It's a sunny Tuesday afternoon and you're sitting at home, or at the office, or Zoom university. A chill runs through your spine because you remember the entirety of Election Day will be spent bouncing between a mixture of fear, anxiety, dread, hunger, nausea, and complete apathy.
To distract you from those feelings for a few minutes, here are some YouTube videos of baby sloths, dancing bears, a hydraulic press crushing a Furby, and more strange, beautiful, and soothing things.
Bears dancing to "Jungle Boogie" by Kool and the Gang
Excerpted from Planet Earth 2, this clip features bears scratching their backs against a tree while holding onto a branch above. But it really, really looks like they're getting down in the club.
Hydraulic press crushing stuff
There's something deeply satisfying about watching a 150-ton hydraulic press crush random household objects under its weight. This compilation features dozens of things getting destroyed, including corn on the cob, lit candles, a beet, a stack of CDs, slime, and so much more.
Daniel the Golden Retriever
Looking at this perfect, silken golden retriever almost makes me feel patriotic. It's simply beautiful. Daniel won the "sporting group" at the 2020 Westminster Dog Show and came close to winning Best in Show. As a bonus, he's from Ligonier and City Paper interviewed his handler for our 2020 Animal Issue. She said his compensation for his work is "the satisfaction of a job well done."
How it's made: soy sauce
Based on this beautiful and cinematic short film about how soy sauce is made, I'm convinced it should cost $500.
Funny TikTok compilation
TikTok is actually a perfect distraction tool for These Times, because it provides an unending stream of distractions. This one involves a lot of falling and harmless pranks.
Peaceful Cooking
There are dozens of genres of cooking videos, but this kind is specifically designed to soothe. It involves no music, no talking, no obnoxious editing. It's just a man quietly and calmly making dumplings from scratch.
Here are some videos to distract you from fear and dread
