This is driving me nuts. It’s from a Christmas set but I’m stumped
byu/RbbyAick inwhatismycookiecutter

A mystery cookie cutter is driving the subreddit What Is My Cookie Cutter insane. RbbyAick found this in an unmarked ziplock bag of Christmas cookie cutters. The others are a Christmas tree, candy cane, a bell, a snowflake, a truck hauling a tree, and an angel. But what is this shape supposed to be? My first impression is that it's a chess piece, specifically a knight. You have to rotate it 90 degrees to the right. So I looked up chess piece cookie cutters to make sure that's a thing. I found plenty of sets, but they all have flat bottoms for the chess pieces.

Others guessed that it's a sea horse, a chalet, a nativity scene, a pile of gifts, a dreidel, a slice of pie, Santa's sleigh, or various cartoon dinosaurs. Others guessed that the series of round shapes were supposed to be a word written out in icing. The reddit thread is full of pictures where people colored in plausible, semi-plausible, or ridiculous guesses. These mysteries are usually solved when someone can post a sales page for another cookie cutter in the same shape, but that hasn't happened yet. Have you ever used, or even seen, a cookie cutter in this shape? Maybe we can help them out.  

Have you ever thrown a party that people talked about for years afterward? I once threw a going-away party for a co-worker who was temporarily living with me. I didn't invite anyone (she did), but before the night was over, the police had set up a roadblock in the complex's driveway and residents of four apartments were evicted, including mine. I don't remember much else about it. That party still didn't hold a candle to the ones that rich and powerful people have thrown throughout history.     

In ancient Egypt, worship of one particular god involved parties where one was required to get as drunk as possible. They don't make religions like that anymore. Or do they? A pope once threw a party that appears to have been a sexual orgy. Louis XIV once staged an extravagant and decadent party that lasted a week, but was sensible enough to not let the revelers inside the palace. Powerful and ambitious leaders threw enormous parties to impress their rivals and the general populace, but these sometimes had the opposite effect. You have to be careful not to enrage those who weren't invited. Weird History shares the details of some of the biggest, wildest parties in history.    

An "almost perfectly preserved" saber-toothed cub has been unearthed in Russia's Sakha Republic, 35,000 years after it died. The cat is of the species Homotherium latidens, a distant relative of the more familiar Smilodon. This kitten doesn't have long fangs jutting from its jaw, because it was only about three weeks old when it died. It gives scientists the opportunity to study the species' fur, muscle mass, and muzzle shape. Yakutia's permafrost is perfectly capable of keeping a carcass frozen for 35,000 years, yet scientists describe this cub as "mummified," so this a case of a freeze-dried kitten. Yakutia is also known for its dry air.

A recent paper explores the difference between the Homotherium kitten and a modern lion cub. The ancient kitten has wider paws (good for traveling over snow) a bigger mouth, and smaller ears. Read more about this unique discovery at NPR. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: A. V. Lopatin, M. V. Sotnikova, A. I. Klimovsky, A. V. Lavrov, A. V. Protopopov, D. O. Gimranov & E. V. Parkhomchuk)

Comedy duo Austin & Colin stopped shaving and went to the National Beard and Moustache Championships in Everett, Washington, a couple of weeks ago. They had a wonderful time as you can see in the video footage they shot while at the convention. They even signed up to compete and Austin came in third in the Natural Mustache category! So they wrote a little song about it. It contains every mustache pun ever uttered, including the title. There are also callbacks to the 1980s, and references to celebrities with remarkable mustaches. You'll find the complete lyrics at the YouTube page under "more."

Check out plenty of images from the National Beard and Moustache Championships at Instagram. The song and video were put together in record time because November is a time to grow a mustache and to promote Movember, an awareness and fundraising effort for men's health issues, mostly testicular caner and mental health. -via reddit

Have you purchased your Thanksgiving turkey yet? If you're buying a frozen turkey, be sure to allow enough time to let it that before cooking it on the 28th. If you're buying a fresh turkey, you want to wait until the last minute, which means reserving one so they don't sell out.
 
St. Andrew’s Boynton Church in Yorkshire, UK, uses turkey iconography. The wooden lectern above is carved in the shape of a turkey. There's a turkey in a stained glass window. And a memorial stone with no inscription is embellished with a stone turkey on top. There's a reason this American bird features so heavily in a Christian chapel. The church was built by the Strickland family, descendants of British navigator William Strickland, who is credited with bringing the first turkey to Europe. The bird has become the family's symbol, and therefore gets plenty of respect.  

