In the cold and mountainous regions of Europe, winter is dark and full of monsters, and the festivals are extremely metal. This video from last year has been making the rounds, although it is often mislabeled- this version identifies it as a Nordic Krampus parade. What we are seeing is a Perchten parade in Austria, usually held on January 5th or 6th. The role of the Perchten is to drive away the old year and the evil spirits that inhabit it. The huge jingle bells on their butts help. You also see the witch Frau Perchta at the beginning. Perchten are not to be confused with Krampus, another Austrian winter demon, who parades on December 5th. But they have a lot of company.
A similar festival in Croatia features the Zvončari. In Hungary, they have Busójárás. In Slovenia, the monsters are Kurenti. In Bulgaria, it's the Kukeri that chase away evil spirits. These monsters were once part of the winter solstice celebrations, but now are more often associated with Christmas, Carnival, Lent, or Easter. -via Everlasting Blort
Although I prefer to attribute the origin of the Reuben sandwich to divine intervention into the fallen human world, a more historical acknowledgment belongs to a man named Reuben who invented the sandwich for his weekly poker games at the Blackstone Hotel in Omaha, Nebraska.
The Crescent Moon Alehouse across the street from that hotel produces its Reubens in the classical style. It also holds an annual ReubenFest that celebrate's America's greatest sandwich. Featured variants of the Reuben include the Reuben Chimichanga and Reuben Pierogi.
This is one of sixteen restaurants that Takeout insists are the best in the country for Reubens.
My fondest memory of the Reuben is a now long-defunct Greek restaurant named The Oven on Dolly Ridge Road in Birmingham, Alabama that served Reubens on pumpernickel buns the size of footballs. They were, alas, too good for this world.
Photo: Crescent Moon
How much do you really know about Antarctica? It's cold, icy, has penguins, and it's dark for half a year at a time. Oh yeah, and it's where the South Pole is. Neatorama readers know that the American science station is McMurdo, Scott Base is for New Zealand, and the Russians have Vostok Station near the pole. That's more than most people know, but certain "factoids" have snuck into what people say about the continent. Frankly, I have never heard any of these misconceptions, but that may be because of the company I keep. No, polar bears do not live in Antarctica. The name comes from the North Pole.
But even if you never believed any of these misconceptions, you'll learn some interesting things about Antarctica, like how it was discovered, how it came to be shared between nations, and why penguins can't fly. You'll even learn about polar bears, even though they have nothing to do with Antarctica. Read the truth about those five misconceptions at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: ravas51)
Nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, and clove are spices we mainly associate with autumn and Christmas because they are used in various combinations in gingerbread, egg nog, fruit cake, and pumpkin pie. Well, okay, cinnamon is used year round, but you get my drift. Before the 21st century, you rarely saw these spices outside of the kitchen. There were some soaps and candles with those spices, but they weren't labeled as pumpkin. There was McCormick's pumpkin pie spice, but no one used it for anything besides pie.
Then in 2003, Starbucks introduced their Pumpkin Spice Latte, and suddenly the term "pumpkin spice" was everywhere, despite the fact that the Starbucks drink contained no pumpkin at the time, and neither did the other products. The scent became so popular that we had jokes like the pumpkin spice oil change and pumpkin spice condoms.
Still, the scent of those spices and the memories they evoke are pretty powerful. Pumpkin may be American, but the spices that go into it have a bloody colonial history. Read about how those components came together in a history of pumpkin spice at BBC Travel. -via Nag on the Lake
The latest collaboration from Playing for Change (previously at Neatorama) is the 1975 song by War "Why Can't We Be Friends?" The theme is bringing disparate people together fits right in with the organization's ethos of connecting people from around the world through music through their Song Around the World series. The song consists of couplets, some of which illustrate why people are not friends, followed by the chorus which repeats the title, offering to bridge the gap. It's the chorus that sticks with you, and may be your earworm for the day.
Also, this is a 50th anniversary celebration of the song and the album of the same name. That's what makes it astonishing that they were able to include seven surviving members of the band War among the featured musicians. The players in this collaboration are listed at the YouTube page. You can learn more about this song and see other videos from the Song Around the World series at their website.
