Wednesday Night ONT - August 12, 2026 [TRex]

Good evening Horde! The time has come for mid-week shenanigans of the overnight variety. The bar is open and (mostly) re-stocked with Tab. Only the best for the Horde...

Welcome to the Wednesday night ONT which means another edition of random overnight fun and games. Pull up a chair and join the fun. Good will offerings of amusing puns are encouraged. Pants are optional. Be nice to your fellow commenters and AoS contributors. If you're a troll, go away.

This is a Tucker, Candace, Megyn, and Bill Kristol free zone. Please.

[Top photo from NASA: Shock waves are visible around a T-38 trainer aircraft during NASA's Air-to-Air Background Oriented Schlieren flights in 2019. Schlieren imaging makes normally invisible changes in air density visible, giving researchers a way to see the same shock waves that can create sonic booms on the ground.]

Happy Birthday!

ICYMI - congratulations to the Blogfather for 25 years of InstaPundit.

Like many others, we found InstaPundit following 9/11. We read things we did not see elsewhere and found other writers and blogs we wouldn't have found otherwise. Maintaining staying power and relevance on the internet for over 25 years without burning out is impressive.

From the Blogfather: Some thoughts on InstaPundit's 25th bloggiversary.

One of the big lessons of the past twenty five years is that the preening self-regard of the laptop class is largely unjustified. There's a lot of ignored wisdom out there.

Third, speaking of the laptop class, the press is much, much worse than I thought it was at the beginning of this exercise, and I was pretty skeptical about the press then.

Read the whole thing.
Heh.

Animal News

A Physicist Rigged His Pet Hamster's Wheel to Upload to Strava. It Runs Surprisingly Far Every Night

Thijs de Buck, an MRI physicist based in Utrecht, the Netherlands, recently posted on Reddit that he built a speed and distance tracker for his hamster's wheel, with the data automatically uploaded to Mollie's own Strava account. Mollie, his 10-month-old hamster, is now committed to logging nightly runs with distance, pace, and time.

One recent activity showed 6.06 miles in 4 hours and 37 minutes. The next night, Mollie logged 5.55 miles in 3 hours and 56 minutes.

And the little guy's not exactly phoning it in. De Buck said Mollie is averaging almost 10 kilometers per night, with a current record of 10.8 kilometers after the first week of tracking.

"I really believe he'll be able to exceed that soon," he said.

Mollie also has a weirdly consistent schedule for a hamster. Over one seven-day stretch, he started within the same 10-minute window on five nights, between 9:54 and 10:04 p.m. He tends to run in short bursts, sometimes reaching about 4 to 5 kilometers per hour on the live monitor, then hops off for water.

Content Rejected from the Hobby Thread

Anyone ever attend a vintage pyrex swap? Never knew such a thing existed:

Military Traditions

How U.S. Navy Pilots Really Get Their Callsigns

Let's pause a bit and talk about the 'rules' for callsigns.

It's rumored that Air Force fighter jocks get to pick their own callsigns... which is where you get things like 'Ripper' and 'Ace' and 'Thor.'

Not in the Navy.

Callsigns are bequeathed for doing something stupid or memorable. The more you fight the more it sticks.

Usually a new guy in a squadron is given something like 'FNG' (Fucking New Guy) or 'New Jack' or 'Don't Speak.'

Eventually, someone does something noteworthy, and the King (or Queen) of the JOPA [Junior Officer Protection Agency] calls a kangaroo court known as a 'callsign review board.'

Mandatory Maiden

Long documentary - save this one for later:

Subaru News

For all the Subaru fans among the Horde - I held my breath a few times through this video. Impressive.

Life Advice

Niche YouTube Channel of the Week

Tonight's feature is a YouTube channel called The Slow Motion Guys. No, the channel is not about guys that move slowly. It is about two friends armed with camera equipment to show activities in super-super-super slow motion.

Some of it feels a little like a science class. Some of it feels a little like a technology class. Some of it feels like madness and giggles purely for the sake of having fun.

Over 45 million people have watched their video on how a TV works. Their video showing popcorn popping has over 24 million views. Spinning a record to pieces? Spinning a CD to destruction? Paint vibrating on a speaker? Airbag deploy? Camera shutter? They've got it all. When things happen so quickly, we miss what really happens.

They've been at it for 15 years and have over 15 million subscribers. This is a favorite:

Difficult to call it an unknown channel but it absolutely qualifies as a niche channel. It is exactly the type of content that could not survive elsewhere but thrives on a narrowcasting internet platform.

Pittsburgh Scanner

The Pittsburgh police scanner in internet treasure. Thank you people of Pittsburgh and thank you Pittsburgh scanner!

A Cooter tribute for the big ONT finish:

There is no truth to the rumor that TRex is set to be announced as the new White House Press Secretary. Correspondence can be sent to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com where it will be promptly be ignored. Are you lurking ????

posted by Open Blogger at 10:00 PM

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