Speaker 1: I guess what, well, what's that mango? So one of
Speaker 1: the things I used to love, and there really isn't
Speaker 1: that much of this anymore, But I used to love
Speaker 1: all the weird and ridiculous websites that you could find online.
Speaker 1: Like there's a page I've mentioned before that's dedicated strictly
Speaker 1: to saving the Northwest Pacific tree octopus. And of course,
Speaker 1: you know there aren't any endangerous species of octopus that
Speaker 1: live in trees, but this page really does its best
Speaker 1: to prove that they do. And uh, there's also the
Speaker 1: site I remember thinking it was so funny when I
Speaker 1: found it called Taco Spin. It's just a page with
Speaker 1: a single picture of a taco spinning, and as you're there,
Speaker 1: it just counts how many spins you've witnessed for the
Speaker 1: length of time you've been on a meaningful site. It
Speaker 1: really is. It means a lot to me. And there's
Speaker 1: also a site called is it Christmas? Basically type in
Speaker 1: is it Christmas dot com and most of the year
Speaker 1: it has the word no written on it. One special
Speaker 1: day year it changes to it. Yes, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to tell you which one because I don't want to
Speaker 1: spoil it for you. Don't don't spoil that for anything.
Speaker 1: I mean, I also kind of love fossils that are
Speaker 1: still on the Internet. Like I don't know why the
Speaker 1: original space Jam site is still up there, and you know,
Speaker 1: for the longest time, the official Dole Camp six website
Speaker 1: was still left up there. I don't know. Maybe somebody's
Speaker 1: still holding out hope that they'll somehow win. But it's
Speaker 1: just fun to see these, Yeah, I mean, it is bizarre,
Speaker 1: especially since someone's actually paying to keep those sites up.
Speaker 1: For today's nine things that would be really fun to
Speaker 1: just highlight delightful corners of the Internet, let's dig in
Speaker 1: a their podcast. Listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Speaker 1: Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
Speaker 1: friend Man Gueshow Ticketer and sitting behind the soundproof glass
Speaker 1: wearing a T shirt. It's been a little while since
Speaker 1: he's worn one of his custom T shirts. This one
Speaker 1: is of Avocado Rat, which I guess was a Brooklyn
Speaker 1: hipster version of Pizza Rat. That's that's our friends and
Speaker 1: producer Tristan McNeil so ago. We're talking delightful corners of
Speaker 1: the Internet today. But you know, every once in a while,
Speaker 1: I look up the blair Witch Project and your name,
Speaker 1: just to see if that beautiful story is still there.
Speaker 1: I can't believe you brought it up. You actually need
Speaker 1: to just remind us all of that story. So you
Speaker 1: were in college and you were I think you were
Speaker 1: interning somewhere and you and your friends went to go
Speaker 1: see the blair Witch Project. Right, yeah, that's right. So
Speaker 1: it was when I was living in d C for
Speaker 1: the summer and we just submitted this big project at
Speaker 1: my office and pulled together like this all night are essentially,
Speaker 1: and so our boss decided would be fun to treat
Speaker 1: us to a movie. So the Blair Witch Project had
Speaker 1: just come out, and we went to go see it,
Speaker 1: and during the movie I got motion sick. This like,
Speaker 1: I've actually fine generally, like when I'm at movies, I'm
Speaker 1: not affected by motion in movies or anything, but very
Speaker 1: very occasionally, like shaky camera work can make me a
Speaker 1: little nauseous, and the Blair Witch Project had that. So anyway,
Speaker 1: the movie ends, we leave the theater and there's this
Speaker 1: cub reporter just waiting outside from the Washington Post, just
Speaker 1: standing by the exit, and she's asking everyone like like,
Speaker 1: did you get sick? Did you get sick? Did anyone
Speaker 1: feel sick? So I guess it was enough of the
Speaker 1: thing that the Washington Post was like writing a trend
Speaker 1: piece on it. Anyway, my friends pointed her to me,
Speaker 1: and she comes up to me and she says, I
Speaker 1: heard you threw up. It's like, uh no, And she
Speaker 1: she says, uh, well, you look really wretched, and and
Speaker 1: I was a little confused, and she says, and your
Speaker 1: skin looks really palid. And I was like, what is
Speaker 1: going on your wretched palette? I need to stop this,
Speaker 1: So I said, excuse me. I mean I did not
Speaker 1: throw off. I I just got a little off from
Speaker 1: the shaky camera work, but nothing else. And you totally
Speaker 1: know this, but I used to have, especially in college,
Speaker 1: this this nervous habit of not knowing where to put
Speaker 1: my hands, and so I just kind of placed them
Speaker 1: on my stomach as I talked and as she kind
Speaker 1: of scribbled these things. She wrote up her notes and
Speaker 1: then ran away. And then the next day my friends
Speaker 1: showed me the Washington Post, which had this ridiculous paragraph
Speaker 1: all about me. It was ridiculous, and actually I decided
Speaker 1: to pull this up because it's just such a delightful
Speaker 1: part of the Internet to me. But here is what
Speaker 1: it says. It says for some like Maesh Ticket or twenty,
Speaker 1: the jittery camera was enough to make him feel wretched
Speaker 1: after a recent screening. Looking palid, he stood outside a
Speaker 1: few minutes after the show quote the handheld camera stuff
Speaker 1: made me sick, he said, clutching his stomach. He did, not, however,
Speaker 1: actually hurl, he reported. I can't ever get through it.
