The first movie in the newly-created series called the DC Universe is titled simply Superman, but will be known in the future as James Gunn's Superman. The writer, director, and producer is also the co-CEO of DC Studios. The DCU is said to be intended as a "soft reboot" of the less-than-stellar movies in the DC Extended Universe like Man of Steel or Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Superman will star David Corenswet as Superman, Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, and Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor.

The trailer begins with a beat-up Superman, as if someone has thrown a chunk of kryptonite at him. But who's there to save the day? Krypto! Yes, this movie will have a dog, and that makes it a hit among other Superman films right out of the starting gate. While Superman will obviously battle Lex Luthor, the stated premise of the film is Clark Kent's journey in reconciling his alien origins with his Kansas upbringing. We will find out more when Superman opens in theaters on July 11, 2025. -via Metafilter

Traditional folklore in pagan Sweden was full of fairies, elves, sprites, sirens, and other supernatural creatures of the forest. Occasionally, humans would meet these fairies and be charmed into sex. Women who gave birth to babies with an unusual appearance were accused of such fornication, and there were cases of men who used seduction by fairy as an excuse for their absence from their military duties. No doubt some accounts were the result of dreams or mental illness, or cover for actual trysts with strangers. Or animals.

Things changed when Christianity spread to Sweden in the Middle Ages. Christian authorities maintained that there was no such thing as fairies, and those who experienced such sexual encounters were obviously cavorting with the devil, which was illegal. The question at a fairy sex trial would be whether the accused was guilty of sorcery for dealing with the devil, or a victim of the demon's crimes. The conclusion was usually guilt. Then eventually, the witch trial craze reached Sweden, and that country furiously executed around 300 people between 1668 and 1676.

Sweden in the 17th century was a clash between the mostly benign pagan belief in fairy folk, the medieval Christian stance on good vs. evil, and the emerging field of science. Read about Sweden's fairy sex trials at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: John Bauer)

Hanukkah doesn't start until the evening of December 25th, but we already have two a cappella holiday songs using the tunes from the Broadway musical turned hit movie Wicked. The movie is already the fourth biggest film of 2024 (expected to be third after this weekend) and has grossed more than any other Broadway musical adaptation, surpassing Grease. Above you have The Maccabeats (previously at Neatorama) singing about Hanukkah to the tune of "Defying Gravity." Their song is titled "Defying Gravity (We’ll Rise Above)."

The other Jewish a cappella group from New York City, Six13 (previously at Neatorama) also released their song for Hanukkah 2024. It's a medley of two songs from Wicked with new lyrics, beginning with "Defying Gravity," rewritten as "Defining Destiny," plus "Popular." If you want to sing along, the lyrics are here.



It's not the first time the two a cappella groups have latched onto the same pop culture phenomenon for Hanukkah. In 2016, both groups did song parodies using the musical Hamilton. Because everyone was singing songs from Hamilton.

The winter solstice has been marked as the starting point of a new year for thousands of years all over the globe. Even more commonly, it was seen as the turnaround point for the sun, when the darkness stops expanding and the days begin to get longer. That's something to celebrate! While December 21st is often called midwinter, we consider the beginning of winter, because the earth's temperatures lag behind the number of sunlight hours. In Japan, the solstice is celebrated by taking a hot bath with citrus fruit. In Peru, they read the coca leaves. In Iran, they stay up all night to welcome back the sun.

Most winter solstice celebrations around the world involve lighting up the long night, special rich foods, singing, dancing, and drinking, because those are things that just go with winter festivals. Read about ten traditional winter solstice celebrations from around the world at Mental Floss. They include a couple of festivals that are celebrated in June, because they are in the Southern Hemisphere.    

(Image credit: garethwiscombe)

For many New Yorkers, and tourists, too, Christmas just isn't Christmas without a trip to the Dyker Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn (previously at Neatorama). Practically every home is festooned with Christmas lights and decorations to the max. It's not an organized event, but a neighborhood custom that grew organically since Lucy Spata moved there in 1986 and decorated her home in a very festive way. Over time, her Christmas spirit spread from house to house. It's not a competition, either, but each neighbor wants to be a part of the Christmas cheer. The area's reputation grew until entrepreneurs now offer walking tours and bus tours through Dyker Heights between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. Great Big Story went to Dyker Heights to talk to the people who live there and spend all year planning their Christmas displays. Their homes are well-decorated inside, too! They admit it's hectic during the season with all those people coming to see their houses, but it's a merry kind of hectic. -via Laughing Squid

Every year, ventriloquists, or vents, meet for the annual Vent Haven Ventriloquist ConVENTion at the Holiday Inn in Erlanger, Kentucky, home of the Vent Haven Ventriloquist Museum. Ventriloquism is an art form that's a humorous conversation between a performer and a puppet, or dummy. The magic happens when all eyes are on the dummy, while the vent is trying his best to speak without moving his lips. Ventriloquism was a standard type of entertainment in the vaudeville days, but is rapidly dying out in the age of movies and computer-generated magic. Today's ventriloquists perform on cruise ships and in churches or children's hospitals, or just among friends for the fun of it.

