The Pantone Color Institute had announced its annual Color of the Year for 2026, and it's what they call PANTONE 11-4201 Cloud Dancer. Most of us would call it white. They explain that this shade of white was selected because it "signifies our desire for a fresh start" and "serves as a symbol of calming influence in a frenetic society rediscovering the value of measured consideration and quiet reflection." I might add, it also shows stains easily. The choice is surprising, considering that three paint companies selected different shades of green as their color of the year for 2026. Pantone has helpfully paired Cloud Dancer with other pastels for your decorating inspiration. 

The backlash started the moment Pantone made the announcement. There can be all kinds of implications in choosing white, but the most basic is that white is not a color. Some call the choice lazy, while others have coined the term "Pantonedeaf." What do you think of their choice? 

Desiree of Tiny Paws & Whiskers animal rescue in California was alerted about a kitten that was trapped in a steel container which held a diesel fuel tank. The container was pretty deep and a small kitten would have never been able to climb out of it on his own. The tank fit inside rather snugly, so it was impossible to reach in and get the kitten. 

She organized an entire team of volunteers for a rescue operation that involved draining the tank and lifting it. That's a lot of men and equipment. But while they worked on the tank, another kitten appeared and was trapped. Moving the tank revealed two kittens had fallen into the container. And while Desiree was taking care of the three kittens, their mother was trapped. And she had more kittens! By the time the operation was finished, Desiree had six new cats to find homes for. At least they are safe. 

The Bermuda Triangle, a huge area roughly bounded by Bermuda, Florida, and Puerto Rico, is said to be a very dangerous place to travel, considering how many shipwrecks, plane crashes, and disappearance occur there. The urban legend has been debunked over and over, as the many mysterious events cited are not statistically more than any area of the ocean with the same amount of traffic. So where did this legend begin? 

Eighty years ago today, on December 5, 1945, five bombers under the mission title Flight 19 took off from Florida on a training mission over the Atlantic, carrying 14 Marines and Navy aviators. The planes were never seen again. Two naval patrol bombers were sent to search for them. Only one came back, and the crew of 13 on the other were never seen again. What happened to Flight 19? The records of that day are now declassified, and we have a detailed minute-by-minute account of failed navigation, failed communication, dwindling fuel, and a lack of the technology we've become accustomed to today. The investigation that followed was subject to corrections and modifications so that the cause of the tragedy officially ended up as "unknown." No wonder conspiracy theories grew up around the incident. Read what we know now about the disappearance of Flight 19 at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Lt. Comdr. Horace Bristol, U.S. Navy photo 80-G-427475) 

What sort of Great Gatsby will we have when Daisy Buchanan is actually Daisy Duck? We can find out because, as Zach Weinersmith explains in Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, we're just four years away from a mashup of the Disney characters and the Fitzgerald novel.

Then just wait ten years. In 2040, both Bugs Bunny and the grim Richard Wright novel Native Son will enter the public domain.

The history of Chick-fil-A goes back to Atlanta in 1946. Truett Cathy was searching for the secret of the perfect chicken sandwich, which turned out to be cooking the chicken fillet in a pressure fryer. Then he licensed his method to other restaurants before going into the fast food franchise business. You might recognize this as the story of Harland Sanders, the founder of KFC, except Sanders did it with bone-in chicken. The difference is that Sanders just wanted a faster way to cook chicken, because his fried chicken was already pretty good. Anyway, that was just the beginning of Chick-fil-A, which spread across the South and then went nationwide. Today Chick-fil-A is known across the US as the chicken outlet that advertises with cows and is never open on Sunday. Tom Blank of Weird History Food goes through the history of Chick-fil-A, including the controversies that land the chain in the news every now and then.  

(Image credit: maisonsmd) 

A world built for humans must look so big to a tiny kitten. It's no wonder they want to explore every nook and cranny. That will keep them busy for weeks! But meanwhile, you have to tread lightly, because it's easy to miss such a small creature on the floor. Or if the kitten finds a nice cozy place to hide, you may be looking for quite some time before you find them. And you'd better check before you plop down on that bean bag or bed, because the cat may have already staked out her territory! The reddit post for the cat above features a second, closeup image of the kitten in case you can't see her well enough. 

(Image credit: Colar) 

Sure, you can get the kitten her own bed, but it still might be awful big for such a smol cat. Ah, she'll grow into it. Bored Panda gleaned their favorite such images from the subreddit Tinycatsinbigspaces and posted them in a reader-ranked list of 50 pictures to make you go "squee!" 

"Come quietly or there will be trouble," as the RoboCop statue has arrived in Detroit’s Eastern Market following a public funding campaign. pic.twitter.com/fmWplyVRHO

— Local 4 WDIV Detroit (@Local4News) December 4, 2025

Ever since Paul Verhoeven's 1997 documentary about Alex Murphy, Detroit's most famous police officer, people have sought to erect a memorial to honor the cyborg hero RoboCop. The project has taken over 14 years to reach completion.

The Detroit Metro-Times reports that the 10-foot statue of RoboCop is now in place at 3434 Russell Street. Crowdfunding raised the $60,000 necessary to hire sculptor George Gikas of Venus Bronze Works to construct the durable statue. Now the hero again stands watch over us.

-via Alyssa Hazel

Cookie Monster baked a triple berry pie, but it's all gone! Who could have helped themselves and left none for the monster himself? Oscar the Grouch baked a garbage pie, but for some reason, no one ate his. It's a mystery that none other than the world's greatest detective, Benoit Blanc, can solve. It's only a matter of observaation and deduction, which are beyond a Muppet's abilities, having felt for brains. 

