After some disappointments over the last few years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe had a good year in 2024-  100% of their movies were record-breaking hits! That fact is a little easier to swallow when you realize that Marvel only released one movie this year, and it was Deadpool & Wolverine. Still, you can't argue with success.

But Marvel's good year involved a lot more than what you see on the big screen, or what you saw on your television screen. The news going on behind the scenes made it clear that Marvel has changed its focus and may be in for big changes in the future. First, the 2024 movie release schedule shows that Marvel is willing to step back and consider their path, and the one film they had this year shows they are also perfectly willing to venture into new territory with an R-rated film. Other news spoke to the future: Robert Downey Jr. returning to Marvel as Dr. Doom, the Russo Brothers coming back to Marvel to do two Avengers films, and the upcoming Spider-Man and Fantastic Four projects. Read about what Marvel has done this year to inspire confidence among their fans, and what it all may lead to in the coming years, at Gizmodo.

Dr. Laura Driessen is a radio astronomer at the University of Sydney. At Study Finds, she explains that the speed of an object in motion affects sound and light waves from that object relative to an observer. This is called the Doppler Effect.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, who leads Santa's sleigh with his nose so bright, has a red-appearing nose only when he is motionless. The appearance of his nose changes when he travels at speeds sufficient to complete his busy night of work.

Dr. Driessen estimates that Rudolph must travel at 8.2 million KPH in order to deliver Santa to each of his destinations. If you saw Rudolph moving toward you, his nose would appear bright orange. If you watched him fly away, his nose would turn almost black.

Does Santa Claus exist in the video game universe? You betcha- even in Super MarioWorld! But this pixelated Santa in his skivvies turns out to be a grumpy old man who'd just as soon someone else take the title of Santa Claus for a while. That duty falls to Mario, who is only interested in what new powers this arrangement brings him. One is that he can transform koopa troopas into koopa reindeer! It's all in service of bringing gifts to good little boys and girls, and video game characters, too. The problem comes when Mario focuses only on the video game characters, meaning he doesn't quite live up to the standards we set for Santa Claus. What else wold you expect? Dorkly shows us in this video what chaos follows when Mario tries to play Santa. The plot may remind you of The Santa Clause, but luckily here, the old man doesn't have to die for someone else to take his place.

(Image credit: daQueen1011)

Good stories should be shared with strangers on the internet, because we all need to be reminded of what's good in the world. Imagine getting excited for your baby's first Christmas. Sure, he's too young to understand, but there will be pictures documenting it for the rest of his life. Then something happens and he's in the hospital over the Christmas holiday. The child's nurse understood what a first Christmas photo meant, and she went above and beyond to recruit a Santa Claus to be there when the shutter clicked, watching over the little boy and keeping him safe. I checked OP's comment history, and found the baby is okay a year later.

(Image credit: NotGayRyan)

You know how some people buy a gift for their significant other that's really something they want themselves? It works out when a couple is in tune and has shared interests. A husband and wife got the gifts above for each other. Perfect. You have to wonder what their dog got- probably everything! Read a long list of Christmas posts gleaned from reddit that will bring a smile to your face at Bored Panda.

The question for this episode of the What If? series (previously at Neatorama) was, if there were a lake on the moon, what would it be like to swim in it? Well, there is no lake on the moon, but someday there might possibly be a swimming pool. It would have to be sheltered from the elements, or lack of, just like astronauts have to wear helmets. Safely inside a secured moon base, a pool would be a lot of fun. See, physics works the same on the moon, but the gravity is different from that on earth, leading to the kind of fun Randall Munroe is famous for.  

Alas, real astronauts know better than to get their hopes up about a pool on the moon. The cost of transporting that much water would be, dare I say it, astronomical. Right now, we can't even manage to get our people back home from the ISS.

Who does the best "pa-rum, pum-pum, pum"? @TheSimpsons #TheSimpsons #Christmas pic.twitter.com/GHz3J2lp6x

— Hank Azaria (@HankAzaria) December 23, 2024

Hank Azaria's greatest acting accomplishment was, in my opinion, a supporting role in the groundbreaking sitcom Herman's Head. But he is most famous for voicing several characters on The Simpsons, having done so for almost the franchise's entire run since 1989.

In this special Christmas video, Azaria sings a few lines from the 1941 carol "The Little Drummer Boy" as Simpsons characters, including police chief Clancy Wiggum, the beloved Moe Szyslak, Comic Book Guy, Captain Horatio McAllister, Professor John Frink, the rascally scamp Snake, and Duffman.

-via Laughing Squid

Licorice is the world's perfect candy. The flavor is optimal for activating dopamine among all right-thinking people. Not everyone agrees, but this is how you can distinguish between the enlightened and the depraved among the people who walk upon the Earth.

Empanadas are a wonderful food delivery system popular here in Texas. In a flash of characteristic brilliance, it occurred to me a few months ago that one could make empanadas with a licorice filling. As far as I can tell, I am the inventor of this epoch-defining development.

Every summer, the town of Watkins Glen in the Finger Lakes region of New York experiences a surge of visitors in search of scenic wonders, both natural and man-made. The latter includes a tiny diner that bills itself as the world's smallest. WETM 18 News interviewed the owner, 83-year old Gerry Collins.

Depending on how it's measured, the establishment covers either 32 or 34 square feet. It hypothetically seats four people, but the heat from cooking makes interior temperatures unbearable for dining. Although a variety of foods are available, most people come for Collins's traditional Coney Island-style hot dogs.

