Thanksgiving Day is only three weeks away, so it's time to look for sales on frozen turkey and plan your menu for the Thanksgiving feast. You'll probably make (or just eat) the same traditional foods your family has always enjoyed, but you can always learn more about those dishes. For example, did you know that sweet potatoes aren't even potatoes? And get this- they aren't yams, either.

True potatoes like russets are members of the nightshade botanical family, while sweet potatoes belong to the morning glory family. But that doesn’t make sweet potatoes yams either; though they aren’t actually potatoes, orange sweet potatoes are their own thing. Yams, which are often white or yellowish on the inside, are related to lilies and grasses and mostly grow in tropical environments.

Whatever you call them, it's the tradition that matters. Learn other new facts about Thanksgiving food at Mental Floss. Then we can all be thankful for a holiday centered around eating.

(Image credit: Flickr user Alexis Lamster)

Jason Allemann decided to create an amazing surprise for kids for their trick-or-treat by programming a LEGO vending machine for chocolates. He also coded in a 2-second delay to prevent button mashing from causing problems since only the first press will trigger the dispenser motor. This is also to make sure that no one can get too many candy bars!

Here’s a video on how the vending machine works.

Image Credit: Jason Allemann

Back in 2012, no fewer than nine researchers conducted a psychological study. In this study, they discovered that drinking alcohol can be fun. But we might be sneering at their discovery, and respond with a “so what?” It’s true after all that this does not sound like an earth-shattering conclusion.

But the team, led by Michael A. Sayette of the University of Pittsburgh, pointed out that many previous studies had found no statistically significant mood improvements when people drink. That’s largely because they typically studied drinkers in isolation. “It is unsurprising that, without considering social context, investigators have struggled to explain effects of alcohol on affect and the mechanisms underlying these effects,” they write.

So what happened when they investigated the topic at a larger context? Find out the answer over at JSTOR Daily.

(Image Credit: Republica/ Pixabay)

When Gerald Muswagon won $10 million playing in the lottery, he bought cars, threw lavish parties, showered gifts on his friends, and invested in a logging business. But then the business flopped, and the alcohol and drugs took their toll. Gerald’s reckless behavior grew more intense, until finally he hung himself in 2005.

There’s also Suzanne Mullins, who won $4.2 million, but lost all of it after she covered a mountain of medical bills for uninsured family members and losing a settlement over a loan default.

There are many stories like these about people who won lotteries but ending up in ruins.

It even has a name, the "Lottery Curse." The response to such stories is equally ubiquitous. In order: there's the "tsk, tsk" of teeth, the solemn head shake, and the dusting off one of mom's favorite aphorism, "Well, money can't buy happiness."

While lottery winners are an extreme case, the maxim that money can’t buy happiness has a partial truth in it, according to psychologists.

Psychologists often added an addendum your mother forgot to quote. Money can't buy happiness — if you don't know how to spend it.

So how do we spend our money properly? Find out over at Big Think.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: TBIT/ Pixabay)

Get ready to groan and sigh a lot, as you face a barrage of pun-tastic, corny jokes on this 20-item quiz. Can you match the punchline to the proper joke?

I got 19 out of 20 on my first try. I wonder: can I be a dad now?

Take the quiz over at Mental Floss and comment the score you got.

(Image Credit: Pezibear/ Pixabay)

Who doesn’t love animals dressed as popular fiction characters? Meet Potter the Pomsky, a dog named after Harry Potter. Watch the Siberian Husky and Pomeranian mix ride a roomba vacuum as the Harry Potter theme plays in the background.There are some bumps at first until the pupper yawns as he rides the roomba like a pro. It’s like watching Harry Potter ride a broom for the first time! 

(via Popsugar)

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“Deez muggle brooms iz boring” ⚡️ Sound⬆️ #myotherrideisafirebolt #potterthepomsky #harrypotterdog #harrypotter #harrypotterfans #pomsky #dogoftheday #dogoftheweek #dogsofinstagram #pomskies #fluffydogs #toocute #husky #pomeranian #pomskypuppy #pomskypuppies #jkrowling #dogspotting #awesome #halloween #costume #ladbible #puppyofday #puppyoftheday

A post shared by Potter The Pomsky ⚡️ (@potterthepomsky) on Oct 19, 2019 at 1:13pm PDT

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People nowadays love to get away from the stress and hustle of the city, and head towards rural cities, gardens, or the sea just to unwind. The green lush gardens and woodlands aren’t the only spaces that are beneficial to one’s mind, “blue spaces”, the sea, coastline, and other bodies of water are proven to be good for the body and mind. Proximity or being near a body of water is associated with many benefits, from getting vitamin D to better social relations, as The Guardian detailed: 

“Many of the processes are exactly the same as with green space – with some added benefits,” says Dr Mathew White, a senior lecturer at the University of Exeter and an environmental psychologist with BlueHealth, a programme researching the health and wellbeing benefits of blue space across 18 (mostly European) countries.

