Comedian Zach Anner first went viral in 2010 when he auditioned for Oprah Winfrey's contest in which the winner got their own TV show. Anner has cerebral palsy ("the sexiest of the palsys") and charmed everyone who saw it. Although the contest was plagued with controversy, he ultimately did launch a comedy travel show on Oprah's network. We've posted plenty of his videos in the years since.  

Today I found out that Anner got married this past June, to Karlee Currin. The wedding pictures are at his Instagram gallery here, here, and here. In this video, Zach and Karlee goofily relate the story of how they met and what they did on their first date, in which Anner ends the evening by saying what common sense tells us is the worst thing anyone can say on a first date. Lucky for both of them, it didn't spoil their future together. We wish them all the best. 
      
     

不懂就问，在线材里面封上人民币是啥意思？ pic.twitter.com/JGIGytTNYC

— 怪盗一只耳 (@yizhier_btc) September 9, 2026

I'm fairly sure these are reels of filament for 3D printing. They're being sealed in plastic with Chinese paper currency. Why?

Because each bill has a unique serial number that allows buyers to verify authenticity. Counterfeiting Chinese currency would be, um, rather hazardous. So the money serves a unique identification number.

-via Ryan Lackey, who compares it to Americans using the Postal Service instead of private shipping companies in order to turn any sort of fraud into a federal crime.

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles is named for one of its founders, George Lucas, but it is not limited to Star Wars. It's not limited to Lucas' work, either. The "Narrative Art" in the title refers to art that tells stories. The museum will open to the public on September 22nd, but io9 got to tour it on a preview day. They were impressed. 

The building itself is a work of art. The museum has galleries that range from concept art to movie props to digital exhibits, two theaters, an extensive library, and even a collection of original Banksy works. The exhibits cover all manner of pop culture from movies to comic books, but also art for the sake of art. And plenty of Star Wars, too. Of course, there's a gift shop and a cafe. The author has a few quibbles, like too few elevators and a reliance on phones for information that drained his battery. But mostly, the museum is a wonderland of imagination that you won't regret visiting the next time you're in L.A. 

    

Tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. On September 11, 2001, four airliners were hijacked and headed toward four targets on Al Qaeda suicide missions. Two hit the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, one struck the Pentagon, and the fourth flight was delayed just enough so that the passengers were made aware of what was going on when their flight path changed direction. 
 
United Airlines Flight 93 was the plane that was delayed.  The passengers and those on the outside knew it was doomed to crash into another target. The passengers stormed the cockpit and caused the plane to crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, instead of the target, which some involved claimed to have been the US Capitol Building. All aboard died stopping the hijackers. But the Air National Guard was on the way to do the same thing. Heather “Lucky” Penney piloted one of those aircraft that day. Since her jet was unarmed, she would have to crash into the airliner. Penney was ready to die, but didn't, and has spent the last 25 years working to make sure that an event like that never happens again.    

Milo of Croton was a famous athlete 2500 years ago who became a legend in his death. There is little doubt that Milo was a real person, a native of the Greek colony of Croton in southern Italy. Milo won six Olympic wrestling championships and was lauded as the strongest man in the world. He was also a war hero, leading men who were inspired by his strength and reputation. But there are plenty of legends about him that defy credence. Did he really train by carrying a calf around every day until it was a full-grown bull? That's most likely bull itself, but you'd expect stories like that to circulate about a famous athlete. 

What really got Milo into the history books is the legend of his death, which is illustrated in several paintings, yet reads more like an Aesop's fable than a true story. Milo was was supposedly eaten by wolves, but the circumstances around the account are an incredible cautionary tale that you can read about at Amusing Planet. 

