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

In 1934, two teenagers in Baltimore dug into the dirt floor of their apartment house basement. About a foot down, they unearthed a $20 gold coin. Digging further, they discovered a literal pot of gold- a cache of pre-Civil War gold coins in a copper pot! The two boys, not fully understanding what they had found, were going to cash the coins in at the bank, but were stopped by a brother-in-law. 

When the news got out, anyone and everyone who had a relative with a connection to the house stepped forward to claim the stash as their own, and the case was tied up in court for years. The value of their discovery changed greatly during the account of what happened afterward. First it rose due to the composition and rarity of the coins, further digging, and the fact that some coins had been re-stashed elsewhere, plus the inflation estimates. Then it went down due to court costs, lawyer's fees, and taxes. But the fight over the gold uncovered some interesting stories about the property going back almost a hundred years. Read the tale of this buried treasure at Strange Company. 

Electrostatic attraction is not a mating strategy, but as you know, Ze Frank will take any opportunity for a double entendre. This video starts off telling us about nematodes, which are weird enough, but eventually gets to the subject matter: how they harness the tiny electrical charges in the atmosphere for their own ends. For nematodes, it's how parasitic species target flying insects to invade. For bees and other pollinating insects, electric fields offer a strategy for collecting plenty of pollen. That benefits the plants, too. Spiders use electrostatic charges to weaponize their webs into more powerful insect traps. And newly-hatched spiders use the power of electrons to spread their silky parachutes and fly. The concept of parasitic nematodes and flying baby spiders might be icky, so instead just think about how these tiny creatures understand the physics of the world around them better than you do. There's a 75-second ad at 4:22.  

There are elephant enclosures in various zoos throughout Europe. But the non-profit organization Pangea plans to open an expansive sanctuary for captive elephants that will stretch over 850 acres. That's 200 times larger than the elephant enclosure at the Tierpark zoo in Berlin.

The Resident, an English-language newspaper in Portugal, reports that the site is located in the Alentejo region of southern Portugal. This area is among the most suitable in Europe for elephant habitation.

Construction should finish in December and thirty elephants will arrive in the spring of next year. They will be able to roam freely over the site while still having access to veterinary care.

-via Marginal Revolution | Photo: E-roxo

There is an entire repertoire of songs that we only hear for one month out of the year, because they are associated with Christmas. This might be because we hear them so much during that one month that we can no longer stand them after the New Year holiday. But some of them got lumped into the Christmas category because they were about cold weather and snow. They would be appropriate up until March, but we don't hear them after Christmas at all. 

Then there are Christmas songs that started out as something completely different, like the song that was written for a Soviet comedy film in 1934. One familiar carol is actually about the second coming of Christ, which you can understand once you know that and go over the lyrics in your head. And then there's one song that was originally about an unfaithful lover, but was changed over hundreds of years and translations. Read about these five Christmas songs and what they originally meant at Mental Floss. 

(Image credit: Charles E. Beckett) 

December is the darkest month of the year, so candles, once necessary, are now associated with Christmas. You are liable to light a few yourself, so you may as well learn the science behind what makes them dangerous. See, what actually burns in a candle flame is not the solid or liquid wax, nor the wick, but the vapor of the wax.  

James Orgill of the Action Lab (previously at Neatorama) starts this video with a spectacular reaction you may not see coming. Maybe we should have noticed that he's using a long stick to keep it far away. Apparently this reaction is internet fodder, yet is rarely explained accurately. It's not really new, either, as one commenter relates.

This looks dangerous, but it's a phenomena that would rarely happen in everyday life. Don't try to replicate this stunt, and you'll just need to follow the safety rules we all know about burning candles. The video has a two minute skippable ad at 2:30.  -via Damn Interesting 

It seems simple: people who evolved near the equator have dark skin to protect their bodies from the sun, while people who settled closer to the poles lost melanin to take advantage of scarce sunlight. It's not quite that simple. New research shows that most European people, who settled there 45,000 years ago, had dark skin up into the Iron Age, about 3,000 years ago, when the number of pale-skinned people became the majority. Even more surprising, the genes for lighter skin didn't proliferate from mutations in northern Europe- they migrated in from what is now Turkey.  

These findings come from genetic studies on individual Europeans, such as Cheddar Man, who lived 10,000 years ago, and Ötzi the Iceman, who lived 5,300 years ago, plus others even older now that we have tools to analyze degraded DNA. You might also be surprised to learn that blue eyes became common in Europe long before pale skin and hair. Read about the genetic studies that revealed what ancient Europeans looked like at ZME Science. -via Real Clear Science 

Tomorrow is the first day of Advent--the countdown to the birth of Jesus in the Western Christian tradition. Advent calendars marking out these individual days are popular. In the past, we've seen Advent calendars inspired by Die Hard, filled with whisky, and one using a Dalek as its shape.

The Czech firm of Podnikovka offers this Advent sausage. Slice off a piece each day in preparation for Christmas.

-via Messy Nessy Chic

The iconic "Hotel California" by the Eagles has been covered in many different genres, including bluegrass, and instruments, such as bagpipes. It remixes well and calls to people from different cultures and generations.

So it is proper that Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox ("Today's hits yesterday") would put the 1977 classic into a prior era. In this case, that's midcentury Cuban jazz. Actor and musician Rogelio Douglas, Jr. performs it. It's beautiful and, as one commenter puts it, authentic:

In a world where everyone and their mother are using AI to do genre-bending covers, PMJ still stands head and shoulders above the rest with real talent and incredible singers and performers.

-via The Awesomer

in my friend’s apartment, there is a subway LED banner with live updates of when the trains by him depart

I NEED ONE IMMEDIATELY pic.twitter.com/Z16zElnx5E

— whizwang (@whizwang) November 14, 2025

When does the next train on the red line depart from the station nearest your home? It might be helpful to have an up to date banner sign within sight so that you always know by just turning your head.

Nook Woodworking in Brooklyn makes this LED sign for, specifically, New York City. It stays synced in real time with your preferred MTA lines. Hopefully, they'll offer it for other cities in the future.

-via Super Punch