Because life, sometimes in the form of a punch, comes at you quick, this is a video of MMA fighter Xu Xiaodong jabbing self-proclaimed defense training tai chi master Chen Yong in the face hard enough in the first ten seconds of their fight for Chen to tap out. Wow, so if this is master-level tai chi then a beginner really has a lot to look forward to in their development. I mean the way he couldn’t stop either one of those kicks or the punch — you don’t just learn that sort of technique overnight.

Keep going for the video, which should start playing at 27:14 when the fight is about to start, but skip there if it doesn’t.

In proof dogs are better than humans in absolutely every possibly way, this is a video of Dexter the boxer helping his blind puggle friend Ginger down the stairs. How sweet is that? For reference, my dogs always try to bite each other’s legs when they’re going down the stairs because they’re little monsters and would almost certainly be running with scissors right now if they were human children.

Keep going for the original TikTok video from owner cougargurlie (plus bonus vid of Dexter keeping an eye on Ginger while she goes outside to the bathroom), as well as a Youtube version.

@cougargurlie

My boxer helping my blind dog Don’t mind my steps lol ##mrdexter ##fyp ##foryou ##dog ##boxer ##SelfImprovement ##REMDreamCheck ##selenanetflix

♬ Just the Two of Us – Grover Washington, Jr.

@cougargurlie

Dexter keeping an eye on Ginger while she goes potty. ##fyp ##foryou ##dogsoftiktok ##boxer ##puggle ##ImAGhost ##PersonalFinance ##REMDreamCheck

♬ Backyard Boy – Claire Rosinkranz

Apparently curiosity doesn’t kill all cats because this is a video from a logger in Alberta, Canada of a wild lynx that climbed up on his skidder to get a better look at him while he was working. In his own words while I can’t help but admire the size of those paws:

I was stopped on the road with my skidder and looked back and to my great surprise, there was a Lynx standing by the tire on my machine. I quickly climbed on the roof and started videoing. He then jumped up on the tire, looked at me, and then jumped again on the arch of my skidder. Only a few feet from me now, he sat and curiously watched me. After a few minutes, he jumped back down on my tire and then with one great big leap, jumped off the tire back on the ground and slowly walked back into the forest never to be seen again.

Mother Nature: you never know what she has in store for you next. I mean one minute you think you know her, and the next she’s got you handcuffed to a bedpost and is waving a giant Venus fly trap around and making me feel real nervous-like. I mean you. I mean this is all just hypothetical.

This is a short clip of English food writer and television cook Nigella Lawson putting way too much effort into the pronunciation of ‘microwave’ on her BBC Two show Cook, Eat, Repeat. She pronounces it like ‘meecrow-wahvey.’ That’s weird. That’s like people jokingly calling Target, Tarjay or JCPenny, Jacques Penne. Why’d she do that? Did she just have a stroke? Did I just have a stroke? How many fingers are you holding up because all I can see are toes.

Nigella Lawson saying 'Microwave' like this has made my Christmas already pic.twitter.com/ByXTDVIloq

— Queen of Quizzes (@EtceteraWithEst) December 8, 2020

Space: the final frontier. Captain Kirk said that so it must be true. This is a video from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) of a massive plasma eruption taking place, played in both visible and invisible wavelengths for reference. Some more info while I pretend it’s actually the devil trying to escape his prison:

This imagery captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory shows a solar flare and a subsequent eruption of solar material that occurred over the left limb of the Sun on November 29, 2020. From its foot point over the limb, some of the light and energy was blocked from reaching Earth – a little like seeing light from a lightbulb with the bottom half covered up.

Also visible in the imagery is an eruption of solar material that achieved escape velocity and moved out into space as a giant cloud of gas and magnetic fields known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME. A third, but invisible, feature of such eruptive events also blew off the Sun: a swarm of fast-moving solar energetic particles. Such particles are guided by the magnetic fields streaming out from the Sun, which, due to the Sun’s constant rotation, point backwards in a big spiral much the way water comes out of a spinning sprinkler. The solar energetic particles, therefore, emerging as they did from a part of the Sun not yet completely rotated into our view, traveled along that magnetic spiral away from Earth toward the other side of the Sun.

Man, it’s crazy to think that the earth is flat and the center of the universe and the sun just follows us around. Like literally, you have to be crazy to think that. But people do. *side-eyes Florida* People do.

In time for Christmas next year (preorder available now, estimated shipping by October 1st, 2021), Nerf and Disney have teamed up to create this Mandalorian Amban Phase-pulse Blaster replica that shoots Nerf Elite foam darts. The 50.25-inch blaster costs $120 and takes two AAA batteries to power its eight loading and blasting sound effects, as well as its illuminated scope. Some more info while I daydream about sitting on my porch with it, drinking hard lemonade and listening to my girlfriend yell at me for drinking hard lemonade at 9AM on a work day:

At 50.25” inches long, this is the longest Nerf blaster we’ve ever done, and doing this blaster justice starts with getting the sculpt and deco right. Designed at 1:1 scale with details inspired directly from The Mandalorian series, our team spent months in development making sure we got the look just right for Mandalorian and Nerf fans alike.

It’s not a Nerf blaster without dart blasting and this comes with 10 silver-colored Nerf Elite darts inspired by the rounds used by the Mandalorian. The breech is spring-action for quicker reload times in a pinch and has a handle you pull back to prime the blaster.

Man, that thing is sweet. I just showed it to my roommate and he said he’s going to get one too, presumably because everybody who’s ever watched the show imagines there’s a lot of Mandalorian in themselves, even though in my roommate’s case the similarity ends with he should wear a helmet that covers his whole face and never take it off.

Keep going for a bunch more shots and a video.