CTV News in Vancouver reports that people in the town of McBride, British Columbia have spotted a deer wearing what appears to be a high visibility vest--the kind of vest that hunters wear to avoid being mistaken for deer.

It's uncertain how the deer ended up wearing the vest, although the best explanation is that someone managed to wrestle the deer into it. This activity is, wildlife officials warn, very dangerous to both the humans and the deer. They hope to be able to locate the deer, tranquilize it, and the remove the jacket safely.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Andrea Arnold

We've seen digital artists take vintage photographs and give them the stereoscopic treatment, in which a 3D effect is achieved by making the elements move slightly, more so for the objects in the foreground. This is not that at all. What happens in these postcard images is the kind of thing you'd expect from a Terry Gilliam animation, in that you don't know what is going to happen at all. It's pure nonsense, but there are no giant feet crushing landscapes. However, what they did to that lighthouse seems pretty destructive.

The vintage postcards are from the Isle of Wight, a popular vacation destination in the English Channel. The video was made by Justin Mason, also known as Drivelsieve, and is actually a followup to an earlier compilation video he did using the same subject. It's just as silly.

Mason began his series of animated Isle of Wight postcards ten years ago. You can see the entire series in this playlist. -via Nag on the Lake

The article, promising a recipe for Long Island cheese pumpkin pie, starts off telling us it was never a commercial hit. I immediately thought the name was to blame. Who wants to eat a pumpkin pie with cheese in it? But maybe it's cream cheese, which might be good. Then I find out that the pie is made from a "cheese pumpkin," which isn't grown nearly as much as other varieties. Of course not, who wants a pumpkin that tastes like cheese? But that's not how the pumpkin got that name -it was named that because its shape and color makes it resemble a wheel of cheese.

The article is not so much about pumpkin pie, but for those dreaming of next year's garden. The reason the cheese pumpkin didn't become commercially successful is because its shape kept it from rolling through a mechanized harvesting process as easily as round pumpkins. They taste wonderful, and can be grown in a variety of environments, including the Mojave desert. While a cheese pumpkin is the same species as the pumpkin puree you get in a can, this heirloom variety is infinitely adaptable, especially when you save the seeds and grow subsequent generations. Cheese pumpkins are becoming popular with backyard gardeners who cook their own pumpkins. Read about cheese pumpkins, and find a recipe for Long Island cheese pumpkin pie, at Atlas Obscura. There is no cheese in it, just as there is no tea in Long Island tea.  

(Image credit: Badagnani)

Think of this facility as optimized for multitasking. If you're already going to make one mistake, why not make a second one at the same time?

Chuck's on the Avenue is a locally-famous liquor store in New Orleans. It occupies a prominent place in the city's celebrations. Now, the New York Post reports, you can book it as a wedding venue. On November 16, a couple got married next to the beer cooler. An ordained minister/Elvis Presley impersonator presided over the ceremony. A brass band provided Dixieland jazz music and a little girl threw beads instead of flowers.

It was thus a supremely New Orleans event. You can book your own happy wedding here.

-via Dave Barry

Chemists at universities in England not Italy are responsible for developing nanopasta--the world's thinnest spaghetti. It's not just a minutely fine thread of material but, specifically, white flour so it's technically pasta by, at least, English standards.

The nanopasta measures 370 nanometers across. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter. You can read the science-y bits in the article published a few months ago in Nanoscale Advances. Their process is called electrospinning, which I gather means using electrical current to create fibers small enough that you wouldn't be able to roll it out on your cutting board.

