The 2025 movie Avatar: Fire and Ash is the second sequel to Avatar (2009) following Avatar: The Way of Water (2022). The title sounds like the film takes place in a volcano, but that turned out to be a small part of the movie, which is focused on water like the previous film. Jake Sully and his family once again deal with the mostly evil humans who have invaded Pandora. They now have a human child, but the franchise seems to have forgotten how much taller the Na'vi are than humans. There seems to be some magical shenanigans that make the boy called Spider start to turn into a Na'vi. Who knows? 

Avatar: Fire and Ash was not as popular as The Way of Water, but it was hella successful. The budget was maybe $400 million, and it grossed $1.4 billion. When your only real competition is your previous work, what does "success" mean, anyway? Screen Junkies found Avatar: Fire and Ash to be a bit repetitive, but it still looks gorgeous. 

The Ocean City (New Jersey) Welcome Center is such a popular place for birds to nest that it has been designated as a rookery where the Audubon Society holds events there. Jacqueline Burke was visiting fromPennsylvania with her camera in May of 2024 and said there were dozens of active nests. Underneath a ramp, she spied an egret's nest with three chicks, sporting punk plumes and attitude, under a parent's watchful supervision. The scene made for a good picture, and now it has won the grand prize in Smithsonian Magazine’s 23rd Annual Photography Contest. These chicks would now be adults and look like every other egret you've seen. 

The contest gathered over 17,000 submissions from 108 countries. There were winners in the categories of artistic, travel, people, American experience, wildlife, and drone photography, plus the reader's choie award, and you can see all eight images and read the stories behind them at Smithsonian.  

(Image credit: Jacqui Burke) 

It's always a treat to get a mashup of two (or more) familiar songs from Bill McClintock. Usually, they are shockingly different songs that meld in a surprising way. This time, the two main songs are thematically similar- they are about a working woman.

Donna Summer's 1983 hit "She Works Hard for the Money" was inspired by a tired restroom attendant she met at a Grammy afterparty. The song is about all blue-collar women. On the other hand, the 1978 song "Roxanne," the first hit by The Police, is definitely about a sex worker. Together, the two songs seem to be about a really hard-working prostitute. You can also appreciate a 1970s disco singer with an '80s hit mashed up with an '80s band's song from the 1970s. 

Musically, McClintock shows his skill at making disparate rhythms work together better than they should. There are also snippets of "Never Enough" by L.A. Guns and "Round and Round: by Ratt in this mashup.   

Professional cosplay photographer David "DTJAAAAM" Ngo attended the recent MegaCon in Orlando and snapped images of the best cosplayers. Among them was this young lady who adds Kermit the Frog to the hairstyle and wardrobe of Hatsune Miku, a vocaloid and virtual idol singer. It's not easy being blue, but she does it with style.

Humans spent thousands of years looking for ways to make life easier. We turned from hunting and gathering to agriculture, then we invented machines to help with labor. Now we have artificial intelligence so we don't have to bother thinking anymore. Recent research has identified what is called "cognitive surrender," when critical reasoning is abandoned to trust in external reasoning from algorithms.  

The experiments used Cognitive Reflection Tests, which are designed to separate people who make decisions on a quick, intuitive basis and those who slowly deliberate the details to come to different conclusions. In other words, the tasks are designed to be somewhat confusing on the surface. The option to consult AI was added (except for a control group), with the AI programmed to give the correct solution only half of the time. While many people took the option to consult AI, some double-checked the algorithm's advice and others blithely accepted what the algorithm told them.   

Overall, across 1,372 participants and over 9,500 individual trials, the researchers found subjects were willing to accept faulty AI reasoning a whopping 73.2 percent of the time, while only overruling it 19.7 percent of the time. 

Significantly, those who trusted artificial intelligence with their answers were more confident about their decisions, no matter how correct they were or weren't. And adding a time limit only increased the number who trusted AI. Read more about this research at Ars Technica. 