Mina Tavakoli attended the 2024 convention and got to know the attendees. They fell into two main groups: older men who have been vents for many years and all know each other, and children who want to learn the art, along with their families. She introduces us to long-time vents and their dummies and attended classes with those just starting to learn how to "throw their voice." Her story is the type of journalism that makes a very niche activity you never thought much about seem absolutely fascinating. Read about the masters of ventriloquism and the youngsters who are learning it at N+1. -via Metafilter

Designer and artist Syd Mead worked with many companies to create the look of the modern world, but he is best known for designing the futuristic looks of movies such as Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner, Tron, 2010, Short Circuit, and Aliens, among others. Mead died in 2019 at the age of 86.

One of the things Mead did in his spare time was to create gingerbread structures. The Syd Mead Archive found a video that they labeled as from 1990, but Mead himself introduces it as for "the 1992-91 Christmas and New Year's season." At any rate, this is no ordinary gingerbread house. It's a fantasy castle designed the way you'd expect Mead to do it. He sketched the architectural plans, then made a prototype of foamcore. Only when the design was right did he bake gingerbread. In the video, he shows us how to make curved walls and corners by working quickly with hot gingerbread before it turns crispy, using his foamcore prototype as a mold. Everything is thoroughly iced and decorated, even the trees. The finished castle is quite stunning. -via Boing Boing

Scientists have determined that modern humans (Homo sapiens) migrated out of Africa several times and then died out in Europe and the Middle East before they could populate the world. New DNA studies indicate that a migration of modern humans left Africa about 48,000 years ago and finally thrived in Europe, because they interbred with Neanderthals. However, that population died out after a few thousand years, and so did the Neanderthals. But their descendants had already moved on to Asia and other parts of the world where they survived. Eventually, these later generations migrated back to Europe.

Along the way, Homo sapiens genes became dominant, with only traces of DNA from Homo neanderthalensis remaining. But that DNA must have been crucial to survival, possibly allowing humans to resist disease. Of course, this theory doesn't say anything about the modern humans who stayed in Africa. Most sub-Saharan Africans don't carry any Neanderthal DNA. But without Neanderthal DNA, humans might even today be restricted to the African homeland. Read more about this discovery in an article from the BBC.  -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: hairymuseummatt/DrMikeBaxter)

Once upon a time in America, it was fairly common for churches to have a bowling alley in their basements. They were most common in the Midwest and parts of the Northeast. And why not? They provided a place for young people to meet and have fun, a wholesome activity for families, and were an alternative to parishoners hanging out in gambling dens. Some were a way to get around local liquor laws, since Christian denominations vary widely in their stances on drinking.

The first church bowling alleys were built in the 1860s and served as community gathering places for German immigrants. The trend peaked during the 1940s and '50s, when bowling was something everyone did. But those basement alleys were mostly dismantled in the 1980s and '90s. That means that the less than 200 that remain are mostly time capsules of retro design and ambience. Messy Nessy Chic takes us through the history of church basement bowling, and shares a list of quite a few that you can still visit today. 

(Image credit: Chris Yunker)

How in the world did this happen? In posting this image, redditor Every_Commercial556 quoted the driver as saying, "I backed into this and Idk what happened- help." Is there something she's not telling us? Is there a hidden ramp somewhere? Did her car drop out of a tree?   

Redditor Hriibek stepped in to save the day with a representation in text that's as good as any video in explaining what happened.

(car and a yellow pole)
-> CAR |
-> CAR/
-> CAR_
-> CA_R
"oh sh*t, I've hit something" starts going forwad
<- CA/R
<- CA|R

Mystery solved.

If you've ever wondered what to do with all those line keys on your keyboard, this is what they are for. Hriibek was lauded by hundreds for his clear explanation.

Next up, let's visualize how the car was removed from the post. That's not so difficult, since tow trucks have winches that will lift up a back end easily, or even a broken bollard. Then you have to visualize the laughs from all the guys at the garage when this car was towed in.

(Image credit: Every_Commercial556)

As cool as the new Sora is, gymnastics is still very much the Turing test for AI video.

