Spanish band Broken Peach has impressed us with some Halloween videos to accompany their rockin' cover songs. They go all out for Christmas, too! The video above sets the stage for a Christmas challenge, as Broken Peach investigates the evil that may creep into the holiday season. To save Christmas, the band must perform the world's most perfect Christmas song. And despite the title Noche de Paz, it will not be a "Silent Night." Instead, they give us a rockin' yet festive rendition of  "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas."



This is the song you play when you want to hear some rock 'n' roll, but your family wants to listen to Christmas classics. Or vice versa. Oh, there's plenty more where that came from. The YouTube page for the top video has links to their Christmas playlist.

About ten years ago, my daughter asked to borrow my Christmas sweater. I was pleased that she liked it, until she came home from school that day with first prize in the ugly Christmas sweater contest. The phenomenon of the ugly Christmas sweater has been with us for a long time, but the trend jumped the shark when manufacturers began cranking out sweaters that were intentionally ugly. But how did it ever start?

Christmas sweaters started out as festive and fun, and only gradually became tacky as their creators ramped up the festiveness. Special sweaters for Christmas have been around at least since the 1890s. There is one event that clearly stands out in their history- the "jingle bell sweaters" of the 1930s. First, the bells were lined up down the front to resemble buttons on a cardigan, but more and more jingle bells were added until everyone could hear the wearer coming. Creative designs ramped up the holiday imagery through the 20th century. But what made the ugly Christmas sweater a thing was the utter sincerity of those who enjoyed wearing them- and the utter horror of receiving one as a gift if you were one who did not. Read about the evolution of the ugly Christmas sweater at Mental Floss.

A recent AskReddit thread had the question: "Which grammatical error annoys you the most?" It garnered two thousand comments in two days, so that's a lot of annoyance. The top answers were pretty common, and might even be spreading due to so many people reading internet communications instead of professionally-edited publications.

"Should of" instead of "should have." They sound the same when spoken, so that's likely why young writers don't know the difference.

"Loose" when one means "lose."

Apostrophe misuse. An apostrophe with an "s" at the end of a word indicates a possessive, not a plural. Or it can indicate a missing letter in a contraction like "she's," meaning "she is." These uses overlap in the word "its/it's," so English scholars created an exception as a workaround. With no apostrophe, the word is a possessive, and with an apostrophe the word is a contraction. It was difficult to write that sentence without a certain pronoun.

"Alot" instead of "a lot." Allie Brosch made this into a delightful creature that we can think of instead of the state of English education.

"Then" and "than." These are both used when the other is indicated. It could be a typo, or maybe some people don't realize they are two different words.

"I could care less." This is mostly said when someone could not care less.

There are a lot more in the reddit thread. Some are spelling mistakes you can blame on autocorrect, like "to/two/too" or "there/their/they're," but no one would believe you. Autocorrect is often wrong on the "its" and "it's."   

Personally, I've spent way too many years writing for the 'net to let grammatical errors bother me anymore. It can happen to anyone, especially if you edit something that you have already written. If I change a word from past to present tense, or from singular to plural, there's a good chance that some other necessary word change gets overlooked. I've also found that many errors come from people who are learning English as a second or third language, and that's a commendable effort. If I notice a grammatical error at Neatorama, I'll correct it, but I no longer cringe at other people's language mistakes. However, when those errors end up in permanent signs, news or business websites, or expensive advertising, I will roll my eyes a little.  -via Digg

In the TV show Penn & Teller: Fool Us, the famous stage magicians invite other illusionists to trick them. After performing in front of Penn Jillette and Teller, the duo try to describe how the guest star performed the illusion. A panel of judges determine if they succeeded. If Penn and Teller are wrong, then the guest star wins a trophy for successfully fooling their famous colleagues.

In this video, Axel Adler shows how competitive stage magic can be. Somehow he appears to have three legs. Which one (or possibly two) is fake? Just when you think you've got it figured out, Adler does a trick that throws you off.

-via The Awesomer

For some reason, we had three versions of Pinocchio released in 2022. First there was Pinocchio: A True Story, a Russian cartoon released in the US in February. Pauly Shore is the voice of Pinocchio in the English dub. Few paid any attention to that one. Then there was Disney's sort-of-live-action remake Pinocchio starring Tom Hanks as Geppetto. Like their 2019 movie The Lion King, it's hard to call it a live-action movie when almost all the characters are animated. Finally, there was Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, released in November. It's a stop-motion animation that may still be playing at a theater near you. There can't be too many people who saw all three versions, but Screen Junkies did so we don't have to. Watch three short Honest Trailers in a row, and they'll tell you which version of Pinocchio you should see, if you were planning to see one.

The resemblance is quite striking, indeed. If you look at the image we’ve provided above, then you’ll notice a lot of similarities between the two. The one on the left is a painting made by Luxembourg-based painter Jeff Dieschburg, which won him the 11th Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2020. 

The other image on the right, which looks like a mirrored copy is United States-based photographer Jinga Zhang’s work for Harper’s Bazaar Vietnam in 2017. The photographer, noticing the odd similarities between her work and Dieschburg’s took it to court for plagiarism. 

However, the Luxembourg court which handled the complaint ruled that the fine artist did not commit any type of plagiarism. The original photo by Zhang, according to the judges, did not meet the criteria to fall under Luxembourgish or European copyright law.

In response to this ruling, the photographer shared to social media the basis of the ruling. “The model’s pose in my photo is not unique,” she shared. “I am devastated by the copyright ruling in Luxembourg today, which stated that my work lacks originality and therefore will not receive copyright protection in Luxembourg,” she added. 

Image credit: Jinga Zhang, Jeff Dieschburg via PetaPixel

Back-to-back tasks, without any breaks, can be draining and tiring. There comes a time in our work week when we forgo the need for rest in exchange for more productivity and more finished tasks. 