We clean our kitchens and we clean our toilets, because that's where the germs are, right? Sure, but bacteria, viruses, fungi, and even insects are more universal than our cleaning habits are. During the pandemic, we learned to clean our doorknobs and wash our hands correctly. But you can't get those nasty little germs off everything. Chill Dude Explains might ruin your day by looking at the things that never get washed in our homes and revealing how nasty they can get. He explains how you can mitigate the germ infestations on some of these, but not all of them. It's a good thing we have immune systems, right? 

You might check off your lifestyle habits as the list goes on. I, for example, am now thankful that I don't wear makeup, buy meat, or have an ice maker. I'm surprised that a keyboard isn't included in this list, because I touch that more than anything, and it rarely gets washed. 

If you've been following Neatorama for a while, you are familiar with Tristan da Cunha, a tiny island in the middle of the widest part of the Atlantic Ocean. The British territory is 38 square miles and has one town, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, with about 250 residents. There is no airstrip, and ships arrive only about once a month or so. The island has a school, a doctor, and internet access. 

On such a remote island with a small population, you'd think that life would be slow and bucolic, but nothing is further from the truth. There are so many tasks necessary for community life that everyone learns to pitch in and multi-task. Residents fish, process seafood, care for livestock, tend to gardens, repair homes, help out at the school, and run the government. When a ship arrives with supplies and a limited number of tourists, everyone knows what their job is. NPR has a lovely multi-media presentation that shows us what everyday life is like for the few dozen residents of Tristan da Cunha. That life is not for everyone. -via Nag on the Lake 

(Image credit: The Official CTBTO Photostream) 

We've all seen the viral instructions for bathing a cat, which mainly consists of retrieving the cat from another part of the house and tending to your wounds. There's the easier alternate method, too. Cats are famously hydrophobic (which does not means rabies in this case). They will loudly proclaim they are self-cleaning, but sometimes they require extra help. I have always considered bathing a cat to be a two-person task. 

Ash is an outlier. He is the kind of cat we all wish we had, because he loves taking a bath. Here we see how eager he is, and how calm he stays during the procedure. In return, his owner makes a big production out of it, basically giving Ash a spa day to keep him clean and happy. If I had such an amenable cat, I would bathe him more than once a month, just for a fun of it. See more of Ash at Instagram. 

Bunny rabbits are a sign of spring renewal, and are everywhere around Easter, in our yards and our Easter baskets. They are also seen as the most harmless of all wildlife, which is why we find it amusing to make them into monsters, from the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog to Bunnicula. That joke is not altogether new, either, as seen in the murderous bunnies of medieval marginalia.  

A town in England has its own killer rabbit, perched atop the back door of the Cathedral Buildings, which is one building and not a cathedral. The black bunny with its bulging eyes and red mouth and claws is no medieval gargoyle- the building was erected in 1901. But there was no explanation for it then, and indeed the rabbit went mostly unnoticed for a hundred years. In the last couple of decades, legends have grown up around it and people go out of their way to see the "vampire rabbit." So what's the real story? Lenora at The Haunted Palace Blog takes us through the history of fictional killer bunnies and digs to the bottom of Newcastle upon Tyne's bad bunny.  -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: Mike Quinn) 

Epic Aussie Encounters set up a mirror near one of their trail cameras. It looks pretty natural for a mirror. Each critter is identified in the lower left corner when it first appears. Some were frightened, some were curious, and some took the reflection as a challenge. Some of the encounters are at night, and I wondered how well they actually saw their reflection. The Brushtail possum certainly does- look at the size of his eyes! They all seemed to see pretty well, except for the echidna, which is known for bad eyesight and obliviousness. The grey strike thrush tried to impress its reflection, but who knows if it's a greeting, a warning, or a mating dance? The mother duck tried to ignore the mirror, because it told her she suddenly has twice as many babies, but one duckling was fascinated. One kangaroo was smart enough to look behind the mirror, and checked out the camera as well. You have to wonder what's going on in these animals' heads.

