Dodging my responsibilities like....#hockey 🪑 pic.twitter.com/Itk1NuqmaN

— Pavel Barber (@HeyBarber) December 17, 2020

Pavel Barber is a Canadian hockey coach who describes himself as "a stickhandling specialist." That means he's an expert in the precise and consistent use of the hockey stick. In this video, he's at The Skating Lab, a hockey training facility in Toronto. That facility's website is fascinating to browse, as it's filled with photos of many specialized machines designed to optimize hockey performance.

In this video, he's using a treadmill to maintain control of a puck while maneuvering it around increasingly difficult obstacles.

-via The Awesomer

A friend of redditor appuhlatchuhn recently brought an adorable dissertation into the world. She got this beautiful maternity photo taken with it. Mama looks so proud. I hope the little tyke grows up and gets published as a monograph some day.

Rommy De Bommy, an artist in the Netherlands, makes fashion accessories that look just like (and I'm going to guess tastes like) food products. She says that they're made of clay and "and little bit of magic." She can make custom orders, so if there's some special food that speaks to your soul, De Bommy can make a purse that looks like it.

In the olden days, before Amazon Prime, people still had daily deliveries to their homes. In the United States, this often consisted of a daily drop off of fresh milk. The milk could be left at one's front door. But to hide bottles from casual thievery and make the milk easier to grab while still inside the house, some homes had milk doors. These were cabinets built into the outside wallk, accessible through doors on each side.

They weren't locked, but, as Rain Noe of Core77 points out, they represent a similar approach to the delivery lockers that some people use to prevent "porch pirates" from making off with their property.

Perhaps, in the future, homes will have built-in delivery lockers to support this new instant delivery lifestyle.

Photo: Downtowngal

A Dutch team of aerospace engineers led by Henk Hesselink argue that future airports should be built with circular runways rather than linear ones. This would give pilots flexibility during variable weather conditions and allow for an easier traffic flow. In 2017, Hesselink spoke to International Airport Review about these advantages:

This runway is a circle, that has no limitations on where to take-off or land on this circle. This makes it possible to fly in from or out to any direction. The size of the circle is pretty large, its diameter is 3.5 kilometres. Total length of the runway therefore is 10 km. This means that passengers during take-off or landing will not feel like they are in a roller coaster, a maximum of 1.2g forces will be experienced, similar to a train on a curved track. A typical landing only requires a part of the runway with a limited curve.

Current airports operate runways with fixed directions, so a limited number of directions is available for take-off and landing. During a storm, the capacity of the runway is limited because of this. This fixed direction also means that some communities experience more noise than others.

At the Endless Runway, aircraft have the possibility to land anywhere on the circle. This gives the possibility to find always at least one point where there is no crosswind and only headwind. This means that the airport can operate a sustainable capacity.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Netherlands Aerospace Center

Anna Chojnicka, an artist in London, went into lockdown with the rest of her city last spring. She needed to be creative, so she began bruising bananas. She uses a stylus to lightly and precisely press into ripe bananas, bruising the skin. Every day, she makes a new banana image, some of which display amazing detail and shading.

We were all impressed when, last month, redditor kelvin214 neatly arranged 518 blocks on top of one. Now he's blown away his own record with 1,002. There's no glue or other adhesives at work--just ordinary wizardry.

Here's a time lapse video of the erection process. At the 1:33 mark, having completed his work, the Jenga master brings it all crashing down.

-via Geekologie

Prudence Staite is a master chocolatier. She can make seemingly anything out of chocolate (and other foods) and does so with an artistic flair.

YouTuber Technomoan, who explores antique audio equipment, bought a Christmas music record from Staite's Etsy shop. It's literally made of Belgian dark chocolate and is completely edible. The sound quality is . . . well, not as good as a vinyl record, but remarkably strong for chocolate.

You can watch a longer version of Technamoan's video here.

-via The Awesomer

Love Hultén, an "audiovisual artist" from Sweden makes amazingly amusing and interesting machines. His most recent invention, which is sadly not up for mass production in time for Christmas shopping, is the VOC-25. It's a vocal synthesizer with 25 chattering teeth, one per key on the keyboard. It's inspired by a similar work by famous roboticist Simone Giertz.

-via The Awesomer

I know from watching Murder, She Wrote that the best thing you can do for yourself is not be related to Jessica Fletcher. But what if you have instead found yourself inside an Agatha Christie murder mystery novel? The rules are different. You have to adapt to avoid being murdered. Mystery novelist Maureen Johnson is here to help. At Crime Reads, she explains which people and places to avoid when you venture into a quaint English village:

The vicar

See previous note about the village church. When you see the vicar, run. If you are not dead yet, the vicar is obliged to kill you.

The newest resident in town

They don’t know the Old Ways yet and refuse to learn. They want to open up a Coolspa in that twee Grade Two-listed thatched cottage. They’re talking to you because no one else will talk to them. They’ll be a popsicle soon enough. Shun.

