The OP whose post escaped containment is set to "logged in users only", as were the quote-skeets that showed up on my timeline. I have found some examples for demonstration purposes:

Slightly diminish a band: Neutral Milk Air BnB

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— S.R. Lee (she/her) (srleeauthor.com) August 13, 2025 at 5:41 PM

I enjoyed this CanCon specific list, although I don't recognise all of the bands:

Canadian version:

The Guess How
The Unfortunate Hip
Hurry
April Cider
Nude Women
Martha and the Biscuits
Men without Toques
Crayon Square
The Walleye
Big Sweetener
Fairly Damp

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— ShariM (thedanglybits) August 13, 2025 at 4:29 PM

A "visible to logged in users only" post provided "Moderately Sized Sea", which I also enjoyed.

I enjoyed seeing how many close variations on "Sternly Worded Letter to the Machine", "Foo Complainers", "They Might Be Taller than Average" and "Scantily Clad Ladies" there were. I enjoy seeing lots of people enthusiastically making the same joke, I feel it says something endearing about the social function of wordplay.

The ones which ought to be both amusing and repetitive but are neither because there isn't a clear "slightly diminished" option were also interesting. Blush, Rose, and Salmon Floyd were all attested, but so was Beige Floyd. I liked Deep Lavender, but it only came up once, unlike the Floyds. Both "Unseasoned Girls" and "Seasoned Girls" are attested. There is no concensus on the slight diminishment of Pearl Jam (Oyster Jam? Mother-of-Pearl Jam? Pearl Jelly?). Many people are wrong, I submit, with offerings such as "carressing pumpkins" (the people who say "mashing", "bruising", etc are correctly identifying slight diminishment).

"U1" was repetitive and not particularly funny, but the dryness of this contribution tickles me:

Duran

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— Gregory Crosby (monostich) August 13, 2025 at 10:49 AM

Also very amusing in its understatement:

Bap!

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— Britality (britality) August 13, 2025 at 11:17 AM

I believe this is my funniest contribution, although I am going to subject you to the Aus-specific list as well:

Consort

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— Az (amisamileandme) August 13, 2025 at 3:16 PM

Also very funny of me, I believe:

Sting and the Traffic Wardens

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— Az (amisamileandme) August 13, 2025 at 12:17 PM

AusContent Slightly Diminished Bands:

Alternating Current

Reasonable Bedtime

The Frasers

Multiple Occupancy Dwelling

Duke Gizzard and the Lizard Hedge-witch

Employees On Break

The Benevolent Spirits

Ambulance Blues

Wooden Stool

Feral Yard

Refrigerator

Collective of the Middle Aged

Backstroke

Someone else went for "Pewterchair", and I agree, Wooden Stool might be more than slightly diminished.

I was really stuck on one particular band, but it the answer has finally occurred to me.

Slightly Diminished AusCon Bands, Addenda:

Ruminator

The actual winner of this mediocre pun game must surely be locked-to-logged-in poster eggbert dot bluesky dot social with "Slightly diminish a band: The E♭ Street Band", for introducing a secondary pun on theme.

Someone else came up with a more accessible version of "Reasonable Bedtime" but I maintain I'm more in the spirit of the actual band title. "Ambulance Blues" isn't funny at all, but gives me a sense of satisfaction anyway (I checked my lore on the Aus band, then read a Rolling Stone retrospective about a US-Canadian artist... and now I know more about both!).

Meanwhile a DIFFERENT locked-to-logged-in user was making jokes about Mustang Sally, and that is how I, at today years old, learned that that is not a song about a woman and her strong bond with a formerly-feral horse which lacks decorum.

Upon looking up Mustang Sally, I discovered:

- I have been misattributing it to Joe Cocker for many years
- The version I recognise is from a movie soundtrack about working-class Irish youth singing RNB???



and also

- The whole movie tie-in album for the movie The Commitments is actually pretty fun.

Anyway that has kept me amused today in tiny phone-checking breaks.

Please, slightly diminish your favourite bands for me.

Courtesy of a recent subscriber bonus episode (preview here of Gender Reveal, I have discovered Mal Blum, who has a new album out (I think I had previously had their country-ish EP on a list of queer country music that I was slowly working through, but never got to that one). I am enjoying it.



I like this song and was amused by Mal and Tuck discussing people taking it too literaly.

The music video is... weird, though. It seems average-good, close-ups on the singer appropriate to the song. But the group choreography is... weird. Perhaps just "niche indie artist can't afford really cutting edge music video"? But am I wrong in thinking that it felt like the choreographer did not know what kind of person Mal is or whose gaze to showcase them for?

I may have to go back and look at some of Mal's older music videos and form Opinions.

Today, the internet decided to create a travel guide for Me, Personally, in the form of a mildly-viral thread about unique museums:

what is the most unique museum u have visited
for me possibly the ramen museum

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— darth™️ (darthbluesky) August 1, 2025 at 2:38 PM

After some thought, the most unique museum I have visited is the Tobacco and Salt Museum in Tokyo. It's unique among oddly-specific museums because it *isn't* someone's collection of Stuff that got out of hand, it's a well-curated museum run by Japan Tobacco, the company which formed when the Japan Tobbaco and Salt Public Corporation privatised. That corporation controlled the import anad manufacture of both both products in Japan until the 80s, hence it makes perfect sense to have a museum on the history of both! They also have an exhibition space: when I visted, they had an exhibition about matchboxes.

