Every year, reddit hosts a Christmas gift exchange among users, sending gifts flying across the world to strangers. Thousands participate, including Bill Gates. So every year, one lucky participant is shocked, surprised, and delighted to find that Gates is their secret Santa. This year is was redditor szor. She told the story in a video, and also in text.   

Diane, It’s Tuesday, December 17 at 10:00 p.m. and I’m full-force in my getting-ready-for-bed routine. I check my phone one last time and I spy an email alert informing me that my RedditGifts Secret Santa package has shipped! I log in and am a bit taken aback that the package is being FedEx overnighted – sounds expensive. I also noticed that it was being shipped from Washington state, and as a seasoned RedditGifter, I remark to my husband, “Huh, wouldn’t it be something if my Santa was Bill Gates? LOLOLOLOL!” Cue bedtime.

Diane, It’s morning on December 18. The work holiday party is today, so I’m expecting a pretty lax day. I check the shipping page to make sure the package is still on track, and something curious catches my eye- 81 pounds. 81 POUNDS. 81. POUNDS. MY PACKAGE IS BEING OVERNIGHTED ACROSS 8 SHIPMENT ZONES AND IT WEIGHS 81 POUNDS. This is when it hits me that this is something truly special. It’s only 9:30 a.m. and I can’t just ditch to go home to accept this surely gigantic package.

The package did not fit into her car, nor her husband's car, so they had to open it at the FedEx office, to the delight of the staff. Gates always checks the reddit history of the person he draws as well as their gift preferences, so that the gifts are personal and meaningful. Read what szor received in the gift exchange forum. -via reddit

When Dr. David L. Goldstein of the California Institute of Technology began his book States of Matter, he desired that readers be fully aware of the risks they were undertaking. Ludwig Boltzmann and Paul Ehrenfest met unpleasant ends. It is indeed "wise to approach the subject cautiously."

Note that Dr, Goldstein is, at 80, still alive. Statistical mechanics has not killed him yet.

-via Ace of Spades HQ

What a time to be alive, especially for avid comic book fans, sci-fi geeks and tech enthusiasts. A human flying in a 3D-printed jet suit at speeds of up to 80 kph is not just some character idea for an action blockbuster, but now a reality thanks to British inventor Richard Browning. 

Browning recently broke his own Guinness World Record by earning the title for “the fastest speed in a body-controlled jet engine powered suit (wind-guided) at 85.06 mph (136.891 km/h)” just 2 years after setting the previous record. 

Browning  is the founder of Gravity Industries, which makes the suits. He set the previous world record at 32.02 mph (51.53 kph). He said the suit has changed completely since he set the last record, and that it now is "entirely 3D-printed, lighter, stronger and much smarter," and that it gives the flyer the ability to fine-tune the power level mid-flight.

The suit looks like something closer to a crash test prototype than a highly advanced Iron Man suit, but it’s exciting to think how that could change in the next fifty years.  

-via CNet. 

Photo: Jaime Reimer / Pixabay

Off-White, a popular clothing label has announced a collaboration with the Louvre museum. This collaboration yields a collection inspired by the museum’s Leonardo da Vinci’s exhibit, to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the famed artist’s death. This surprising collaboration is the culmination of fashion and high art, as Virgil Abloh, the man behind Off-White, told Paper magazine; 

"I want to crash together these two worlds that are seemingly different: fashion and high art," Abloh said in a statement. "It's a crucial part of my overall body of work to prove that any place, no matter how exclusive it seems, is accessible to everyone. That you can be interested in expressing yourself through more than one practice and that creativity does not have to be tied to just one discipline. I think that Leonardo da Vinci was maybe the first artist to live by that principle, and I am trying to as well."

image via Off-White

Sometimes, we think that our voice sounds terrible. We refuse to record ourselves speaking, and also refuse to hear other people’s recording of our voice. This hatred we have towards the sound of our voice isn’t exactly unusual, as Rebecca Kleinberger explained: 

According to Kleinberger, because our own voice is one of the sounds we hear most in daily life, we actually perceive it at a lower frequency than we do other sounds, in what is called a habituation effect. In other words, we hear our own voice but we don’t hear it the way people around us do—so it’s jarring when we hear the way it does actually sound to others.

image credit: via Pixabay

Dero, a bicycle rack manufacturer in Minneapolis, designed the FixIt. This is a bicycle repair station designed to be open to the public whenever needed. To facilitate simple repairs for people without the necessary tools, the FixIt allows a bicyclist to hang a bike in the air while using tools which are attached with steel cables. An optional air pump is also available.