A scientific study out of Italy shows that research can be a lot of fun. The researchers took 138 rides on the Milan metro to observe the behavior of strangers. Their conclusion was that when someone dressed as Batman got onto a train car, riders were significantly more likely to give up their seat to a pregnant woman. Dress for the job you want, indeed. This study is easily replicable; all you need are an obviously pregnant woman, someone with a Batman suit, and someone to observe and crunch the numbers. The effect is not exactly unknown, as a story from a bus driver illustrates the way the Caped Crusader affects passengers.
Not that anyone was afraid of Batman. The character of Batman isn't thought to spur prosocial behavior, meaning the tendency to help others. The study frames the presence of Batman as an "unexpected event," which drew attention. When that happens, people become less locked into their phones and more aware of the environment around them. That's when they noticed a pregnant woman standing. The same people would have given up their seat anyway, if they'd been paying more attention. To be sure, someone should replicate the experiment using someone dressed as a the Joker. -via Metafilter
My proposed monopoly house rules:
— Harmony Ginger (@Gingerblast) November 21, 2025
Pot of Greed - If you have the most money at the start of your turn, you may draw 2 cards from a standard deck of playing cards. They are worth money equal to their value x 10 or may be used in combat (see combat rules below)
En passant capture… https://t.co/89wD5gu2sD
Tabletop gamer Harmony Ginger suggests some custom rules for Monopoly to spice up gameplay.
I especially like the idea of Free Parking Random Encounter, although it would necessitate each player have a complete character sheet.
Perhaps players could also, instead of taking turns, roll for imitative each round to determine who goes first.
What house rules do you use for Monopoly?
Back in 1981, when you first saw Raiders of the Lost Ark, you loved the movie because it was an adventure for the viewer. It had alluring characters, great action scenes, and just the right amount of humor. And the bad guys got their comeuppance. But the fact that you left Raiders feeling good about it involves much more than those things.
Every scene was both beautiful and believable, and they hold up 44 years later. That's largely due to the work of cinematographer Douglas Slocombe. Director Steven Spielberg had his own vision for what Raiders could be, but he was open to Slocombe's vision, and found it to be better overall. His attention to detail required some workarounds to stay on budget, in the quest to "make a 20 million dollar movie look like a 40 million dollar movie." This video looks deep into how they did that. The other secrets were the editing by Michael Kahn that kept the story moving as a breakneck pace, the amazing special effects, and of course, the actors. But you already knew about those.
Who doesn't love Thanksgiving leftovers? You have the taste of the formal feast, on your own schedule, in the amount you want, eaten in front of the TV without all those annoying relatives around. Usually, the gravy is the first thing you run out of. Now you can buy leftover gravy to stretch out those leftover sandwiches! Heinz is offering a limited run of their Heinz Homestyle Turkey Gravy in a squeeze bottle for appropriate portion control and placement, appropriately called Leftover Gravy. It was inspired by a sandwich called the Moist Maker from the TV show Friends.
Don't look for this product on grocery store shelves. Leftover Gravy is only available through Walmart online, and it comes with a recipe that mimics the Moist Maker, although with a different name. The first run sold out within hours, but they made more, and you have to keep trying to see if supplies have been replenished. Otherwise, you'll just have to use a jar, or learn to make gravy.
We're familiar with what they say about orange cats: they're large, very food-motivated, and all of them share one brain cell between them. Trekkie lives up to the reputation in the food department. In fact, he's an outlier there, because he will eat almost anything, and he wants it now. If it can be identified as food, he's going for it, and you just try to stop him. Trekkie will even steal food from a hot stove!
His family has had to take extraordinary measures to protect the family's food supplies. When Trekkie gets too rowdy in the kitchen, they put him in the bathroom with the door shut. So he learned how to open the door. Besides doors, he's learned to open packages, jars, devices, and it's all for the goal of getting to the food. That takes more than the allotted number of brain cells. Trekkie is a smart orange cat- he just goes overboard in the other stereotype.
