It's common enough to get a couple fortune cookies delivered with the bill at the end of a meal at a Chinese restaurant. But TAO Asian Bistro goes much, much further. Its iconic fortune cookie is a complete dessert course. At a guess, I'd say that it's about eight inches across. Here's a video that shows how the chefs make it.

Furthermore, the bistro makes custom versions of its fortune cookie dessert for Christmas, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and the Chinese New Year.

This fortune cookie is one of 15 huge desserts compiled by The Takeout, including huge sundaes, milkshakes, and a 25-pound apple pie.

Christopher B. Buck, Ph.D., is a virologist with the National Institutes of Health's Laboratory of Cellular Oncology. Science News reports that he has lately experimented on himself and his brother by brewing and drinking beer that contains effective vaccines against cancer-causing polyomarivuses.

The project has caused legal difficulties for Buck who, as a scientist with the US federal government, is constrained by ethical requirements for experiments on human subjects--even if test subjects are himself and his brother. The formed and serves as the sole employee of the Gusteau Research Corporation to provide himself with some means of evading these restrictions.

-via NEXTA

Chesty is a bulldog who serves as the official mascot of the United States Marine Corps. He's named for Lt. Gen. Lewis "Chesty" Puller (1898-1971).* This particular bulldog is the sixteenth to bear the title of Chesty when the Marine Corps adopted its first bulldog for this purpose in 1957.

This video shows how Chesty is trained and kitted out to serve the corps and engage in his work for it. Although there are treats involved, Chesty also has responsibilities and standards to uphold.

-via Instapundit

*I enthusiastically recommend the Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography of Chesty Puller's son. It's a raw, honest, and moving story of the full life of a man in all its ordeals.

Oxford's Mathematical Institute reports about the development of shapes that can physically exist only in zero gravity. These "soft shapes" lack corners and are partially available as biological tissues. But recreating them in practice against the pull of gravity is challenging. The fluid dynamics require micro or zero gravity.

In the above video, Hungarian astronaut Tibor Kapu created an accurate physical model of one of these shapes while on board the International Space Station.

-via My Modern Met

Barry's Borderpoints is a website featuring photos and maps of national borderpoints visited by Barry Arnold, the Vice President of the International Border Research Group--an organization of border enthusiasts.

Arnold's website includes some of the more eccentric borders that history and politics have drawn across the world. Among them is this house that is in Slovenia but is surrounded by Italy. It is set in the region of Trieste--a city long disputed among Italians, Slovenians, and Croatians.

A map reveals the international border. There are official marker points at all four corners. Residents have incorporated them into their garden landscaping. There are no indications that the Slovenian and Italian residents across the fence are hostile to each other.

In the 1990 Christmas movie Home Alone, the McCallister family experiences a nighttime power outage. As a result, their alarm clocks don't go off and the family wakes up only when the airport shuttle van arrives to pick them up. This electrical problem is central to the plot. If the McCallisters are not frantically rushed to leave, it's very improbable that Kevin would have been left home alone.

How likely is it that there would be a power outage on that particular night? Physicist Luís Batalha produced this brief analysis on the subject. His conclusion is that the likelihood of this event is about 0.13%.

Kevin got lucky.

Yukon Cornelius, the great mountain man of the frozen north and a hero of the 1964 classic Christmas film Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, is a larger than life figure who taps into hidden universal forces to perform mighty feats.

In the original film, Cornelius wields a revolver. Now he prefers a lightsaber -- an elegant weapon from a more civilized age. In Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back he almost dies when captured by a Wampa.

Travis Chapman, a pop culture artist with a great gift for humor and the Christmas spirit, shows Cornelius at his best.

YouTuber Jonas Wolf and his friends adapt modern songs for the choral styles of the Renaissance and early Baroque period of Western European music. Past recordings include "Let It Be" by The Beatles and "Last Christmas" by Wham!

Embedded above is the 1977 disco hit "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees--a song made most famous for its appearance in the film Saturday Night Fever. Like many of Wolf's recordings, he and his colleagues are performing the 20th Century song as a madrigal. That's a polyphonic form of vocal chamber music that originated in Renaissance Italy and now grooves on the dance floor.

-via Kottke

Like most states, Illinois allows residents to choose combinations of letters and numbers to reflect custom messages on their car license plates. But, the state warns, applicants must follow certain standards of decency and decorum.

NBC News 5 Chicago reports that the state received 55,600 requests during the past year. It rejected more than 550 of them because they were "inflammatory, profane, or offensive...."

In this video, Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias reads off some of the funniest license plate requests that he has had to turn down. I had no idea that "bricked" had an offensive connotation, but Urban Dictionary was unfortunately informative.

-via Jalopnik

Will my shipment arrive before Christmas? I have proceeded through the five stages of grief and reached acceptance: it will arrive at my home on the 27th.

But Flo & Joan, the musical comedy duo from the UK, are not working with the psychology of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, but instead that of Joseph Campbell. In this song, they go on a hero's journey to seek their missing parcel which itself is on a great journey.

Watch this beautifully staged performance that rises to a crescendo of anxiety combatted with courage as the women find the parcel serves as a boon that transforms them.

-via Nag on the Lake

To torment me, my teenage children introduced me to a YouTube channel filled with AI-generated Christmas carols filled with Gen Alpha slang. The slop flows melodically and the lyrics are far from mid, inducing much gyatt with their rizz rhythms.

In addition to the above embedded "Six Seven on Merry Rizzmas", there is "12 Days of Rizzmas", "Rizzmas Bells", "Oh, Rizzmas Tree," and "Six Seven Christmas."

No cap, they are all very skibidi.

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is one of the most popular and respected anime and manga franchises of the past few years due to its emotional depth and character development.

It is a story about regret.

The second season of the anime adaptation of the manga premiers in about three weeks. It's definitely on my must-watch list.

Last year, cosplayer Hanami made this cosplay of the main character, Frieren, dressed for Christmas festivities.

Historians will study how bad this book is. English teachers will hold this book aloft at their students to remind them that literally anyone can write a book: Look at this, it’s just not that hard to do.

That's how Scaachi Koul describes American Canto, a memoir by journalist and political operative Olivia Nuzzi. Koul reviewed the book for Slate. This review is one of several collected by Literary Hub for a roundup of the most cutting book reviews for the past year.

Other books considered and then eviscerated are the first novel by comedian Louis C.K., a memoir by former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and a posthumously published collection of short stories by Harper Lee.

-via Nag on the Lake | Illustration: Dawn Hudson

Peppermint is a flavor often associated with Christmas and peppermint-flavored candy canes commonly appear in Christmas decorations and gifts. Sweets master Elizabeth LaBau--known on the internet as the Sugar Hero--proposes 35 uses for peppermints that are appropriate for the season.

My favorite are her candy cane cups, which are pictured above. These are little cups made from whole candy canes. She partially melted them in an oven-safe shotglass-sized mold until they held their shape as functional cups when cooled.

LaBau then filled them with peppermint hot chocolate, whipped cream, and crumbled candy canes. She proposes an alternative drink for adults: peppermint schnapps. Yummy!

Artist Tom Jung got his start in film illustration in the 1950s. In 1977, he composed this image to promote the first Star Wars film. We've all seen this image or parts of it since that time. The original is a half-sheet illustration that was recently sold by Heritage Auctions for $3.875 million (USD). That makes it the highest priced piece of Star Wars memorabilia ever sold.

It was the most expensive item taken at the December 9-10 event which totaled $7.71 million in sales of Hollywood treasures, including the hat of the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz and a harem girl costume once worn by Marilyn Monroe.

-via My Modern Met