Friday Fun Blog: Polar Bears Playing Edition

Welcome back to the Friday Fun Blog—come on in, the water’s fine. Am I in a pool? WHO KNOWS. As always, the Fun Blog is brought to you by Dave & Buster’s, which for real have one of the best NFL Sunday specials in the biz, and no they are not paying me for this.

On to the links!

Hurricane Matthew is currently hitting Florida and the Southeastern coast, and while the majority of residents have evacuated—and we hope you are currently safe—some brave souls decided to venture INTO the hurricane. Those people are the pilots for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who are tasked with taking detailed data recordings of the category 3 hurricane. Check out the turbulent video courtesy of pilot Jim Van Fleet, who also has the most “pilot” name of all time (Via Sploid):

Flying through #Eye of #Matthew 5 times. Can see eye on Radar, finally see out window about 1:30 in. @NOAA_HurrHunter @CBSNews @spann #flwx pic.twitter.com/GiwvM653Mv

— Jim Van Fleet (@JamesVanFleet) October 6, 2016

As mentioned above, the majority of the eastern coastal cities in Florida and other southeastern states have evacuated in anticipation of Hurricane Matthew making landfall. Transportation engineers have successfully implemented the evacuation of nearly 2 million residents, and here’s a fantastic look into how a mass evacuation is pulled off.

Is this a polar bear cub playing in a kiddie pool filled with ice? Yes, yes it is. (Via Mashable):

Why do the British and American spellings of the same words differ– i.e., “color/colour”, “favor/favour”, “center/centre”? In short, because the British are still salty about 1776! USA! USA! USA! USA! (Via Sploid):

Obligatory Space Post of the Week: There was a “UFO” spotted during a live feed space video this week, that researchers and experts are saying was just a piece of “space fluff” caught on the camera lens. DON’T LET THEM LIE TO YOU THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE. WE ALL KNOW WHAT YOU’RE HIDING, “NASA” IF THAT’S EVEN YOUR REAL AGENCY NAME! NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SPACE ALIENS. COINCIDENCE?!?!1

Ted Cruz stepped out onto the stage at the 2016 Republican National Convention and total the audience and viewers at home to “vote with your conscience”, which was a subtle way to tell Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump to go f*ck himself, as everyone assumed Cruz was there to explicitly throw his support behind Trump. Much more recently, Cruz actually did endorse Donald Trump, and promised to help get him elected. Turns out, the way to do that was phone bank for Trump, which was capture hilariously by some hero, and turned into a giant Photoshop battle by the fine folks on the Internet.

The complete opposite of Ted Cruz is something that actually makes children smile and that’s Disney. They have their own research lab, which has developed a hopping robot that will one day be used to make a child smile, and that’s awesome. A lot of companies throw millions of dollars itno research to develop robotics that will be used by the government, but not Disney; their sole purpose is the smiles of children.

That’s it for this week! See you next time!