Wednesday Night ONT - March 18, 2026 [TRex]

Good evening Horde. The time has come for very random mid-week shenanigans of the post-cafe overnight variety. Did I mention the shenanigans were random? They are indeed random.

Welcome to the Wednesday night ONT which means another edition of overnight fun and games. Pull up a chair and sit a spell. Good will offerings of amusing puns are happily accepted. Pants are optional. Be nice to your fellow commenters and AoS contributors. Leave Tucker, Megyn, Candace and anyone similar to threads elsewhere. Your reward is an open bar with as much virtual alcohol as JQ can serve.

[Top photo credit: B&O Railroad Museum, Baltimore, MD]

ONT Wholesome Content

This is Bethan's Rock. Who is Bethan and why does Bethan have a Rock? Glad you asked.

Bethan's Rock is on display at Poole Museum which is a maritime museum, art gallery and cultural center located in Poole, Dorset in the southwest of England. A main focus is a preserved 13th-century shipwreck known as the Mortar Wreck which is presented alongside various artifacts the vessel was carrying when it sank. The museum also features a 2,000-year-old Poole Logboat which is an Iron Age vessel found in 1964 during dredging work in Poole Harbor.

Per Atlas Obscura:

In the summer of 2019, a young girl by the name of Bethan was visiting Poole Museum with her mom. While exploring all the site had to offer, she and her mother began to discuss what museums do and why. Inspired by her visit, Bethan felt eager to support the museum's collection. She decided to donate her most precious treasure, something that she felt was appropriately significant and valuable: her favorite rock. Curators placed Bethan's Rock in a glass cabinet, just like many of the museum's other valuable artifacts, where visitors are now able to appreciate the piece as much as Bethan once did.

The rock donated by five year old Bethan became a social media phenomenon in 2021 after showing up on a Reddit post. If you're ever in Poole, stop by and have a look. Admission to the museum is free (but I doubt they're taking more rock donations).

Random music trivia:

Look at this gent playing keyboards in the video for "Video Killed the Radio Star" in 1981. It was the first music video aired on MTV. The band's name is The Buggles.

Oddly, he was not a member of the band, did not play on the actual studio recording of the song, and reportedly did not write the song or contribute musically to the track's composition or production.

At the time of the video, the band itself only had two members - Geoff Downes and Trevor Horn (a third, Bruce Wooley, was involved when the song was written but was not with the band at the time of the video). Horn handled vocals, bass and guitar and Downes played keyboards. But the guy playing keyboards in the frame above wasn't Geoff. It was a cameo by a keyboard player that Horn knew and worked with in London in the late 1970s.

Who was the guy? Hans Zimmer. You might have heard of him. He went on to compose soundtracks to many movies, including like The Lion King, Pirates of the Caribbean, Crimson Tide, Gladiator, Batman, the Dark Knight, Inception, The Last Samurai, No Time to Die, Dune, Rush (the racing movie, not the Canadian trio), Top Gun:Maverick and more. What's your favorite Zimmer score?

My apologies if this has appeared on the ONT previously but I can't recall. If this is a repeat, pretend to forget and enjoy anew. Apparently the US National Institute for Standards and Technology sells standard material samples on its website. You can shop online for...

Forty grams of domestic sludge costs $758.

Three jars of standard peanut butter costs $1246.

Five vials of Organic Contaminants in Smokers' Urine (Frozen) costs $1854. (For the record, frozen organic contaminants in non-smokers is the same price.)

Four 70 gram jars of baby food composite costs $1246.

So many questions...

Intentionally crashing locomotives used to be an attraction in the late 1800s. Must have made an almighty sound. Amazingly, someone put together a three part series with the full history. Lots of old photos and maps.

In case you missed it among all the St. Patrick's Day festivities, March 17 also marks the date of the launch of Vanguard 1 in 1958. It was the first satellite with solar panel and remains the oldest artificial object still in orbit around the Earth. Communications were lost in 1964. To give you a sense of size, Nikita Khrushchev nicknamed it the "grapefruit" satellite. Sputnik 1, Sputnik 2, and Explorer 1 were launched before but none are still in orbit.

A Netherlands engineer built a car for his pet goldfish, Blub, who drove the vehicle a distance of 40 feet in one minute to break a world record.

Thomas de Wolf constructed a four-wheeled vehicle with a water tank for a driver's seat. The vehicle is steered by analyzing the movements of the goldfish inside the tank.

Reminds me of one of my favorite pieces of fine literature.

The ONT is not a music thread and it is not a movie thread. But what if we combine them? Wednesday cinema preview released today that will be of interest to Iron Maiden fans:

ONT Legal Docket

The home of rapper Afroman was raided by Adams County deputies in 2022 when they served a search warrant looking for drugs. They found no drugs and brought no charges. They took $4000 in cash and eventually returned $3600 (there is a dispute about the amount involved). They also damaged the home and refused to pay for the repairs.

Afroman was not amused and put out a song and video titled "Lemon Pound Cake."

The video was ostensibly to earn money to pay for the damage. It took issue with the officers involved and used his own security footage. Video footage showed police ramming down his door, searching his wardrobe, opening CD cases, and at one point briefly glancing at a lemon pound cake on his counter. Thus the name of the song...

Seven officers sued him over the video on defamation grounds. Afroman attended depositions and trial adorned in an American flag outfit.

This afternoon the jury returned a verdict in favor of Afroman on all counts.

The unfortunate loser in all of this? The Adams County police department in Colorado received a deluge of unhappy emails and social media messages in support of Afroman. The problem is that the whole thing took place in Adams County, Ohio.

The Pittsburgh police scanner keeps giving. Thank you people of Pittsburgh!

Live AC DC for the big ONT finish:

Written correspondence can be sent to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Are you lurking ?? Thank you for your attention to this matter. We aim to whelm.

posted by Open Blogger at 10:00 PM

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