-via Hickman | Photo: World Record Academy

Air Force Colonel Harry Shoup was the operations officer at the North American Aerospace Defense Command in 1955. It was close to Christmas when Shoup received a call on the "red phone," a dedicated line that was to be used if the Soviets were to launch an attack on the US. Back then, Americans expected that to happen any minute. But it was a false alarm of a sort, actually a wrong number. When the news got around to the airmen, they made a joke out of it. But Shoup was a father as well as a straight-laced, by-the-book Air Force officer and knew how to handle children. That one call led to an entire series of events that would change the way we celebrate Christmas.

Shoup later became known as "the Santa Colonel." He died in 2009. Three of Shoup's four children got together to tell the folks at StoryCorps what happened that day in 1955, and what became of it as time went on.

It's not that unusual for artists to dip into the past when designing a gingerbread house, so artist and occasional baker Edward J. Cabral went back to the bloody days of the French Revolution. Behold his Christmas masterpiece: a gingerbread guillotine! Click to the right to see this bad boy from all angles. And it works, too! Well, the blade is probably not all that sharp, but it does move.

The entire gingerbread sculpture is edible, from the glittery rainbow candy platform to the peppermint "heads" in the receiving basket (minus the wrappers). You have to admire the ingenuity and skill that went into this gingerbread device, but at the same time, you have to wonder whether it's meant to be a warm Christmas greeting or a not-so-subtle warning. Miniature depictions of the guillotine were quite fashionable during the French Revolution, from haircuts to earrings, and it was always a warning to aristocrats and the bourgeoisie. Any way you see it, it's an incredible work of gingerbread- just don't lose your head over it. -via Everlasting Blort

The Parker Solar Probe took off from earth in 2018 and has been spending its time bouncing from Venus to the sun and back again, each time getting closer to the sun. On December 24th, it is expected to come within 3.8 million miles of the sun's surface. Nicki Rayl, NASA’s deputy director of heliophysics, calls that "literally touching the star" because the probe will be in the sun's upper atmosphere. And you didn't know the sun had an atmosphere.

The Parker probe is there just in time to catch the sun at the apex of its eleven-year activity cycle, when the magnetic poles move, sunspots appear, and geomagnetic storms flare out into the solar system. But that's what it was sent for, to collect valuable data about the sun from a vantage point never before possible. The probe will be close enough to experience temperatures of 1700 degrees. How will it survive? Read about the purpose of the Parker Solar Probe and the extreme design that allows it to handle temperatures of up to 2500 degrees, at Smithsonian.  

(Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)

Charlie Brown was always the perfect character to illustrate the feelings of confusion or inadequacy we all experience some time or another. In clips from the 1965 Christmas television special A Charlie Brown Christmas, that inadequacy includes not really getting the Christmas spirit like everyone else around you. That doesn't make him odd, because it happens to most of us, at least in some years. It makes him relatable.

Charlie Brown's depression is a small part of the show, and takes a back seat to his bad luck and Snoopy's World War I fantasies, but it means a lot to people who share those same feelings. Chetreo took the relevant clips and gave them some autotune and arranged them into a song, for those who feel alone in their lack of Christmas spirit. You are far from alone.  -via Geeks Are Sexy

It seems every nation has it shared television habits, especially around holidays. We were a little surprised a year ago to find that it's a tradition in Italy to watch the 1983 film Trading Places on Christmas Eve. In Germany and Scandinavia, it is a tradition to watch Dinner for One on New Year's Eve. But on Christmas Eve, most of the television sets in Sweden, and many more in Denmark, Finland, and Norway, will be tuned to an annual broadcast of Kalle Anka och hans vänner önskar God Jul  (Donald Duck and His Friends Wish You a Merry Christmas). At least that's what it's called in Sweden. The show is 66 years old, and is an American television production.  

It's the 1958 special Christmas episode of the series Walt Disney Presents called "From All of Us to All of You." This particular episode only ran occasionally afterward in the US and had not been on broadcast television since 1980. But in some countries it's become a beloved tradition to spend the afternoon of Christmas Eve with the family, watching that show. If you want to see what the fuss is all about, you can what that episode on YouTube. It's a compilation of clips from Disney's classic animated features, some cartoon shorts, and a greeting from Walt Disney. In the annual European broadcasts, a preview of an upcoming Disney project is usually included. Only a small part of the show is Christmas-related, but it's a big part of the holidays in Sweden! -via Boing Boing

You can almost feel the testosterone flowing through this video. Loggers have the highest rate of fatal work injuries and this video is a taste of why. These people use dangerously sharp machines to cut through wood as quickly and precisely as possible without losing any limbs.

Every year, the Stihl brand of power tools sponsors a world championship of essential logging skills. It's a tradition that stretches back to at least 1870, when the first logging competition took place in Tasmania. Now some of the tools are powered instead of manual, but enormous strength, stamina, and raw courage are still essential.

-via Massimo

A digital production company in London named Sennep made a new thing called Audibaubles, described as "sonic seasonal decorations." These are video snippets that look like Christmas ornaments in motion, although they are based on sound, specifically movie clips. The audio from each clip is rendered as a symmetrical waveform in the colors of Christmas tree ornaments. The puzzle part is when you try to guess the movie these sound clips came from. If you are distracted by the shimmering ornament, watch (and listen) again. Maybe even turn the sound on.



If you know what movie it is, you know. There are four Audibaubles in all, and if there's one (or more) that stumps you, the answer key can be found at vimeo. -via Moss and Fog