sonic’s shoes being inspired by Michael Jackson’s boots from the Bad cover is still the coolest thing in the world to me and one of many reasons why he’s Black in my headcanon. The thought behind everything with all the references is incredible to me, considering how that is lacking in a lot of popular media nowadays. And it’s not to say “Everything In The Past Was Better” but the effort was way higher back then and carefully considered compared to now where it’s all about getting media out fast and at scale. In contrast, it’s ironic that the measured development of Sonic’s character is the inverse of his speed.
After Jimmy Carter’s death yesterday, I looked for a Jimmy Carter post I made on Bluesky. But I also found another one about Carter’s lineage:
Berry Gordy I was the son of Georgia slave owner James Thomas Gordy and one of his female slaves, Esther Johnson. In addition, James Gordy had a son, also James, with his legal wife; the younger James was the maternal grandfather of former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, making Carter and Berry III and his siblings second half-cousins.
via Wikipedia
That’s right: the founder of Motown was related by blood to the 39th President of the United States. That’s enslavement for ya!
At 100 feet (30.48 metres), the Grove Christmas Tree is a white fir and the tree branches will be recycled and used for mulch and firewood according to CBS News.
(Image credit: “The Grove Christmas Tree in November 2009” by Prayitno / Thank you for (4 millions +) views shared via CC BY 2.0 licence.)
Did you know that Los Angeles has an official Christmas song? Christmas in Los Angeles was written by the Sherman Brothers in 1980 and first appeared on Lawrence Welk’s 1980 Christmas TV Special as well as The Rockettes Radio City Christmas Spectacular. (via)
Back for a fourth year, I’ve compiled the top 10 posts published this year (see last year’s if you’re interested, 2022’s and 2021’s edition). I’ve actually published much less this year (202 vs. 226) but life happens!
Anyway, here’s the top 10:
This Christmas season finds us a rather bewildered human race. We have neither peace within nor peace without. Everywhere paralyzing fears harrow people by day and haunt them by night. Our world is sick with war; everywhere we turn we see its ominous possibilities. And yet, my friends, the Christmas hope for peace and goodwill toward all men can no longer be dismissed as a kind of pious dream of some utopian. If we don’t have goodwill toward men in this world, we will destroy ourselves by the misuse of our own instruments and our own power […]
An excerpt from Martin Luther King’s last Christmas sermon in 1967
Nigel Richards is the 2024 Spanish Scrabble champion. But the New Zealander can’t speak Spanish:
Despite hardly speaking the language, the New Zealander, who has won dozens of Scrabble tournaments in English, was competing in the Spanish-language Scrabble world championship. Some of his competitors, who are fluent, doubted his chances, said Horacio Moavro, treasurer of the International Federation of Scrabble in Spanish.
“He shut our mouths completely,” Moavro told The Washington Post.
Richards won the competition in Granada, losing only one of his 24 games and topping 147 competitors from across the world. Benjamín Olaizola, the runner-up, told Spanish radio network La Cadena SER that Richards’s victory was a “humiliation.”
via The Washington Post [archived link]
But it gets wilder: Richards is a two-time French Scrabble champion… and he doesn’t speak French either. I’d say there are no words but apparently that’s not true.
For Letterboxd, Dan Mecca picked some underrated movies from the year 1999 aka “the best movie year ever”:
1999 is often referred to as the single greatest movie year of all time. It’s such a common refrain, in fact, that author Brian Raftery wrote a whole book about it. Along with The Matrix, you’ve got The Sixth Sense, Being John Malkovich, Magnolia, Eyes Wide Shut, Fight Club and so many more. But what about the films that slipped through the cracks? For all of the much-lauded innovation of 1999, there were still high-concept programmers and traditional weepies at your local multiplex—and even those had far more ambition than you remember.
The only one I have seen is Bicentennial Man and I did enjoy that a lot. Might have to check out a few of the others at some point.
Here’s something interesting from Martin Wattenberg: An Anti-Tag Cloud shows you the most common English words that never appear in a text, visualizing the “negative space” of a literary work.
Spoiler alert: you won’t find the word “blood” or “government” in Pride & Prejudice.
Something I learnt about the other day was the Special Drawing Rights, or SDR. It’s an international reserve asset that countries can exchange for currency and its value is a combination of five other currencies:
The IMF created the SDR in 1969 and set its value as the fractional amount of gold equivalent to one US dollar. In 1973, this changed to the equivalent of the pooled world currencies (as above).
For more info on the SDR and its exact value, check out the IMF’s factsheet.
Victoria Rose Richards is a biology graduate and embroidery artist from Devon, UK and her aerial embroidery is incredible. They’re inspired by UK landscapes and look like the view from an airplane in mid-air. (via)
Daniel Dockery wrote a good Bluesky thread on Cillian Murphy’s Scarecrow and how a failed audition for Batman turned into a succinct but interesting and deteriorating portrayal of The Scarecrow.
