Nick

@variousvarieties.bsky.social

146 Followers 267 Following

I couldn't think of anything to put here on the bird site, I couldn't think of anything to put here on the elephant site, and I can't think of anything to put here.

An Only Connect thumnail showing Victoria Coren-Mitchell holding question cards.
First shot of Red Dwarf: Back to Earth. Red Dwarf in space, with a caption: "NINE YEARS LATER"
Roy Lichtenstein's "Look Mickey", recreating (badly) a cartoon of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.
Title card for an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon from The Simpsons: "AAAHHH! WiLDERNESS!"
Frinkiac caption of Bart Simpson reading a book and saying "Don't do what Scrappy Doo does."
I'm Alan Partridge screenshot. Caption: (COWBOY ACCENT) YEAH. I THINK I'LL GO AND READ SIMON HEFFER ON THE VERANDA.
Screenshot of two posts on Bluesky: Top: Standplaats Kraków posts an image of a Wikipedia article for "Toe", which says "This article is a stub. Owwow Yeeooooouch!!!" Immediately below it, Dark Souls Dialog Bot posts: "Ooph!"
Screenshot of Wikipedia's maps of areas of England that held local elections in May 2026: map of district, borough, and metropolitan councils at the top; county councils at the bottom.
Screenshot of NASA's YouTube thumbnails for its two main Artemis II livestreams: Live Mission Coverage (Official Broadcast) - 230:38:28 Live Views from Orion - 215:58:46
Animated Gif of Bart Simpson saying "Hurrah for science! Woo!"
THE TIDE-DRIVING POWER OF MOON AND SUN Note: Neither astronomers nor newspapers say "the Venus" or "the Mars." All say simply "Venus" or "Mars." Astronomers follow the same snappy practice for Earth, Moon, and Sun. More and more if the rest of the world now follows - as do we in this book - the recommendations if the International Astronomical Union. The oceans rise and fall in a never-ending rhythmic cycle bears witness to the tide-driving power of Moon and Sun. [...]
Screenshots of a Twitter thread from 2019: GAIL SIMONE: The Punisher would be a lot prettier if he smiled more. TWITTER USER A: Ummmmm, I know what you're getting at here, but the jab doesn't work due to his backstory and personality. He actually has a huge plot point as to why he doesn't smile alot. Try harder GAIL SIMONE: [Posts a photo of a bookshelf full of comic spines] TWITTER USER A: Nice collection of what looks to be mostly female centric comic books. That literally has nothing to do with my comment, nor the topic under discussion. Unless if you're pointing out what is the most likely fact that you know very little about Punisher's backstory. TWITTER USER B: Read the names of the writer on the spine, now look at her name. TWITTER USER A: K, so she's a comic book author. That actually makes her case look worse seeing as how she should know better GAIL SIMONE Dude, between the two of us, which one has actually written the Punisher, do you think?
Carl from The Simpsons. Caption: "But, Moe, the Dark, the Dark."
Screenshot from the Red Dwarf episode "Me2" of the characters Rimmer and Lister watching Skutter robots paint a grey wall. Caption: "They're changing it from ocean grey to military grey. Something that should have been done a long time ago."
Disqus comment by J Henry: "Tom Bombadil is pallete rotated Wolverine." ... With a picture of Wolverine in his yellow and blue X-Men costume.
Blog post screenshot: I am an extremely unmusical person, and one difficulty I’ve always had with Tolkien’s writing is being able to imagine the poems in his books as sung work. So during this reread, I’ve made a point of seeking out musical adaptations of the poems and songs I’ve encountered in each chapter. In the chapter “In the House of Tom Bombadil”, the title character’s song—which he sings all the time, peppers into his speech, and teaches the hobbits as a means of calling him to their aid—has always baffled me. This is a song that canonically calls people back from the dead. It should be an irresistible earworm, an absolute bop, and yet I’ve never been able to make the lyrics sound anything but awkward and cumbersome in my head. The versions I’ve found online haven’t fully alleviated this difficulty, but they’re a fascinating showcase of different attempts at the problem.
Screenshot of tweet by Jared Yates Sexton (11 July 2017): "I...worked on this story for a year...and...he just...he tweeted it out."
Screenshot of a bug report submission for Bluesky: Viewing Bluesky on mobile web browsers, usernames and timestamps are overlapping, making both of them unreadable. Additionally, the browser view of the UI starts slightly zoomed in by default, hiding the buttons at the bottom of the screen. This happens with the web interface on both Chrome for Android and Firefox for Android.
