Sideswipe: December 14: 'Tis the season for festive coffee art

"This morning at our favourite cafe in Orewa, Bobby the barista presented me with this Christmas motif," writes Anna, from Orewa. "It made my day!"

Your guide to buying presents for dads with no hobbies

Something for the garden: He's not a proper gardener, so don't go mad ... A trowel isn't the most scintillating item but once wrapped and handed to him it's technically a present. If he's already got one, it gives him something new to put in the shed.
An unfunny book: Don't try too hard. He won't read it. Generic toss churned-out by a bored hack writer, such as Hilarious Blunders of History, ticks a box. The publishing industry is 90 per cent geared to the unwanted gift market, so there's always a new edition of James May's Shiniest Juggernauts.
Beer in a gift pack: After a certain age, men are only interested in booze and nothing says "token gesture" like a single bottle of lager with a glass. Don't waste your time choosing interesting craft ales, Stella will do. It will be horribly overpriced for a frustratingly small amount of alcohol, so you've helped him drink responsibly. (Via The Daily Mash)

Best of Twitter #2

1. "The purest love in the world is the one between grumpy dads and the pet they said they didn't want."
2. "You ever pull your cardigan closed across your chest with crossed arms and suddenly feel like a sentimental widow stepping out onto her beachfront porch at night, fondly remembering her past lover?"
3. "A girl in the coffee shop I'm working at has just said to her friend 'imagine a hot veg smoothie' and I'm wondering how to break it to her that soup exists."
4. "Can someone write an article on millennials killing the doorbell industry by texting "here".
5. "Peaches are just suede apples."
6. "The hardest part of dating is pretending I'm laid back the first 30-40 days."
7. "Adult email culture is ending every sentence with an exclamation point, then proofreading to see how many is socially acceptable to keep."
8. "Paid rent so I'll be at home enjoying my purchase for the rest of the week."

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Finally, 2020 has some good news!

"It has been a year in search of small comforts," writes Ben Taub. "And one of them, it turns out, is that even an all-out nuclear war targeting high-population areas and optimising for the maximisation of death is unlikely to cause human extinction. 'It would be almost impossible to kill every human via radiation with the existing nuclear arsenals, even if they were targeted explicitly for this purpose,' the biologist and security consultant Jeffrey Ladish writes, in this fascinating post on LessWrong. Starvation by loss of agriculture, in a climate-altering nuclear winter, 'would likely kill most people on earth,' he continues — but not everyone. I sleep better already." Read all the science here.