White says there are three established pathways by which the presence of water is positively related to health, wellbeing and happiness. First, there are the beneficial environmental factors typical of aquatic environments, such as less polluted air and more sunlight. Second, people who live by water tend to be more physically active – not just with water sports, but walking and cycling.

Third – and this is where blue space seems to have an edge over other natural environments – water has a psychologically restorative effect. White says spending time in and around aquatic environments has consistently been shown to lead to significantly higher benefits, in inducing positive mood and reducing negative mood and stress, than green space does.

image credit: via wikimedia commons

In 2004 a paper titled “Music Lessons Enhance IQ” appeared in the journal Psychological Science. The paper was authored by author, composer and University of Toronto Mississauga psychologist Glenn Schellenberg. 

… [she] had conducted an experiment with 144 children randomly assigned to four groups: one learned the keyboard for a year, one took singing lessons, one joined an acting class, and a control group had no extracurricular training.

For those children who either took keyboard or singing lessons, their IQ increased by an average of seven points in the course of a year. Those who joined an acting class, along with the control group, on the other hand, only gained an average of 4.3 points.

Does this mean then, that those who take music lessons become smarter? Find out the answer over at Undark.

(Image Credit: stevepb/ Pixabay)

Toshi Omagari who works at Monotype UK recently published a book documenting the typography history of arcade games during the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s.

Omagari, who works at Monotype UK, should know; he recently published a book documenting the typography of arcade games from the 1970s, '80s and '90s. "I was always sensitive to video game graphics in general when I was young," he says, "but it was when I started typeface design professionally that I noticed the artistry of pixelated fonts, especially coloured ones, which were virtually unknown among the professional designers." Omagari gathered 250 such fonts for his book, Arcade Game Typography.

According to Omagari, the creation of the Atari Quiz Show in 1976 launched a standard-looking sans serif font, made from an 8x8 pixels per character, which became the most frequently used typeface in video game history.

More examples of the fonts contained in the book can be seen here.

Image Credit: Graphic Design

How to do you get to the Wonderful Wizard of Oz? Follow the now yellow brick road to the site where L. Frank Baum's home once lay.

1667 N. Humboldt Boulevard in Chicago is the place where the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz wrote his most famous novel. Although the original home is long gone, the site now includes a memorial to his life and work.

The Bickerdike Redevelopment Corporation, which is rebuilding the decaying neighborhood, has paved a 70-foot stretch of sidewalk with bright yellow bricks. Book Club Chicago reports that the the rounded concrete shape above will house a mural by artist Hector Duarte. The total cost for the project is about $65,000.

-via Colossal

The photorealistic CGI version of The Lion King did not quite connect with audiences. Screen Junkies explains exactly why in this Honest Trailer, as if you didn't already know. Still, they found plenty of other things to critique about The Lion King remake, except for Beyonce, who is beyond criticism.

About 26% of the Netherlands lies below sea level. How does that work? The Dutch needed the land, so they figured out how to reclaim it from the ocean. They built dikes, for sure, but there is a lot of world-class engineering involved in controlling the water. In this video, Tom Scott shows us around the Waterloopbos, a laboratory used to test scale models of much larger water-control projects like the Delta Works. Read more about the Waterloopbos here.  -via reddit

The simplest answer would be: find another cat to cuddle with and share body warmth. Watch as a cat moves from huddling one cat friend to other to sleep, finding the best partner to sleep warmly in the cold weather. Isn’t this adorable? 

Do your AirPods keep falling out? Jam this one in and you'll never have to worry about that problem again.

Redditor Master_Aar made this 3D printed scaled-up AirPod that is Bluetooth-compatible and fully functional. When asked by fellow redditors why he made it, Master_Aar had no clear answer. But that's okay. When you have a 3D printer, you don't need a why, just a how.

You can see more photos here.

This past summer, workers at Microsoft Japan were able to take Fridays off without losing any pay. The company announced that productivity went up 40% during that period. The company will run the trial again in the winter. One might guess that a motivated workforce wasted less time during the four-day week, but the exact mechanics of the increased productivity have not been publicized yet. One factor may have been a new rule that meetings would be limited to a half-hour for no more than five employees at once.

Four-day workweeks made headlines around the world in the spring of 2018, when Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand trust management company, announced a 20% gain in employee productivity and a 45% increase in employee work-life balance after a trial of paying people their regular salary for working four days. Last October, the company made the policy permanent.

The Microsoft trial roughly doubled Perpetual Guardian's productivity gain. But for now at least, the company isn't saying whether it will test the four-day workweek policy in other locations or consider making it permanent.

While a four-day week with five-day pay may sound wonderful, there are other factors to consider. In the United States, being classified as part-time may mean losing benefits, even if the pay remains the same as a full-time job. Read about the Microsoft experiment at NPR. -via Metafilter