• Where'd the Spanish tilde over the 'n' come from?
  
  
• About that photo of a gamer duct-taped to a ceiling beam.
  
  
• Asmara, Eritrea, has a collection of beautiful Modernist buildings from the Italian occupation.
  
  
• Pivot to video, a revolting new trend. Perhaps in direct respons, my laptop's taken to freezing up periodically, seemingly whenever called upon to display a video.
  
  
• Simulation: quadcopters destroy an air force, and an aircraft carrrier. (Yt)

Imagery from the heavily-shielded Juno probe, compiled from its Perijove 05 and Perijove 06 passes over Jupiter. It's all kinda twitchy because the spacecraft's rotating at about at about 3/min.

• A former run-down slum in Central Java, Indonesia has received a dazzling makeover!
  
  
• The Five Nicest and the Five Most Annoying Sounds of Japan. Also, more audio, unrelated: a half-hour of ambient 'Bladerunner'.
  
  
• At Jalopnik, How Pixar screwed up cartoon cars for a generation of kids. I've never seen a 'Cars' movie but I'm intrigued by the new one. Also, Gorgeous cars from the Art Deco era.

• According to The Telegraph, the world's coolest passports are apparently issued in Scandinavia and Canada. Also shows some interesting entry stamps, like Easter Island's.
  
  
• Concerning two million-dollar 'face' gold coins -- a 221-pound Canadian Maple Leaf, and Australia's One Tonne Gold Coin. One of the Canadians (apparently, about twenty were minted) was recently stolen from a museum in Berlin.
  
  
• Ah, 'Fantasia' -- "a new form of musical entertainment," according to our host, Deems Taylor. Saw it in the theater at least three times in the 70s (once, at Radio City Music Hall), and I'm now in possesion of the original 'Disney Classics' restored version, with its aggresively stereo Fantasound soundtrack. My favorite sequences are the abstract Bach at the beginning, and the mythological Beethoven. Also wondering about what was cut in the latter, this side-by-side comparison with & w/o Sunflower shows all. Plus another, related YouTube, the movie's original Claire de Lune, initially cut but surfacing a little later with some version of 'Blue Bayou' for the music; don't care to know which.

• At Bored Panda, Honest Pictures of Russia -- photos by Alexander Petrosyan. Also, David Burdeny's photos of Moscow subway stations -- after hours, so no people.
  
  
• The USGS and the National Geographic have teamed up so you can use the interactive map to find your TOPO and print out its PDF.
  
  
• Beautiful neighborhood Korean convenience store pictures by Me Kyeoung Lee. And finally, Umbrellas in Japan.

• Illustrated -- What Your Poop Can Tell You About Your Health, posted here as a public service.
  
  
• Found a wiki devoted to Boy Scout merit badges. Its Discontinued merit badges might be an interesting starting point, although each badge also has a page.
  
  
• The Soviet future of 2017 as imagined in 1960, for a filmstrip. Also, Car ads of the Soviet Union.
  
  
• I've mentioned this science fiction cover artist from the 1950s here a couple times, but I keep forgetting his name. Searching again, I found his entry in something amazing called the Internet SF DataBase. For more, here's another Richard M. Powers site somebody's got on Tumblr.
  
  
• Donald D. Markstein's Vast Repository of Toonological Knowledge has entries for almost every comic book and cartoon.

• It's Boxing Day but didja know it's also Mao's 123rd birthday? Here's a soulful new pop version of The East is Red to commemorate the occasion.
  
  
• A few more Chirstmas links: in Collectors Weekly, A Wonderful Life: How Postwar Christmas Embraced Spaceships, Nukes, & Cellophane which traces the development and evolution of the American holiday; Honest Trailers reviews the ever-perplexing Rankin/Bass 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' (note that Wikipedia explains the miner licking his pick-axe: a deleted scene involving a peppermint mine); and Mental Floss explains 10 British Christmas traditions which confuse Americans.
  
  
• Only saw a couple episodes of 'MythBusters' but I'm absorbing its collected conclusions which are summarized at mythresults.com.
  
  
• Another didja know -- the buyer of a new Rolls-Royce can specify many custom features, one of which is a fiber-optics laced headliner, which simulates the night sky.
  
  
• And at NewStatesman, a fascinating article about false memories of a non-existent movie called 'Shazaam' which some are convinced they saw in the early 90s.

