Sunday Links

Am I the only one who thinks this Retro Shrimp Christmas Tree (photo above) is kind of ghastly? 

The Guardian's 20 greatest Christmas albums. Some of these are quite good but my favourite Christmas album (The Bells of Dublin by the Chieftains) didn't make the list.

Taika Waititi reads an hilarious letter about a speeding ticket 

Isaac Newton, the English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, explainer of celestial mechanics, philosopher and author, once listed 48 sins he has “committed” before and just after Whitsunday, 1662.

Our Liz is eighteen years old and I think she's lovelier than ever. Old Faithful: Studio Portraits of Really Old Dogs (Thanks Bruce)

This looks heavenly to me: A floating sauna experience in the Stockholm archipelago

I want to make this puff pastry with brie appetizer. 

 Often scavenged from battlefields, Waterloo Teeth looked more realistic than ivory teeth taken from animals.

Her mother’s bouillon de Normandie is her secret weapon. Perpetual Broths That Simmer For Decades

Wacky cake was created as a result of WWII rationing and contains no eggs, butter or milk.

An Exhibition of Cat Art Worthy of a Meowseum (via Perfect for Roquefort Cheese)

A new Apple campaign features accessible tech: a deaf mother is alerted to her child crying, a performer uses his camera to access the stage door, and a man makes various facial expressions to edit photos.

Spitalfields artist Robson Cezar makes wee Whitechapel houses from wooden fruit boxes.

Becoming a chatbot For one year I was a person pretending to be a computer pretending to be a person.

This year's Bulwer-Lytton prize for worst opening sentence for a bad novel is appropriately awful.

This is a car expressly designed for wheelchair users in 1956 

Fly Like The King In 1976, Elvis Presley added a 1962 Lockheed 1329 JetStar to his collection of private jets for the hefty sum of $840,000. This plane will be auctioned off in January.

Otaku Altar To Open in Osaka where fans can hold traditional Japanese funerals for their favorite anime/game/2D characters, mourn idol groups that break up, or hold other traditional ceremonies (weddings, anniversaries, etc.) related to otaku/geek culture.

I'd totally forgotten that white dog poop was ubiquitous when I was a kid. Now I know why.

Old catflaps, including a 14th century one that is possibly the oldest catflap in Britain.

Two holiday links from Perfect for Roquefort Cheese: A slew of big batch hot cocktail recipes for the festive season and a list of poorly considered gift ideas.