Wayne Szalinski: Your dad's invention is going to be in the Smithsonian alongside the gramophone! Adam Szalinski: What's a gramophone? Wayne Szalinski: An early record player. Adam Szalinski: What's a record player? Wayne Szalinski: An early CD player.
Wordle results screen, with a "Congratulations!" message and the following statistics: 1436 played 97% win 59 current streak 109 max streak BADGE EARNED: Wordle in 1 Guess distribution: 1: 1 😁😁😁 (That's today!) 2: 46 3: 348 4: 522 5: 348 6: 134
Screenshot of xkcd website, with the Chrome menu that appears when long pressing the comic image. The alt text only shows 2 lines, then is truncated.
Screenshot of tweets from 7 May 2020, in replies to a deleted tweet by Glinner. First reply by @justwanttorea15: "I've tried copying some folks in to have a word with him, but not optimistic. This is something which needs sensible discussion, not blunderbuss accusations of paedophilia." Reply by James Serafinowicz: "Tried for two years. Have given up as have a lot of people."
Screenshot from the first page of the court judgment Rex v Graham Linehan: Furthermore, I wish to make it clear how parties have been and will be referred to. I am grateful to counsel for agreeing before the start of the trial a use of language document. In summary the prosecution referred to the complainant using female pronouns and/or referring to the complainant as Ms Brooks or “Brooks”. The defence, defendant and defence witnesses referred to the complainant with male pronouns and referred to the complainant as Ms Brooks. I will refer to the complainant using gender neutral pronouns and as “the complainant”.
Screenshot from BBC News article "Linehan cleared of harassing trans activist but guilty of damaging phone": She also did not find that the complainant, a biological male who identifies as a woman, "was as 'alarmed and distressed' as they portrayed themself to be by these messages and this course of conduct".
Screenshot from the above linked Radio Times article from September 2025: "The last time we saw Bond he was poisoned and blown to smithereens – how will they get past the fact he is dead with a capital D?" he said. "I think that was a mistake, because Bond is a legend. He belongs to everybody, he is eternal – except in that film. "If I was asked tomorrow to write the script, I wouldn’t be able to do it. Where would you start? You can’t have him waking up in the shower and saying it was all a dream." Of course, in reality, the new film will not be based in the same continuity as the previous version – serving as a relaunch of the series with a new actor playing Bond – so it seems very unlikely that the end of No Time to Die will actually be referenced at all.
Screenshot of Joyce Carol Oates's tweet about Musk. At the bottom, it's quoting a tweet by another user, which includes a screenshot of Musk's tweet about "takers and makers".
Musk replies to a tweet by @TheCinesthetic about Man on Fire: "Man on Fire is great!"
Musk whinging about Joyce Carol Oates, in three tweets posted 1, 2, and 10 hours ago.
Screenshot of a Twitter thread from 6 November: Two pro-AI people at the top mocking "haters", followed by Jason Zada posting a Pikachu "haters gonna hate" GIF. Then another user replies: "Proceeded to post a gif of actual art, and deleted previous tweet."
Three panel webcomic by 9mmballpoint: Me in 2003: "Everything is Bush's fault." Me in 2013: "History is a vast web of political, economic, geographic, and social factors that are all constantly shifting over time. There are always deeper layers and new perspectives, so we have to view it as a complex system instead of looking for easy narratives about heroes and villains." Me in 2023: "Everything is Reagan's fault."
Screenshot from Grant Morrison's Reddit AMA: fainting_goat_games: Who is currently winning in the ongoing wizard war between you and Alan Moore? GrantMorrisonReal: Donald Trump. fainting_goat_games: Fair point. Though I'd argue we're all losing that one.
Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, counting on his fingers as he says the five word phrase: "Out for a walk. Bitch."
Gif of Bart Simpson walking into the Skinners' house, and Agnes Skinner saying to him: "Don't touch the wallpaper."
A paragraph from the above Telegraph article: "An independent candidate is also on track to take Health Secretary Wes Streeting's Ilford North seat, Ruth the Left-wing alternative there expected to take 34pc of the vote, polling shows."
Photo of a TV screen showing the 1993 film The Bride with White Hair. The subtitle's first line is the female character's movie dialogue: "*I'm* asking you where the jade is." (The word "I'm" is in italics.) The second subtitle line is definitely not in the movie, and reads: "The 'I'm' should be italicised, please look into and correct."
The spines of two UK DVD copies of the movie Face/Off. One (The Film Factory edition) has a code, a hologram, and the blue IFCO 18 certificate; the other does not have those, and has the BBFC 18 cert in a different position.
Screenshot from the Simpsons episode "Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment": the Duff factory with an "OUT OF BUSINESS" sign.
