How can a game in which the objective is to simply name all the stations on London's Tube map be so popular? That's probably the charm in it. It's simple and addictive, and it taps into the deeper part in our psyche wherein we want to test our knowledge about something that is part of our daily routine, which for many Londoners is going through the London Underground. There are currently 500,000 players who are obsessed with the game, and with the popularity that it has now, that number might grow even further.

The creator of the Metro Memory game, Benjamin Tran Dinh, says that the game was brought about by his memories of his time studying in London when he was in his twenties. The memories form another means by which players can connect deeply with the game, because as they look through the map and try to remember the names of different stations, they inevitably draw from their experiences through the years. Perhaps, a similar thing can happen if one were to make a game on the New York subway, the Chicago L, or the Washington Metro. You may check out the game here.

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Thanksgiving is in ten days and consumers might be worried how much they will need to spend to prepare Thanksgiving dinner. Although experts say that consumers might have to spend a little bit more on Thanksgiving this year, it won't be a dramatic leap like in 2022. According to the American Farm Bureau, the average consumer spending for 2021 was $53.31 and for 2022, $64.05. Despite the increase in prices, Thanksgiving dinner must still go on although shoppers have expressed their displeasure about the rising costs.

Based on the estimates done by Olivia Evans and Kathryn Gregory of the Louisville Courier Journal, depending on which store you buy items from, you might expect to spend from between $40.03 to $108.54. In assessing these costs, they went to three local grocery stores: Kroger, Rainbow Blossom, and ValuMarket. They looked at the same 10 items needed to make the turkey along with sides and dessert. In picking the items, they bought store-brand items if available, otherwise, they sourced the lowest-priced products.

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For anyone who might still have a $2 bill in their possession, you might want to check the US currency price guide to see if your $2 note might actually be worth much more than its face value. Last July, somebody sold a $2 bill on Heritage Auctions for $2,400 which was later sold at $4,000. It's not uncommon for old, historical pieces such as these Jefferson notes to fetch for high prices because of their rarity. Despite being manufactured at the same cost as $1 notes, it just wasn't circulated as much and they supposedly became notorious for being used in betting and bribery in the mid-20th century.

Although $2 notes continue to be produced, there are some notes which become collector's items because of certain factors like unusual serial numbers or having stars designated on them, called replacement notes or star notes. Moreover, because $2 notes are rarely used, some have encountered problems regarding the authenticity of the notes. The most recent incident happened in 2016, when a 13-year-old girl in Texas used a $2 note to pay for her lunch at the cafeteria. She was later detained as it could not be ascertained whether the bill was genuine or not.

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Some books are banned by certain states or school boards for their content which they deem inappropriate for children of a certain age. But banning books just doesn't seem like the best solution. Perhaps, a proposal by the Cobb County school superintendent Chris Ragsdale could be a better compromise. By creating a rating system similar to that being used for films - G, PG, PG-13, etc. - Ragsdale hopes that it can provide a guide for parents and schools to know whether books contain language, scenes, or concepts that would require their supervision when their children read it.

However, there are some librarians and booksellers who say that such a system would be impractical and expensive. Given that there are millions of books being published each year, it would be an arduous amount of work to try and stamp each one with a rating. Furthermore, they argue that nobody should be in a position to determine or even dictate what people should be reading or not. One may even push the envelope a little further to the extreme and say that this is a way of policing knowledge and information, and chipping away at people's freedom to choose what they want to consume or not.

One can understand where they might be coming from, but it might even be unconstitutional as Texas, which wanted to pass a similar law, is awaiting the decision from a federal court which blocked the law from taking effect.

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In Heinz' newly released ad, they say that runners have been using ketchup on their runs, so that's why they have laid out routes on running apps for certain cities like Toronto, Vancouver, San Francisco, and New York in which they marked restaurants where runners can grab a packet of Heinz ketchup while on their run. It's a very intriguing campaign and while a packet of ketchup is very handy, is ketchup really the best source of fuel? A few dietitians weighed in on the matter.

According to Katherine Patton, endurance athletes generally need from 23 to 27 grams of carbs and they can usually obtain that through energy gels. This is because for anybody who would be exercising for more than an hour, the body would need energy which it draws from the carbs stored in the muscles. However, the amount that our bodies can store is limited, and thus the need for an added external source.

The problem, according to Amy Stephens, who is a sports dietitian as well as a runner, is that ketchup has too much sodium which could cause some gastrointestinal issues from the high acidic content. Furthermore, excessive sodium can cause headaches and make one really thirsty. Add on the fact that there might be logistical issues in using ketchup if one were to run for a bit longer like say, a half marathon, which is 13 miles.

For alternative sources of fuel, Stephens suggests honey gels or lemonade and iced tea if someone were to take a break at some point during their run.