The tools include Allen wrenches, metric wrenches, tire levers, and screwdrivers. If a bicyclist is unsure how to use them, s/he can just scan the QR code to find a general bike repair manual online. You can watch a demonstration video here.

The website includes an interactive map (keep scrolling down) of FixIt locations. There's one near me, so I may check it out soon. I don't have a hanging rack for my bike, so it could come in handy.

-via Core77

Scientists have found a slice of the world’s oldest fossilised forest. The slice was found in an abandoned quarry in Cairo, New York. These rare webs of fossilised roots are nearly 11 meters wide, and mark the spot where the first trees once stood. While the discovery of these fossils weren’t exactly that recent, as they were discovered by chance in 2009, scientists of today believe that these fossils are actually part of the first plants to capture and store carbon dioxide, as ScienceAlert detailed: 

Many of these long woody roots are thought to belong to plants of the Archaeopteris genus, an ancestor of today's modern trees and one of the first to capture and store carbon dioxide from the air with its flat green leaves.

This sort of activity would have dramatically shifted our planet's climate, potentially adding more oxygen to the atmosphere and providing lush habitats for primitive insects and millipede-like creatures. It would be many more years before birds and other large animals made their home in the trees.

"By the end of the Devonian period [360 million years ago], the amount of carbon dioxide was coming down to what we know it is today," explained Berry to New Scientist.

The international team of researchers has so far mapped over 3,000 square metres of this fossilised forest (over 32,000 square feet), which includes two other types of ancient tree; one of them belongs to a fossil plant group known as cladoxylopsids, and the other is yet to be identified.

image via ScienceAlert

Nir Meiri Design Studio has launched a lamp collection shedding light on the possibilities of materiality and sustainability. The collection, named veggie lights, used a material called fiber flats. Fiber flats are developed from thin layers of red cabbage, soaked in water-based adhesives and sustainable color preservatives. Plain magazine has the details: 

Shaped into a lampshade, the cabbage’s translucent material lends its amazing depth and texture to the object. Warm hues of oranges and reds are filtered through the lamp, the light exposing the organic material’s visible membranes. This innovative project delves into the creative boundaries between form and function, successfully explored and executed by the designers. 

image via Plain magazine

Here’s an alternative way on how Pokemon card collectors can make use of the items in their collection. While some would not want their cards to be touched and edited, Instagram user pokesats takes these cards and repaints them, adding details to the art placed on each card. From adding new surroundings on the Pokemon art to just expanding the details from the original art, the creations breathe new life and detail into these beloved cards!

image credit: pokesats on Instagram

Katie McBride Newman of Newman, Georgia, tells the story of the Christmas owl. Her family bought a cut Christmas tree, brought it home, set it up, and began putting ornaments on it. Coincidentally, they were hanging owl ornaments when they found a real owl had come with the tree! The owl did not show any desire to leave.  

In the days that followed, Newman and her husband, Billy, posted videos, shared details of trying to feed the bird, and added a bit of mystery by noting it would vanish and reappear in the tree.

“Last night we shut all the interior doors, turned off all the lights and came to initiate owl removal – and he was NO WHERE to be found. Gulp,” the family posted Dec. 13. “At 1:30 am, Billy came out to check, and was roosting on the tip top of the star.”

On Dec. 14, the couple sought professional help from the Chattahoochee Nature Center, which sent a wildlife tech to examine the bird for injuries (it was unhurt) and get it into a crate.

Read the story of the owl in the Christmas tree at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. -via Boing Boing

Department stores will try any promotion to get people inside to do their Christmas shopping. After all, that's how we got the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Wannamaker's, one of the earliest department stores in America, had a foolproof Christmas promotion in 1897. They had a "bargain day for cats," in which they displayed and sold the hot Christmas gift of the year, angora cats, priced from $10 to $40.  