• Here's a company, Supernova, which sells a blue taillight for bicycles. Since this isn't legal in many jurisdictions, they've posted a handy state-by-state list of blue light laws. I'm now wondering about green, and purple -- the latter may be too close to law enforcement's special blue wavelengths. Speaking of green, there's a new Wal*Mart-supported initiative which surfaced around Veteran's Day -- replace one of your porch-lights to "support the troops." There's several in my neighborhood (one house even has four) but at first I guessed these were simply devout Muslims, green being the color of Islam and emerald lights, a common night-time indicator of mosques.
  
  
• Someone is stealing sunken WWII battleships (possibly for their low background steel).

• Syrian refugees are peddling through a loophole to cross the Russia-Norway frontier.
  
  
• One of those two-page Cracked listicles which are pretty good -- Seven Types of Violence They Get Wrong in Action Movies, especially that hand-cutting thing of #4. Clearly "they"ve never had a badly cut palm.
  
  
• Two unrelated videos: an art installation in Montréal, 21 Swings; and Psychedelic Pink, the Pink Panther cartoon they showed before "Yellow Submarine" when it was new in early 1969. In 2008 the kids were watching this cartoon when I checked into a family-run guesthouse in Jodhpur, India.

• History of Waffles. Pearl sugar apparently the secret ingredient of true NYWF Belgian waffles.
  
  
• Beautiful Old Batteries
  
  
• Rocket with internal combustion engine -- a straight six, in Space!
  
  
• Garrison Keillor just retired; here he is at the beginning, in 1979.

• A Map of the World's Most Superlative Trees
  
  
• United had Men-Only Flights up until 1970
  
  
• Barton Bernstein - American conservatives are the forgotten critics of the atomic bombing of Japan. Sounds a little out of character now.

've been unable to post for a while, links accumulating as wunderland.com transitioned to a different server.

• Over at Bored Panda, an architectural phenomenon I first saw in a dance sequence in The Fall -- Stepwells of India. More at the wikipedia Stepwell page.
  
  
• In The Atlantic, The Curious Case of Men and Women's Buttons.
  
  
• Helium Dreams in the New Yorker -- a new generation of airships is born. "So this... this is what happened."
  MeFi

• James Fallows has declared war on the two-stroke engine, specifically the Leafblower Menace.
  
  
• The Food Lab: The Science of the Best Yorkshire Puddings aka Popovers.
  
  
• Consumer Reports Video: Chevrolet Crash Test -- 2009 vs 1959. Automobile accidents must've been horrible in the Fabulous Fifties.
  
  
• All your germaphobic habits are pretty much useless.

• RIP David Bowie -- the 70s-80s soundtrack of my life incomplete w/o your music. Pushing Ahead of the Dame is an amazing reference, has an in-depth post about every song. And don't miss the twitchy "Blackstar" video.
  
  

From The Commercial Zen of Muji by Silvia Killingsworth, in the New Yorker:
• The colors, patterns, and materials are generic, but everything, from toothbrush holders to storage boxes, comes in pleasing shapes.
• [Their] compact all-white appliances are described by a display sign as having "a square shape tinged with mellow roundness."
• Its advertising conveys the sense that life without logos, loud colors, and sharp edges is peaceful and free of distraction and excess.

• James Fallows, in The Atlantic, on The Tragedy of the American Military.

• The design of this Iowa bridge is mind-blowingly cool
  
  
• In the Soviet Union, "okroshka" were mystery ingrediants, diced into cubes. From A short history of the USSR through its food
  
  
• In The Atlantic, Don't Hate the Phone Call, Hate the Phone

• Interactive US Fall Foliage map -- scroll down for notes on Autumnal colors.
  
  
• A few more Slate articles of note: Van Gogh's birthplace in the Netherlands, Zundert, celebrated his 125th birthday with a parade of amazing floats; European church façades by Markus Brunetti; Baths Are Better Than Showers: a Manifesto by Lily Hay Newman (includes the conundrum -- standing, how do you wash your feet?) and finally, the most important, History's True Warning by Timothy Snyder -- How our misunderstanding of the Holocaust offers moral cover for the geopolitical disasters of our time.
  
  
• Robert Foyle Hunwick in Foreign Policy: We're Still Fighting the Japanese in Bed -- "China's oversexed anti-Japanese propaganda and its underground porn trade have a lot in common." I've watched TV on the mainland, and it's true.
  
  
• Watching "Children of Men" -- don't ignore the background! (SLYT)

• Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion 1945-98 by Isao Hashimoto -- hypnotisch.
  
