Wednesday Night ONT - August 19, 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. Step up and place your order. (No Bud Light per Management.)

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: Albert Dros, Cap de Favaritx, Menorca, Spain - Aug 12, 2026 eclipse photo shot from a small boat]

"What are you lookin' at? Haven't you ever seen someone filling up on some of that fine high octane ONT content?"

Mad Scientist Department

You had me at "Jet Super Beast":

Same, but different (this guy may be clinically insane which is why he has found a home on the internet but the most entertaining part is his neighbors trying to figure out the sounds his garage tests were making):

Random Signage Department

Does this mean something to someone?

Finders Keepers?

Builders unearth €9m gold stash sealed in walls of Belgian property

Builders renovating a house in Belgium have discovered a stash of gold reportedly worth €9m (£7.6m) sealed into the walls of its cellar.

The construction workers stumbled across the hidden trove of gold bars and coins while drilling to lay new sewage pipes in the property in east Flanders earlier this week, local media report.

The discovery has sparked interest in who might get to keep the hoard - with both the builders and the local charity that owns the site having a chance of claiming it.

After launching an investigation, police warned people against attending the site to search for more treasure, saying the house was "turned upside down" and all the gold had been moved to a secure location.

The rightful owner has five years to claim the hoard under Belgian law - though the local prosecutor, who has launched an investigation, said it was not yet known who this might be.

If no one comes forward, civil law states that hidden treasure on someone else's property be divided between the finder and the property's owner.

Fwiw, that's about USD$10.42 million.

Mandatory Metallica

Life is full of pivot points. They make you wonder "what might have been different?" For Metallica, how would the band have evolved with Dave Mustaine if he wasn't excused in 1983? What music could have emerged if Cliff Burton had survived the bus crash in 1986? The handling of Jason Newsted ranks up there as well. What might have been?

Jason is still playing music. If you're a Jason fan and like your music on the heavier side, you'll enjoy this clip:

Not the Art Thread but...

This is the type of high quality educational content I appreciate from YouTube:

Niche YouTube Channel of the Week

Tonight's feature is a YouTube channel from Alec Steele. The self-named channel features Alec who is a British blacksmith. I'm pretty sure he's a full time YouTuber at this point because his content is mostly about his metal working projects. He's a modern blacksmith, so he uses modern machinery but a lot of it boils down to swinging a hammer or using a machine to shape and forge metal. He knows and respects the history and has several videos to prove it.

Alec's recent project is restoring a 1958 Massey Clearspace Power Hammer that he has dreamed about since age 11. It weighs over 5 tons. I am not a metalworking expert but big machines that smash hot metal sound interesting. Apparently, I'm not the only one. Alec's channel has 3.19 million subscribers. That's right kids - over three million people are subscribed to a YouTube channel to watch a modern blacksmith's passion projects. Amazing.

Alec tells a story well, he has a sense of humor and his enthusiasm is infectious. No clickbait, no fancy graphics, no music - just a guy, his wife and anyone else he can convince to help bend and move metal. He's been posting YouTube videos for 15 years.

I struggled to pick a representative video. He's made knives, swords, springs, saws, nails, hammers, arrowheads and rings (jewelry). The recent string of Power Hammer restoration videos are good watching, but the video with the highest view count by far is this one:

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

Only one Pittsburgh scanner entry tonight. Most recent posts have been more tragic than humorous and we're only here for funsies.

ZZ Top for the big ONT finish:

RIP Frank Beard and Dusty Hill.

Haven't seen this mentioned widely on AoS, so thought it was worth including:

Been a busy run for the grim reaper lately. You might have missed Bill Rasmussen (ESPN founder) and Charlie Slater (racer and former owner of IMSA).

Correspondence can be sent to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com where it will be promptly transferred to an undetermined department for processing. Are you lurking ????

posted by Open Blogger at 10:00 PM

| Access Comments