LEGO artist Ochre Jelly noticed other LEGO artists doing Christmas scenes, and decided to join in, with his own sideways style, inspired by both Heironymous Bosch and Cyriak Harris.
You've probably heard myths about elves and workshops, but the truth behind how Christmas presents are made is actually much more sinister - and beautiful. Happy holidays everybody!
I suppose a giant snowman mecha insect is as easy to believe as a bearded elf that delivers gifts around the world. Let's get a closer look at the carnage.
Janelle Shane (previously at Neatorama) tried to train a neural network to understand cookie recipes, with varying success. In this picture you see some of the new cookies it came up with.
One neural network I use, called textgenrnn, tries its best to imitate any kind of text you give it. I’ve given them paint colors, band names, and even guinea pig names and in each case their results are somewhat… mixed. (Paint colors called Stanky Bean, Stargoon, and Turdly, for example) The problem is that it doesn’t know what any of these words mean - it’s just picking letter combinations that seem likely to it.
This is what happened when I gave it all the cookies from a list of American recipes. This is what human cookies sound like to a neural network.
There are more, some that might whet your appetite and others that are worthy of a facepalm. -via Boing Boing
Epic NPC Man is back to make fun of video game situations. Here's one I didn't know could happen. Are there really adventure games in which the action continues while you negotiate the next fork in the road? That could have some dangerous consequences. -via Geeks Are Sexy
It's a modern tradition for Jewish people to eat at a Chinese restaurant on Christmas (and then go to the movies). You might have assumed that it's because Chinese restaurants are open on Christmas Day, and are less crowded when Christians are having a traditional meal at home. That's definitely part of it, but the custom has a specific history that goes back to 19th-century immigration patterns in New York City, when Jewish enclaves and Chinese enclaves were next to each other.
By and large, Chinese restaurateurs didn’t discriminate against Jewish customers. Joshua Eli Plaut writes in his book A Kosher Christmas: 'Tis the Season to be Jewish that the Chinese, as non-Christians, didn't perceive any difference between Anglo-Saxon New Yorkers and Jewish immigrants; they accepted all non-Chinese customers with open arms.
Jewish customers embraced Chinese food in return. The restaurants were conveniently located and inexpensive, yet were also urbane in their eyes. Jews saw dining out as an American custom that they wanted to try, largely because they sought upward mobility among other Americans. According to Yong Chen, a history professor and author of Chop Suey, USA: The Story of Chinese Food in America, "[Diners] were attracted to Chinese food because, in their mind, it represented American cosmopolitanism and middle class status." And they weren't deterred by the fact that food in Chinese restaurants wasn't kosher. But they could easily pretend it was.
There's more to it, like the specific Chinese foods that appealed to Jewish immigrants. Read the story of why Jewish people eat Chinese food on Christmas Day at Mental Floss. Now, about the movies... it's because the theaters are open and less crowded.
Double H Canine Training Academy would like you to know that not all dogs are cut out to be service dogs. Witness Ryker, who washed out of the program. He's still a good dog, just not a good service dog. -via Metafilter
Her name was Rossa Matilda Richter, but she was known as Zazel, the human cannonball. Zazel was a trapeze performer and walked a tightrope, but became famous for performing a new stunt on April 2, 1877, at the Royal Aquarium in London. The 14-year-old performer climbed into the business end of a huge cannon, which was then lit, and she was suddenly launched across the arena and into a net. The cannon act brought Zazel worldwide fame.
“We listen to the loud report which follows its application to the powder and lo! our vision is startled by the sight of the living Miss – we mean missile – flying through space, and alighting safe and sound in the huge net spread to receive her. It is Zazel. There she stands, bowing her acknowledgments of the thunders of applause which greet her. Before the smoke has cleared from the vast mouth of the cannon whence she had come she has made her away along the net, and is found again bowing and smiling upon the stage, and the spectators, almost bewildered as well as delighted, are turning to each other with astonishment plainly written upon their faces, and upon their lips the query, ‘Is it possible?’”
But life wasn't a bowl of cherries for Zazel. She was cheated out of proper compensation by her handlers, and suffered injuries quite a few times, including a horrific injury that ended her career in 1891. Read about the life of the first human cannonball at Geri Walton's blog. -via Strange Company
The best animal videos are either adorable, funny, or strange. Many of the best are all three! The Pet Collective has compiled the best pet videos from 2018 into one rather enjoyable collection, yet they labeled it "part one." That means there are more coming. -via Tastefully Offensive
Fifty years ago this week, NASA launched the Apollo 8 mission. It was mankind's first adventure outside low Earth orbit, the first trip around the moon, and the first time anyone got to see Earth as a distant object, a blue marble in space. And it wasn't even supposed to happen.
Astronauts Frank Borman, Bill Anders and Lovell were not supposed to visit the moon at all. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration had assigned these men to Apollo 9, a fairly routine test of the lunar excursion module (LEM) in Earth’s orbit. But during the summer of 1968, U.S. officials feared an unexpected Soviet jaunt to the moon, so just 16 weeks before the scheduled liftoff, they reassigned the astronauts to an incredibly ambitious and dangerous flight. This decision was essential “to put us on the right timeline for Apollo 11,” says Teasel Muir-Harmony, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum and author of the new book, Apollo to the Moon: A History in 50 Objects.
