June 20

Better Than News

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  Donut Heist is a 2023 crime thriller film about a gang of thieves who steal the world's most valuable donuts, only to find that the donuts are not what they appear to be.

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  Days of Wine and Thunder is an American action drama film starring Tom Cruise, Lee Remick, and Jack Lemmon.

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  The Holy Mountain 2 is a Mexican surreal Muppets film written and directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Jim Henson.

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  Undercover Jester is a 1955 medieval police procedural training film starring Danny Kaye as a police forensic dramatist working undercover as a court jester.

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  Smilodon is a 2018 American nature thriller film about a paleontologist (Tom Cruise) who must stop saber-tooth tigers from evolving teeth so large that they cannot close their mouths.

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  Alabama in My Mind is a song by James Taylor.

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  Mister Rogers' Op-Center is an American half-hour educational children's television series that was created and hosted by Fred Rogers.

Beyond Plausible

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  Invasion of the Birkenstockers is a 1978 horror-fashion film about the "Birkenstock Scare" of the early 1970's starring Leonard Nimoy and Veronica Cartwright.

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  Indiana Jones 2049 is an American neo-noir action-adventure film about K, a Nexus-9 replicant Whip Runner who uncovers a secret that threatens to destabilize the Indiana Jones franchise and the course of civilization.

In Other Words

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  Twittergrades is a 2022 book about how Twitter's work policies stimulated the evolution of new species of tardigrades.

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  "Kilgrave or Dr. Kildare" is an episode of the reality television series Who Would Win in a Fight?

Are You Sure

... that during the Second World War, five Navy planes become permanently trapped in the Bermuda Triangle Dead Letter Office after a junior Gnomon algorithm engineer in the United States Navy Advanced Philately Division misplaced a decimal point?

... that inventor and engineer Wilhelm Bauer designed and built several hand-powered submarines?

Selected Anniversaries

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  1840: Samuel Morse receives the patent for the telegraph.

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  1875: Inventor and engineer Wilhelm Bauer dies. He designed and built several hand-powered submarines.

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  1877: Alexander Graham Bell installs the world's first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

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  2024: Self portrait.

Topic of the Day

Airplanes

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  "Silvery Aeroplanes" is an anagram of "Elvis Aaron Presley".

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  Less Than Zero is a 1987 American war film about a college freshman and airplane restoration enthusiast who is also a drug addict.

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  Black Phaeton is a historical drama film based on the race films of the 1920s.

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  Guess Hughes Coming to Dinner is a 1967 American romantic aviation drama film, one of the few films of the time to depict Howard Hughes in a positive light, as Hughes had become an eccentric recluse.

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  The inverted Charles Lindbergh stamp misprint is a famous example of a stamp misprint apparently caused by the printers' emotional response to Charles Lindbergh's intimate association with Nazi Germany.

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  "Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy For Adult Airplane Disorders: A Meta-analysis Of Randomized Placebo-controlled Airshows" is a research paper published by Playskool's My First DSM.

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  "Mendelevium on a Jet Plane" is a song by John Denver and a team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

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  Four Honeymoons and a Snake on a Plane is a 2021 romantic herpetology thriller film starring Hugh Grant, Andie MacDowell, and Samuel L. Jackson.