'Forks Out': A Benoit Blanc Sesame Street Mystery is a Muppet take on Rian Johnson's Knives Out murder mystery movie series featuring Daniel Craig as investigator Benoit Blanc. You can see Craig's reaction to this parody here (spoiler- he got a kick out of it). Sure, it's an ad for Netflix, which is now a distributor of Sesame Street and the owner of exclusive rights to two of the Knives Out movies. But it's the Muppets, so you know it's funny. -via Metafilter 

Do you remember cigarette vending machines? In the age of smoking in America, they proliferated in public venues. But as smoking became less common, the vending machines gradually disappeared.

In 1997, artist Clark Whittington took one and converted it into a vending machine for small pieces of art. He called it the Art-o-Mat.

The project was popular and Whittington, along with other artists, made more. There are now about 200 in service now, mostly in the United States. This one pictured above is in a Whole Foods location in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Art-o-Mats are great ways for artists to promote their work, earning $2.50 per sale. The guidelines are strict, though, as Whittington describes the mechanical requirements of the machines as "unforgiving."

An awful lot of underground shenanigans went on during World War II that were only discovered years later. Those who defied Nazi occupation knew that secrecy was a matter of survival, and after the war many just wanted to forget. Dr. Eugene Lazowski worked in Rozwadow, Poland, under German occupation. He lived near the Jewish ghetto, and he knew that he could only help its inhabitants in secret. But he treated children under the cover of darkness and smuggled medicine and supplies into the ghetto when he could. The Nazis were gradually taking the Jewish population away, and conscripting the non-Jewish residents of Rozwadow for labor. 

Lazowski's later fame came from the time he, along with his friend Dr. Stanisław Matulewicz, engineered a fake typhus epidemic in Rozwadow. As more and more people in Rozwadow and the surrounding villages had to be quarantined for typhus, the occupying Nazis tried to keep their distance. Deportations ceased, and roundups for labor stopped. After the war, the story got out that there had been no typhus at all, although with confusing and incorrect details. Lazowski emigrated to the US and only wrote his version of events in 1993. Read the true story of how the doctors created a fake typhus epidemic in Rozwadow at Utterly Interesting. 

The comic strip Peanuts debuted 75 years ago, and we are all familiar with its many TV specials and movies -and merchanidise, of course. We all know the Peanuts gang and we all have our favorite characters. The core group of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, and Snoopy are augmented by a group of children and animals (but no adults) who each had their own unique personalities and roles within the group. 

This video is set up to rank seven (actually eight) of these characters from "criminally overlooked" to "global icon," but we know how such rankings can rankle. It's better to look at it as an explanation of their personalities, and how each one plays a role in providing someone we can relate to, or maybe even aspire to. That said, I am disappointed by the absence of Pigpen. Not that I related to him, but I always liked the character. -via Laughing Squid 

A raccoon broke into a state-run liquor store in Ashland, Virginia, which is just north of Richmond. According to a Facebook post for the animal control authority for Hanover County, the raccoon smashed bottles of alcohol and drank their contents until he passed out on the floor of the restroom.

Animal control officials took him back to a county shelter until he sobered up. After a few hours of sleep, the raccoon woke up apparently uninjured. The human authorities then released the raccoon back into the wild to commit additional poor life choices.

-via @sunnyright | Photos: Hanover County Animal Control and Shelter

UPDATE: 12/4/2025:

I painted the raccoon from liquor store in Virginia. He’s still sleeping it off. pic.twitter.com/aVGbbytHTU

— Travis Chapman (@Travispaints) December 4, 2025

Dave Locke is not just an acrobat; he's an "acrobat conceptor." He's a master athlete and performer with experience in Cirque du Soleil, notably using the cyr wheel and the trampwall (a trampoline arranged vertically rather than horizontally).

How is he a conceptor? Locke is devising original acrobatic activities, such as kicking a sword into a target. Most people (well, Miss Cellania and I) use our hands when wielding swords, but Locke can shoot a sword in preferred directions with sidekicks.

-via Born in Space

Christmas is a totally secular holiday in Japan, and the symbol of the Christmas tree has become a medium for some spectacular public art installations. Spoon & Tamago have selected their favorite Christmas trees of 2025 from Tokyo and Osaka. There are five of them, and some stretch the definition of "tree," although the conical shape is unmistakable. 

The tree shown above was designed by Takahiro Matsuo of the art studio LUCENT, and is on display at Omotesando Hills in Tokyo. It contains a thousand prisms to reflect and multiply light. The ring near the top is Matsuo’s invention called Kinetic Light Vision (KLV), which produces the mid-air points of light you see surrounding the tree. And those lights dance. You can see a video of the device in action at the link, as well as four other spectacular Christmas tree art installations. If that's not enough, there are links at the bottom for the best Christmas trees from previous years. -via Everlasting Blort 

The movie Kill Bill: Volume 1 came out in 2003, and Kill Bill: Volume 2 followed in 2004 to complete the story. And now this Friday, both return to theaters together in a four hour and 35 minute marathon called Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair. 

Both the earlier movies were box office hits and became martial arts classics. But it's been a long time, and if you are young, your parents didn't let you see these movies in a theater the first time around. Is it worth sitting that long to see both volumes on the big screen? Kill Bill is the saga of a woman done wrong who furiously gets her revenge. It has plenty of over-the-top violence and the many quirks that brand it as a Quentin Tarantino flick, which becomes obvious in this Honest Trailer. The Whole Bloody Affair will also feature a new anime sequence, and there's an intermission between the two parts, so you can stretch your legs and relieve your bladder.