It Follows
Internet round-up for the week of January 19, 2026
Hello and good day from the tundra!!
(For the record, that shows the high as 7° for today, but if you scroll through the hourly forecast, the temperature never goes above -2°. My poor husband had to drive to work this morning. I am in sweatpants and will not be leaving my apartment.)
On the positive side, we made it through the 10 darkest weeks of the year! SUMMER IS COMING, BABY1!
This week has been pretty good! Lots of work (as always), but I also still had time to watch The Traitors and The Pitt. Currently rooting very hard for Rob Rausch to take it all. Hopefully the move he made in last night’s episode doesn’t come back to bite him!
I made some lovely homemade biscuits this weekend that turned out pretty good, and I’m realizing just now I guess I ate them all without taking a single picture. What is this, 1999? Might as well go buy an inflatable couch from Limited Too. Geez.
Anyway, I’m planning on making another batch this weekend and actually freezing them this time for more rationed consumption instead of pigging out on a giant pile of bread and honey butter all at once. I’ll definitely take a photo of them! I think!
Otherwise, as always, I’ve been online. So let’s get on in to all the lovely treasures I’ve got for ya this week:
Headline of the week
NEW YORKERS!!!! IT’S TIME TO STEP UP.
According to the story, over 450 domesticated (they’re pets!!) white rats were found running amok in a suburban home, and have since been rescued. (Apparently, they’re still trying to catch the last 30 or so before this big winter storm hits2.) They’ve been taken to the vet for meds and are on the hunt for new homes!!
Do your part for the rat community and adopt one of these lil cuties! And then send me pictures of them immediately!!!
Brands a-branding
It’s a new year, and you know what that means: NEW UNHINGED COLLABS!!
LEGO is partnering with Crocs to create LEGO x Crocs shoes that look like, well, this:
If you’re like me, the first thing you want to know is if the two shoes can stack on each other. I’m sorry to report that the bottoms are flat, and you cannot. Incredible letdown. I should be able to stack one foot on top of the other and then pull them apart repeatedly while I’m sitting somewhere, like a fidget spinner but for tripping me when I try to get up.
I once had a pair of slip-on Crocs I wore for years on little trips outside. I wore them until the bottoms were smooth, which is not great in a place where there is ice on the ground sometimes. Once I tossed them, though, I moved on to a pair of those plastic Birkenstocks instead.
Years later, I bought a pair of platform Crocs for Fashion™ reasons. I had to return them, because they kept slipping off my feet and squeaking when I walked in them. When I look at these Crocs, I imagine buying them for taking out the trash.
And then I imagine what would happen when I approached my wooden stairwell with these gigantic skis hanging 6 inches off the end of my toes, and just how funny it would look to my neighbors as I tumbled end-over-end, garbage flying everywhere, because my shoes had corners on them.
I can only assume these are a novelty item and not made to be worn, unlike the far more stylish Windows XP Crocs they released last year.
Anyway, they cost $149.99 on the Crocs site and $199.99 on the LEGO site, which is very confusing. They also come with a little LEGO figurine that is — you guessed it — also wearing the LEGO Crocs.
You should also know that when this deal was announced, they called it a “multi-year global partnership.” How many more types of brick shoes can you make?? Thrilled to follow along with this nonsense in the coming years.
In other news, remember Progresso’s Soup Drops from last year? Well, they’re back. Just in time for cold & flu season, Soup Drops return(!), including two exciting new flavors of ipecac this year:
As if chicken noodle weren’t bad enough, they’ve decided to add “beef pot roast” and “tomato basil” to the lineup. I can’t find a specific description of the flavors of those, and I have to guess that’s for a reason (they’re gross). Once again, I’m left to wonder what fresh hell these things crawled out of, and whether or not they’re trying to classify a lozenge as a meal.
They’ve already sold out, but they’re doing another drop next Thursday. I already put it on my calendar as “Soup Drops Drop,” so send good vibes I can get a can of these horrific affronts to God and humanity. I need to eat one. For science3.