Flight Director Christopher Kraft told Borman’s wife Susan that the odds of her husband’s return were fifty-fifty. As launch day arrived on December 21, 1968, many “engineers and scientists at NASA question[ed] whether the crew” would ever return.
One of the reasons for those low odds was because the Saturn V missile had only been used twice, and one of those times was a complete failure. Another was the crucial rocket burn that had to be performed on the far side of the moon, when the astronauts would be completely out of touch with Earth. But the decade was running out, and America was dead set on reaching the moon. What the public recalls about the mission was the Christmas Eve broadcast from the astronauts. You can read the rest of the story of Apollo 8 at Smithsonian.
You have to admit the first trailer for Avengers: Endgame is sad and serious. But what if Deadpool joined in to lighten the mood? In this recut trailer by Mightyraccoon! all the superheroes are replaced by Deadpool. This turns the super-serious superhero saga into an R-rated comedy. Contains NSFW language. -via io9
Animator David Li created a web toy for Adult Swim that's a virtual choir you control, sort of. Your job is to pull the lips open, which is all it takes to make the virtual mouth sing. The other lips will follow suit. The further you pull, the higher the note. It's creepy and fun at the same time. They can hold a note longer than you can! -via Laughing Squid
You've never thought of wolves as fish eaters, but there is now evidence that they catch and eat freshwater fish. The Voyageurs Wolf Project has established that wolves in Minnesota eat fish as a substantial part of their diet. The project studies GPS-collared wolves from 15 different packs in the Voyageurs National Park area of Minnesota.
Researcher Tom Gable first noticed the wolf-fish interaction in April, 2017, when he hiked to a creek where GPS data showed one of the collared wolves was spending a lot of time.
“As I approached the area, I briefly saw a wolf trying to catch a fish before it ran into the woods,” Gable said. He then found fish remains and wolf tracks scattered along the creek.
In the following month the team found the two GPS-collared wolves in the Bowman Bay pack, south of Lake Kabetogama, spent 43 to 63 percent of their time hunting fish around this creek.
Camera traps eventually captured concrete evidence of wolf fishing. The project has determined that wolves will leave deer and moose alone if they can catch beavers. Fish -and blueberries- help to round out their diet when other foods are not available. -via TYWKIWDBI
What we learn about the aftermath of the American Civil War in history class is usually the Reconstruction era. What happened to the individuals who drove the war? Lincoln was assassinated, his successor Andrew Johnson was impeached (but not convicted), and U.S. Grant became president. What about the leaders of the Confederacy? Considering the lack of history class mentions, you'd think they faded into obscurity, but that was not the case- at least immediately after the war.
Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy, was arrested and held in prison at George’s Island in Boston until October, 1865. He was released from indemnity by Andrew Johnson, a pro-slavery, anti-Black President. He was elected to the Senate, which refused to allow him to sit; was elected to Congress; and became the governor of Georgia. Stephens was a rabid anti-Black racist who wrote the “Cornerstone Speech” stating the the Civil War was all about slavery and that Blacks would never be the equals of Whites.
Longyearbyen, Norway, is the northernmost city in the world. It is said that it is illegal to die in Longyearbyen, despite the polar bears, dangerous cold, and occasional diseases. Yes, people can die there, but if you do, it gets complicated.
But for more than 70 years, not a single person has been buried in Longyearbyen. That’s due to the region’s year-round sub-zero temperatures: Bodies don’t decompose, but are preserved, as if mummified, in the permafrost. Should anyone die there, the government of Svalbard requires that the body is flown or shipped to mainland Norway to be interred.
But strange things are happening to the permafrost in this town as the climate changes. Take a short trip to Longyearbyen from the comfort of your home in this documentary from David Freid. Read more at The Atlantic.
Vinyl record albums are grooved in a coil that ends in a circle at the end of a side. That circle is still a groove, and can be recorded on. In 1982, I worked at a radio station that played album cuts, and played the very last song on Def Leppard's High and Dry album, not knowing that that the circle had been recorded onto, and the song ends with an endless loop of the lyrics "No no!" It was a complete surprise to everyone, and it went on for far too long while we figured out what was happening, so I eventually faded it out. There are plenty of examples of albums (and 45rpm singles) that were recorded that way, with a locked groove containing audio. "Muskrat Love" by The Captain and Tenille, Monty Python's album Another Monty Python Record, and certain pressings of Sgt. Pepper. In fact, Discogs has a list of 1251 such records. You might even have one in your collection! -via Metafilter
In 1949, King Features Syndicate produced a giveaway book, sort of a quasi-comic, to explain how nuclear fission works. It starred Dagwood and his wife Blonde, with appearances by other King Features comic characters: Popeye, the Katzenjammer Kids, the Little King, and others. The science gets explained by Mandrake the Magician! It's only 36 pages long, and they are all scanned and enlargeable at The Ephemerist. Be warned, there's a quiz at the end. -Thanks, Tim!