That's not the only religion a turkey is associated with. They were once used as sacrifices in pre-colonial Mexico and the Aztec god Chalchiuhtotolin appeared in the form of a turkey. Of course, more modern Americans have their own turkey customs and traditions. Learn about some of these lesser-known cultural rituals and traditions involving our favorite holiday bird at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Jules & Jenny)

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) regularly shows us amazing creatures from the deepest depths of the ocean. This one is Bathydevius caudactylus, a newly named species that they've been studying for 24 years. Until recently, they called it the "mystery mollusk" because they didn't know exactly what kind of creature it is. It has a transparent hood like a jellyfish, tentacles like a squid, and a foot like a sea snail. Yet it acts like none of those other types of animals, and lives in the bathypelagic zone, 1,000 to 4,000 meters (3,300 to 13,100 feet) under the surface, where sunshine cannot reach. Yes, Bathydevius caudactylus is bioluminescent, but at this depth, that doesn't indicate what other species it may be related to. There have been more than 150 sightings in those years, and finally a specimen was brought up to study and underwent a DNA analysis. Reach more about the new species at MBARI's website. -via TYWKIWDBI

Sixty-five years ago today, prison parolees Perry Edward Smith and Richard Eugene Hickock went to the Kansas home of farmer Herbert Clutter and murdered him, his wife Bonnie, and their two teenage children. Each of the victims were tied up and shot in the head. If the crime sounds familiar to you, it's most likely due to the book that Truman Capote wrote a few years later titled In Cold Blood, or the movie made from it in 1967. Capote wrote it as what he called a "nonfiction novel," or a true story told in dramatic style using literary storytelling techniques. It became a bestseller, and was foundational in establishing the literary genre of true crime novels. Capote did painstaking research into the crime, but was criticized later on for embellishing some of the facts.

What happened that day in Holcomb, Kansas, was horrifying enough, and scarred the community permanently. Read an account of the murders of the Clutter family on November 15th, 1959, at Smithsonian.

A surveillance video shows a bear rummaging around inside of a 2010 Rolls Royce Ghost in Southern California in January. The video was submitted to the car insurance company as evidence of the extensive damage, but investigators were suspicious and turned to a wildlife biologist for help. What appears to be a brown bear, a species that doesn't live in Southern California, was actually a man in a bear costume. The insurance company also found bear damage claims for two other cars with two other insurance companies on the same date at the same location. And strangely, no one in the neighborhood was aware of any bears spotted in January, which would have been shared. Four men were arrested Wednesday for insurance fraud. A bear costume, pictured above, was found at a suspect's home. The weird scheme could have been a Scooby-Doo plot, and you have to wonder why the Rolls Royce owner didn't just try to sell the car instead of ruining it. -via Metafilter

(Image source: CA Dept of Insurance)

An account from 1560 tells the story of Marguerite Walezer of Vienna, who had what she thought was a normal pregnancy in the year 1545. During her long labor, the fetus stopped moving and she knew the baby had died. But the labor pains stopped and the midwives couldn't make her deliver. Doctors couldn't help her, either. Surely her body would expel the stillbirth eventually, right? But that didn't happen, and Walezer suffered pains until November of 1550, when she convinced a surgeon to cut her open and relieve her of the fetus. At the time, alcohol and opium were the only surgical anesthetics, so it must have been a horrific experience. But after the surgery, Walezer was said to have been the picture of health.

Could this story possibly be true? The account is nestled in a book full of fantastic tales, but stands out because it comes with names and dates. Dr. Irvine Loudon published a paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine that explains the rare but plausible medical circumstances that may have led to Walezer's five year pregnancy, including the surgery that ended it. You can read a shorter recap at Weird Universe.

(Image source: Wellcome Images)

A video this dense with information makes me all the more respectful of public health scientists. We fight all kinds of different viruses, and each has their own story. Today we learn how many different types of polio virus there are. There's the wild virus, which has three main variants. And then each of those variants can be a wild virus, deactivated virus, attenuated virus, or a mutant virus. We use some of these to fight the others.

