Who would you bet on in an encounter between lions and honey badgers? Honey badgers don't care how big and ferocious lions are. The lions, in turn, are telling themselves that this little bundle of sass isn't worth the trouble. Can you blame them? -via Digg

In the US, the place most associated with witches is Salem, Massachusetts. It was one of several towns where people were convicted and executed for the crime of witchcraft, but now Salem is a gathering place for both tourists and Wiccans, and plays the angle to the hilt. In Norway, the town of Vardø holds the distinction of "the witchcraft capitol," but it's not such a tourist draw. The town is at the rim of the Arctic Circle, and travel to Vardø is not simple. Why would someone make a pilgrimage to Vardø?  

For me, that reason was the Steilneset Memorial, a monument to witches that makes Salem look like a Disney ride. Today’s Vardø may be trying to reinvent itself as a tourist attraction (bird-watching is its other big draw), but three centuries ago, it was the beating, psychotic heart of a major witch panic. Co-designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor and French-American artist Louise Bourgeois, the Steilneset Memorial honors the 91 people who died, most burned at the stake, in the witch persecution that started in 1600 and ended in 1692.

Vardø itself is dark and cold. You can avoid that by taking a virtual tour of Norway's witch capitol, and learn a bit of its history, at The Outline. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Stylegar)

You've heard of gelatinas, which are edible flowers encased in gelatin that resemble a glass paperweight. Siew Boon has taken that idea to the next level. She creates beautiful "jelly cakes," which are an edible art form. She plants beautiful flowers inside, but also populates them with trees, fish, and even birds to make complete scenes.



Boon's business is called Jelly Alchemy, https://www.facebook.com/jellyalchemy but she also uses her creative juices as therapy, as she undergoes cancer treatment.



See a selection of Boon's best jelly cakes at Bored Panda and more at Instagram.

You might find yourself in a food coma this weekend, but you'll still want to learn a thing or two about food from the gang at Mental Floss. In the latest episode of Scatterbrained, we'll find out what makes Indian food so unique, whether recent cooking hacks are worth the effort, kitchen tips from celebrity chefs, and secrets behind cooking shows. -via Tastefully Offensive

Monster blobs lurk in the sewers beneath us, silently growing until the wreak havoc on the civilized world. These are fatbergs, masses of congealed fats, oils, and grease (known as FOG) entertwined with solid debris that shouldn't be in the sewer to begin with. When fatbergs grow large enough -and some have been over 100 tons- they can bring an entire municipal sewer system to a halt. But exactly what goes into a fatberg varies from city to city.

But beyond that, you have to think about the people who find, retrieve, and study these fatbergs. It's a case of "someone's gotta do it, just glad it's not me." Read about the study of fatbergs and what they've discovered so far, at Atlas Obscura. Meanwhile, remember that saving room in a landfill is not worth destroying a sewer system.

(Image credit: Stephanie Birdsong)

On November 11, the mall in João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brazil, welcomed dogs to come and shop. The local Golden Rretriever club made their entrance together with the dogs dressed to the nines. However, dogs don't do escalators, so they needed a bit of help. That's a good dog -all of them. -via Digg

Maybe you've seen this photograph on a wall near you: a black and white picture of Amsterdam, with a red bicycle parked in the middle. IKEA sells a ready-to-hang version for $50, and it's sold 427,000 of them. Tom Roes (pictured) bought one, and then began to recognize it everywhere. He began to wonder about the picture.

Who made this photo, why was it made, and how did it end up at IKEA?

What he found may surprise you. The photograph itself is less exciting than you'd expect, but the story of photographer Fernando Bengoechea is downright tragic. Roes made a documentary about his search for answers, which is in Dutch but English captions can be turned on. The short version of the story is in text at PetaPixel (along with the documentary).  -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Tom Roes)

The devastation of the Camp Fire in California has killed at least 80 people and destroyed thousands of homes. Thousands of pets have gone missing, and many have been picked up by search and rescue teams. Animals shelters and veterinary clinics took in unidentified cats, dogs, exotic animals, and livestock. The process of returning the pets to their families is a huge task. In the video above, Laci Ping and her husband Curtis Mullins are reunited with their cat Mayson. When you've lost everything, finding a family member is extra special.

The North Valley Animal Disaster Group posted on Facebook that it has 1,798 pets in its emergency shelters.

Wood said that the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine is currently taking care of eight goats, two pigs, a mini horse, three horses, a llama, five chickens, one duck, one goose, and 29 cats.

Read about the volunteers who are caring for the animals and see more reunions of people and cats at Buzzfeed.

If you think attention to detail isn't important,  then you need to read some pictofacts about little things that meant a lot. The irony of the story above is that the Germans would have gotten into all kinds of hot water if they hadn't ended their messages in the same way every time.



I knew who this was already, but it was confirmed as soon as I saw the word "whup," since that's how they say it here in Kentucky.

You can see plenty more stories of small details that made a huge difference at Cracked.   

Sorry about the cake selection. I'm watching my figure. @jlandpartners https://t.co/c45vlQpz0m

— John Lewis (@johnlewis) October 28, 2018

The only time I use straws are when I stick them on my teeth and pretend I'm a walrus. @jlandpartners https://t.co/wjiaUD8944

— John Lewis (@johnlewis) November 17, 2018

The British department store John Lewis gets a lot of attention around Christmas, even on Twitter. But the Twitter handle @JohnLewis belongs to a man in Blacksburg, Virginia. Lewis gets a lot of Twitter replies and messages meant for the retailer, and he has become pretty clever with his responses, so much that he has become semi-Twitter famous in his own right. Twitter UK even reached out to use Lewis in their Christmas ad. That's an ad for Twitter, not for John Lewis.