The Tower of London was built in the year 1078 as a royal residence and fortress, but it has served many uses. You most likely know it as a prison. It has also been used as an armory, the treasury office, a public records office, and is now a repository for the Crown Jewels. But in the 13th century, it was a zoo. The royal menagerie came about due to the custom of foreign dignitaries bringing exotic wildlife as gifts for the king, in this case Henry III. In 1235, he was given three lions (although they were recorded as leopards) from the Holy Roman Emperor as a wedding gift that referred to the three lions in the royal coat of arms. They weren't the first exotic animals given to the king, but the Tower of London seemed like a good place to keep them and other creatures. 

In 1252, the king of Norway sent a gift in the form of a polar bear. You have to wonder who caught a wild polar bear and how they did it, although I supposed it could have been captured as an orphaned cub. King Henry was thrilled, although the zookeepers weren't, since polar bears require a lot of food. The tower still has a polar bear, in the form of the statue pictured above. Read about the polar bear who lived in the Tower of London at Mental Floss. 
  
(Image credit: Matt Brown) 

This is one vignette after another of surreal body horror rendered in simple and colorful animation. Well, maybe horror is too strong of a word, since there's no realism and little gore, despite plenty of heads exploding. There's also honestly very little meaning behind most of them, although I do like the image of exercising your fingers by scrolling on your phone as if they were walking on a treadmill. And dancing, uh, plants. Many of these sequences build tension due to what you think will happen, when sometimes it's a surprise left turn, and often nothing happens at all.       

This video is titled Lumps Vol. 1, so we can expect more of them to be posted in Vol. 2. Lumps is the internet pseudonym of animator Sam Drew, who made these scenes between 2019 and 2026. You can see more of his designs at his website. -via Memo of the Air

Fastest time to eat a burrito ⏱️ 🌯 30.75 seconds by Leah Shutkever 🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/0OZRMAncvW

— Guinness World Records (@GWR) September 7, 2026

I've never thought that a Guinness World Record was something attainable in my life. But I have, without knowing it, been training for this category of competition all of my life.

Leah Shutkever is a professional eater according to her Instagram profile.

So, by the way: it's possible to eat at a professional level. And Shutkever is definitely a pro. She holds 42 Guinness World Records, all of them eating vast quantities of food at high speed.

Watch her become one with a burrito. Watch and wonder.

-via Jarvis Best

On September 8, 1966, a new show named Star Trek debuted on NBC. The USS Enterprise had a five-year mission that only lasted three years, but the series came back in syndication due to viewer demand, and spawned a series of further adventures on both TV and the silver screen. Star Trek imagined a future in which money was unnecessary, all races, genders, and even species served together, and the universe was full of new civilizations to explore. The original series inspired many of today's astronauts and astrophysicists. NPR looks back at the franchise and how it continues to "live long and prosper."

But if you want something to argue about, another anniversary link takes on the challenge of ranking the 60 best Star Trek episodes from all the different series. "The Trouble with Tribbles" only made it to #33, but you'll probably have fond memories of the very top ranked episodes. 

You'll find more links celebrating the 60th anniversary of Star Trek at Metafilter. 

  

We know Elle Cordova (previously at Neatorama) is extremely witty and can make us laugh about the most arcane subjects, but this time she's outdone herself. And it's all about fonts. 

The "Major-General's Song" from the musical The Pirates of Penzance has long been a medium for parody, with the fast-paced and difficult lyrics repurposed for other subjects, most notably Tom Lehrer's "Elements Song" and Randall Munroe's "Every Major's Terrible." Cordova follows suit by reciting all the fonts for better or worse, more or less in alphabetical order, along with her opinion on their proper use. The ability to sing the song is enough to impress me, but the font jokes just keep rolling. Sure, you might find it funny, but send this to someone who really knows typography, and they will find it even funnier, because there are jokes within jokes in these lyrics. We all understand the tension between someone who cares deeply about font choice and the editor who just hits the default.

