YouTuber Jonas Wolf and his friends adapt modern songs for the choral styles of the Renaissance and early Baroque period of Western European music. Past recordings include "Let It Be" by The Beatles and "Last Christmas" by Wham!

Embedded above is the 1977 disco hit "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees--a song made most famous for its appearance in the film Saturday Night Fever. Like many of Wolf's recordings, he and his colleagues are performing the 20th Century song as a madrigal. That's a polyphonic form of vocal chamber music that originated in Renaissance Italy and now grooves on the dance floor.

-via Kottke

Like most states, Illinois allows residents to choose combinations of letters and numbers to reflect custom messages on their car license plates. But, he warns, applicants must follow certain standards of decency and decorum.

NBC News 5 Chicago reports that the state received 55,600 requests during the past year. It rejected more than 550 of them because they were "inflammatory, profane, or offensive...."

In this video, Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias reads off some of the funniest license plate requests that he has had to turn down. I had no idea that "bricked" had an offensive connotation, but Urban Dictionary was unfortunately informative.

-via Jalopnik

Will my shipment arrive before Christmas? I have proceeded through the five stages of grief and reached acceptance: it will arrive at my home on the 27th.

But Flo & Joan, the musical comedy duo from the UK, are not working with the psychology of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, but that of Joseph Campbell. In this song, they go on a hero's journey to seek their missing parcel which itself is on a great journey.

Watch this beautifully staged performance that rises to a crescendo of anxiety faced with courage as the women find the parcel serves as a boon that transforms them.

-via Nag on the Lake

An article at The Takeout explains why pancakes from a diner taste so much better than homemade pancakes. It's because they have specialized equipment and lots of experience. Restaurants cannot afford to have their pancakes turn out differently from one customer to the next, and they don't have the time for a do-over. They offer some tips for making your pancakes more like those you'd find in a restaurant. 

But when the article was linked at Metafilter, the response was swift and adamant. Diner pancakes do not taste better than homemade; they are simply more consistent. And it depends on what you really want in a pancake- thick and fluffy or thin and crepe-y, but most of all, inexpensive. Besides sharing tips on how to improve your pancake and waffle technique, Mefites shared their recipes, including those with a variety of unusual flours, buttermilk, bananas, yeast, malted milk powder, and instant oatmeal, plus some traditional recipes that have always worked for them. There's also a recipe for a berry goo topping. Check them all out in the comments. 

(Image credit: Lajmmoore) 

In Britain, you are considered an adult when you turn 18. In America, that's true for only some things, like voting and signing contracts. You can drive at 16 (or younger in some states), but you can't buy alcohol or tobacco until you are 21, and some companies will not rent a car to anyone under 25. I once explained to a foreign visitor that Americans let their kids have jobs, date, and drive in high school to make sure a parent is available to help them learn those skills. The alcohol and tobacco laws were a response from the government to too many people dying.  

Laurence Brown, who celebrates his birthday on Christmas Eve, also covers the difference between other adult things like traveling, taxes, home ownership, and hosting holiday parties in this video about how the United States is an outlier in transitioning to whatever passes for an adult life. There's a 75-second skippable ad at 1:55. 

We've been following the adventures of Jonathan Stanley (redditor kakalacky_guy, previously at Neatorama) and his family for years, by way of his humorous Christmas cards. Here is a his card for 2025, titled “The Great Backyard Ice Rink Disaster of 2025.” The kids have transformed the driveway into a hockey rink by flooding it with water. The oldest is operating a Zamboni fashioned from the lawn mower. The daughter's goalie gear is also homemade. Dad, in the same sweater he's worn for twelve years, lacks skates so he's fallen. Mom's coffee has escaped its cup. The power cord for the lights has been skated over. You can see more details by greatly enlarging this photo at reddit. 

Kakalacky_guy has been producing these Photoshopped cards since 2014, when there were only two kids (although they seemed like a half-dozen back then). He calls them "honest Christmas cards" because they illustrate the chaos of life with three children. Click to the right and see all the previous Christmas cards.  -via reddit 

John C. Worsley is the master of goofy musical Star Trek videos, and always has something special for Christmas (previously at Neatorama). For 2025, he's focused on Jeffrey Combs for the supercut "Here Comes Jeffrey Combs." Who is Jeffrey Combs? He's an actor and voiceover artist who has become the go-to guy in the Star Trek universe. Combs has played nine aliens (and one human) so far on Star Trek - some of them recurring characters, including the Vorta clone Weyoun and the Ferengi character Brunt in the series Strar TreK: Deep Space Nine. On Star Trek: Enterprise, he was Andorian military officer Schran. He also appeared on Star TreK: Voyager and Star Trek: Lower Decks. Combs has even worked on a Star Trek video game! You need to be a real Trekkie to know all that, but you don't have to have a photographic memory of all the players to enjoy the cleverness of this song. -via Metafilter 

A type of cancer called diffuse midline glioma (DMG) grows on the brain, specifically on the thalamus, brainstem, or spinal cord. Surgery in those areas is impossible because it's so dangerous, and patients diagnosed with DMG have a 1% survival rate. But a breakthrough is giving these patients more time.

