The blessing of getting old is that you survived long enough to do it. Randall Munroe of What If? and xkcd didn't put much of his personal life into his comics when he first started out, but we all knew when he fell in love. Then in 2010, Munroe's fiancée (now wife) was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer. He related some of his emotional journey in his webcomic xkcd. We learned how profoundly hardcore the treatment is, and how precarious the prognosis is even after treatment. But the couple made sure to stuff a lot of experiences into the time they have. 

Munroe posted updates every so often, like the two year "biopsy-versary" and the seven year mark. Now it's been 15 years since the diagnosis that changed their lives, and Munroe has commemorated it with another comic. The panel above is only a small snippet; you need to go see it in a larger size (and there is a hover text, too). The past is in lighter ink to bring us up to new material, in bolder drawings. -via Metafilter 

You know that song about Rudolph, you love it, but you've never heard it like this. It's just the thing for someone who is not at all serious about the Christmas season. All kinds of singers and bands have recorded Christmas songs, but they usually keep the original tune, if not the original style. In this version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," the tune is changed as well as the style, to that of "Higher" by Creed. The vocals are not Scott Stapp, but rather Dustin Ballard of There I Ruined it (previously at Neatorama). 

Creed's version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is from the new There I Ruined It album titled A Very Ruined Christmas, featuring "99 Problems:Christmas Edition" and "Rap God: Christmas Edition." Alas, it is only available to Patreon members. Still, its existence hints that we may have more Christmas songs from There I ruined It coming soon. 

Kate Wagner has discovered a home for sale in Alvin, Texas (near Houston), that she says really should be in Florida, I guess because it's blue and it has portholes. Now, I'm not averse to houses coming in unconventional colors, having one such house myself, but I can't imagine using the same color scheme in every room. This 8-bedroom, 10-bathroom home takes blue to the extreme. But it's not just the color; it's the oversized everything and the rococo decorating that make this place as ugly as you can make a nearly $3 million home. 

You can try to be kind and say that the person who had this built had a clear vision of what their personal dream home would be, and made sure it happened. But then you see it was built in 2023! That means that the person with the dream saw the finished product and said, "Naw. I don't want this." Or else the landowner was confident that someone in the area with plenty of money would really want a house with so much blue you can't do much about it. Read Wagner's takedown at McMansion Hell. 

Cat lover Half-Asleep Chris (previously at Neatorama) has a new kitten named Henry, who is active, adorable, and much funnier than his adult cats. So Henry was the perfect choice to test out a series of ten mechanical animals for their value as cat toys. Oh, the other cats, Bella and Ralph, got a chance to interact with the toys, but they quickly figured out they weren't real animals, so their reactions are only shown here when they add to the video's humor. Henry, on the other hand, is in kitten heaven. 

Henry's reactions to each animal robot are not exactly scientifically significant, but they are entertaining. He also spends quite a bit of time in this video licking cat food off a glass table. And somewhere along the way, you get the idea that Chris and his cat experiments are an excuse for buying more and more toys.  -via Laughing Squid

Neuropathy in the extremities--a loss of sensation--is an effect of diabetes. When a person with this condition loses sensation in the soles of their feet, they experience increased falling risks. Design Boom reports that the startup company MYNERVA in Zurich, Switzerland is developing socks with electrodes that help people with diabetes experience sensation while walking.

The company has named the device Leia because the visual appearance of the sensors are reminiscent of Princess Leia's hairbuns. The socks, which are controlled with a smartphone app, indicate to the user when they are in contact with the ground.

MYNERVA plans to release the product in the USA in 2027.

Olly Hawes is a British actor with experience on the stage and screen. Years ago, during a student production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Hawes had the titular role. As he writes in The Guardian, he was unprepared for the necessary realism that one of his fellow performers brought to the assassination scene. Due to a mishap, the performer of Brutus stabbed him with a real knife:

There was a sharp piercing feeling. The knife was supposed to have been quietly slipped to me – instead, it had gone into my back. I realised what had happened while acting out my character’s death, and thinking: I have to lie here until the lights go down.

But the show must go on, so Hawes lay still with a blade a mere centimeter from his aorta. When the lights went down, Hawes asked for an ambulance. He left while the play continued with the audience unaware of the accident.

It's unclear who took up the role of Caesar's ghost after Hawes left.

Instagram user June Cleaver's Vintage Closet shared this image of a Thanksgiving dinner-themed Enterprise model. Its five hour mission is to explore strange new dishes, seek out new tastes and new recipies, and to boldly expand the waistline where no stomach has gone before.

I think the design originates with MakerWorld member Fixumdude. Various alterations are available to reflect different preferences in pies, as well as light meat vs. dark meat. He also provides downloadable files and specific 3D printing filament suggestions. Now load up your plate, pour some Aldebaran whiskey,  and get ready to watch the parrises squares game on the viewscreen.

UPDATE 12/3/2025: Geeks Are Sexy was delighted by this design and 3D printed their own. Then they made this song about the toy:

Have you ever seen a snail that looked old, ugly, saggy, or tepid? Of course not. Snails always look youthful, vibrant, and moisturized. So it makes sense to pay spas a lot of money to put snails on your face.