Album cover for the Queen album "The Miracle", with the four band members' faces blended together side-by-side.
Screenshot from the BBC article "Mystery solved: Why this man took a sheep on a train". Photo of a sheep on a train, with the text: "ScotRail said there is nothing to say sheep are not allowed on trains and the animal complied with its rules that pets should be on a lead."
Poster of the Simpson family against a white background, looking toward the viewer. Homer makes a rabbit ears V-sign behind Bart's head, Bart does the same behind Lisa's head, Lisa does the same behind Maggie's head. Homer says (with a speech bubble *and* quotation marks): "Remember, as far as anyone knows, we're a nice, normal family."
Screenshot of the Letterboxd page for Short Circuit (1986), directed by John Badham.
Images from the Official UK Dreamcast Magazine's review of Metropolis Street Racer. At the top, a double-page spread of a mocked-up postcard saying "Greetings from London", showing photographs of five landmarks: London Eye, Houses of Parliament, Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, and Piccadilly Circus. Text at the top: "You've visited London..." Below it, the next two pages show the same locations, but as screenshots from the game. Text at the top: "... Now get ready to race in London. The world's most detailed driving game..." Text on the postcard: "Welcome to... MSR: Metropolis Street Racer"
Simpsons frame with Lisa looking at Nelson's "Nuke the whales" poster. Lisa (caption): "'Kick the immigrants'? You don't really believe that, do you?"
Frame from b0tster's Cortana video, showing an expression with wide eyes and a smile with clenched teeth.
Caption from the Simpsons episode "The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show", with Roger Meyers Jr telly Krusty: "The animal chain of command goes mouse, cat, dog.
Screenshot of Reddit comments: First commenter links to an Imgur post showing Star Wars movie posters. Then by u/Cod-Save-America's replies: "Do you suppose George Lucas got the name Jar-Jar from the fact that in the first poster the font kind of makes 'far, far away' look like 'jar, jar away' ?"
Sickos meme edited so that the speech bubble reads "Smeg... Ha ha ha... SMEG!" and the character's text labelling says "Smeggos".
Screenshot from a question on Microsoft's Bing/MS Rewards quiz: "What shape does the box jellyfish resemble?" Possible answers: "A box", "A sphere", "A triangle"
Photo of the full Moon in a cloudy sky with an aeroplane contrail. Just to the bottom-left of the Moon is the dot that is Mars (highlighted with a red arrow).
Screenshot of Google result for the search "what yonder soul doth go hence". The AI Overview says: "'What yonder soul doth go hence' is the name of an episode of the original Star Trek series that is about a space frog who makes everyone take off their clothes."
Screenshot from "The Internet Is Rotting" by Jonathan L. Zittrain: "Here, courtesy of the law professor Alexandra Roberts, is how a district-court opinion pointed to a TikTok video: “A May 2020 TikTok video featuring the Reversible Octopus Plushies now has over 1.1 million likes and 7.8 million views. The video can be found at Girlfriends mood #teeturtle #octopus #cute #verycute #animalcrossing #cutie #girlfriend #mood #inamood #timeofmonth #chocolate #fyp #xyzcba #cbzzyz #t (tiktok.com).”"
A Sega Master System control pad.
Photo of a page of sheet music for the song "Live & Let Die", showing the lyric "give it and cry".
Meme image of man with "sickos" label looking through a window and laughing: "Yes... Ha ha ha... YES!"
Groundskeeper Willie from The Simpsons, with the caption: "Damn Scots! They ruined Scotland!"
The front cover of The Guardian's G2 supplement from Thursday 4th November 2004. A black cover with only two words of small text in the centre: "Oh, God."
Top screenshot: a room from Sifu's "Tower" level, in the middle of which are two rows of computer desks facing a big wall screen. There are columns around the perimeter (behind which are corridors), and an upper mezzanine floor that can be reached by two symmetrical sets of stairs. Also, it's not visible here, but there's a lift in the centre of the mezzanine floor. Bottom screenshot: GoldenEye's "Control" mission showing a room with a similar description, but less elaborate graphics. Except in this case, the stairs are spiral. (Also - not seen here - the centre of the upper floor has a stairway that leads up, instead of the lift that's featured in Sifu.)
Screenshot of a Reddit conversation: user FragrantKnobCheese: "The Snowman has always bothered me. When you make a snowman, you compact all that snow into 2 balls and greatly reduce its surface area. As a result, your snowman will still be there for quite a long time after the rest of the surface snow has melted. "Yet, at the end of the Snowman, the sun comes out and the snowman melts BEFORE the rest of the snow. Totally inaccurate physics!" User slawnz: "His mum poured hot water on it during the night"