1/4 pic.twitter.com/X78dNzusNU

— Deedy (@deedydas) December 10, 2024

AI should be forgiven, since very few people have mastered gymnastics. And while we can laugh at the body horror these videos show us, there's something comforting about knowing that "intelligent" machines aren't yet perfect. I made the joke that you can tell this is AI because gymnasts don't perform en pointe, as if you couldn't tell by the arms, legs, and torso constantly changing places. At about nine seconds in, the gymnast's head flies off her body and quickly reattaches. Also notice the photographer in the back. He appears in two different places, and has four hands.

This video and three others were generated under prompts from Deedy Das using OpenAI's new Sora AI video generator. Das explained that Sora is an improvement over other video generators when it comes to gymnastics, but machines still don't understand the physics of how human bodies work at higher speeds. Trained on existing gymnastics videos, the algorithm predicts the next frame of video based on the current and previous frames, not by common sense, which human brains still excel in. Das explained how it all goes so wrong Ars Technica. Meanwhile, keep going to see the other three videos Das produced.

The kids called him "Hot Dog Santa" but his real name was Axel Bjorklund. Bjorklund came to Boston from Sweden in 1889 and sold hot dogs on the street. He never got rich, or even ahead, selling street food, but was always generous to the hungry children of Boston's North End. Their immigrant families started out poor, and were even further impoverished or even orphaned by the Spanish flu pandemic.

On Christmas Day in 1921, Bjorklund set up his hot dog cart and gave away hot dogs to 500 children. The Christmas giveaway became a tradition, and grew until Bjorklund was giving away 3,000 hot dogs every year. Not that he could afford it- in later years, he asked for donations keep up the annual giveaway. But he didn't ask for help for himself as his health deteriorated. Read about the the old-fashioned generosity of Axel Bjorklund, the Hot Dog Santa, at Fishwrap. -via Strange Company

Adolf Hitler proudly hosted the 1936 Olympics in Berlin as a demonstration of German racial superiority. Jews were not allowed to compete for Germany, and Jewish athletes from other countries boycotted the games or were barred by their countries to avoid upsetting Hitler. It was another 36 years before Germany got another chance to host the Olympics, this time as West Germany. The 1972 Munich Olympics gave us global sports stars Mark Spitz and Olga Korbut, and the German authorities were very determined to not resemble a police state. This led to a certain lack of security, and suddenly, a Palestinian militant group called Black September set upon the Israeli athletic team.

With the entire world watching, West Germany was thrust into the ongoing struggle between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and the games were halted -but only for a short time. German police were ill-equipped to deal with the situation, which went from bad to worse to a complete disaster. Tom Blank of Weird History explains what really happened at the 1972 Munich Olympics.  

Just as all domestic dogs are descended from wolves, the cows we know today descended from wild aurochs that once populated Europe, Asia, and North Africa. Around 10,000 years ago, humans decided they would domesticate aurochs because they would be useful for pulling heavy weights and producing milk. Besides that, they were delicious. But you have to wonder how that was accomplished. Aurochs were huge, with bulls about six feet high at the shoulder. They were also aggressive, strong, and fearless. A dead auroch could provide plenty of meals, but a live one would be very difficult to capture, much less keep. People living on the other side of the world knew better than to even try to domesticate bison.

There are other mysteries about how we domesticated aurochs and ended up with cows. Genetic studies have shown that domesticated cattle and wild aurochs interbred in Europe up through the Middle Ages. Was that on purpose, and how did cattle breeders handle it? The last wild auroch died in 1627, but can we really say the auroch is extinct when all our domestic cattle are their descendants? Read what we know about the domestication of wild aurochs and how selective breeding turned them into cattle at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Malene Thyssen)

After six epic films and a spinoff TV series, do audiences want more stories mined from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings? Sure they do! A new film centered around the character Gollum is in the works, and should be in theaters in 2026. There are tons of people who will go see any movie having anything to do with The Lord of the Rings, especially one written and produced by Peter Jackson. The movie, tentatively titled Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, will be directed by Gollum himself, Andy Serkis.

But is Gollum the best character to hang a spinoff film on? We know it will be a prequel, because we've already seen Gollum's end. That in itself restricts what can be done with the character. Yes, Smeagol will be involved, too, as we'll get a closeup of the metamorphosis that Gollum goes through. But is there anything new to be revealed there? Are we capable of rooting for Gollum? These and other questions are explored in depth by The Art Of Storytelling (previously at Neatorama). He has a way of explaining the nuts and bolts of telling a story that we recognize intuitively, but never really thought about.