Speaker 1: It's as his friends, but no doubt grateful for that.
Speaker 1: It is so ridiculous and I feel like for years
Speaker 1: after that it was like one of the top articles
Speaker 1: when you google my name, or at least when you
Speaker 1: googled my name with the word wretched. Yep, if you
Speaker 1: google Mangesh his name with wretched, you will find this
Speaker 1: story anyway, So that may be the best part of
Speaker 1: the internet. But anyway, where do you want to go
Speaker 1: from here? So? How about a weird bookroom? And this
Speaker 1: is a section of a site from a Books which
Speaker 1: is an online book dealer. And the weird book Room
Speaker 1: is this sort of ever growing assortment of the most bizarre, awkward, unsettling,
Speaker 1: like amazingly off the titles you'll ever find and it
Speaker 1: isn't just like a photoblog of book covers either. You
Speaker 1: can actually buy these obscure titles directly from the site,
Speaker 1: but you don't have to buy them. Pruising them is
Speaker 1: super fun. And here just a few favorites I found
Speaker 1: whilst giving the list. Extreme ironing one oh one, crafting
Speaker 1: with cat hair, how to live with an idiot, gobble,
Speaker 1: improofing one's chicken coop, the thermodynamics of pizza rats for
Speaker 1: those who care, how to make your own dried apple dolls,
Speaker 1: old tractors and the men who love them, and nuclear war.
Speaker 1: What's in it for you? So good? And this seems
Speaker 1: like a great place to do your holiday shopping, just
Speaker 1: to find some some real gems out there there definitely
Speaker 1: is all right. Well, here is a page I liked.
Speaker 1: It's called That's Not How You pipette, and it's basically
Speaker 1: a bag of people and pop culture misusing lab equipment.
Speaker 1: And so for anyone who doesn't know, a pipette is
Speaker 1: this lab tool that's basically the science equivalent of an
Speaker 1: eye dropper, like a turkey based or you know, kind
Speaker 1: of a kind of a science based or I guess.
Speaker 1: But despite how simple pipettes may seem they actually come
Speaker 1: in a bunch of different forms and sizes depending on
Speaker 1: what you're trying to do, and unfortunately that kind of
Speaker 1: nuance often falls by the wayside and TV shows, especially
Speaker 1: ones that portray lab text and crime scene investigators. And
Speaker 1: so for most to us that's not that big of
Speaker 1: a deal because we really can't tell the difference. We're
Speaker 1: not used to seeing these in use all the time.
Speaker 1: But for someone who works in a chemistry lab or
Speaker 1: in medicine, it could be pretty annoying to see a
Speaker 1: common tool so badly misused on the screen. And so
Speaker 1: that's where this tumbler comes in because it acts as
Speaker 1: a running list of all the pipette fails in popular
Speaker 1: TV shows, And weirdly, there's actually a wide range of
Speaker 1: mistakes to catalog here. So there's some simple stuff like
Speaker 1: you know, using one while I'm not wearing gloves, or
Speaker 1: using a pipette that's way bigger than the situation requires.
Speaker 1: But then there's the really egregious stuff like when a
Speaker 1: character uses a pipette to insert you know, an r
Speaker 1: F I D chip and somebody's hands they used one
Speaker 1: for some reason. So the site has been around since
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, and and you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: an oldie, but I still like looking back at this one.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure a favorite of people who like the
Speaker 1: fact check as well. Right like like kind of falls
Speaker 1: into a category of I feel like there was an
Speaker 1: HR director who looked at the office sin and catalog
Speaker 1: how many mistakes the HR department was making with Steve
Speaker 1: Carrell's character. But uh, I love that. So you know what,
Speaker 1: one of the sites that took the Internet by storm
Speaker 1: while back was Stuff on My Cat, which is a
Speaker 1: good site for folks who enjoyed the simple pleasure of
Speaker 1: seeing random objects put on top of sleeping cats. But
Speaker 1: you know, for many that scene has gotten a little
Speaker 1: too pedestrian over the years. It's easy to find house
Speaker 1: cats sleeping and get them to pose with a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff on top of them, but trying to do
Speaker 1: that with a capybara is way harder. So has the
Speaker 1: world's largest road in the native of South America. You know,
Speaker 1: these can be a little harder to come by to
Speaker 1: begin with, and so spotting a capa bara was something weird.
