It appears that in Jerusalem, Santa Claus rides a camel. Santa Claus in Jerusalem? The nation of Israel is a Jewish state, and the Christians who make the pilgrimage to the Holy Land in December are focused on the birth of Jesus, not Santa Claus. But Jerusalem has a Santa Claus, and he's an Orthodox Christian Arab. Meet Issa Kassissieh.   

It was 14 years ago when Kassissieh found an old Santa Claus costume that had belonged to his father. He decided to amuse himself and tried it on. It fit so well that he went to the nearby Jaffa Gate, a historic portal in the Old City’s wall, while wearing it. Children happily gathered around, and it had an effect on him. “I realized that as a child I didn’t get to have this happiness, and that it’s time to give it to the children of Jerusalem,” he says. “While traveling the world during Christmas I realized how deep Santa is embedded in Western cultures, while here, in the place where Christmas began, we only know Santa through television and movies.” The following year, Kassissieh donned the costume again. The year after that he hired a camel. Since then, around Christmas, he has ridden the camel around the Old City spreading cheer, and then receives visits from children and their families in Santa’s House in the afternoon. At the height of the season, the line in front of “Santa’s House” can be two hours long. Kassissieh funds most of the operation himself, but he does get candy donations from Christian individuals and organizations worldwide.

Read about Kassissieh, his journey to become Santa, and his Christmas house at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Heidi Levine for Atlas Obscura)

Photographers Kelly Pratt and Ian Kreidich love dogs and love dancers. Every year, they do a photo shoot with the St. Louis Ballet, who perform The Nutcracker every year, and dogs and cats from Stray Rescue of St. Louis. They call it The Muttcracker.

It’s hard to find a more universally lovable piece of work than one that features orphaned pets taking part in a holiday classic. "The Muttcracker" has received tons of coverage over the years, which has opened up the adoption floodgates and led to most of the dogs and cats finding their forever homes.   

    We have gotten a lot of national coverage for 'Muttcracker!' Outlets like People Magazine and Hallmark Channel have covered the story. Last year, all of the dogs were adopted within a couple months of the project. And this year, at least nine of the dogs have found homes already — less than a month after we started.

Read about the project and see the photographs at Wonderful Machine. Don't miss the story of the blind chihuahua that was held by the Mouse King. -via Metafilter

Gargoyles are statuary carvings that serve as downspouts on buildings. In freezing but wet weather, they grow icicles in a hurry! And when a gargoyle looks funnier than usual, someone is going to be ready to take a picture. See a dozen such pictures (#1 is quite rude) at Bored Panda.

(Image source: Green Pepper)

Stanislav Petrov was a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces and served at Serpukhov-15, a Soviet base. The aforementioned base monitored early warnings of ballistic missile launches.

Come the night of September 26, 1983. Petrov just replaced a colleague at the night shift. Fifteen minutes after midnight, the alert went off. The system has warned that the U.S. had launched a missile.

“Naturally, he began to check all the services in case there had been a software failure,” Dmitry Petrov, Stanislav’s son, recalls the story. “He trusted the visual services the most. After all, they could observe the launch of missiles via the satellite.”

Visual inspection, however, was impossible, as the sun was already setting at that moment. He only had less than half an hour to decide whether the launch was true or false.

Around that time, the air between the U.S. and the Soviet was very tense. “In such a situation, a wrong decision would have been enough,” German Gigolaev states.

What did Stanislav do? Find out on the full story over at BBC Reel.

(Image Credit: Queery-54/ Wikimedia Commons)

These are Christmas toy parodies made by Jeff Wysaski. He has them distributed in local stores. Why? Because it’s hilarious.

Some of these toys I can buy for my enemies, such as the frog that can tell him how much I hate him. Others I can buy for myself, like the crippling depression supervillain action figure.

See the other toys over at Sad And Useless.

Which toy do you like the most?

(Image Credit: Sad And Useless)

Architecture flirts with nature in expressive but subtle ways. Oftentimes, the idea behind this is to harmonize and not dominate the landscapes. When faced with steep slopes, cliff faces, and mountainsides, this could prove to be a challenge.

Check out these houses that have overcome this challenge, and where they can be found, over at CNN.

(Image Credit: Chen Hao / Bengo Studio)

After the recent incidents involving selfies, the US National Park Service wants to reinforce good and safe photo etiquette. There’s no better way to get the attention of your intended audience than to depict the possible effects of their bad selfie behavior through gingerbread cookies. These gingerbread cookies aim to convince all to stay a safe distance away from the wildlife, as Cnet.com details: 

"Use a zoom lens on your camera," the NPS tweeted on Friday. "If you are close enough to take a selfie with wildlife, you are wayyyy too close ... gingerly back away." 

The agency set the scene with photos showing a gingerbread man posing for a selfie with two bison. The next image shows the cookie flying through the air with a "WTF just happened" expression on its face.

The NPS doled out some more detailed advice in an Instagram version of the post. "Animals may appear to be calm and docile but are unpredictable and can easily be startled," the agency warned. It suggests sticking to trails and boardwalks and keeping your eye on the trail rather than your camera.

image via Cnet.com

Christmas time primarily means two things: reunions, and giving and receiving gifts. That, and it also means that there are etiquette landmines that await you. How do you respond when you receive a gift that you don’t like? How do you handle the person who always brings up politics at the Christmas table? Thomas Farley, also known as Mr. Manners, joins TODAY to provide timely advice for those tricky situations.