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There are only three states in America which have covenant marriages - Arizona, Arkansas, and Louisiana - but what does it mean and how is it legally distinct from the usual marriage we know? Covenant marriages includes a stipulation in which the couple agrees beforehand to be bound by two provisions if they would later seek divorce. It's like a prenup for divorce. These two stipulations include that the spouse seeking divorce must first undergo marriage counseling and must prove that there was evidence of adultery, felony, substance abuse, child or spousal abuse, or that the spouses have been living separately for the past two years.

The first state to legally approve of a law allowing covenant marriages was Louisiana which were soon followed by Arkansas and Arizona. The intent of the proponents behind the covenant marriage law was to promote and strengthen marriages among many other reasons including curtailing the divorce rate and preventing children from being born out of wedlock. However, since its inception, not a lot of couples have entered into covenant marriages in the states where they were legalized. Furthermore, there are loopholes regarding out-of-state divorce which might render the law useless.

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If you were to walk along the Fitzroy neighborhood of Melbourne, Australia, you might run into the Carrot Man. His name is Nathan, and he's been carrying a giant homemade carrot around for about ten years now. He moved to Melbourne from Brisbane and found that carrying around a giant vegetable was a great way to meet people and make friends. Everywhere he goes, folks want to have their picture made with the Carrot Man.

When the Guardian tried to get an interview with him, he said he prefers to let the carrot do the talking. Nathan is well-known for his friendliness and generosity. He gives gifts to the neighborhood residents, often plants. And he's said that his motivation for carrying the carrot is just to make people smile. Carrot Man's fame is spreading globally. He's even been the subject of street art in Paris! Nathan's fans have a dedicated Instagram gallery to share pictures of Carrot Man sightings. -via Fark

(Image credit: Humans In Melbourne)

It's likely that you only think about cranberries in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, although thankfully for the industry, cranberry juice is sold year-round for the possible benefit of reducing the risk of UTIs. The Pilgrims ate cranberries in some manner at the first Thanksgiving because they were in New England, where cranberries grew wild and ripened at the right time. They were great at preventing scurvy. But cranberries as a crop are relatively new. They weren't cultivated until 1816!

Cranberry plants reproduce by exchanging pollen with other plants, or by fertilizing itself, or by cloning. Each ripe cranberry has four air pockets inside it that allows it to float on water, which makes harvesting them by flooding cranberry bogs a relatively simple matter. It also makes them bounce when you throw them, which is another way to tell if they are fresh. Those are just some of the things that make cranberries unique, but you can learn quite a bit more about this Thanksgiving staple at The Conversation.  

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Redditor Grizz1371, a former Marine, posted this photo of his also-former-Marine buddy's new tattoo. Commenters from the USMC jumped in to share their favorite crayon, while others wanted to know what this was all about. The joke is that Marines eat crayons, indicating they are not all that smart. But far from taking offense, most Marines just run with the idea, making it funnier and funnier. Several ex-Marines have even started businesses selling edible crayons. The "dumb Marine" trope goes way back, but when did the joke about eating crayons begin?

A deep dive into the meme by Task & Purpose finds the first mention of Marines eating crayons only as far back as 2010. That explains why my ex-Marine husband never heard of it, while his Marine son was quite familiar with the idea. But it only took off into the wider world of social media in 2016, possibly with this comic.

(Image source: U.S. Army W.T.F! Moments at Facebook)

Marines will tell you to this day that crayons are the best MRE. Grizz1371 said the tattoo was in honor of Veteran's Day yesterday, but it could also be for the USMC's birthday on November 10. The military branch is now 248 years old!  

Between 1854 and 1929, around 250,000 homeless, orphaned, or abandoned children in New York City were shipped to the Midwest to find foster homes. There are many horror stories about the program, of children separated from siblings, taken in as servants, or abused, while their ties with family back in New York were erased. This program came to be known as the Orphan Trains.

The program was launched with the best of intentions, and not merely to relieve the city of a burden. The city did nothing for these children in the first place. It was the brainchild of Charles Loring Brace, a young minister who founded the Children's Aid Society. He attended seminary near the Five Points neighborhood in the mid-19th century (portrayed in Gangs of New York) and witnessed the misery of what was estimated to be 40,000 children fending for themselves in the streets of New York. What he dubbed the Emigration Plan first placed children in foster homes in New York State, then expanded further west when more homes were needed. The massive numbers of children and their far-flung travels led to lax oversight and local officials who did not vet foster homes properly in many cases.

Despite the many horror stories, the vast majority of the children relocated had good outcomes. But the Orphan Trains were not the only way that Brace worked to help the children of New York. Sending children away from the city was pretty much the last resort. Read the story of Charles Loring Brace and his efforts to get children off the streets at The Saturday Evening Post.  