  
• Misophonia -- I suffer terribly from this.
  
  
• Also at Slate, Trump is the Only Candidate Talking About a Taboo Subject. I heard they're yelling 'White Power' at his rallies now.
  
  
• And where was that link? Ah yes -- the Fantastic Four was the Great American Novel.

• Is the new Fantastic Four movie The End of the Fantastic Four? Didn't realize the recent #645 would be the last issue of The World's Greatest Comic Magazine.
  
  
• Three from Bored Panda: the Hypnotizing Beauty of Lavendar Harvesting, How Birds See Our World and street artists paint 200 houses to unite community of Palmitas, Mexico (reminds me of Jhodpur).
  
  
• Why 'They Live' is the Perfect Movie for America's Toxic Politics and Culture

• A map of which states have legal fireworks. If you ignore Pennsylvania, the Fun Zone kinda resembles the Louisiana Purchase.
  
  
• Wikipedia: the Bellamy Salute -- what we did with our arms during the Pledge of Allegiance, up until WWII.
  
  
• At The Nation, speaking of flags, What Was the Confederate Flag Doing in Cuba, Vietnam, and Iraq?

• John McAbery sculpts wood.
  
  
• Why Some Civil War Soldiers Glowed in the Dark.
  
  
• "Sponsored Content" or "Promoted Stories." You've seen it, down at the bottom of web pages; maybe you've even followed the links. Explanations at A Complete Taxonomy of Internet Chum, where John Mahoney goes all the way down.

• BlankOnBlank.org is the source of that Bucky animated interview mentioned previously. Many others there, curently featuring Ray Bradbury.
  
  
• A story in need of a James Burke treatment -- Cheese, pottery and human evolution involving lactose intolerance.

• Buckminster Fuller, on Life with clever animations.
  
  
• In The Atlantic, The Secret Life of Yo-yos.
  
  
• Die Schwarze Sonne -- early German science fiction

• Always enjoy Old Time Radio; have recently discovered Airchecks, audio archives of several minutes to hours of some radio station, now a broadcast from the past. First I came across was this whole day from 1939 of WTOP at archive.org, then more recently an hour from Top 40 KVIL in '67 at soundcloud which is gone now, probably because it hadn't been 'scoped', where most of the songs' middles are removed. Seeking the sounds of my youth led to this WPGC tribute site which has both triva and airchecks, but unlike there, this DJ's blog posting has links to some unscoped MP3s from that station 1963-1972.
  
  
• airportcod.es provides access to a fun fact about your favorite aerodrome via an attractive interface.
  
  
• This looks tasty -- The Leviathan.

• At Vox, 21 snacks that explain our delicious world. I want that McDonalds banana pie #6 and also #16, Mandise? (a delicate sponge cake with chocolate and hazelnut).
  
  
• Kiss Me Deadly -- a video review by Colin Marshall
  
  
• 100 Years of National Geographic Maps: The Art and Science of Where

Re-sizing countries based on their population.

• Mustang station wagon, fact or fiction?
  
  
• BoredPanda photos of abandoned building stairwells in Eastern Europe
  
  
• Today's A.A.Milne's birthday, so it's Winnie the Pooh Day.

• Forgotten Movie Songs #18: Benson, Arizona, from Dark Star, the most recent addition to my eclectic listing of Treadmill Tunes.
  (Another page offers the MP3 and more anecdata)

• In the Guardian, How to make the perfect grilled cheese sandwich.
  
  
• Handle the Heat has an extensive, Ultimate Guide to Chocolate Chip Cookies -- all the possible variations on the original Toll House recipe, documented.
  
  
• Foggy Dubai, beautiful photos.
  
  
• Mark Lisanti at Grantland: An Unblinking Journey of Autumnal Despair -- contemporary commentary on 'It's the Great Pumpkin, CB.'

• Tom Scott details Four Fantastic Features We Don't Have In The English Language on You Tube.
  
  
• On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Wiedervereinigung, there's a bit of ostalgie in Victor Grossman's Why Did East Germany Really Go Under? (an article at CounterPunch).
  
  
• Results of a Buzzfeed poll -- 24 Surprisingly Divisive Pooping Habits. Concerning #10, sit or stand to wipe -

  ...about 50% of the people you know wipe their heinies standing up, and about 50% of the people you know do it sitting down. Furthermore, many report being completely unaware that the other option exists.

  This poll reveals a more realistic 71/29% ratio (and apparently, those who claim to stand "up" may just in fact be squatting).