They say everything's bigger in Texas, and that includes ballpark food. The Texas Rangers have led the way with bigger and more ridiculous treats to nosh on during home games, and this year they've upped the ante by serving food in hats. Or serving hats as food. The biggest innovation for 2026 is the 9th Inning Rally Sombrero. It starts with a 26-inch diameter tortilla shaped somewhat like a sombrero, filled with nachos and a nine-layer dip. You can literally eat your hat. Helpfully, the snack is supported by a paper tray. And it will only cost you $39.99. 

Other new concessions at Globe Life Field in 2026 will include a dozen chicken tenders with fries served in a batter's helmet, and a churro sundae served in a plastic baseball cap. These are just the hat foods; there's an entire list of new over-the-top meals you'll be able to get at the game. Looking at the prices, you'll probably decide to eat before the game, and pray there are no extra innings. -via Metafilter 

Little kids love stories. When they learn they can make up their own stories, magic can happen. It doesn't matter whether they make any sense, because it's the imagination that matters. The joy a child takes in their own creativity is touching. Composer and music theory professor Stephen Spencer has a three-year-old daughter who loves to make up and tell stories. He takes her lyrics and makes songs out of them. To her fresh mind, an apple can find his mom with the help of a magical fairy that had legs. But a rabbit is just a regular rabbit.  



They don't rhyme, but Spencer takes that as a challenge. Lack of rhyme is no barrier to a hit song, as long as the song makes you feel good. After going viral, he's released many of the songs on Spotify. You can also find them at TikTok and YouTube. You'll be glad you goed there. -via Memo of the Air 

In the mid-19th century, France colonized a chuck of southeast Asia that now comprises Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. In Cambodia, the French tried to protect the ornately-carved ancient temples built a thousand years earlier that were being reclaimed by the rainforest. In 1923, a young French couple, André and Clara Malraux, arrived with a plan to loot a few of those carvings to sell and sustain a lifestyle they would like to grow accustomed to. André Malraux was a poet and author, but mainly a bookseller, who hung out with the literati of Paris he admired and wanted to be a part of. The couple passed themselves off as archaeologists and identified a more recently-discovered Hindu temple predating the Buddhist temples of Cambodia that lay deep in the jungle and wouldn't be well guarded. They hired a team of guides and porters and set off to Banteay Srei, where they cut reliefs from the temple and loaded them into seven large crates. 

Of course, they were caught. Malraux suffered from the hubris of youth, privilege, and a colonial mindset. Neither the Cambodians nor the French who lived there wanted the nation's cultural treasures looted. Malraux was forced to stay in Cambodia to face his crimes. It wasn't as long as some thought he deserved, but it was long enough to change his outlook completely, and launch him on a completely different lifetime path. Read about the looting of Banteay Srei at Smithsonian.  -via Strange Company    

(Image credit: Gary Todd) 

Usul has called a big one! Again, it is the legend.

Plant a thumper and summon Jera, a professional cosplayer and costumemaker in Nashville. For the 2023 Dragon Con, she appeared in this costume that mashes up the sandworm from the Dune franchise (specifically the 2020s depictions) and a bunny girl outfit.

The detail is exquisite. Notice that the ears appear to be made of stillsuit cells.

The Artemis II mission is an extraordinary endeavor that possibly heralds a return of the ambitions and accomplishments of the Space Race of the 1960s. These astronauts are making the first human departure from low earth orbit in 54 years.

Their $30 million toilet was recently in the news as it briefly malfunctioned. This toilet is notable in that it is the first in human history to leave the loving embrace of Earth's close gravity. Scientific American explains that the Apollo astronauts did not have a high-tech suction toilet. They had to make do with an assortment of tubes and bags that did not function well in microgravity. The astronauts loathed it, as fecal matter occasionally escaped to float about the capsule.

So as long as the Universal Waste Management System on the Artemis II vessel continues to function, current astronauts will have a better experience.

-via Marginal Revolution