Why are reindeer associated with Santa Claus? In History Today, Alexander Lee traces the history of the Santa Claus legend. He begins with the historical Saint Nicholas, who was a Fourth Century A.D. Christian bishop in what is now Turkey. He was famous for sneaking into a poor man's house to leave money as a present.

When the Protestant Reformation came to Germany, Martin Luther decided to keep the Catholic feast day of Saint Nicholas, which continued to thrive in German-speaking areas of Europe, as well as spread outside of it to England and other nations.

German immigration to the United States led to the proliferation of Santa Claus imagery in America, emphasizing his gift giving to children. Perhaps heavy winters in the early Ninteenth Century encouraged artists to depict him in a sleigh.

In 1821, a New York City publishing house produced the anonymously written poem titled The Children's Friend: A New-Year's Present, to the Little Ones from Five to Twelve. One of the illustrations showed a reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh. The Santa legend rapidly assimilated this image and added the number of reindeer. Read about this change at History Today.

-via Debby Witt | Photo: Pixabay

TikToker TeeCee has two great talents: combining foods and video editing. She has the soul of a Cordon Bleu chef and the skills of a Hollywood storyboard artist.

I had orginally planned to post her video of dipping a cinnamon roll in a bowl of chili, but as I explored her Instagram channel, I found only more and more imaginative food videos. Yes, we should get around to trying this combination, but a more imperative recipe is dipping sticks of butter into Ragu sauce and eating them whole.

To adapt a phrase from Robin Williams's character in Dead Poets Society, foods like this are what we stay alive for.

-via First We Feast

Well, maybe he's pretending. Maybe he actually has the power to manipulate the intersection at the baggage carousel.

Some people will claim that this man, who is the comedian Andres Ini, recorded at an airport in Barcelona in 2018, is standing in front of one of those smart baggage mergers that prevent clogs from forming. But I still believe in magic and I hope that the people standing next to him do, too. May Ini use his powers for good.

-via Laughing Squid

Assuming that this photo is real, Dr. Kenyon Wilson, professor of music at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, would like for his students to carefully read his course syllabus. He left a fifty dollar bill inside a locker and included the combination in the document. No student took the money.

I will withhold judgment on Wilson's students' attentiveness until I see the syllabus itself. In the past few years, I've sat in on discussions by rhetoric professors about the literary genre of the syllabus and the ways in which they can be written to discourage students from actually reading them. Maybe his is as short at W.H. Auden's famous one-page syllabus from 1941. Maybe it's a twenty-page document written by lawyers that reads like (and essentially is) a terms of service agreement. Maybe Wilson would be out of money if he had left a Franklin instead of a Grant in the locker.

-via Josh Hadro

There's no swimsuit component at this beauty pageant, but contestants are expected to be perfect specimens of physical beauty (sorry, but inner beauty doesn't count). Every year, Saudi Arabia holds the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival in Riyadh. This is the world's most prestigious beauty pageant for camels. Now, tragically, this contest has been wracked with scandal.

The Associated Press reports that pageant authorities have expelled more than 40 participants due to artificial enhancements, including hormones to increase muscle mass, botox to increase lip volume, and fillers to shape the camels' faces into relaxed expressions. These camels will be unable to compete and secure the $66 million in prize money.

Photo: AboutHer

If the facility looks more like a train station than an art gallery, it's because the temporary and improvised art gallery is in a train station. This photo by Sara Scanlan is one of many displaying the artistic scene on BART, the public train system in San Francisco. These happy, creative people joined together for two hours on Saturday for BART Basil 2021, an unauthorized art celebration. Here's how participant and all-around Renaissance woman Danielle Baskin describes it:

Italian artist Giulia Bernardelli is becoming famous around the internet for her striking images made with spilled tea and coffee. After tipping over a cup of what is presumably the best drink available (she is Italian), she uses her fingers, brushes, and styluses to shape the liquids into famous or even original works of art.

Those are not the most common ingredients to use in beer brewing, but brewmaster Valgeir Valgeirsson is no stranger to strange beers. From his facility in Iceland, Valgeirsson has also brewed beer with seaweed, algae, Christmas tree stumps, and fish. For this Christmas season, AFP reports that he decided to make a beer with a traditional Icelandic Christmas dish--green peas and stewed cabbage.

The brewery made this beer, named Ora Jolabjor, in cooperation with Ora, Iceland's largest food production company. The can design resembles the cans of peas and cabbage that Ora sells in grocery stores.

Valgeirsson made just over 7,200 gallons, which sold out only very quickly. Consumers report that the smell and flavor definitely reflects the main ingredients.

-via Oddity Central | Photo: RVK Brewing

Military pilots may have to stay airborne and ready for action for long periods of time--long enough that they desperately need to urinate. One unfortunately common response for this need has been for pilots to intentionally dehydrate themselves to reduce their need to pee. But this also impairs their physical endurance and mental concentration.