Speaker 1: Sitting on top of its back tends to be way
Speaker 1: more rewarding and and that's why I love the site.
Speaker 1: It's called Animals Sitting on capabaras dot com and it
Speaker 1: is just photos of wild animals on top of these
Speaker 1: like obliging capa baras. You can find turtles, dogs, monkeys, butterflies.
Speaker 1: Sometimes like a group of birds will be on top
Speaker 1: of there and just taking advantage of this like oversized roading.
Speaker 1: But you know, the blog also features fan art of
Speaker 1: where like people depict their favorite animal stacks on top
Speaker 1: of cappa barras. That just takes it to another level.
Speaker 1: That's alright, Well, since you brought up animals, here's the
Speaker 1: thing I like that Gabe happened to tell me about.
Speaker 1: So you know how Twitter is obviously this mixed bag
Speaker 1: of information and of course trolls, But there's one account
Speaker 1: on there that's so sweet and simple it almost makes
Speaker 1: up for everything. And it's called I've Pet that Dog
Speaker 1: and it follows this ten year old boy named Gideon
Speaker 1: Kid who's on this ongoing quest to meet and hopefully
Speaker 1: pet every dog he possibly can. I love it, and
Speaker 1: you know, and and that's that's really all there is
Speaker 1: to it. Like every post includes a photo of Gideon
Speaker 1: posing alongside the latest dog that he pets, and below
Speaker 1: it as this right up summer Rising the encounter. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's so good. And actually here's one from a week
Speaker 1: or so ago when Gideon met this dog, Coco. Here's
Speaker 1: what he writes, I pet Coco. Today is his first birthday.
Speaker 1: He's an English chocolate lab. He loves music, so he
Speaker 1: was named after the movie Coco. He's a smart dog
Speaker 1: who will bring you his food if you say, bring
Speaker 1: me a can. He loves bananas and wines for them.
Speaker 1: And Coco is the happiest when you scratch his armpits.
Speaker 1: So anyway, apparently I've pet that dog has amassed nearly
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand followers since it launched last April, and
Speaker 1: in that time, Gideon has personally met more than seven
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dogs. So I mean, I like dogs
Speaker 1: a lot, and I think that feels like more dogs
Speaker 1: than all pen in my life. Like he's really he's
Speaker 1: only ten. He's on a mission. There's no doubt about them,
Speaker 1: all right, So what do you have next? So I've
Speaker 1: got a super quick and super weird one. It's called
Speaker 1: gold Bloomings, and gold Bloomings is nothing but flowers in
Speaker 1: bloom feed during Jeff Goldblum's head or a picture of
Speaker 1: him popping out of him, both really funny and really disturbing,
Speaker 1: which I think makes it worth mentioning. Yeah, that kind
Speaker 1: of sounds like maybe just like a weird dream you
Speaker 1: would have, like where all the flowers would have Jeff Goldblum,
Speaker 1: but he's like perky and every one of the pictures. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so weird. Al Right, Well, I'm gonna go with a
Speaker 1: little bit longer of a fact. And this is what
Speaker 1: the site I found called Ask the Past, and it's
Speaker 1: part blog, part advice column. But the twist is that
Speaker 1: all the advice is taken from very old or even
Speaker 1: ancient books, so obviously most of the advice is really terrible.
Speaker 1: So for instance, there's a question on how to tell
Speaker 1: if someone is dead or not and the answer is
Speaker 1: from the thirteen eighties. Here's what it says. If there's
Speaker 1: any doubt as to whether a person is or is
Speaker 1: not dead, apply lightly roasted onion to his nostrils, and
Speaker 1: if he be alive, he will immediately scratch his nobs.
Speaker 1: A's simple as that. Don't feel for a pull, Just
Speaker 1: life has to get an onion yeah, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a great hack. Or if you want to improve your memory,
Speaker 1: you could always follow this advice taken from a sixteenth
Speaker 1: century medical journal. So pay attention, mengo. This is important
Speaker 1: advice here, and it says to sleep hosed and showed,
Speaker 1: especially with foul socks, don't hinder the memory because of
Speaker 1: the reflection of the vapors, which feeblit the sight and
Speaker 1: causes the body to burn. Is that not profound? I
Speaker 1: am not sure what that means. Can you explain it? Well?