And speaking of eating things for science: I have received the fake meat water.
It is in my possession. It is currently residing in my fridge. I have not tasted it yet.
I am afraid.
I promise I will sip the Beyond Meat Milk before next Friday.
Billionaire boys
I’m sorry for this.
I’ve often said Bryan’s whole thing is like my Roman Empire, and yet also like a car crash you can’t look away from. Except now I’m starting to feel more like the car crash is the monster thing from It Follows and if you slow down for one second it gets right in front of you and explodes in a shockingly uncomfortable way.
Randomly selected animal cutie
A cow in the news, and not for having been stolen by some semen-thieving freak?? We love to see it!
(Before I even read this article, I can confirm that cows are smarter than people think.)
Moving on. This is Veronika:
She lives in Austria, and is the pet of a farmer and baker there. And she might be the first “experimentally verified instance of cattle using a tool.”
I studied Physical Anthropology in college, so forgive me for the lecture, but:
For the uninitiated, tool use is something scientists have long used to determine cognition. In particular, it’s something that sets humans apart, though chimpanzees and corvids famously use some tools as well. The difference is that humans are often able to discern that a tool might be useful for something else, whereas other species are not.
For example, perhaps someone hands you a hammer, and shows you how to use it to put a nail in the wall. Then they show you the claw, and how to pull the nail out. Now you can use it for either of those tasks in the future. But you — a human — might then think to yourself, “Oh, I could use this claw to pull something else out as well,” like a door stuck in a jamb. (Obviously that might damage the door, but I’m just giving shitty examples here.)
Other species do use tools, but use them only for specific purposes. So a chimpanzee might know from watching another chimpanzee that it can put a long stick down in a termite mound to make a little termite kebab (they do this!). That is step one! Step two would be looking at the stick and realizing, “hey, this stick might also help me pull this branch closer so I can reach those berries.” And that’s where the gap lies.
But don’t get me wrong — even basic tool use is a huge deal.
So, a cognitive biologist named Alice Auersperg, who’d recently written a book on the topic, learned of Veronika and went to check out her skillz4.
In a series of trials, the researchers placed a deck brush in front of Veronika in a random orientation. With a camera rolling, the cow picked up the brush to scratch herself 76 times, positioning it with her tongue before securing it in her teeth. Occasionally, she’d readjust her grip by releasing the brush and picking it back up again to get the right orientation.
Unexpectedly, in what the researchers said was another potential sign of higher cognition, Veronika appeared to use different parts of the same tool for different purposes. She largely used the bristled end of the brush to forcefully scratch her upper body, while she used the smooth end to more gently rub the sensitive skin on her udder and belly flap.
So, yeah. She’s kind of a big deal.
VERONIKA!! My genius cow queen. I love her so dang much.
Finally, I’ll close with this quote from the researcher, which is my favorite part because it feels very on par with my previous personal experiences (particularly with one of my cows, Robbin):
“She behaves like a cat. You can’t force anything on Veronika. You need to adapt to her and gain her trust. But when you gain her trust, then Veronika is a really social animal.”
That’s it from me this week! I’m off to have some dinner and watch The Pitt before kicking back for two days of finishing up some personal projects before an arbitrary deadline I set for myself (what else is new?). Have a great weekend!
K
(She says as the temperature has a minus sign in front of it.)
By the way, if you see boob-shaped images of this storm circulating on social media, know that those are old pictures of a storm from 2019. Obviously the second I saw them I attempted to confirm their authenticity because I love it when weather looks like body parts, and while they are real images, they are not current.
Real scientists are too busy digging around in space and the ocean to do the important research, so I have to take matters into my own hands.
I’m a millennial. Sue me.
This is well timed because I just had a conversation yesterday where the question of “is there such a thing as ‘rescue rats’?” came up.
I know we're supposed to be annoyed that America is basically becoming four corporations, but I'm okay with the Lego Croc company. They seem weird, not evil yet.