You've probably never thought about it, but many signs are made by negative stenciling. That's when the top layer of paint or plastic or whatever is coloring in the parts that aren't letters or logos. When a sign is out in the sun, wind, and rain for a long period of time, that top layer can develop cracks, tears, and peeling sections, often at the corners of the letters, which is the weakest part of the stencil. When this happens, the letters develop strange, spiky serifs that will remind you of nothing more than a heavy metal band logo.  

Instagram user 2022dirt brings us a collection of such signs from all over. They should have been replaced long ago, but remain as a kind of artwork because of their "new" weathered fonts. On the other hand, while they may get no maintenance, people are more than likely actually reading these signs because they look so different. -via Boing Boing  

When you think of extinct North American cats, you think of Smilodon and related saber-toothed cats. But there's also Miracinonyx trumani, often referred to as the "American cheetah." They looked like cheetahs, with long legs and long bodies built for chasing prey. But a new study that involved nuclear paleogenomes and stable isotopes found in fossils that are 23,000 to 31,000 years old found that these cats have no relation at all to African cheetahs, outside of being felines. They are a cousin to American pumas (cougars) in a line that diverged a couple of million years ago.

The study found Miracinonyx trumani ranged further north than previously thought, well into the Arctic region. These samples also showed gene mutations that hint they had a specialized diet that may have been based on fish in those cold conditions. Read the latest findings on the American cheetah, which may have just earned itself a new nickname of some kind, at UC Santa Cruz News. -via Real Clear Science 

(Image credit: Spinosaurid) 

Max Miller talks about piña coladas to the point you want to get up and make one, except you'd have to go to the store and get the ingredients. But what would you buy? He explains the normal piña colada you'd be served in most places is made with coconut cream and pureed pineapple and is quite sweet. That's the recipe we got from Puerto Rico in 1954. Then there's also the older piña colada, made with coconut milk and didn't always contain rum, which originated in Cuba. 

But wait a minute. When I was a kid, the only "coconut milk" you could get came in a can and was thick and sweet like sweetened condensed milk. That was also what I used to make piña coladas when I was a bartender in the 1970s. But today, you can get cashew milk, almond milk, oat milk, coconut milk, etc. etc. which are made by blending water with food solids. I would imagine that makes a very different piña colada. You have to wonder how it compares with the original from Cuba, which was no doubt made with the thin, sweet water straight from the inside of a coconut.  

People will still argue about using pureed pineapple vs. pineapple juice, or whether to add cream, and always which rum is best, but I don't think I've ever met a piña colada that I didn't like. There's a skippable ad from 3:10 to 4:20. -via Laughing Squid 

When governments are overthrown, there is no shortage of opportunists ready to fill the power vacuum left behind. In 1804, Haiti ended years of uprisings from its enslaved people by overthrowing their French rulers, although the revolution left the country in incredible and unjust debt that directly led to the current conditions in that nation. In the years after the revolution, Haiti was split into two kingdoms. The northern kingdom was ruled by Henry I from 1811 to 1820. Wanting to shield himself from assassination and live like a European king, he had a grand palace built (with slave labor) called San Souci. While the palace was quite impressive, it never bought Henry the respect he felt he deserved from European royalty. 

Due to Haiti's financial situation, San Souci was never maintained as it should have been, and is now in ruins, although it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Read about this erstwhile palace and the part it played in Haitian history at Kuriositas. 

(Image credit: Van) 

In the animal kingdom, the males of the species are often much fancier than the females. In humans, however, fancy dress has usually followed class lines more than gender. The higher the status, the more colorful and accessorized the fashions were. By the Middle Ages, both men and women of high status in Western civilization wore bright colors, wigs, lace, and high heels, while the working class donned plainer clothes. But today, women of all classes wear a variety of styles and colors, while men all look alike: dark suits in congress, khakis at the office, or jeans at the work site. 

What happened? It was a fashion movement during the Regency Era of the early 19th century now called "the great male renunciation." The move was gradual, but it gave us the idea that a man has better things to do than to care how he looks. It was never true, but it sure made picking an outfit for the day easier.