-via Dave Barry | Images: Nanoscale Advances

Rango was an animated Western comedy that came out in 2011. The title character was a chameleon who accidentally wound up in the desert and took on the persona of a tough guy to get by. While the movie did well, it didn't become a classic, cult or otherwise, so Rango seems a strange choice for a mashup. But mashup artist eli_handle_b․wav saw the possibilities. He set Rango into the virtual Old West of the video game Red Dead Redemption 2, where the chameleon seems right at home. That's a bit of a turn from playing a fish out of water, so to speak, in his original movie. These outlaws don't seem to have a problem with a 6-foot lizard in their midst. Rango manages to fall right into the Van der Linde gang, although he may regret that. The setup is beyond absurd, and the editing is smooth and impressive. -via Geeks Are Sexy

You may associate virtual meetings and conference calls with Skype, Zoom, or Webex. But the task of gathering together large numbers of people to communicate with each other across vast distances long predates our century.

IEEE Spectrum reports that the large conference call dates back to 1916, which 5,100 engineers in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, New York, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco gathered in live discussions that took place across telephone lines. There were even breakout sessions when local groups met privately to discuss particular topics.

The revolutionary nature of this event was widely understood at the time. President Wilson sent a telegram of congratulations, which was read to the participants. After musical performances, a keynote speaker addressed the virtual gathering and then the engineers conducted a formal business meeting.

-via Nag on the Lake | Image: IEEE

You’re not allowed to stop and watch the Las Vegas Formula One Grand Prix without a ticket and stopping in a pedestrian walking zone or on a bridge with a view will get you a ticket, a fine or worse trouble. A few locals and tourists are circumventing this by utilizing the… pic.twitter.com/u8d35JdDkF

— Jen G. (@vegasstarfish) November 24, 2024

The Las Vegas Grand Prix is an elite racing event. Tickets are extremely expensive but 306,000 people paid to watch it, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports.

Vegas Starfish, a Las Vegas tourism guru, reports that other enterprising people found a way to watch the race up close for free. All that was necessary was that they ride escalators continuously without stopping, making laps next to a good viewing position.

Robin Duska is a volunteer at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, working on cataloging the museum's bird specimens. She discovered a snow bunting labeled as being found on May 29, 1872, by Emil Bessels. Duska did the research and found that Bessels was a physician who served as the science officer on the Polaris expedition, an 1871 quest to be the first to reach the North Pole. The expedition was led by Charles Francis Hall, who did not survive the unsuccessful trip. When the crew of the Polaris returned home in 1873 (without the ship, which had been crushed by ice), there were questions about Hall's death.

Was Hall murdered? Dr. Bessels had declared the cause of death a stroke, and an investigation agreed. Hall had been buried in the permafrost of Greenland. Then an autopsy in 1969 showed that Hall had ingested arsenic. Did Hall have any enemies aboard ship? Yes, many, as the crew was full of drunks, deserters, and men who didn't want to go to the North Pole. But Hall's biggest enemy was Bessels. Not only did they disagree about the expedition, they were both wooing the same woman back in Washington, a prominent young sculptor named Vinnie Ream. What does any of this have to do with a bird buried in the archives of a museum? Read about the latest clue in a possible murder mystery at The London Times.   -via Strange Company

The comedy troupe Foil Arms and Hog portrays two suitcases moving along a baggage conveyor belt at an airport. This time it's just Foil and Hog, because suitcases don't have Arms. One is highly upset about an insult they received. The other is caught in that no-win situation when your partner is pissed off about something, but can no longer respond to the one who wronged them, so they lash out at the closest person. Anything you say will be misunderstood and can well feed the flames, but you can't just say nothing, because that's wrong, too. You could (and should) call this "emotional baggage." Listen closely, because they've included quite a few luggage and airline puns.  

And after I went to all the trouble to keep the main joke here a secret, it's spoiled in the on-screen video title. This performance is from the current Foil Arms and Hog tour. They'll be in the US for four shows in March.  -via Laughing Squid

Lydia Faber and her husband live on a houseboat in Amsterdam. When they adopted a kitten named Nimis, they put him in a feline life jacket, because in some places, the city's canal walls are too steep for a kitten to climb. Some people joked that Nimis' bright yellow life jacket looked like a police jacket, so when Faber found embroidered patches at a surplus store that said "police," she added them to Nimis' uniform. The neighbors thought it was hilarious, tourists took pictures, and even the local cops took a shine to the "police cat." They don't mind the impersonation, because any official law enforcement officer in Netherlands would be labeled politie.