Here are some notes on other oddly specific museums I have visited. I included the Shipwreck Museum (Freemantle, Western Australia) in my Bluesky thread, but on reflection, there are a fair number of Shipwreck Museums in the world which approach maritime history through that lens. It's unique in that it's specific to Freemantle, but I gather that many maritime museums are simiarly local.

- The Phallological Museum, Rekjiavik: goes without saying. I found the bull's pizzle particularly enlightening (being familiar with the Fallstaff insult "you bull's pizzle").
- The Musée d'Eroticisme in Paris: Bad, at least as of 2011. Racist in the "insulting anthropologists" way - groups artefects from ancient Europe with items from 19th c Pacific Island cultures as "primitive". Collection of premodern Japanese art is wildly more heterosexual than, statistically, one ought to expect. The section on 19th c Paris was also way Too Straight, and dismissive of primary sources which reported lesbian relationships between sex workers/dancers/etc.
- The Schwules Musem, Berlin: has no permanent collection so every time you visit you get two exhibits on specific aspects of German queer history. When K and I visted there was an exhibition on queer experiences of disability, which was cool in many ways and which I thought did an excellent job with a quiet little corner on Nazi eugenic programs; and there was a fascinating exhibit on the East Berlin squat the "Tuntenhaus" (home to high fag drag queens and trans femmes) in the context of radical squat culture of the 80s.
- The Derwent Pencil Museum in Keswick: personally, I found this disappointing. Not enough museum too much shilling for Big Pencil.
- The Swiss Puppet Museum, Fribourg: why there is a Swiss Puppet Museum, and why it's in Fribourg, are unclear to me, but this was a fun little exhibition.
- The Nijntje (Miffy) Museum in Utrect is an absolute delight
- The Kattenkabinet in Amsterdam: a lovely 17th c house, bought up by a rich guy who has a madcap collection of cat art. There are cats roaming the rooms that you can pat.
- The Klingende Sammlung in Bern, which I like to translate as the "Noisemaking Collection". Wind and brass instruments. There's a downstairs with practical examples that they use for school groups - there weren't any the day K and I went, so the guy let us downstairs to try out Making Noises.
- Blundell's Cottage in Canberra. Every historic house is unique - this one I particularly love because I stumbled on it almost by accident, and because it's set up to exhibit / inform about working rural life in that area in the time before the creation of Canberra as a capital - and before Lake Burley-Griffin was created. There's photos in there of other farm cottages on the plain that became the lake.
- The Alpine Museum in Switzerland, which has some fun permanent exhibits - I particularly enjoyed a collection of donated objects relating to mountain sports, a collection of historic skis. When I visited they had a temporary exhibit on "Alpine trades" - heritage local trades and the schemes to encourage young people to train in them. There was an interactive bit where you could make roofing shingles. And they partner with other countries to put on exhibitions related to Mountain Stuff - I didn't see it but there was an exhibition about life in the North Korean mountains while I was living in Bern.
- The Gustave Moreau Museum in Paris. They have a bunch of his lesser-known or unfinished art - that's where I found My favourite St Sebastian. Also they have the room which, after his mother died, Gustave turned into a weird sort of memorial shrine for his dead best friend (also the model for his St Sebastian paintings).
- The Potteries Museum in Stoke-on-Trent, ceramics gallery of. This is stretching the "unique" part because for the most part this is a solid Regional City Museum - I went there because they have some of the Staffordshire Hoard on display. But the ceramics gallery is truly unique - comprehensive in its narrow focus on the history of English pottery. They have a lovely medieval travel jug/mug shaped like an owl - the owl's head removes to become a cup. They have a giant fuck-off porcelain peacock. And a LOT of English from the peak industrial period, which makes sense given Stoke was, apparently, not so much a city as five factory towns in a trenchcoat.
- Musée des Troupes de Montagne, Grenoble. Turns out, there are specialist troops for Alpine combat!
and
- The Mechanical Toy Museum in Nara, Japan. There are many toy museums, and I have been to a few of them, but this one is unique. Instead of a large collection, they have one room with tatami mats, and a small collection of Edo period mechanical toys which operate using gravity and simple kenetic mechanics. The attendants don't speak English, but they give you a brochure and let you kneel on the tatami and gently play with the toys.

And while I'm here, let me note some of ( my Oddly Specific Museum wish-list )

I'm a little short on oddly specific Australian museum goals. I did find out from that thread that the Cyril Callister Museum in Beaufort, Victoria, celebrates the creator of Vegemite and his famous product. And apparently that fuck-off porcelain peacock has a twin, kept in the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Museum in Warnambool (also Victoria).

There's a Printing Museum in Penrith (NSW). I don't consider that unique, there's a printing museum in every third European city - but I should totally check the local one out regardless.

Please, tell me about more oddly specific museums, anywhere in the world.