The staff at Vilnius Airport in the capitol of Lithuania decided to celebrate the holidays a little differently this year — by creating a Christmas tree out of the various objects they'd confiscated from passengers. Scissors, guns, blades, lighters, and a tree-topping star made of cheese knives. Basically it looks like the set piece for a death metal band's touring holiday stage show.

Check out the creativity of the Aviation security officers at Vilnius Airport! A tree made of confiscated items. "Knives, scissors, lighters, blades, and all sorts of other dangerous goods – this Christmas tree has them all." https://t.co/OAOyHxUKmo pic.twitter.com/WTwaPhP2gJ

— Lithuania Travel (@LTtravelUSA) December 11, 2019

In an interview, the director of the Lithuanian Airports Security and Safety Department, Vidas Kšan, said that the tree does not include any food or liquids, which comprise a large portion of their confiscated items. Instead, the airport donates these, usually sending about 7 tons of food to charity each year. If Google Translate is actually correct (which, who the hell knows), the most commonly confiscated items are gas dispensers and electroshocks. I'm guessing that means portable plastic gas canisters, and tasers—which is still kind of a weird combination, especially for an airplane. Read the rest

Pathé shot this cool documentary of British artisans turning gold blocks into gold leaf. There's clearly a lot of remarkable skill involved, but there's also a remarkable lack or hearing protection around some very noisy machines. Read the rest

A turner's cube is a traditional machinist's exercise to test consistency and tolerances when milling metal. But this two-millimeter cube in a cube in a cube in a cube in a cube is next-level skill. Read the rest

Ben at PressTube has branched out from squishing things in a hydraulic press to other impressive metalworking, like this project to shred and melt soda cans into ingots of aluminum. Read the rest

Cody from Cody's lab had some elemental tin and a new rolling press, so he decided to craft a tin can from actual tin. Read the rest

If you end up at some fancy event this month where gold leaf decorates the food, that gold leaf will be far thicker than traditional Japanese hand-pounded gold leaf, which can be as thin as 0.0001 millimeters. See how it's made in the fascinating video. Read the rest