Cider, eggnog, and piping-hot chocolate. These are the usual drinks of the winter holidays in the United States. These beverages reflect the culinary traditions, weather, religion, and agriculture of the places where they came from.
Tired of the same ol’ eggnog and cider? Try these nine beverages from across the globe and make experience something new this holiday season. See the drinks over at Smithsonian.
(Image Credit: gliuoo/ Wikimedia Commons)
Norwegian artist Caroline Eriksson brought us the amazing gingerbread xenomorph last year, and a gingerbread Optimus Prime a few years ago. You also might remember her gingerbread Smaug and gingerbread Darth Vader. This year, she's outdone herself with this gingerbread Groot! The sculpture is full size, and is made of gingerbread cookie slabs held together with sugar syrup built over a wire mesh structure. It took a week of planning, and another four weeks to build it. You can see some of the process in pictures here. -via Geeks Are Sexy
What could be more festive than a cake iced with an image of Rudolph, Santa's lead reindeer? While that may sound like a fine idea, you must first know how to draw a reindeer. It's slightly more difficult than a couple of eyes, a red nose, and some antlers. None of those things are as easy as you might think to render in pen and paper, much less icing. I'm sure there are cake decorators up to the task, but you won't find any of those decorators in a roundup of disastrous attempts at Cake Wrecks.
A select number of otakus who chose to marry 2-D wives are now in danger of losing them. Gatebox is a tech start-up that released a “character summoning device” that lets its users live with hologram characters. However, these devices, called GTBX-1 Gateboxes will become inoperable as the company is discontinuing its service for the GTBX-1. Owners will no longer be able to see or talk to their virtual wife, as SoraNews24 detailed:
There is, however, a silver lining to this potential digital strategy. Gatebox is discontinuing service for the GTBX-1 because its hardware isn’t compatible with improvements made to the newer GTBX-1000 model. Because this isn’t any fault of early adopters, owners of GTBX-1 models can exchange their unit, for free, for a GTBX-1000, for which service will be continuing without interruption. What’s more, the exchange program will go on until May 31, meaning that if users want to watch their original Gatebox wife’s final, fading moments in her original GTBX-1 before she’s reincarnated into newer tech, they can.
image via SoraNews24
No, these dogs aren’t official mascots of the UPS. The UPS dogs are the puppers the UPS drivers encounter on their routes during work. The drivers have been sharing their photos and stories on Facebook and Instagram feeds called UPS Dogs. The popular pages feature adorable dogs who greet their local parcel carriers, as My Modern Met details:
UPS Dogs explains that while drivers meet a lot of pups throughout the day, many of them are nice but others are not so agreeable. The posts on their social media reflect the genial pups who break the stereotype that canines despise mail carriers. “When time permits, drivers snap a photo and send it to UPS Dogs,” they explain. “Our followers love the photos and the stories told as we share our love of these special relationships with these lovable creatures.”
image via upsdogs on Instagram
Today’s Christmas cards scream joy and cheer, just in tune with the festive season. But before the sparkly cards with drawings of christmas ornaments or adorable festive illustrations, did you know that Christmas cards were designed with anthropomorphic cats, murderous frogs, and insects dancing by the moonlight? Victorians in the 19th century sent such grim cards with the words, “may yours be a joyful Christmas”.
(via Hyperallergic)
image via Hyperallergic
People like to read information about aspects that made the historic Apollo moon landing happen, from machinery, preparation, and the astronauts themselves. However, people seem to gloss over one aspect of the famed space mission: the clothes. The space suits that are forever etched in photographs and history were sewn by women, who endured a long process of stitching, and sewing together the right piece of clothing that can endure the harsh environments of space, so that the astronauts can be protected in space. CNN has the details:
The sturdy light, flexible materials designed for women’s undergarments turned out to be ideal for spacesuits too. Wilson’s sister told her about an opportunity to work on spacesuits for the new Apollo mission astronauts. “I’d just turned 19, so I was very young. But I was so excited.”
Wilson left a job sewing suitcases. “That was production, so every thing was fast,” she says. “And then I came to ILC to work on the Apollo spacesuits and everything was very slow. Every time you sewed a seam, it had to be inspected, it had to be checked, because of the importance of what we were doing.”
The training included learning how to read blueprints, working with engineers and precision sewing using newly designed threads and multiple delicate layers of fine fabrics.
image credit: ILC Dover, LP via CNN
The ‘Ugly Christmas Sweater’ is a wooly pullover, usually in different shades of red, white and green, often of questionable fabric, and with at least one Christmas-inspired motif on it. This subjectively ugly clothing has become an essential part of the holidays. If it’s something you won’t receive as a gift, it’s something that your parents might want you to wear to match theirs. While currently popular, it took some time for the sweater to become a mainstream trend for the holidays. Read CNN’s piece on the now common Christmas tradition’s history.
image via wikimedia commons
Ira Pashkevych, an embroidery artist in Ukraine, magnificently re-creates iconic paintings in thread. Her stitchwork resembles the original brushwork in precise detail. Pashkevych tells My Modern Met that she takes all of the time necessary to replicate the source painting correctly:
Embroidery is a “slow craft” and Pashkevych is not shy about how long it can take to finish a stitched piece. Much of her handiwork is meant to be worn. She creates brooches featuring landscape paintings and portraits that are stitched to felt and then finished with a swivel clasp to secure on your favorite sweater. “The complexity and execution time of a brooch can vary greatly,” Pashkevych explains. “A simple brooch usually takes five hours.” She worked on her popular Starry Night brooch for a week in order to capture all of its swirling details.
You can see more of her work on her Etsy page.