Nimis is three years old now, and can swim and climb as well as any cat who lives on a boat. But he still wears his jacket, because he is a celebrity not only in Amsterdam, but around the world. You can see videos of Nimis, along with his brother Tommy and his humans, at Facebook and Instagram. -Thanks, WTM!

If you've ever had a small fly annoy you in the shower, you've met Clogmia albipunctata. It's a species of drain fly bigger than a fruit fly and smaller than a house fly. You might have wondered where that fly came from, and that would be your drain.

Redditor daisy_bare took the cover off a basement drain and found a writhing mass of drain fly larvae. Before the mass was identified, suggestions included welding the cover back on and burning the house down. While the fly stage of Clogmia albipunctata is generally harmless and several people described the insect as "cute," you really don't want flies in your home. The adult flies are rather waterproof and don't live long, but their main purpose is to lay eggs in your drains, where the larvae can live off the gunk that lines your pipes. The ways to get rid of eggs or larvae in the drains are to 1. pour boiling water down the drain, 2. pour baking soda and vinegar into the drain (that can be dramatic), 3. use a drain cleaning product, or 4. scrub your drains or, if all else fails, call a professional to clean them.

Outside of your home, drain flies are quite useful in treating sewage. I am tickled with the taxonomic name, and had to go check the genus Clogmia to see if there is a species named Clogmia pipe. Alas, there is no such bug.  

(Image credit: Jerzystrzelecki)

Have you ever wondered how in the world audio artists like Bill McClintock and DJ Cummerbund make those marvelous song mashups out of very different songs from different genres? The secret is the chord progression. If two songs have the same chord progression, the melody can be transferred from one to another. Oh, they might be played in slightly different keys or have a different tempo, but those can be manipulated by computer, and if they are close enough to start with no one will notice. Besides, most songs are in the simpler keys anyway.

Pianist David Bennett illustrates how this is done by swapping the music and lyrics of disparate songs that have the same chord progression. Even if you don't know anything about music theory and don't care about chord progressions, you'll enjoy a video in which Michael Jackson sings over a U2 melody, and Celine Dion croons over a Phil Collins tune. The previous video he mentions is here.  There's a 30-second ad at 5:35.

Americans in the early-to-mid 20th century developed a taste for salad that was actually dessert. It wasn't their fault that the manufacturers of Cool Whip, marshmallows, Jell-O, and pudding mix came up with recipes that they labeled as "salad," giving us an excuse to indulge in highly-processed fat and sugar, and who doesn't love that? People today continue to enjoy these bizarre recipes at family gatherings like Thanksgiving and Christmas, because Grandma, or Great-Grandma, always made her signature sweet salad. And since it's "salad," people eat them with the main entree, even if it's just crushed candy bars glued together with whipped topping.

Neatorama readers know about Watergate salad, but have you ever eaten pretzel salad, ambrosia salad, Snickers salad, or frog-eye salad*? They are all regional favorites that you might want to try for some truly decadent occasion, unless your family has its own sweet salad tradition, although you might want to make the kids eat their dinner first. Read about all of them at Atlas Obscura.

*Note: frog-eye salad has nothing in common with frog pizza.

(Image credit: Marshall Astor)

As the saying goes, frog pizza is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. The Independent reports that this is an option at some Pizza Hut restaurants in China. The thick crust pizza is topped with a bed of parsley, serving as the frog's grassy home. The whole bullfrog is fried and served below two halves of a hard boiled egg which are decorated with black olives so that they resemble eyeballs.

It is unfortunate that this culinary masterpiece is available only in China. As an American, I fear that we are slipping behind China in pizza technology.

-via Dave Barry