In 1961, Yogi Bear was spun off from Huckleberry Hound and got his own cartoon show. Yogi lived in the fictional Jellystone Park and craved pic-a-nic baskets. He seemed pretty harmless.
Also in 1961, at the very real Yellowstone National Park, people flocked to see grizzly bears in their natural habitat. Some would approach grizzlies, or even try to touch one out of a car window. Grizzlies were getting used to humans, and flocked to campgrounds to steal food. Even worse, the park had pits to dump garbage into, which drew grizzlies, and in turn drew tourists who wanted to take pictures. The most popular bear that year was Sylvia, a 225-pound mother with three cubs. She would allow visitors to get within 25 feet to take pictures. In addition to Yogi, Sylvia was a reason people thought they could get close to a grizzly.
Meanwhile, brothers John and Frank Craighead were at Yellowstone studying whether humans and grizzlies could co-exist in the park. From their 12 years of research, we get the story of Sylvia, the tamest grizzly at Yellowstone, and what happened to her. -via Strange Company
(Image credit: National Park Service)
You pour a cup of coffee at the coffeemaker, then you carry it to wherever you are going to drink it. You are liable to get some drops on your clothing or on the floor. I don't have that problem because my coffeemaker's carafe is also a vacuum bottle and I take the whole pot to my desk. Scientists, on the other hand, often must share a coffeemaker, so they have spent a lot of time studying the physics of coffee, coffee cups in particular, to figure out why they are so prone to spillage. It's physics.
Madelyn Leembruggen of SciShow explains the research done on this problem, which has to do with resonant frequency. If this video has your eyes glazing over at the science, get another cup of coffee and stay with it, because she also tells how to keep your coffee in its cup. There's a 32-second skippable ad at 3:45. -via Metafilter
The skies over America are suffering the effects of inflation. Har har. Right now there are at least seven dirigibles dispatched over parts of the US. Some of them are actual blimps, which are non-rigid and are shaped by the air inside, and others are airships with internal frameworks. Those terms get confusing when you talk about the Goodyear Blimps, which used to be blimps but are now airships with frames, yet they still use the term blimps because everyone knows them like that.
Anyway, three of the currently flying airships are Goodyear Blimps as they travel to various events. Two more are advertising blimps, and two are from LTA Research. One of those is a blimp, and the other is an experimental rigid airship that's 406.5 feet long, making it the biggest modern aircraft in the world. Read about these airships, and where you might spot them, at The Autopian.
(Image credit: Mercedes Streeter/LTA Research)
We all know that there is a big difference between adopting a dog and adopting a cat. Everyone who has a cat will tell you its story, which often is just "He showed up one day and never left." This is commonly called the Cat Distribution System. A thorough investigation by Cat Lovers Forum has uncovered how the system works, and it will blow your mind. Since the discoveries were all under the cover of darkness, the results of the investigation are explained in this weirdly animated video. The covert operations may remind you of an international spy operation, or at least Men in Black. This is the only way the Cat Distribution System could possibly be as successful as it is.
Once you understand how it works, those cat stories all make sense. And now we know why dogs dig in the yard. While the main headquarters has yet to be identified, those in the know suggest looking in Istanbul. -via Geeks Are Sexy
In a post last week, we learned that were 6,000 shipwrecks on the Great lakes, and that was just in one century. The first documented shipwreck was in 1679 when the Griffon went down. But the lakes have revealed dugout canoes that go back as far as 5,000 years. How do we know this? The Wisconsin Historical Society’s Maritime Preservation and Archaeology program has been identifying, studying, and mapping the remains of ships found in the Great Lakes. This work is carried out by people like underwater archaeologist Tamara Thomsen.
Shipwrecks are better preserved in the lakes than they would be in an ocean, due to the fresh cold water. New technology like GPS and personal aircraft make finding the wrecks easier. So Thomsen no longer looks for shipwrecks, but she dives down to those that have been reported to study and document them. The ship remains, and any artifacts, are left in place to become memorials. Some are added to the National Register of Historical Places. It's a really cool job for someone who's passionate about diving. Read what that job involves at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: Tamara Thomsen)
