Tim King does home remodeling in western Chicago. Recently, he worked on the home that belonged to his parents. While tearing down some drywall, he found a wrapped Christmas present. It had his name on it and dated back to 1978, when King was six years old.

King figures that it must have been in the attic and fallen inside the wall. Now, this prized toy was finally in his hands. WGN 9 News reports that removing the wrapping paper revealed a Matchbox Sky Busters toy plane set. King affirms that, at six, he would have loved to receive this gift. It's a bit late now, but he still enjoys the present.

-via Born in Space

Part of the charm of cuckoo clocks is their old world charm that inspires images of the Alpine cultures that created them. Etsy seller woodmess of Istanbul designs and builds modern interpretations of the classic design with vibrant colors and robust curves.

Like its predecessors, the bird pops out at the hour to sing and dance. But this time, it pops out of a house that looks like it belongs in a Los Angeles suburb instead of southern Germany. Each clock is made to order to suit each customer's color preferences, although woodmess urges light colors for the bird to ensure that it doesn't disappear in its cave.

-via Core77

Redditor /u/mstacle has an impressive corpus of work, but I'm especially taken with this playful sculpture that looks like a melting ice cream treat. They tell us that the ice cream is made out of walnut and the stick is made of maple. Like the line attributed to Michelangelo that he was freeing the angel concealed in the marble, /u/mstacle experienced "a tedious process of slowly removing the material to get the melty vibe."

Ai Nurul, a cosplayer in Malaysia, integrates the hijab into all of her costumes. This often involves making creatively designed and assembled hijabs that serve as wigs, convincingly presenting as hair. You can see that vividly in this horror version of a female Ronald MacDonald.

Explore this image and you'll see represented an entire year of one person's life. Specifically, it's Sophie O'Neill's experience of 2020.

She tells BBC News that she began January 1 of that year by embroidering an icon representing the fountain at a hotel where she worked. Each day, she added a new icon representing that particular day in her life and the experience that was for her. She matches each icon with a few words that she writes down in a journal to provide context.

Now, in 2025, O'Neill is still going strong. She offers online resources for people who would like to join her in embroidering 2025.

-via Kottke

Kaido is a miniature Australian Shepherd. Matty is a human (I'm guessing; he doesn't say directly). Together, they bike through the streets of New York City.

Kaido is a civic-minded dog who contributes to the well-being of his polity. He is involved with the efficient implementation of social services, such as ambulances, by howling whenever he hears the siren erupting from one.

-via Laughing Squid

Kelsey Piggott is a master baker in North Salt Lake, Utah who specializes in sourdough bread loves painted with vivid images from life and popular culture. I take it this loaf comes from a scene in which Bluey and Bingo pretend to be elderly women.

Now, technically, snowglobes are edible if you're sufficiently reckless. But redditor /u/bloomcakes created edible snowglobe cupcakes that will be completely pleasant to consume.

Insane Facebook Marketplace Items is an X account that showcases some of the strangest things that people are trying to sell on Facebook Marketplace. These include, recently, an Officer Big Mac jail from what must have been a McDonald's playscape.

Now, if you can outbid your competition and get to Blacksburg, South Carolina for pick up, you can have your own in your office or home. Place it up front so that people who approach you understand that you are both playful and menacing as the situation demands.

Content warning: many salacious items are for sale, often of a phallic nature.

-via Zillow Gone Wild

Qin, 26, is a professionally trained dancer and the owner of a restaurant in Chongqing, China. The South China Morning Post reports that for a couple of years Qin has attracted customers by performing like a lumbering robot while serving food. Her movements are so unlifelike that people online (and even directly observing her in her restaurant) though that she was actually a functional android.

Her perfect control of her eye movement is especially impressive. She appears to be completely unblinking. You have to watch very carefully to detect the subtle movement of breathing as she moves through the restaurant and interacts with customers.

-via Laughing Squid

I'm a fan of Star Trek: Lower Decks, which just finished after five seasons. It was a popular show with good ratings. Why did Paramount drop it? Internet rumor has it that although subscribers were watching Lower Decks, no one was signing up for Paramount+ for the first time in order to watch Lower Decks. So the company cancelled a thriving series.

The way that people interact with television is very different from the way that Miss Cellania and I grew up with. Will Tavlin of N+1 traces the history of Netflix in particular and the way that this streaming service has shaped the production and marketing of movies and series.

Tavlin mentions that Netflix has catered to a market called "casual viewing". This is a show or movie that one plays while not actually watching the screen. It's background video to play while attending to other tasks, such as doing chores. The characters narrate what they've done, what they're doing, and what they plan to do so that the viewer can more or less follow the plot without paying close attention.

Before we get too disgusted, it's worth noting that several Netflix writers on X are insisting that this allegation is untrue.

-via @Anthony_cf97

(Popeye t-shirt on sale at our NeatoShop)

The Internet Archive tells us about some of the more interesting works of intellectual property that will become public domain in the United States at the beginning of the new year. They include the original drawn Popeye cartoon, which first appeared in publication on January 17, 1929. The artist, E.C. Segar passed away in 1938, but his legacy continued with animated cartoons, comic books, and the underappreciated 1980 film starring Robin Williams.

People will also be free to republish and adapt Dashiell Hammett's novel The Maltese Falcon, Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, and William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury.

Claire Lamman is a graduate student in astronomy at Harvard University. So she's a genius. But she's also humble enough to describe herself as a "procrastibaker" -- someone who bakes in order to avoid academic work. Lamman's portfolio of baking work is impressive.

Each Christmas, Lamman composes a gingerbread masterpiece of an astronomical survey instrument, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, favorite space probes, and a model of the Very Large Array in New Mexico.. This year, Lamman made the above model of the Voyager I probe, which launched in 1977 and exited our solar system in 2013, but continues to operate.

Let us hope that Lamman expands upon her work and creates a gingerbread model of the famed Voyager IV spacecraft.

Dr. Laura Driessen is a radio astronomer at the University of Sydney. At Study Finds, she explains that the speed of an object in motion affects sound and light waves from that object relative to an observer. This is called the Doppler Effect.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, who leads Santa's sleigh with his nose so bright, has a red-appearing nose only when he is motionless. The appearance of his nose changes when he travels at speeds sufficient to complete his busy night of work.

Dr. Driessen estimates that Rudolph must travel at 8.2 million KPH in order to deliver Santa to each of his destinations. If you saw Rudolph moving toward you, his nose would appear bright orange. If you watched him fly away, his nose would turn almost black.

Who does the best "pa-rum, pum-pum, pum"? @TheSimpsons #TheSimpsons #Christmas pic.twitter.com/GHz3J2lp6x

— Hank Azaria (@HankAzaria) December 23, 2024

Hank Azaria's greatest acting accomplishment was, in my opinion, a supporting role in the groundbreaking sitcom Herman's Head. But he is most famous for voicing several characters on The Simpsons, having done so for almost the franchise's entire run since 1989.

In this special Christmas video, Azaria sings a few lines from the 1941 carol "The Little Drummer Boy" as Simpsons characters, including police chief Clancy Wiggum, the beloved Moe Szyslak, Comic Book Guy, Captain Horatio McAllister, Professor John Frink, the rascally scamp Snake, and Duffman.

-via Laughing Squid