A particular Walmart in Chesterfield County, Virginia was flooded with about 50 officers who were engaging in a "shop with a cop" event for children picking out presents. WTVR News reports that during this event, a Walmart employee informed an officer that a shoplifting was in progress.

The suspect had lifted about $1,400 worth of loot before officers converged on him from multiple directions, cutting off any opportunity to escape through overwhelming numbers. Lt. James Lamb of the Chesterfield County Police Department expressed amazement that the suspect chose this time to engage in criminal activity when dozens of marked police vehicles were in the parking lot and uniformed officers could be seen everywhere within the store. 

-via Boing Boing

Sir John Gordon was a Scottish nobleman who lived from 1707 to 1783. In 1723, the French sculptor Edmé Bouchardon composed this bust of him. The statue was present around the family estate in the town of Invergordon, but was, at some point in the 1970s, disposed of by the estate. BBC News reports that it was rediscovered in 1998 being used as a doorstop in the nearby town of Balintore.

Legally, the antique belonged to the community at large, so the Invergordon Common Good Fund is offering it up for auction. It's valued at over $3 million USD.

-via My Modern Met

The 1947 Treaty of Paris ended the war between Italy and the Allied powers. Articles 64-66 placed severe limitations upon the Italian Air Force, which the Italians hoped to circumvent.

For this purpose, the postwar Italian government sought assistance from the Order of Malta, a chivalric order that dates back to 1099 and exists to this day.

Are the Knights of Malta their own country? That's hard to answer. They have sovereignty over their headquarters building in Rome. They have diplomatic relations with 113 countries, permanent observer status in the United Nations, and issue their own passports which are recognized internationally.

For a few years, starting in 1947, the Order of Malta even fielded its own air force. This consisted of military aircraft transferred by the Italian government. The Order painted a roundel derived from its flag on the planes and flew them on transport and humanitarian missions.

After Italy joined NATO as a founding member in 1949, it was permitted to resume normal air operations and resumed control over these loaned aircraft.

-via Eric S. Raymond

Posy is a Dutch musician who has wide ranging interests and hobbies. Last year he introduced us to motion extraction. Posy has a camera that takes macro video images with an overly sensitive focus. In this video, he shows us some of the everyday objects in his home in very closeup mode. You might be able to guess some of them, but certainly not all. Surfaces that we normally think of as smooth are anything but at the macro level. The wandering focus gives these objects a surreal and artistic, if confusing, quality. Posy's narration is what's really entertaining here. He doesn't have interesting facts about what we are seeing, but he shares our marvel at the way they look with his lovely European accent. You can tell he's having fun with the camera. Until he gets bored. To be honest, it's rather charming to listen to a video producer who has the same reactions his audience has. The music is really nice, too. -via Kottke

Christmas is a festive, loving time, but a story about it wouldn't last long without a villain to create conflict, or at least a dilemma. Slashfilm has taken on the challenge of collecting Christmas movie villains and ranking them, counting up to the best villain. They lay out the rules they made up for themselves when considering a villain for the list, and even acknowledge that they eliminated the actual best villain ever in a Christmas movie, although the reasoning behind his absence isn't all that clear. Maybe it's the eternal squabbling about what is and isn't a Christmas movie.  

Oh yes, Old Man Potter (Lionel Barrymore) from It's a Wonderful Life is there, but he's not ranked all that high. The explanation is that Potter completely gets away with his crime, and that's not quite acceptable to the audience. I disagree; I think it makes the fantasy scenario more realistic in our modern world. At any rate, you might disagree with the choices for the list, but you probably won't have an argument about numbers 1 and 2 on the list of the ten best Christmas villains at Slashfilm.

The last video we posted from the What If? series looked at the feasibility of light reaching from the earth to the moon. It ended up with a disaster, actually blowing the moon out of its orbit. After the video was posted, the question stayed with Randall Munroe and Henry Reich. Munroe couldn't stop thinking about even more power, and what that would do. After all, there are more powerful beams than mere visible light. He's talking about gamma rays, the kind of things that pull stars apart. Not that we have gamma ray weapons here on earth, besides the flashes produced by nuclear explosions, but this is a thought experiment. If we could harness such power, it would be in line with the planet-killing beams from the Death Star or Starkiller Base. Once we've fashioned this hypothetical death ray, we could cause all kinds of destruction. Yay! -via Damn Interesting

You've heard of Sasquatch and Mothman, yet there are other cryptids told of in the hills of Appalachia that may go by various local names, but are referred to collectively as the "white things" (pronounced "white thangs"). What they have in common is that they are big, white, hairy, and will scare the crap out of anyone who sees them. Some are described as humanoid, yet much larger than any human, with horns. Others walk on four legs and have claws. From the accounts of sightings, they rarely do much damage beyond terrifying the observer and fortifying the story.

You may get the idea that the white things are a combination of fear, the power of suggestion, and alcohol or drugs. Or maybe they are albino versions of scary animals that make the mountains their home, such as bears, bobcats, or even deer. Even the occasional stray white cow would be terrifying in a dark forest at night. Someone who is predisposed to fearing the white things they've heard of would become a true believer if they encountered such wildlife, especially if they've had a few. But the stories continue. Read up on sightings of the white things of Appalachia at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: pocolover1957)

The science fiction genre often falls into the escapist direction of storytelling, so it's no surprise that male writers tend to create ideal heroes, villains, and other characters. So the male gaze comes into play. That's not criticism--in fact, I'm a fan at times. There's a female gaze, too, although it is far from a direct equivalent.