Ideally, you want to biggest snails available, specifically giant African land snails (Lissachatina fulica) because they have the most mucus. According to one cosmetics company, the mucus not only rejuvenates your skin, but also gently massages your flesh as the snails roam across your body (you can opt for locations other than your face).

Who would like to go first?

-via David Thompson

Dr. Claire Lamman is an astronomer at the Ohio State University. She is also--in her own words--a "procrastibaker." She bakes elaborate sweets inspired by astronomical phenomenon and equipment, including a Voyager I gingerbread space probe and Very Large Array radio telescope, both made of gingerbread.

This Thanksgiving, Lamman made this precisely shaped and colored pie that looks like the Kitt Peak National Observatory, which is in southern Arizona.

It looks a lot like the real facility.

Photo of Kitt Peak by NOIR Lab

Jones Green Bean Casserole Soda (2004-2004): Part of a novelty #Thanksgiving variety pack, this soda was meant to evoke the polarizing side dish (green beans, fried onions, and cream of mushroom soup) in carbonated liquid form pic.twitter.com/qUmTyoARLV

— Discontinued Foods! (@Snack_Memories) November 24, 2022

Green bean casserole is The Goonies of the food world. You either love it or hate it.

In 2004, Jones Soda, a gourmet soda producer in the Seattle area known for its unusual flavors, created a Thanksgiving variety pack of sodas. According to a Spokesman-Review article from that time, the pack included fruitcake, turkey & gravy, and cranberry. The green bean casserole soda was the most controversial inclusion.

Thanksgiving originates as a Christian holiday, but that doesn't stop the Jewish Meme Queen from getting into the spirit of the occasion. She made this challah loaf shaped like a turkey. It's called the Turchallah.

The formation of communities in ancient history seems pretty straightforward: families grew and became tribes, and when they found a good place to live, they settled down and became towns. But how, why, and when did nations, kingdoms, and other state entities emerge? It's much harder to trace the history of civilization in the era before writing was invented, so from what we know now, the first state came about in Mesopotamia more than 5,000 years ago, and was followed by Egypt which took the idea to the extreme. 

Someone somewhere came up with an idea to consolidate different communities in the same general area and form a government over them. This offers some benefits to all by building infrastructure, imposing laws, and regulating trade between communities. But you won't be surprised that, according to the latest theories, it began with a profit motive. After all, ancient history is full of people paying tribute to a king. Read about the reasons and mechanisms behind the rise of states at the Conversation. -via Damn Interesting   

(Image credit: Prof. Mortel) 

Holidays are all about tradition. The wider culture builds some core traditions, but each family or group that celebrates together also builds their own unique traditions. "We always have orange danish rolls on Thanksgiving morning." Why, Grandpa? "Because your great-great-great grandpa liked them. It's tradition." There's an old story that illustrates this phenomenon. 

Then there are the lesser-publicized but goofier things that go into Thanksgiving that arose in order to accommodate a great number of family members and to liven up the celebration. Penn Holderness wrote a little song about these common Thanksgiving memories, and has photographic evidence. You'll probably recognize some of them from your own experience. Rickety folding table for the kids? Hide an overcooked turkey with gravy? Lawn chairs at the table? Take pictures in funny hats? Mac and cheese because the kids won't eat anything else? These are the things we do to get everyone together. We may pretend the holiday is about gratitude, or the food, but it's the company that makes Thanksgiving.

  

Otters are pretty smart. They're quite cute, too. And you'll be surprised by this, but otters can smell underwater. How does an air breathing mammal do that? They manipulate the air bubbles in their noses and analyze them after the bubble has been exposed to water. When Michael Hadsel learned this fact, he went out and bought some otters. 

Hadsel has a search and rescue company. He's trained dogs for this work for years, but always wanted to find a way to locate bodies that were hidden in water. His work with the first two otters convinced him that they could do this work, and then he got a young orphaned otter pup he named Splash. Splash was trained from a young age, and is now the nation's first search and rescue otter. In his first professional search, he located a weapon that had been used in a murder 25 years earlier. Splash has since participated in 20 other recovery missions and has found four bodies. Read about Splash and his talents at Outside Online, or here if you are out of free articles. -via Metafilter 

Frankenstein was in theaters for only three weeks and made less than half a million dollars in ticket sales. To be fair, that limited run in select theaters was just enough to make the movie eligible for awards, because it's a Netflix movie. Guillermo Del Toro spent years imagining a Frankenstein film that stayed closer to Mary Shelley's original story, and this is it. Still, "closer" is a relative term. As this Honest Trailer points out, the philosophical questions of life and death and playing God are contemplative in the book, but screamed out in the movie, because who has time for subtlety these days?  

Frankenstein looks closely into Victor Frankenstein's background and upbringing, but doesn't try to make him into a sympathetic villain. The creature he creates is sadly immortal. And the one woman in the main cast has romantic connections to three of the men, including the creature. Screen Junkies finds plenty to pick on in this Honest Trailer, but it still leaves me wanting to see the movie. Just not enough to pay for Netflix.