The US Air Force recently announced a new type of urinal that may alleviate this problem. The Skydrate by Omni Defense Tech is major innovation in airborne toileting. The male version cups around the pilot's penis and sucks excreted urine into a bag.

The female version resembles a huge plastic maxi pad that, when wedged into the user's groin, likewise pulls away urine and collects it into a bag attached to the flightsuit.

This brilliant invention could also be implemented at other workplaces. Just imagine how much more blogging could get done at Neatorama if authors no longer had to go to the restroom during their shifts.

-via Core 77 | Photos: Omni Defense Tech

A few years ago, I accidentally turned on the subtitles on Netflix and, well, never turned them off. Now I watch everything, including shows in English, with subtitles on.

Pen Pearson, a critic at Slashfilm (/Film), does likewise. That's because he's noticed that it's increasingly hard for him to understand what actors are saying. It's not because he's suffered hearing loss. Movies are intentionally made this way now.

In his deep dive into the issue, Pearson discovered that some filmmakers choose a sound design that makes the dialogue difficult to follow beecause they often want to show hard, difficult situations for characters--the sorts of situations that might make it difficult to hear what's going on. If the audience can't understand the actors, they can empathize with the challenges of the character in that given situation.

Futhermore, actors vocalize differently these days. If I understand Pearson correctly, he means that actors aren't trained to speak clearly on an open stage, but to talk, or even mumble, into a microphone. This is a popular acting style that makes a sound engineer's work difficult. And because the modern visual style of movies calls for wide shots, it's not always possible to simply lower a boom mic over an actor.

Other trends contribute to this problem, such as the transition from sound design for theaters to online streaming video. Read about them at /Film.

-via Kottke | Image: Warner Bros.

Henry Kissinger was National Security Advisor to President Nixon, then Nixon's and President Ford's Secretary of State. He's most famous for negotiating the opening of diplomatic relations with Communist China, the US withdrawal from Vietnam, and nuclear weapons reductions with the Soviet Union. Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, so he's accomplished a lot in his career.

But, Kissinger once claimed, what he really wanted to do was to work as a weatherman.

He got his chance on Tuesday, May 21, 1991. Kissinger appeared on the show CBS This Morning. Coached by regular weatherman Mike McEwen, he described the weather across the continental United States, referring to regions of the US by towns named after famous cities, such as Paris, Kentucky and Athens, Georgia.

Source:

Rosenberg, Howard. "Forecast: A Trivializing of America Television: Henry Kissinger's Stint as a CBS Weather Forecaster is just the Latest Outrage as a Tabloid Mentality Sweeps Across the Airwaves during the May Ratings Sweeps." Los Angeles Times , May 24, 1991.

-via Weird Universe

Этому шедевру немого кинематографа я ставлю 10 из 10! pic.twitter.com/Z5oKNj8pQA

— Артём Дерягин (@DerArto) November 26, 2021

It's only one minute and six seconds long. In those 66 seconds, a lot happens. This plot is all over the place and moving constantly.

Allegedly, the events take place in Russia. This immediately rings true, but I'm at a loss to explain why I think that. I don't think that it's just the Russian text in the tweet where I first saw the sequence.

Whether this is real or just a slice of security camera footage, I can't wait to see the sequel, preferably directed by Michael Bay

-via Richard Chapman

Kudos to this creator.
The comedy is 🧑‍🍳💋! pic.twitter.com/V7kuURJghz

— Rebecca (@RebeccaReadsWLW) November 21, 2021

Literary TikToker (I'm going to just assume that's a thing for the kids these days, just like wearing an onion on your belt is for my generation) Lizzy imagines a scenario in which different incarnated fiction genres meet for their regular bookclub. They have decidedly firm opinions about the relative quality of themselves.

Notably absent is Alternate History, who was probably too busy accusing competitors of using Alien Space Bats, and Science Fiction, who is still world building instead of plot writing. Western's kids took the car keys away and can't get to the meetings anymore.

-via Rebecca Reads WLW

A Soju Bomb is a cocktail which mixes beer with soju, a Korean grain-based liquor with a very high alcohol content. Simply stirring the liquor into the beer is totally inadequate. The real Soju Bomb experiece begins with balancing the shot of soju over the beer glass on a pair of chopsticks. Knock hard on the table on which it sits to jar the shot loose. To fully prepare your brain for this experience, use something heavy, like your skull. Get your head nicely tenderized so that the booze has pain to numb.

If your shot does not fall in, try again and again, as many times as necessary, to mix the drink. The more times that you hit, the more motivation you gain to complete the drink.

Henry Temmermans has his priorities straight. 

The tabloid Daily Star tells us about this Dutch driver who noticed that another driver on the highway had passed out while still at the wheel. Her car continued to roll forward, more or less straight. It had done some damage, but she probably would have been seriously hurt if the car hit a solid object head-on.

So Temmermans guided his own car directly in front of the wayward Volkswagen and slowed until it hit him at a fairly low rate of comparative speed. He brought both vehicles to a halt. Once they stopped, he immediately ran to check on the woman.

-via Born in Space