An awful lot of underground shenanigans went on during World War II that were only discovered years later. Those who defied Nazi occupation knew that secrecy was a matter of survival, and after the war many just wanted to forget. Dr. Eugene Lazowski worked in Rozwadow, Poland, under German occupation. He lived near the Jewish ghetto, and he knew that he could only help its inhabitants in secret. But he treated children under the cover of darkness and smuggled medicine and supplies into the ghetto when he could. The Nazis were gradually taking the Jewish population away, and conscripting the non-Jewish residents of Rozwadow for labor. 

Lazowski's later fame came from the time he, along with his friend Dr. Stanisław Matulewicz, engineered a fake typhus epidemic in Rozwadow. As more and more people in Rozwadow and the surrounding villages had to be quarantined for typhus, the occupying Nazis tried to keep their distance. Deportations ceased, and roundups for labor stopped. After the war, the story got out that there had been no typhus at all, although with confusing and incorrect details. Lazowski emigrated to the US and only wrote his version of events in 1993. Read the true story of how the doctors created a fake typhus epidemic in Rozwadow at Utterly Interesting. 

The comic strip Peanuts debuted 75 years ago, and we are all familiar with its many TV specials and movies -and merchanidise, of course. We all know the Peanuts gang and we all have our favorite characters. The core group of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, and Snoopy are augmented by a group of children and animals (but no adults) who each had their own unique personalities and roles within the group. 

This video is set up to rank seven (actually eight) of these characters from "criminally overlooked" to "global icon," but we know how such rankings can rankle. It's better to look at it as an explanation of their personalities, and how each one plays a role in providing someone we can relate to, or maybe even aspire to. That said, I am disappointed by the absence of Pigpen. Not that I related to him, but I always liked the character. -via Laughing Squid 

A raccoon broke into a state-run liquor store in Ashland, Virginia, which is just north of Richmond. According to a Facebook post for the animal control authority for Hanover County, the raccoon smashed bottles of alcohol and drank their contents until he passed out on the floor of the restroom.

Animal control officials took him back to a county shelter until he sobered up. After a few hours of sleep, the raccoon woke up apparently uninjured. The human authorities then released the raccoon back into the wild to commit additional poor life choices.

-via @sunnyright | Photos: Hanover County Animal Control and Shelter

Dave Locke is not just an acrobat; he's an "acrobat conceptor." He's a master athlete and performer with experience in Cirque du Soleil, using the cyr wheel and the trampwall (a trampoline arranged vertically rather than horizontally).

How is he a conceptor? Locke is devising original acrobatic activities, such as kicking a sword into a target. Most people (well, Miss Cellania and I) use our hands when wielding swords, but Locke can shoot a sword in preferred directions with sidekicks.

-via Born in Space

Christmas is a totally secular holiday in Japan, and the symbol of the Christmas tree has become a medium for some spectacular public art installations. Spoon & Tamago have selected their favorite Christmas trees of 2025 from Tokyo and Osaka. There are five of them, and some stretch the definition of "tree," although the conical shape is unmistakable. 

The tree shown above was designed by Takahiro Matsuo of the art studio LUCENT, and is on display at Omotesando Hills in Tokyo. It contains a thousand prisms to reflect and multiply light. The ring near the top is Matsuo’s invention called Kinetic Light Vision (KLV), which produces the mid-air points of light you see surrounding the tree. And those lights dance. You can see a video of the device in action at the link, as well as four other spectacular Christmas tree art installations. If that's not enough, there are links at the bottom for the best Christmas trees from previous years. -via Everlasting Blort 

The movie Kill Bill: Volume 1 came out in 2003, and Kill Bill: Volume 2 followed in 2004 to complete the story. And now this Friday, both return to theaters together in a four hour and 35 minute marathon called Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair. 

Both the earlier movies were box office hits and became martial arts classics. But it's been a long time, and if you are young, your parents didn't let you see these movies in a theater the first time around. Is it worth sitting that long to see both volumes on the big screen? Kill Bill is the saga of a woman done wrong who furiously gets her revenge. It has plenty of over-the-top violence and the many quirks that brand it as a Quentin Tarantino flick, which becomes obvious in this Honest Trailer. The Whole Bloody Affair will also feature a new anime sequence, and there's an intermission between the two parts, so you can stretch your legs and relieve your bladder.    

Again, sorry about the 67 thing pic.twitter.com/kksi9Dqq56

— Carissa Codel (@CarissaCodelTV) November 25, 2025

Carissa Codel is a professional journalist who began working in that field while still an undergraduate student at Missouri State University. She has thrived professionally, won multiple awards, and is now the anchor for KOLR10 News in Springfield, Missouri.

She attracts a lot of attention for her body of work...and her body. Some of the comments that people leave about her physique are complimentary. Others are not. Codel takes them all in stride and frequently reads them out loud in her level, carefully enunciating, professional newscaster voice.

-via Tara Bull

Level Devil seems like a simple run-and-jump game. I began it thinking that the goal is to reach the doorway that will take you to the next level, but you don't know how many times you have to complete the task to advance. You have to die a few times to figure out your strategy. And there's no limit to how many times you can die and come back, which soon becomes hilarious.