• Bill Weaver describes flying an SR-71 Blackbird when it fell apart traveling at Mach 3+ on my birthday in 1966. He blacked out immediately and when he came to, his face-plate was frosted over.
  
  
• In the NY Times magazine, Kids Eat Breakfast around the world.
  
  
• Aboard Amtrak

• Vertiginous views from the top of Hong Kong
  
  
• Classics of Science Fiction (drill down) and the Top 40 space movies, according to The Telegraph

• Fascinating -- Campanologomania -- why is the dumb-bell, change ringing and more
  
  
• Tower Records on Sunset in 1971 (10-minute video)
  
  
• Also in Slate, in one of their blogs, Why Does ISIS Have So Many Names?

  the New York Times, LA Times; ABC, CBS and NBC all use 'ISIS'. However, the US government uses 'ISIL', for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

  Initially I attributed the difference to an assumed ignorance of the Levant Also contrast Obama's neutral rendering of "ISIL" (almost rhyming with "pencil") with the sinister, hissing "ISIS."
  And FYI that second "S" actually stands for "al-Sham" (Arabic for the Levant).

• In Slate, What Do Talking Apes Really Tell Us? Update on Koko -- all she wants to do now is "sit in her little trailer and watch TV."

• Amazing JT Singh travel promotion videos by Rob Whitworth -- This Is Shanghai, Barcelona GO! and especially Enter Pyongyang.
  
  
• Ex-postmaster condemns the USPS, he doesn't like the Harry Potter stamps. Wish my post offices had the new Jimi Hendrix, but they hardly received any, sorry, sold out.
  
  
• Say, what was that about Mangoes? And what type does that pertain to? There's six kinds but to most, mango = Tommy Atkins but I don't like those -- to me, they've a chemical taste... however, those little yellow ataulfos from Mexico or the Philippines, they're good.

• In Wired, The App I Used to Break Into My Neighbor's Home (along with a photo of the key and a 3D printer)
  
  
• Trends in ethnic plastic surgery
  
  
• Trailer: Mad Max - Fury Road
  
  
• A photoblog, "Tokyo in 91 Days" -- Why is Tokyo so cute?
  
  
• From a recent broadcast of the California Report about the Type 2 Buslab in Berkeley.

• The greatest TV show never seen -- the 1963 version of The Fantastic Four.

• From Detroit, Fordite -- 'gemstone' laminates formed from layers of enamal paint.

• How Censors Killed The Weird, Experimental, Progressive Golden Age Of Comics
  
  
• At Dark Roast Blend, Female Soviet Pilots of The Great Patriotic War
  
  
• Chocolate! The War's Secret Weapon
  Related - Heston Blumenthal's Chocolate Mousse how-to video, must try soon
  
  
• Overlook the Sharper-Image-catalog-style text and enjoy an awesome ambient-background sound generator -- mynoise.net
  
  
• The Beauty and Strangeness of the World's Colossal Statues

• The Oldest Living Things in the World
  
  
• In The New Yorker, Paris vs. New York, with a slide show of Charles Berberian drawings.
  
  
• Concerning NZ's mandatory helmet law -- result: less cyclists on the road, and more injuries among those still peddling.
  
  
• At a blog-comic by Natalie Nourigat called Home is Where the Internet Is, Don't let fear stop you from traveling.

• The Pizza Styles of NYC
  
  
• The Making of Neon Signs in Hong Kong

• Bombay Deco
  
  
• 15 parents answer, "What's the creepiest thing your kids have ever said?"
  
  
• Geometric Sand Castles from Calvin Seibert
  
  
• Polyhedra and the Media -- musings by Adam Lore on new geometry -- a new type of polyhedra has supposedly been discovered
  
  
• Look for Zacharie Gaudrillot-Roy's Façades series.

• Brian Eno released a secret, to-the-trade only CD of ambient sounds in 1989, called Textures, now available on YouTube. Interesting, but I listen to the older Evening Star more often.
  
  
• A new day trip, when you go to Venice (and everybody should go to Venezia   at least once) -- the technicolor town of Burano. The name reminds me of the Soviet space shuttle and the neighboring glass island of Murano.

• Why we need to sleep in total darkness
  
  
• Streamliner Memories, a blog devoted to 'the Silver Age of Passenger Trains'
  
  
• Concerning Appalachia today, The White Ghetto in the National Review.
  Paul Krugman's response.
  
  
• Rainy Mood -- because 'rain makes everything better'