It's the first of January of a new year, so, under United States copyright law, sound recordings from 1925 and other creative works from 1930 are now in the public domain.

You're free to print copies of The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett and sell them. You can make a horror film adaptation of Watty Piper's children's book The Little Engine That Could without consulting the Piper literary estate.

The above video from the Duke University School of Law highlights some of the newest public domain works. They include the Marx Brothers' film Animal Crackers, Bing Crosby's first screen appearance, and the first film with John Wayne in a starring role.

-via Internet Archive

What makes Noah Verrier's paintings so enjoyable is that they juxtapose the rare with the commonplace. His still lives are reminiscent of Baroque depictions of food still lives. But his subject matter, such as this box of McDonald's French fries paired with a flute of champagne, seem out of phase.

Let's say that you passed on while alone at home, perhaps due to a fatal blogging accident. Would your dog or cat, cut off from outside support, eat you? How soon would they reclassify you from human companion to food source?

Popular Science examined the scientific literature and consulted animal behavior experts. Dogs in particular may start feeding immediately, as dogs are more natural scavengers. Cats tend toward predatory behavior, and so would hesitate before eating carrion.

Dr. Lena DeTar of Cornell University says that cats will likely to persist with hunting behaviors in these extreme scenarios, whereas dogs, who are wholly dependent on humans for food will just, uh, continue to depend upon humans for food.

-via Instapundit | Photo: PickPic

How reliable and safe is Tesla's autonomous driving program? The New York Post reports that one owner recently traveled in a completely autonomous mode from Los Angeles to South Carolina, thus completing the first coast-to-coast autonomous trip in the United States.

David Moss, the owner of the Tesla FSD V14.2, never disengaged the autonomous mode--even to park during rest stops. He charged 30 times along the way for the 10,638.8-mile journey. Moss's trip also set a record as the first use of an autonomous Tesla FSD for over 10,000 miles. You can read his X thread about the voyage here.

-via Instapundit

Risk is a fun board game, but Instructables user madkins9 suggests building a spherical board for a "more frustrated, expensive, and time-consuming" experience. Fortunately, he's done the planning work, which is where most of the difficulty comes from.

madkins9 used steel hemispheres to make the globe and glued magnets to the game pieces from an original 1962 set. He then stained and polished wooden base comes with hexagonal drawers for each of the six player colors.

The final product must make for a more realistic game, as, for example, Alaska and Kamchatka are no longer on opposite sides of the board. Thus the spherical design provides for superior practical training for world conquest.

-via Hack-A-Day

In a fan-favorite scene of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jones must flee from a huge boulder rolling toward him as he performs, er, "archaeological research" in a tomb.

That stunt came remarkably close to reality during a recent show at Disney World in Florida. The New York Post reports that a 400-pound rubber ball serving as the boulder fell off its planned track at an actor playing Indiana Jones and toward the audience.

Heroically, a staff member intercepted it, blocking its movement with his own body. He was injured but, Disney World asserts, is recovering. The show schedule is continuing unchanged.

-via Super Punch

I own a globe that could have only existed for 6 months in 1939 pic.twitter.com/IL6Slm4bOX

— DJ Branham🗽 (@DJBranham) December 30, 2025

X user DJ Branham shares a photo of an unusual globe that he found at an antiques store in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He mentions that it would have been accurate for only about six months.

The globe shows then-recent annexations by Nazi Germany that were at least tolerated if not accepted by the major powers of Europe. Poland is still independent, but all of Czechoslovakia is in German hands, so the globe must date between March 16 and July 31, 1939.

One commenter dates the globe as prior to July 29, 1939, as it shows Hatay under the control of French Syria instead of Turkey.

Yesterday, French actress and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot died at the age of 91. Her passing prompted this X post:

Brigitte Bardot’s death means there are now just three people mentioned in @billyjoel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire who are still alive.

— Jon Hollis (@JonHollis9) December 28, 2025

Billy Joel's 1989 song "We Didn't Start the Fire" contains lengthy lists of prominent people and major events from 1949, when Joel was born, until 1989. It's an anthem of Baby Boomer popular culture mixed with the politics of the United States during the Cold War.

Only three people listed in the song are still alive: Bob Dylan, Chubby Checker, and Bernhard Goetz.

Image: 20th Century Fox

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.