You know what they say about unintended consequences, or the best laid plans, or something like that. There's always someone who will find a way around them- or sometimes a lot of someones. Auto emissions are especially dangerous in high-population cities, like Delhi. A plan was hatched to reduce the number of vehicles in use: autos with odd-numbered license plates and even-numbered plates would be allowed on the roads on alternating days.
In theory, this should force people to either carpool or suck it up and use public transportation. But in practice, it just made them buy more cars to get around the rule. According to a study by an Indian university, air pollution went down in Delhi the first time the rule was tried, but on the second attempt it increased by 23%. Not coincidentally, the number of cars on the roads went up too. There's no way the authorities could have known the scheme would have this effect ... unless they'd looked at Mexico City, where precisely this had already happened.
Read the rest of that story and five others that are even more insane (and may be disturbing) at Cracked.
(Image credit: NOMAD)
The traditional Santa Claus character in Russia is called Ded Moroz, which means “Grandfather Frost.” He brings gifts for good children in the dead of winter, but varies somewhat from other versions of Santa. Ded Moroz wasn't even all that popular in Russia until the late 19th century, and even then was considered pagan by the Russian Orthodox church. But Ded Moroz got a boost after the Communist Revolution of 1917, when the new Soviet government went about dismantling the practice of Christianity, including Christmas.
In this context, Ded Moroz’s pre-Christian roots were an asset. The Soviet leadership never said this explicitly, but it seems likely that they permitted and even encouraged Ded Moroz because he was, theoretically, Russian, born and bred. Depictions of Ded Moroz changed with the times during the Soviet era. For the Space Race, he was sometimes shown driving a spaceship rather than a troika. At other times he was depicted as a muscular, hard-working, semi-shirtless emblem of Communist industry.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, religious practice became legal again. But that put those who were theoretically Christian in a very weird position with regard to Christmas. They were able to celebrate Christmas, but they had never done it before. In fact, their parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents had likely never celebrated Christmas. And Christianity in Russia still largely means the Eastern Orthodox Church, which carries its own complicated baggage.
Read the history of Ded Moroz at Atlas Obscura.
(Bottom image credit: RIA Novosti archive, image #541790/Alexander Makarov/CC-BY-SA 3.0)
This is the Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit, trackless trains launched for the first time in Yibin, in the province of Sichuan, China. Instead of steel tracks, these trains run over tracks painted in white. Similar to self-driving cars developed around the world, the trains utilize GPS and LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technologies in order to move precisely along the virtual tracks.
In the case of obstructions, such as accidents or traffic jams, the trams can temporarily leave their designated tracks to go around the obstacles. But this can only be initiated by the driver.
The ART runs on rubber wheels but has the speed (70kph), capacity and ride quality of light rails. The standard ART system is three carriages that can carry 300 people, but it can take five carriages and 500 people if needed. The train is powered by lithium–titanate batteries and can travel a distance of 40 km per full charge. The batteries can be recharged via current collectors at stations. The recharging time for a 3 to 5 km trip is only 30 seconds, and for a 25 km trip, it is about 10 minutes.
The future is now.
(Video Credit: The Paper 澎湃新闻/ YouTube)
Fossilized remains of a disturbingly-big spider were claimed to be discovered earlier this year, and many people freaked out. It turns out, however, that the spider fossil was falsified and was actually a crayfish with extra legs painted on it.
The remains were initially discovered in northeast China's Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation, by fossil hunters who lived nearby. They sold their find to scientists at the Dalian Natural History Museum, located in the province of Liaoning. Those researchers proceeded to publish a scientific paper on the fossil, naming the spider Mongolarachne chaoyangensis, and declaring it to be a species previously unknown to science.
Scientists in Beijing had their doubts, though. Not only was the so-called spider suspiciously large – with a main body length of about 35 mm (1.4 in) – but it also looked rather odd.
How did the scientists figure out that the spider was actually a crayfish? The answer on New Atlas.
(Image Credit: Selden et. al/ New Atlas)
When Alexander Fleming left a petri dish out in the air, it led to his famous discovery of antibiotics. It was pretty much the same thing for Madeline Lancaster when she left stem cells in a shaker — it led to the discovery of a new model for neuroscience: brain organoids.
These blobs of tissue, grown from human stem cells, resemble some of the essential parts of the human brain. Although they are as small as apple seeds, brain organoids may hold the key to understanding one of life’s great mysteries: the human brain.
Growing them, however, raises some ethical questions.
Check out JSTOR Daily for more details.
(Image Credit: Vaccarino Lab, Yale University/ NIH/ Flickr)
The world has become an awful place to live in. We have elected incompetent leaders, choked our waterways with cup lids and chemicals, and we have technology that seem to bring us ever closer to blowing up the planet. How do we find a way out of this global maelstrom? Author and podcaster Christopher Ryan says that we should look closely how our early ancestors chose to live, and tear down the structure of values that we currently have, as well as innovations, and social hierarchies that support modern civilization.
Prehistoric life wasn’t always as short, nasty, and brutal as we assume, Ryan argues in “Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress,” and what we’re conditioned to call progress must be uprooted. “Civilization,” he says, “is like a hole our clever species dug and then promptly fell into.”
Ryan launches his argument with the caveat that he’s not interested in rewinding the clock. “I harbor no illusions about ‘noble savages’ or ‘getting back to the garden,’” he writes. But the bulk of the book suggests just the opposite: that hunter-gatherer societies should be emulated, despite vanishingly rare opportunities to do so in an urbanized world.
Check out Undark for more details about this.
Perhaps we really can learn a thing or two about our ancestors, but what are your thoughts about this one?
(Image Credit: alexstrachan/ Pixabay)