This video shows a clip from the improvisational comedy show Make Some Noise. Comedian and actress Caitlin Reilly is tasked with depicting an idealized female character from a male writer. The character keeps us abreast of the true dangers facing the group in what I'm guessing is a Robert A. Heinlein story.

It's that time of year when the producers of various dictionaries let us know about trends in language. The Oxford University Press, who produces the Oxford Dictionary, has decided that "brain rot" is their word of the year for 2024, despite the fact that it's two words. Brain rot means the deterioration of someone's intellect or mental health due to overconsumption of mindless entertainment, mostly on the internet. Oxford noticed that the use of the term has grown by 230% over the past year. The word of the year was determined by an online poll of six finalists presented by Oxford. The term brain rot is not new, however. Henry David Thoreau used it in his 1854 book Walden.

The Oxford Dictionary word of the year is not the last word, though (pun in tended). The Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year for 2024 is "manifest." Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year for 2024 is "demure." And Collins Dictionary’s word of the year is "brat." Maybe we should look these words up in the dictionary.

Images in Clinical Medicine: Phytophotodermatitis https://t.co/KIhf4tnlip#Dermatology pic.twitter.com/lUsLYISpPG

— NEJM (@NEJM) December 2, 2024

A man in Texas sought medical help for a severe rash, actually a burn, on his hands. The burn eventually produced blisters, and it took several months for him to fully heal. He was diagnosed with phytophotodermatitis, a condition in which chemicals from certain plants interact with the skin and makes one extremely vulnerable to sunburn. The man had manually squeezed a bunch of limes and then went to a soccer game without sunscreen. The traces of juice on his hands altered his skin to react with UV light, causing serious sun damage.

The plant chemicals that can do this are called furocoumarins, which exist famously in hogweed, but also in many plants we eat. Read about phytophotodermatitis, and learn which foods can cause it, so you'll know to wash your hands thoroughly after preparing them. And always apply sunscreen before attending outdoor events.

Minnesotastan cites the same study and reposted a case from 2013 with much more explicit pictures of the worst effects of phytophotodermatitis. You've been warned.

This video begins by posing the question: Does earth exist in the Star Wars universe? Of course it does, although you have to dig into Star Wars lore a bit to find the evidence. A broader question is: Where does the Star Wars universe end and where does our familiar world begin? The simple answer is Disney World, but that's not satisfying, either. We are told that the events of Star Wars take place long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, so the light (and/or video signals of some sort) from that galaxy might just now be reaching us here on earth. But that's just one theory.

The Art Of Storytelling explains some of requirements of a shared universe, and how some similarities between that fantasy world and our own can be tolerated while others cannot. The many Star Wars properties range from the quite plausible (Andor) to the ridiculous (The Rise of Skywalker), so you can pick your poison. Egregious errors in Star Wars stories make it difficult to fantasize about the reality of that galaxy so far, far away. For those who like to think that the events of Star Wars could be real, those errors can induce rage. And outside of the political realm, no one feels rage like an avid Star Wars fan. -via Laughing Squid

Due to Japan's shrinking population, some schools are closing permanently. For anime fans like myself, this presents a new opportunity. Would it not be fun to pretend to be a Japanese high school student, just in your favorite anime series?

Mainichi reports that an entertainment company has taken over a closed high school in Kimtsu in the Chiba Prefecture. Tourists get to wear stereotypical uniforms, eat lunches from animes, and attend classes. My suggestion: choose the back right corner of the classroom next to the window so that you become the main character of the series.

-via Spoon & Tamago | Photo: Mainchi

X user Science Girl reminds us of the innovative German techno band Klangphonics. That ensemble seems committed to convincing the world that it's possible to produce techno music with any instrument. In the past, we've seen their performance with a pressure washer. Since that time, they've also experimented with a sewing machine.

Kate Wagner goes to town on a $3.5 million home in New Jersey that can't make up its mind what style it's supposed to be. The 5-bedroom, 6.5-bathroom house was custom-built to evoke opulence, but the finished product looks like a checklist of things the owner wanted from a wide range of architectural history. Many of these details really can't quite be pulled off with modern building techniques. The interior decorating is even worse, as you can see from the image above. Wagner likens living in this house to a constant performance of living. While the rooms are adequately furnished, the very size of those rooms demands subdivision into areas of activity, so that the overall effect is almost institutional, no matter how swanky. She calls one bathroom "the Sistine Chapel of McMansion bathrooms" for the ornate ceiling, pool-sized tub, and seating for spectators. Read a detailed breakdown of how it all went so wrong at McMansion Hell.

Every year, a group of friends in Ventura, California, get together to do a costumed photo shoot to document their facial hair growth during "No Shave November" (previously at Neatorama). The campaign is for cancer awareness, but these guys have made it their own since 2013. Now they have enough images to produce a calendar! The Christmas-themed picture this year kinda seals that deal. You may also note that the sixth friend, who dropped out in 2014 except for his head seen on a pike in 2019, is back for 2024. Redditor C1eve1and101 posted the entire gallery of the annual photos today. You will need to greatly enlarge the pics there to see all the details.

This year, the guys all got tattoos on their thighs commemorating a previous year's photo. Then they got dressed up as Christmas characters: Frosty the Snowman, the Nutcracker, Buddy the elf, Santa Claus, Rudolph, and a candy cane. They also recorded footage of the photo session, which Michael Lubin (the candy cane) edited into a joyous video.