See the interview over at the site.

(Image Credit: meelina/ Pixabay)

70-year-old Robert Fox already knew where he wanted to spend his Christmas —where his daughter is. He has a problem, though: he doesn’t know how any of that could happen.

As he sat down on a bench in downtown Washington’s Franklin Square, he imagined that he would be welcomed by his daughter with a hug and a kiss. Christmas was then less than 48 hours away.

His daughter lived 61 miles south, in a small town just outside Fredericksburg, Va. He has a cellphone but can’t afford to pay for service. He didn’t know his daughter’s number or even the number of anyone who did. He hadn’t seen her since a relative’s funeral five, maybe six years ago, and they hadn’t talked in four. He didn’t own a car, and in his pocket was all the money he had left in the world: 62 cents.

[...]

Fox figured he should take a Greyhound bus from Union Station to Fredericksburg, where he planned to call her.

A bus ticket, however, costs $27. Will he be able to find that much money?

Find out more about his story over at The Washington Post.

(Image Credit: Michael S. Williamson/ The Washington Post)

I'm muddling the headline a bit because there's quite a lot of unpack. Michael Siegrist and Angela Bearth, professors at a university in Switzerland, polled people in eight European countries and asked them if they would like to live in a world without chemical substances. Ilya Somin writes at Reason:

A recent study published in Nature Chemistry finds that 39 percent of respondents in eight European countries say they "agree" with the statement that "I would like to live in a world where chemical substances don't exist." Another 39 percent say the "slightly agree" or "slightly disagree" with this statement. Similarly, 40% say "they do everything I can to avoid contact with chemical substances in my daily life."

As the study's authors—Swiss academics Michael Siegrist and Angela Bearth—point out, such "chemophobia reflects stunning scientific ignorance, because human life would be virtually impossible without chemicals. Indeed, pretty much everything we use or touch is a chemical or combination of chemicals.

So it's even worse than we thought! The chemicals are everywhere!

For several years, when I've conducted one-shot information literacy classes at my library, I've done a cold open in which I pull up the hilarious DHMO.org website and launch into a fast-paced and hopefully terrifying rant about the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide.

That's water.

Increasingly, though, I find that I can't lead with this shtick because the students already know what dihydrogen monoxide is or have already seen the website. That's an unscientific sample without even casual methodological rigor, but it's encouraging.

-via Instapundit | Image: A Cure for Stupid People t-shirt now on sale at the NeatoShop!

Hannah Fry is a mathematician with expertise in the algorithms tech companies use. She is also a privacy expert, and has warned against allowing Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa into the bedroom.

While Amazon previously denied that its Echo devices were used to spy on people, earlier this year they admitted that their employees listen to customer voice recordings in order to improve speech recognition.

It was also revealed that recordings of personal moments were inadvertently caught up after the smart speaker was triggered by words that sounded similar to "Alexa".

After requesting audio data from Amazon that had been recorded by her Echo speaker, Dr Fry discovered it had picked up conversations that were never directed at the voice assistant.

With an estimated two million UK households owning Alexa devices, the associate professor warned people to be careful how they use them.

Dr. Fry believes that there should be spaces in our homes that should remain completely private, such as the bathroom and the bedroom.

Scary!

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

How should you wrap your cat so that she or he fits neatly under the Christmas tree, ready to be opened in the morning? Anne Holdren provides this helpful instructional video.

She also provides an alternate version in which the person wrapping the cat (the same cat) is a hunky shirtless firefighter. I asked my wife which one I should post and she just glared at me. So I'm going with the first one.

Nota bene: not all cats will approve of being wrapped and may resist quite vigorously.

-via Ace of Spades HQ

What is unclear is whether the Taiwanese online retailer is hoping to convince toilet seat customers to buy a Switch or Switch customers to buy a toilet seat. Nintendo Life reports:

A Taiwanese retailer has decided that the best way to flog Nintendo Switch systems is to chuck in a smart toilet seat - you know, for those lengthy play sessions. According to Chinese Nintendo, the bundles' names translate to "Sit well full-length" for the original Switch model, and "Loneliness Eliminator" for the Switch Lite. Truly inspiring.

With the pace of gaming technology, this won't even be an issue within a year or two, as most toilet seats will be gaming consoles anyway.

-via Dave Barry | Image: Chinese Nintendo

It’s official. Cats are the nemesis of Christmas trees. It doesn’t matter how big or small the Christmas tree is — a cat can and will bring it down at all costs.

Note: When I say cats, I don’t just mean the domesticated ones. I also mean the big cats (they are part of the family, too!)

See the other photos (and GIFs) of cats destroying Christmas trees over at Meowingtons.

(Images Credit: Meowingtons)

Looking forward to a unique food experience this Christmas time? Try making this Puerto Rican Christmas meal called pernil. It is a slow-roasted pork roast meal commonly shared in Puerto Rico on Christmas. For the Puerto Ricans, it is not Christmas without this.

The downside to this meal, however, is that it takes a lot of time, and you might not be able to prepare the meal in time with Christmas Eve. Nevertheless, it’s worth trying to cook this.

Know how to prepare this meal over at the Los Angeles Times.

(Image Credit: Celeste Noche / For The Times)