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure either, But basically you might have assumed
Speaker 1: that your poor memory was due to stress or lack
Speaker 1: of sleep, but it's actually due to sock vapors from
Speaker 1: dirty socks plugging up your brain. They're also blinding and
Speaker 1: burning you, apparently. Anyway, asked the past is this lovingly
Speaker 1: curated collection by a JOHNS Hopkins history professor named Elizabeth Archibald.
Speaker 1: And she's actually got some pretty funny answers on everything
Speaker 1: from how to interpret small hands to how to serve
Speaker 1: a flaming bird. That is great to know. And I
Speaker 1: know we've got two more spots on the internet to
Speaker 1: fill out now, but before we do that, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where
Speaker 1: we're talking about some delightfully strange corners of the Internet.
Speaker 1: And there are obviously too many of these to get
Speaker 1: to it. If you're listening and you've got a great one,
Speaker 1: please do share them with us because we want to
Speaker 1: hear your favorites. But anyway, will it's your last fact
Speaker 1: where you're gonna take it. Well, there's this site I
Speaker 1: love that everybody should investigate, and it's called Scouting New York.
Speaker 1: And I like it because you get to see what
Speaker 1: a movie scout sees when they kind of wander through
Speaker 1: a city, and how different a city might look through
Speaker 1: their eyes. And so the site was created by this
Speaker 1: guy named Nick Carr, and it's amazing what he finds.
Speaker 1: Like he'll walk into a hardware store and notice a
Speaker 1: strange arch, and you know, it's it's just this hardware
Speaker 1: store that's packed with these things in midtown Manhattan. But
Speaker 1: he'll follow the seams of the arch and find a
Speaker 1: little statue on both sides and get curious about that.
Speaker 1: And so he'll go back and do some research and
Speaker 1: show you how this little nondescript hardware store actually used
Speaker 1: to be this gorgeous ornate movie theater, and he spots
Speaker 1: these things in the details, so you know, the site
Speaker 1: is full of these delightful little findings, like this fishing
Speaker 1: village and the Bronx, or the story behind this George
Speaker 1: Jets and like house hidden in the New York skyline,
Speaker 1: or you know why every Hollywood film seems to shoot
Speaker 1: at the same Chinese restaurant. It's it's really a wonderful site.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. I really did like that, and I love that,
Speaker 1: you know, so many people can see the same city
Speaker 1: and not see what he sees, right, It's like pretty
Speaker 1: pretty impressive. So my last site doesn't follow the rules,
Speaker 1: but I love it so much I kind of had
Speaker 1: to give it a tribute. There's a site that the
Speaker 1: comedy superstar and your Bloomfeld created when he was a
Speaker 1: much younger comedian, and it's called Phalondromes and uh. While
Speaker 1: the original site doesn't exist today, you can still find
Speaker 1: links on the way Back Machine pretty easily. But for
Speaker 1: some reason, Amir decided to make a site full of phalindromes,
Speaker 1: which he defines as quote fake palindromes, and though they
Speaker 1: cannot be read the same forwards and backwards like their
Speaker 1: sister palindromes. Their peculiar structure makes them appear as if
Speaker 1: they can So I don't know why it's so funny
Speaker 1: to me, but the fact that he wasted all this
Speaker 1: time constructing phrases that seem like they can be read
Speaker 1: back and forth is really funny. So I'm gonna read
Speaker 1: a few of them to you. Oh gin need a dingo,
Speaker 1: I a cd rom ribbed a bearded Mordecai. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it sounds like a palindrome, but it's
Speaker 1: it's not quite. I guess that it makes it a phalondrome.
Speaker 1: This makes sense. There's one more. It goes able Sidler's
Speaker 1: race cars. I dress Elba and I feel like, I
Speaker 1: feel like that's exactly what pound rooms, so many pound
Speaker 1: rooms are. They're like, don't quite make sense, but like
Speaker 1: you want them to make sense because they're structured nicely.
Speaker 1: But I love that side. It's just so funny. It
Speaker 1: makes me laugh every time I look at it. I
Speaker 1: think that one it may be one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: I do want to admit I have seen those before,
Speaker 1: and I think I was in tears. I was laughing
Speaker 1: so hard at reading these and so for that, I
Speaker 1: think you deserve today's trophy. Mango. Well, I can't fault
Speaker 1: you there. I think that's it for today's part time genius.
Speaker 1: You know, I know you and I had so much
Speaker 1: fun looking this stuff up. Like I said earlier, I'd
Speaker 1: really love for any suggestions to come in. So if
Speaker 1: you've got great corners, great little secrets about the Internet
Speaker 1: that you want to send in, please please hit us
Speaker 1: up on email, Facebook, Twitter, where a part time genius
Speaker 1: at I heart media dot com and from gave Tristan
Speaker 1: willem Me thank you so much for listening to the
Speaker 1: d