Writer and comedian Tessa Coates went shopping for a wedding dress, and this picture was taken during a fitting. When she looked at the image, she got a big case of the willies. When Coates posted it to Instagram, her fans were at first shocked that she was engaged (she hadn't announced that before), and then shocked at the picture itself. If you can't see it, her arms are in different positions in the two mirrors and on her body. The picture was not Photoshopped, nor was it a Live Photo, nor a panorama. It spooked Coates so badly she almost threw up.  

As Bored Panda tells the story, Coates waited in line for two hours at the Apple Store to ask what happened. The explanation she got was that as the phone scanned from left to right, she raised her hands and artificial intelligence decided to stitch the two images together.  

Digital cameras take images by scanning from one side to another, but artificial intelligence doesn't necessarily factor into it. This kind of glitch has been happening for much longer than AI has been used in digital cameras. As pretty as this dress is, the spooky experience made Coates reject it, and she doesn't ever want to be near it again.  

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When doctors transplanted a new eyeball into a human for the first time, they did not expect the patient to be able to see with the eye. But there were other reasons for doing it, and the data gained will help future patients that may actually be able to see.

Aaron James was a high-voltage lineman who was electrocuted in Mississippi in 2021. He suffered multi-organ failure and wasn't expected to survive. But James survived, although he lost his left arm and most of his face. Doctors also removed his left eye because it gave him so much pain. James was left using a breathing tube and feeding tube due to the loss of his nose and mouth.
In two years, James recovered enough to be a candidate for a face transplant. Researchers approached him about transplanting an eyeball as well. While that surgery had never been done and probably couldn't restore his sight, the eye would help support his new face and make him look more normal. James agreed, for those reasons and also because they could learn how to do it.

“I said, ‘Even if it don’t work, I’ll have an eye, and it will be at least normal-looking, and then you all could learn something off of this,’” James tells CNN’s Jacqueline Howard. “You have to have a patient zero.”

The surgery was performed in May. Five months later, James is recovering well, and scientists are studying the signals sent through his optic nerve to his brain. It isn't sight, but it is something. Read about this groundbreaking surgery at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: NYU Langone Health)

Stanley Zhong is an 18-year-old software engineer at Google. He graduated high school with a 4.42 GPA, a 1590 SAT score, but was also rejected or waitlisted from 16 out of 18 universities, including MIT and Stanford. Despite his credentials, it must have been very disappointing to not get into 90% of the universities he applied to, but that's when Google offered him a job as an L4 software engineer, which is a temporary role, something that Stanley will do for a year before he enters the University of Texas.

In these kinds of circumstances in a child's life, parents must also be feeling the disappointment or discouragement that their children feel, and must be trying to console or empathize with them. So, it must have been a great relief and surprise to his parents when Stanley got the job at Google. Not for Nan Zhong, Stanley's father, who wasn't shocked at all upon learning that his son got a job. He says:

"I've seen him writing code since he was age 10. And along the way, he gave me enough shocks that I was no longer shocked [when he got the Google job]. He's been great his whole life."

For Nan, the No. 1 parenting rule he has lived by has been to take a hands-off approach. By that, he elaborates that he and his wife will support their son but will not push him toward one direction or another. Rather, they let him determine his own limits and find the motivation to seek and carve out his own path in life. Apart from this, Nan also shares other insights he gained as a parent raising Stanley over the years with CNBC.

(Image credit: Nan Zhong)

I happened upon this interesting brain challenge on the web. The goal is to make the highest possible number by moving two matchsticks. There are 18 matchsticks which form the number 308. Now, it doesn't really give any other restrictions, as long as you can form the highest number. However, it must be noted that when moving the two matchsticks, it should still form a number, therefore, just removing two matchsticks is not a solution.

For my part, I had thought that it was a simple and straightforward answer. I simply thought that making the number 999 would be the highest possible number that would solve this puzzle. However, that was not the case as the answer was actually completely far off from what I had expected. And no, it's not really very tricky either. I don't want to give any hints, except that the solution is greater than 1000. It might even be much higher than that. It's all about how creative one can be. If you want to know the answer to the puzzle, you may check out this video on Youtube from Simply Logical.

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Whether you're 16 or 60, taking care of your skin is about more than just looking good. The skin is the first barrier of defense against diseases and injuries. It also helps in regulating our body heat, so as to prevent the loss of moisture. Furthermore, it protects us from the harmful effects of UV rays. So, more than just the skin care products we apply on our face, we also have to consider the food we eat and how it impacts our skin health.

In particular, there are several foods of which we have to watch our intake. Processed foods and the ingredients that go into them as well as the manner in which they are manufactured could lead to inflammation, clogged pores, irritation, and excessive oiliness. Alcohol and caffeine are okay but only in moderation. Even healthy food such as carrots or pumpkin can actually produce a visible change in our skin color. To learn more about the relationship between our skin and our diet, read this article by Dr. Monica Allman who is an expert in skin diseases and aesthetics.

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