Wouldn't it be nice to be as fashionable as a cop? Miami Vice was the hottest show on TV from 1984 to 1989. The show focused on two very stylish police officers fighting the war on drugs in the Art Deco neon glow of southern Florida. There were plenty of established stars in the "drug dealer of the week" role, as well as up-and-coming actors, but as the show went on, famous recording artists wanted to get in on the action, as well as athletes, models, and other notable figures. Many of the "unknowns" who appeared on Miami Vice got noticed and became famous for other roles later. In this supercut, they stand out because they look so young. Well, that was 40 years ago.    

This list of Miami Vice guest stars is far from comprehensive. A few years ago, we posted about a massive Twitter thread that was a Who's Who of Miami Vice characters. You'll find an even longer list at Wikipedia.  -via Laughing Squid

Memento mori translates from Latin to mean "remember that you will die."  It alludes to a common artistic theme that began in the medieval period featuring skeletons and other symbols of death. To bring that idea into the modern age, Mefite condour75 created a generator that compares your life span to a movie. It's called Memento Movi. Enter your date of birth and expected lifespan (you can be as optimistic as you like, but the average lifespan is 79 years) and then pick a movie. You will get a frame from that movie that corresponds with the present day in your lifespan, like a progress bar. The list of films is alphabetical and extensive, so I picked The Blues Brothers. I got the image above and this explanation.

You are 87.1% through The Blues Brothers (1980).

I had to laugh, because not only am I too far into it, it's a wreck. You can try this with movie after movie, and you don't really have to be truthful about your age, but if you are, it can be jarring. How far is your life into Star Wars, Young Frankenstein, Home Alone, It's a Wonderful Life, or Jaws? -via Metafilter

The science fiction drama Megalopolis was supposed to be Francis Ford Coppola's magnum opus. Coppola wrote, directed, and produced the movie using his own funds, to bring to life an idea he had been nursing since 1977. The plot is presented as an analogy for the fall of the Roman Empire, but set in an alternate present day with supernatural features. It's also a political statement and a drama about a family. Are you still with me? It almost made sense when you watched the trailer, but ended up as a total mess. Even the star power of Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Chloe Fineman, D. B. Sweeney, and Dustin Hoffman couldn't save this movie. Critics and audiences alike were bewildered about what the film was trying to achieve. Megalopolis was made on a budget of $120-136 million, but barely made back 10% of that. It was low hanging fruit for Screen Junkies.

My family always made cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving by putting fresh cranberries and oranges through a grinder, and then adding sugar. My husband and his kids always bought canned cranberry sauce, served in slices, and it was tradition. So I served both, and had way too much left over. That's a story that happens all across America. But you can have have it both ways when you make your own jellied, molded cranberry sauce from fresh cranberries!

The process is simple- cook and puree your cranberries, strain out the skins, then cook some more with sugar and your favorite flavorings until it's jelly, then chill in a mold. The mold can be anything, including a can if you want the traditional experience. It's almost like making homemade preserves, but in a smaller amount. You can even make it days ahead of the feast! The result looks and feels like canned jellied cranberry sauce, but the flavor is fresh and fruity, better than any from a can. Get the recipe and all the instructions, including the science behind making jelly, at Serious Eats.

(Image credit: Serious Eats/Vy Tran)

Spock's death in The Wrath of Khan in 1982 featured an emotional scene between Spock and Captain Kirk. Then Spock was brought back to life in the next Star Trek film. That wasn't going to work when actor Leonard Nimoy died in 2015. The 2016 movie, Star Trek Beyond, wrote Spock's offscreen death into the script, leaving fans feeling both sad and shortchanged. A new video titled 765874 - Unification shows the scene we didn't get in the Star Trek movies or TV shows- Kirk leaving the Nexus and going to say goodbye as Spock draws his last breath. A computer-enhanced William Shatner stars with Lawrence Selleck as Spock, with his face computer-generated as Leonard Nimoy. There are also guest appearances by Star Trek characters from different galaxies and different timelines that you'll recognize.

The video is only 7:45; the rest is credits, which have some emotional moments themselves. Read more about the context of the video within the world of Star Trek at Geeks Are Sexy.

When the Statue of Liberty was unveiled in 1886, Matilda Gage shouted from a megaphone that it was a travesty to portray liberty as a woman when women didn't have the right to vote. Gage was part of the trio who launched the national women's suffrage movement along with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, until she parted with them over the alliance with the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Gage was opposed to mixing religion with the right to vote. She wrote about the persecution of smart or unruly women as "witches" from a feminist point of view, after critics called her satanic and a heretic. Gage's adventures also crossed paths with the Underground Railroad, Sitting Bull, Anthony Comstock (of the Comstock laws), and the Theosophical Society.

Gage had four children. The youngest was Maud, who dropped out of Cornell to marry her roommate's cousin, an actor and failed chicken farmer named L. Frank Baum. Gage lived with the Baums off and on for the rest of her life, as Baum launched one failed business after another. When Gage also suffered a financial setback, she encouraged both Frank and Maud to write fantasy stories to sell, even providing ideas to work around. Baum found success selling short stories to magazines, and in 1900 published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Read about Matilda Gage's life and her influence on Baum and his writing at Smithsonian.

Cassowaries are scary birds. They are a part of the ecosystem of Australia, where the wildlife wants to kill you. These "murder turkeys" have five-inch claws, may grow up to six feet tall, can run at more than 30 mph, and they wear helmets. They are also among the few species of bird that have killed humans, although that is relatively rare. Still, just because a cause of death is rare, that doesn't mean you tempt fate, yet in this video we see plenty of people getting close to cassowaries. Dr. Ann Jones explains what cassowaries are all about, and why you shouldn't mess with one. You won't win. They don't like being insulted, like when someone compares their wattles to neck testicles, or when someone looks at them. While the cassowary has been called the world's most dangerous bird, they kill fewer people than ostriches do. Ostriches are bigger, and you don't want to mess with them, either.  -via Damn Interesting

Frisk Me Good is a fashion designer who creates original and innovative outfits from other objects, such as bodysuits and corsets made from shoes.

She is catching eyes with this bustier made out of tape measures. It's pricey at $375, but that comes with a guaranteed fit (A to DD) because everything in the package has been measured precisely. And, because this is an American firm, it's made with normal inches, not that weird foreign metric thing.

Maria Victoria Kjær Theilvig was crowned Miss Universe Saturday night, the first woman from Denmark to wear the title. But as usual, those of us who missed the pageant only care about the strangest part of the event, in which each contestant must impress the judges with a costume that tells something about their country. These national costumes range from traditional ethnic wear to classy gowns to outrageous Vegas showgirl-style constructions to fashions that makes you go "huh?" Continue reading to see some that stood out to me.

Can cats see into the future? In this case, it may be a matter of a persistent cat making his destiny happen. Dudley had a home and a family who loved him, but when Jen Richardson and her husband moved into the neighborhood, Dudley took a shine to her. Jen was never a cat person and was, in fact, allergic to cats. But Dudley was determined to change her, and he did. It took him years of hanging around, like an annoying neighbor child who just won't go home until you eventually accept them as part of the family.

It's not all that uncommon for a cat to unofficially belong to two households, or even more. It isn't a problem if the neighbors get along and aren't too cranky about their cat's preferences. The twist in this story is that Dudley was planning for his future all along. You can see more of Dudley at his Instagram page.

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)