As you progress, you start to think the goal of the game is to see how many ways this game can kill you over and over again. It's called Level Devil because it's diabolical. Just when you think you've got it figured out, you are suddenly confronted with a new way to fail. You can almost picture a demon watching you from somewhere, laughing at your miserable attempts to outsmart a simple run-and-jump game that will sneak up and destroy you before you can even blink. -via kottke 

Sarah Wagner is a gingerbread artist known in Cleveland for recreating landmarks of that city that she calls home. In the past, she's made highly realistic models of the Westside Market, Terminal Tower, and East Fourth Street.

Cleveland magazine reports that, this year, Wagner made a scale model of the central Cleveland Public Library. This was a commission by that institution, which provided Wagner with architectural plans necessary to recreate the headquarters. Baking and assembly took a full month, as well as 25 pounds of flour and 3 pounds of Isomalt, which is the substance used to create the windows. It measures 32 by 38 inches.

The model is now on display at the main library.

-via reddit

Do you recognize the design of this cookie?

It's a reference to a meme illustrating suvivorship bias.

During World War II, the US Navy asked statistician Abraham Wald to suggest where armor should be added to planes based upon a data set consisting of where USN planes had been damaged by enemy fire. Counterinuitively, Wald proposed armoring spots that were rarely damaged.

Why? Because Wald realized that the planes that had been hit there were unable to return to aircraft carriers and bases. By focusing on the planes that had returned to base damaged, the USN engaged in survivorship bias.

Bluesky user Stephanie made shortbread cookies resembling the meme.

-via Super Punch

Polar bears are normally pretty solitary creatures, but there are fewer and fewer of them these days, and this one feels the tug of loneliness. The other creatures of the Arctic either don't like him or are scared of him, and you honestly can't blame them. So he does what he has to do for companionship. It seems a bit strange for a wild bear to have an imaginary friend, and even that fails when climate change is involved. But there's always hope. 

You'll be struck by the gorgeous visuals and the wonderfully expressive faces in the cartoon Snow Bear. That's because it was written and directed by former Disney animator Aaron Blaise, who co-directed Brother Bear and worked on Aladdin, The Lion King, and Beauty and the Beast, among other films. Blaise spent three years on this project, with the aim of supporting Polar Bears International and the National Parks Conservation Service. -via Metafilter 

We've all heard the story of how Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. He went on vacation and left an open petri dish of Staphylococcus bacteria sitting out. When he returned, the dish had the mold Penicillium rubrum growing in it, and the Staphylococcus nearest it were dead. The substance produced by the mold was named penicillin, hailed as a breakthrough in killing dangerous bacteria. 

But there were some problems with Fleming's story. First, no other bacteriologist could replicate the original petri dish that Fleming has discovered (Plate 1, which is still preserved almost 100 years later). Instead they discovered that Penicillium would not grow on a colony of Staphylococcus, and even if it did, it would only kill young, developing bacteria. There was the curious fact that Fleming didn't take notes on his observation for almost two months, and only included the discovery story in a write up of experiments with Penicillium. And some of the details of the story were only added years later, when Fleming admitted he might not recall it all correctly.  

So what happened in Fleming's lab to result in Plate 1? There have been lots of theories, a couple of them quite plausible. Bacteriologist Ronald Hare actually replicated Plate 1 after many attempts, but only by making some assumptions and changing the conditions to fit the results. His sequence of events relies on some amazing coincidences, and doesn't really explain Fleming's actions afterward. Professor Robert Root-Bernstein has another theory that credits Fleming's work but infers he added the intriguing story of the initial discovery afterward. Read up on the question of penicillin and how it may have been discovered at Asimov Press. -via Damn Interesting 

It had to happen sooner or later. Santa Claus has been arrested for breaking and entering, ratted out by a naughty kid who resents getting coal in his stocking -again. Kris Kringle doesn't look quite so jolly in an orange jumpsuit as he enters prison life with trepidation. Santa nervously meets his cellmate, Joe Dumbass, who has always been naughty, and now demands an unusual Christmas gift from Santa Claus, even though his sack has been confiscated. A tattoo. Santa's surprising skill with a tattoo gun make you wonder if he's had some experience like this in his past. During the process, Santa has time to listen to Joe's story and figures out a way to turn things around for Joe. 

Tattoo Santa Claus is a dark new award-winning animation from Patrick Ward. The animation appears simple at first, but the lighting and the details add depth to the underlying meaning of the story. -via the Awesomer 

Fox 4 News in the Dallas/Fort Worth area reports that on November 25, police in Little Elm, Texas received a report of a goat "aggressively snacking" by the side of a road. Without backup, an officer detained the goat. There was some resistance, but the goat eventually complied and sat in the back of the police cruiser while the officer read him his Miranda rights.

The police department asked the owners to come to their station to get their goat before "he eats the report."

Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin (no typo; that's his legal name) is most famous for his role in the 1990 Christmas film Home Alone. Recently, he's been on a touring series called A Nostalgic Night with Macaulay Culkin, which includes a screening of the movie and an interview with him.

Variety reports that, during one of these interviews, Culkin shared his idea for a sequel to Home Alone. Culkin, now 45 years old, would play an adult Kevin McCallister who is either divorced or windowed. He is trying to, like the Wet Bandits, break into a home with a vulnerable child:

I’m raising a kid and all that stuff. I’m working really hard and I’m not really paying enough attention and the kid is kind of getting miffed at me and then I get locked out. [Kevin’s son] won’t let me in… and he’s the one setting traps for me.

Would you watch it?

-via Discussing Film | Photo: zuko1312