Anyone who leaves a voice mail

Do not leave voice mails if you are in a murder mystery town. It means you Know Something. Don’t leave them. Don’t hang around people who do.

-via Instapundit | Photo: Pixabay

Twitter user @NBastel posts this photo of a dormitory at Virginia Tech. Yes, those are accessible, not decorative, balconies over indoor space. According to redditor mchoward, who lived near this building during his time at Virginia Tech, the design led to precisely the drunken shenanigans that you're imagining:

About a decade ago, the people that lived in this building used to throw massive parties in this common area. It would get absolutely packed and the cops were always called. One time, the apartment complex sent an employee to take pictures. They then sent the pictures to all the residents to shame them ("Look at how dumb you all look!"), which included pictures of students pouring drinks from the balconies to the people below as well as students climbing into the ceiling tiles to get to different balconies without having to go down (apparently one person fell through the ceiling). Of course, no one was embarrassed by the pictures, and they sent them to their friends which resulted in even bigger parties.

-via Super Punch

"Get him, Santa!' And Santa Claus does do, tackling a suspect while an elf drew his handgun. This scene took place in Riverside, California, on Friday. Two police officers working undercover outside of a Target store spent their day arresting shoplifters as they left the store. Then they noticed three men stealing a car in the parking lot. NBC 4 News quotes Detective Paul Miranda about the incident:

The elf cornered one very perplexed suspect.

"When I looked over my shoulder I saw Santa running by me going after the second subject," Miranda said.

The driver got away but detectives say they know who he is.

As for the other two suspected thieves...

"They were apologetic and Santa is currently deciding whether they stay on the naughty list," Miranda said,

-via Dave Barry

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Pictured above is a tripod that rests on top of the frozen Tenana River in Nenana, Alaska. People all over Alaska place bets on when they think the ice will break and the tripod will tip over, marking the reopening of the river in the spring. The person who gets closest wins the Nenana Ice Classic and a portion of the pot. Last year, the winner got $311,000. The rest of the proceeds went to charities.

The lottery began in 1917 to encourage town residents to watch the river during construction of a railroad across the river when broken ice could endanger the work. Now anyone in Alaska can buy a ticket for $2.50. Bailey Berg of Atlas Obscura writes about what this tradition means to the people of Nenana:

For two months a year, people place their bets in special red cans that are returned to Nenana in early April. There, teams of locals sort the guesses by hand, entering the tickets into an elaborate analog database that’s checked and cross-checked by myriad workers for accuracy. Even though there are roughly 100 employees working six- or eight-hour shifts, it’s so time consuming that in recent years the contest has been over well before the tickets are all accounted for. [...]

The Classic is a hold-over from Alaska’s more Wild West, pre-statehood years. Before becoming the 49th state in 1959, Alaska had a robust gambling culture. Membership in the union changed that. The Alaska Legislature legalized charitable lottery-style games in 1960, largely to allow the Classic to continue (and making it one of the oldest continuously running betting events in the country). Sixteen percent of all ticket sales are used for scholarship programs, local causes, and sporting groups, and a handful of larger medical charities. Last year the Ice Classic was able to donate $90,000.

Sitting in front of a fireplace on a cold winter night is one of the special joys of winter life. Yule log videos are a substitute for those of us who lack a functional fireplace. You can try videos with Lil Bub the cat, Nick Offerman, or the corpse of Darth Vader.

But this is 2020.

So it's more appropriate that this dumpster fire of a year feature a dumpster fire celebration. That's why AM/FM, an advertising agency in Edmonton, Alberta created this symbolic view of the year with Christmas carols playing softly in the background. The materials burned are themselves representative of 2020: CTV News quotes a partner in the agency:

"We filmed it for an hour straight and just threw stuff in a watched it burn," said Anderson. "It was interesting for sure."

Each of the 2020-related items were handpicked by the team and had its own backstory.

"Struggling with puzzles, not wearing ties, the White Claw craze. They were all just little inside things I think that our team shared and went through and it was a good laugh for all of us," said Anderson.

"The sourdough starter was hilarious to me because I couldn't get mine started for the life of me."

-via Dave Barry

Do you want to look sharp? McDonald's of Sweden knows that means that you're heading to the McDonald's branded barbershop in Stockholm. There, you can get the "Golden M" haircut.

Which looks like this. Fox News quotes a McDonald's representative:

“When we realized that people were wearing our Golden Arches, we had to act," said Staffan Ekstam, the marketing director at McDonald’s Sweden. "We started the M Barber Shop not only to guard our Golden M, but also to claim it once and for all. The salon is a celebration dedicated to our beloved ambassadors — a helping hand to guide them on how to keep their M’s in perfect trim, even when we can’t move around as freely as we usually can."

I look forward to a response by the hairstylists at Whataburger.

-via Dave Barry | Photos: McDonald's