Before we had vaccines, polio was super virulent because most infected people weren't even aware they had the virus, so they constantly spread it to others who might not be so lucky. A small fraction of the infected got sick, and were in danger of dying or becoming permanently disabled. The only real solution is to vaccinate the entire population and wipe polio viruses from the face of the earth, like we did with smallpox.

Thanksgiving is only two weeks away. Do you have the movies picked out for your Thanksgiving family film festival? Yeah, that's not really a thing, like it is for Halloween and for Christmas. Up until 1987, there was only one Thanksgiving movie, and it was Alice's Restaurant. Then there was Plane, Trains, and Automobiles. If you wanted, Miracle on 34th Street would do, even though most of it is about Christmas. But if you expand your definition of a Thanksgiving movie a little, there are a lot more. Does it have a memorable Thanksgiving scene in it? Does it happen on Thanksgiving Day? Then it's a Thanksgiving movie! You can pick and choose from uplifting family fare, rom-coms, horror movies, comedies, animation, and gripping dramas. Mental Floss found 18 movies that you might consider watching for Thanksgiving, with a description and trailer or video clip for each. And it doesn't even include Alice's Restaurant.

Surfers usually prefer to not get bitten by sharks. Recent research by Dr. Laura Ryan of Macquarie University in Australia and her colleagues may offer a means to reduce the number of shark attacks on surfers.

The Guardian reports that Ryan towed seal-shaped objects through the water in Mossel Bay, South Africa. When the researchers attached LED strips to the undersides of these silhouettes, the number of shark attacks plummeted. This is likely because sharks have poor eyesight and may have found the shapes confusing.

This research indicates that LEDs on the undersides of surfboards may disrupt the silhouettes that draw sharks.

-via Dave Barry

This little octopus wants to go places! A young boy is hijacked by the totally adorable sea creature while on vacation, and ends up taking him home. The octopus loves seeing and learning about the new things in the city, but he loves Christmas more than anything. There is no dialogue, yet it's obvious that the boy and the octopus communicate with each other. I won't tell you how it ends, but the piece of paper you see at 3:04 explains. I had to back the video up to take another look at it.

This holiday short is from Disney, which explains the constant reference to other Disney products, from the music to the various toys to the movie they watch together. The Boy and The Octopus was directed by Taika Waititi. I wouldn't be surprised to learn this is a test to gauge the character's appeal for possible future projects. -via (appropriately) Laughing Squid

Have you ever heard a radio announcer say, "That was (song) from the movie (title)," and you thought, "Wow, I've always loved that song, but I never knew it was from a movie." It may well have been from a movie you never saw or never even heard of because it wasn't all that great. Plenty of film productions commission songs specifically for the film, and even more find appropriate but unreleased songs to use that are then released in conjunction with the film. That leaves us with a lot of songs that became hits from movies that flopped so badly we don't even remember them -or maybe the film is just too old.  

Back in 2014, you couldn't escape the Pharrell song "Happy." It was the biggest song of the year, won two Grammys, and we posted about it quite a bit. Yet few people recall that is was written for the 2013 movie Despicable Me 2. The movie was honestly a hit, but it was aimed at children. Even more obscure is the origin of the song "Unchained Melody," which was a big hit for the Righteous Brothers in 1965 and you might associate it with the 1990 film Ghost. However, it was written for the 1955 prison movie Unchained, and that's how it got its title.

Some of your favorite songs may have been spawned by a movie you've never seen. Read up on 21 of those songs, with videos, at Cracked.

All aboard the Quarantrain! A large setup of miniature trains in a realistic setting is always a treat, and you have to admire the craftsmanship and dedication of those who make them. Jim Merullo did that with some extra goodies during the pandemic lockdown. He upgraded a previously-abandoned HO scale train layout with scenes that bring us all in on the joke. The first scene he made for what he calls the Quarantrain was a recreation of baldur's gate ios gameplaybaldur's gate ios gameplaybaldur's gate ios gameplay Making a standing cow was not easy- he had to combine parts of four cows to get it right. Another scene that caught my eye is an illustration of the Trolley Problem.

Will the switch operator do nothing and kill half a dozen children, or divert the train and kill a nun? See more of these unique scenes from the Quarantrain at Merullo's website. He also posted a thread at Bluesky explaining how he constructed the Quarantrain.  -via Everlasting Blort