According to an article in the Buffalo Evening News, each cat had a pet name tagged onto his or her cage, such as Peggy, Tammany, Romeo, Hamlet, Juliet, Maggy, Jack and Jill, and Fedora. Above the cats’ wire cages hung smaller cages filled with singing birds. A cat doctor was in constant attendance to ensure their well-being.

“What is the price of Tammany?” one news reporter asked the cat clerk. “Tammany’s sold,” the clerk replied. “He brought $20, and we can’t keep supplied with Tammany cats.”

The clerk continued, “Here’s Peggy. She’s marked $10, but if you want her I will let her go for $9.99. Jack and Jill together are worth $30, but as an inducement we will sell them for $29.99.”

The cat clerk had a sense of humor. The news reporter had $29.99, which he gave the clerk to purchase Jack and Jill.

It must have worked, as Wannamaker's repeated the promotion in 1898 and 1899. Read about the craze for Christmas angora cats at The Hatching Cat.  -via Strange Company

The Collatz conjecture, also known as the “3x + 1 problem,” is infamous for being so deceptively simple that for decades mathematicians have obsessively made attempts to crack the seemingly impossible problem. It’s named after German mathematician Lothar Collatz who posed the problem in the 1930s. Here’s how it works: 

The problem sounds like a party trick. Pick a number, any number. If it’s odd, multiply it by 3 and add 1. If it’s even, divide it by 2. Now you have a new number. Apply the same rules to the new number. The conjecture is about what happens as you keep repeating the process.

But Collatz predicted that’s not the case. He conjectured that if you start with a positive whole number and run this process long enough, all starting values will lead to 1. And once you hit 1, the rules of the Collatz conjecture confine you to a loop: 1, 4, 2, 1, 4, 2, 1, on and on forever.

Recently, Terence Tao presented a proof that is considered “one of the most significant results on the Collatz conjecture in decades.” But the sheer difficulty of the problem has led other mathematicians to believe that a perfect solution is simply unreachable and research efforts would be better spent elsewhere. 

What do you think about this? Read the full article from Wired. 

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Long before December 25th was designated as the day to celebrate the birth of Jesus, northern civilizations celebrated the winter solstice. While the solstice doesn't mean much in the tropics, it is a big deal in colder places, because it means daylight will stop shrinking and begin to grow again. Watch a traditional solstice song and dance from Latvia celebrating the solstice the way their ancestors did. A machine translation from the description at YouTube says,

Everything is as it used to be.
Just like in fairy tales, it is the eve of the Winter Solstice and Goddess is standing by the door, a camomile.
Just as in the past, the night alternates with the day and the Sun gives his daughter the Velas to this land.
And just like in the past, we masquerade to pull up the feast on the hill and re-create the world.

Kaladoo!

-via Nag on the Lake

In October, Nick Noland took off on a solo hike that was only nine miles, round trip. But after watching the sunset from the mountain summit, he had to find his way back in the freezing dark. He lost feeling in his feet, and therefore did not realize when he lost his shoes.

I tucked myself under the roots of a large, fallen pine and scraped in as many leaves and branches as I could to cover myself. I settled into a fetal position, and planned to wait for daylight.

But lying under that downed tree, I began to wonder if I had dug my own grave. I started thinking I might never get home. I thought about the sparkle in my oldest kid’s eye, the way my one-year-old says “Daddy,” and of my wife.

Noland make it back to his truck, but there was still plenty of trouble ahead. Read his story at Outside Online. -via Digg

(Image credit: Nick Noland)

People lie most of the time, from lying to save themselves from shame or harm, or the subtle lies that they just happen to blurt out. Regardless of the type of lie, there is the underlying question on the inner mechanisms of lying. Allure enlists the help of Robert Feldman, a professor of psychology and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Michael Slepian, a social psychologist and professor at Columbia Business School, and Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, a journalist who has written about lying, talk about truth, lies, and the gray matter in between to further understand the concept of lying: 

Lying is so much a part of everyday discourse that we do it without thinking about it. What’s really interesting is you can ask somebody to look back on a conversation, and invariably they’ll say, “I was totally truthful.” Show them a video, and they’ll find that’s just not the case. In 10 minutes you probably tell three lies to someone you’re just getting to know. We lie less to the people we know the best, but those tend to be very big lies—usually lies about fidelity.

image credit: via wikimedia commons