Lewis has some behind-the-scenes stories about the video shoot at -where else- Twitter. -via Laughing Squid

Do you wake up in the morning and immediately forget what you were dreaming about? The ability to recall dreams varies widely among people, and can vary over time for each person. There's a lot we don't know about dreams, or even sleep itself, but research into the difference between dream recallers and dream forgetters has unearthed a few factors that may determine the difference.  

4. AMOUNT OF SLEEP

The amount of sleep one gets on average is one of the most important factors related to dream recall. People dream every 90 minutes during the REM (rapid eye movement) sleep cycle. However, those REM periods get longer throughout the night, meaning that you’re doing the most dreaming toward the morning—generally right before you wake up. If you only sleep four hours instead of eight, you’re only getting about 20 percent of your dream time. For this reason, some people report remembering more of their dreams on the weekend, when they have the chance to catch up on sleep.

That explains my experience, as I haven't had eight uninterrupted hours of sleep in decades. There are five other differences that might determine whether you recall dreams or not at Mental Floss.

Parents aren’t a fan of my cooking pic.twitter.com/DP2yDHfwbB

— Tim O'Shea III (@oshea_iii) November 16, 2018

This year's viral Thanksgiving prank is to text your parents and ask them how to microwave a 25-pound turkey. The responses are wonderfully funny. But is it really a prank when your parents "fall for it"? That only tells you that your folks consider it plausible that you're that clueless about cooking. One of the more common responses is "Are you high?"  

Ask my dad how to microwave a Turkey. pic.twitter.com/QGQZJYsSHQ

— C.P. (@CPblazin) November 17, 2018

You can see a lot of responses at Twitter. Some of the humor comes from the very idea that anyone would have a microwave that could accommodate a 25-pound turkey. However, Butterball has instructions for microwaving a turkey, so it is possible. Just don't expect it to be good. Read those instructions, and some more challenge responses, at Patch. If you are outside the US, go here. -via Metafilter

Any workplace with several people in the same place will eventually confront a lunch theft. The victim will be upset, not only because they have no lunch, but also because they feel violated, and suddenly they cannot trust the people they spend do much time with. Katie Heaney's lunch was stolen. She was angry, of course, but she also offered amnesty if as he could talk to the perpetrator and find out what went on in their mind to cause the theft. The lunch thief was not found, so she went online to find someone who had stolen co-worker's food and talk to them about it. She wanted to know what made a lunch thief different from the rest of us.    

Before I called Rob, I expected — hoped, really — that our conversation would reveal something sinister about his personality, perhaps something tellingly psychopathic. But Rob seems like a nice guy. He expresses remorse for his actions, sounding genuinely devastated when I ask him to imagine his victims gazing sadly into the refrigerator. “People get hurt, I guess,” he says. “Knowing you have that soda there in the fridge at 3 or 4 in the afternoon when you really need it … that’s gotta suck for someone else [when it gets taken].” I imagine him here looking in the mirror and not recognizing the person he sees. “Now I think about it, yeah it’s pretty bad of me to do that,” he adds. “I’m not a horrible person, but clearly I have ethical issues.

At this point in the conversation, I feel bad. And after talking to Art Markman, a professor of psychology and marketing at the University of Texas at Austin, I know why: I may never have stolen a lunch from a co-worker, but I am no better than Rob. I’m simply bad in a different way.

It appears to be a simple breakdown of the Golden Rule. Lunch thieves do not seem to imagine themselves in the place of the victim. Read how Heaney learned about lunch theft and other everyday transgressions at The Cut. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: Flickr user Joe Loong)

Our typical Thanksgiving dinner is a celebration of foods native to North America. The traditional American feast is astonishing to people from other nations, and particularly to those who grew up never having enough to eat. In this video, four North Koreans who managed to escape to South Korea experience an American Thanksgiving meal for the first time. They really enjoy the food, and then talk about what they are thankful for. If you find it difficult to summon a sense of gratitude this Thanksgiving, their stories will put things in perspective. -via Digg

Possibly the best way to get an unvarnished understanding of the rock 'n' roll hippie culture of the 1960s is from an insider, who's had decades to process and understand that era himself. Jorma Kaukonen, guitarist for Hot Tuna and Jefferson Airplane, offers that kind of retrospective in his new autobiography Been So Long: My Life and Music. Kaukonen's life has taken quite a few turns.    

Most rock stars have unlikely origin stories, and Kaukonen is no exception. To put his journey in context, consider the case of one of his contemporaries, Janis Joplin, about whom Kaukonen writes, “The first time I met Janis, I realized that I was in the presence of greatness.” No disrespect, but it’s a safe bet Joplin was not thinking the same thing about Kaukonen when they performed together in 1962, with Steve Talbott on harmonica, at the Folk Theater in San Jose, California. Five years before her breakthrough with Big Brother and the Holding Company, Joplin was already a full-time musician at age 19, the product of a troubled childhood in the oil-refinery town of Port Arthur, Texas. A budding drug habit would round out the dues she’d eventually pay to sing the blues.

In contrast, in 1962, Kaukonen was an indifferent student at a small, private, Jesuit university, still learning how to fingerpick, although he, too, was developing what would become an impressive drug habit, or several. Kaukonen’s parents, Jorma Sr. and Beatrice, were only a generation removed from Finland and Russia. Kaukonen himself grew up in Washington, D.C., the son of a diplomat whose career occasionally relocated the family to places like the Philippines and Pakistan, where servants waited on their every need. Kaukonen, in short, took the small stage at the Folk Theater as a bona-fide member of the privileged class, a self-described “Foreign Service brat”—the dues he’d pay would be entirely self-inflicted.

Read more about Kaukonen and his stories of San Francisco during the Summer of Love at Collectors Weekly.