The new drug Modeyso was developed with the aid of fireflies. Dr. Joshua Allen has been exploring how our bodies' own immune system fights cancers, and inserted the firefly gene for bioluminescence into human genes known to fight cancer to study their behavior. When the body's cells become cancerous, these genes are activated and made cancers glow and easier to see. The study of how such genes are activated led to the new drug. Some DMG patients that were given nine to twelve months to live have survived months or even years longer after the new treatment. Read how all that came about at Popular Science. -via Damn Interesting 

To torment me, my teenage children introduced me to a YouTube channel filled with AI-generated Christmas carols filled with Gen Alpha slang. The slop flows melodically and the lyrics are far from mid, inducing much gyatt with their rizz rhythms.

In addition to the above embedded "Six Seven on Merry Rizzmas", there is "12 Days of Rizzmas", "Rizzmas Bells", "Oh, Rizzmas Tree," and "Six Seven Christmas."

No cap, they are all very skibidi.

War is hell, but field kitchens do whatever they can to bring a little comfort to soldiers risking their lives for the cause. Back in WWII, that meant baking mincedmeat pie for the troops around Christmas time —even if they didn't quite have all the traditional ingredients. Tasting History has the recipe for this fascinating wartime sweet. It is quite interesting and includes boullion, corned beef, apples, sugar, raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg, and pepper. 

The song "Baby It's Cold Outside" was written in 1944 as a romantic comedy duet. In the 21st century, it has come to be seen as creepy because the man is trying to prevent a woman from leaving his company. That's not cool. 

The country-western duo The Doohickeys rewrote the song by changing only the male lines to make it more appropriate for modern sensibilities. So she's in 1944 and he's in 2025- talk about an age gap! In this version, it becomes obvious that the woman really wants to stay, but she is using the expected performative phrases to protect her reputation as "hard to get" or a "good girl." The clues as to her age don't translate well across the years, because in 1944 it was more common for a woman to live with her parents until she married, no matter her age. What she really wants out of the evening is ambiguous, because back in the day, the difference between romance and sex wasn't explicitly discussed in polite society. It's no wonder signals were so often crossed. "Clear and enthusiastic consent" may not lend itself to jokes as well, but it's a better way. 

What makes a party a disaster? I once threw a party in which more than a dozen attendees were arrested, and I was evicted, as well as two neighbors. They're still talking about that one more than 40 years later. But it wasn't as bad as the event President Francisco Macías Nguema of Equatorial Guinea threw for Christmas in 1969. He invited 150 of his political opponents to a football stadium, and his guards (who some say were dressed as Santa Claus) shot and killed them all.   

Other world leaders threw or attended Christmas parties that turned out to be disasters of one sort or another. Sometimes people got killed, while others were just embarrassing. Winston Churchill invited himself to a White House Christmas party in 1941. The King of Sweden's Christmas banquet in 1317 was the last time anyone ever saw his brothers. And then there was Jimmy Carter's hemorrhoids. Read about all these Christmas parties and more at Mental Floss. 

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is one of the most popular and respected anime and manga franchises of the past few years due to its emotional depth and character development.

It is a story about regret.

The second season of the anime adaptation of the manga premiers in about three weeks. It's definitely on my must-watch list.

Last year, cosplayer Hanami made this cosplay of the main character, Frieren, dressed for Christmas festivities.

Every year, DJ Earworm takes the 25 biggest songs that peaked in popularity in the United States during the calendar year and mixes them all together for his "United States of Pop." There is a track list at the YouTube page, although they can't be listed in order as the biggest ones pop in and out through the mashup. As has been the case for the last ten years or so, they all seem to fall into the same dance beat. 

Despite relative disappointment with Taylor Swift's album The Life of a Showgirl, it ended up on several top albums of the year lists and landed two songs in this mashup: "The Fate of Ophelia" and "Opalite." Other artists who have two songs represented here are Benson Boone, Morgan Wallen, and Tate McRrae. The cast from the movie K-Pop Demon Hunters also had two songs make the top 25, although they were credited to different combinations of artists. 

You may be into Stranger Things, but do you really wish you could enter the fictional world of Hawkins? Well, thanks to the Byers Home listing on Airbnb, now you can.

Located only 15 minutes from Atlanta, this rental is the actual home where the exterior shots of the Byers'  home was filmed for the show.

And the inside is all decked out to match the vibe, with 80s decor, creepy lab designs, and giant growths permeating the home from the Upside Down.

On the downside, the place will cost you over $2,000 a night and they don't have any availability until July. But I guess that's the cost of true fandom.