Alternatively, some have no choice but to sit through meeting after meeting because of their schedules. While that seems to be a low-key task at first, spending a long period of time socializing, thinking, and brainstorming with your peers still takes a lot of your brain power and energy. 

A 2021 research by experts at Microsoft’s Human Factors Lab found what exactly happens to our brains when we go to consecutive office meetings. They recruited 14 people to do video calls while wearing equipment that monitored the activity in their brains. 

They found out that the stress levels in the brains of those who got no breaks increased. Additionally, the researchers discovered that the participants anticipating the next call also caused a spike in beta wave activity, which is associated with stress. These people also were more mentally withdrawn during breaks while those who had breaks in between were more energetic and engaged. 

Image credit: Anna Shvets

In a blog post related to their annual Year in Search report, Google has revealed the most-searched term in the United States (and globally). To our surprise, it isn’t a celebrity, a movie, a brand, or a fictional character. It’s a game. 

The 2022 hit game Wordle has been crowned by the search engine as its most searched term. Which actually makes sense since its rise to fame this year. During the first few months of the hype, we did find ourselves Googling the answer for that day’s Wordle puzzle. It managed to defeat topics that trended such as “election results,” “Betty White,” “Queen Elizabeth,” and “Ukraine.” 

image screenshot via Wordle / The New York Times

If you have a bottle of hydrogen of peroxide nearby for cuts and scrapes, heads up! That’s not really good use for the chemical. This is because the oxygen atoms in the mixture, while responsible for destroying and weakening bacteria out of the wounded area can also damage healthy cells. 

Hydrogen peroxide steals electrons from the cell walls of both bacteria and healthy cells. Additionally, it has been found to slow the healing process and worsen scarring. So, instead of putting it into your first aid kit, try using it for other tasks instead! 

You can actually use the chemical for cleaning dirty surfaces such as stovetops, dishwashers, and more areas in the home. It is also the perfect solution for cleaning grease and dirt-filled baking sheets. It can also make them look like they were freshly bought from the store! 

Cubby at Home’s Shifrah Combiths shares more potential uses for a bottle of hydrogen peroxide here. 

image credit: Vi-Jon via Amazon

DOOM is a shooter game initially released in 1993 for the MS-DOS that has seen a lot of users tinkering with it in recent years. From playing the game using a rotary phone to having rats play the game on their own, players and enthusiasts constantly find ways to add spice to the classic game. 

The newest installation to this odd but fun activity (of changing up DOOM games) is by turning it into a different game. Well to be exact, somebody has managed to recreate the original Legend of Zelda for the NES into a DOOM game. 

DeTwelve Games has recreated the video game into a first-person game and remade every asset of the game so that it can perfectly sit in the DOOM engine. From the entire overworld to the items to the enemies and many more, fans of the 2 games can have fun with this new mod. 

If you’re interested in trying out The Legend of DOOM check out this guide here on how to install and play it on your computer. 

Russian scientist and photographer Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky (previously at Neatorama) was a pioneer in color photography, and his lush, brightly-colored images of imperial Russia from more than a century ago still amaze us. Prokudin-Gorsky achieved his color images by shooting each image three times, each time with a different color filter on the camera. What the casual viewer doesn't know about these astonishing images is how much work went into producing each one. For every photograph Prokudin-Gorsky considered worth publishing, there were many more that didn't live up to expectations.

The images Prokudin-Gorsky published are often different from the ones we see today. His original negatives are still available, and photographers and color scientists recreate the stacking of the negative images with modern tools like computers to produce even richer colors than Prokudin-Gorsky did. How he ever got the images he was proud of is a testament to his own skill and patience. Read about Prokudin-Gorsky's technique at the Public Domain Review. -via Damn Interesting

The history of medical science is full of theories that might appeal to one's common sense, but didn't hold up over time, and came to be seen as downright crazy in hindsight. One of those ideas became a trend in the early 20th century. People have long been disgusted by the colon, because it contains feces, which was seen as dangerously unhealthy. Doctors and laypersons alike treated this with enemas for a long time, then laxatives. When anesthesia made surgery a lot easier, one doctor came up with the idea of cutting the whole thing out, to keep our wastes from infecting the rest of our body. Eminent London surgeon Dr. William Arbuthnot Lane developed the radical colectomy, in which the large intestine was removed, and the small intestine was connected directly to the anus.

The radical colectomy caused a sensation, with patients flocking in their hundreds to Lane’s surgery to undergo the new cutting-edge procedure. From the 1910s to the 1930s thousands of Britons and Americans had their perfectly healthy colons snipped out as a preventative measure, with Lane himself performing over a thousand such procedures over the course of his career.

You can imagine this caused problems, particularly a 30% death rate due to postoperative complications and infections. But he wasn't the only doctor to try removing a possible source of future infection. Surgeries were developed to remove healthy teeth, testicles, ovaries, spleens, stomachs, appendixes, gall bladders, and cervixes, in addition to colons. More research eventually went into these organs, and such radical surgery died out. Or did it? The removal of healthy tonsils was fairly routine for children through the end of the 20th century, and even today doctors are warning against routine but unnecessary circumcisions and wisdom tooth removal. Read about the story of the radical colectomy and the other surgeries that followed at Today I Found Out. 

Can you talk to your toilet? Yes, and some of us do. But toilets generally don't answer back.

Until now. The future has arrived in the form of the Kohler Numi 2.0. The Verge reports that for a mere $11,500, you can have a toilet that comes equipped with Alexa, which is Amazon's digital assistant. Command her to fire up your custom music playlist for your special event.

Additionally, the Numi 2.0 has what you'd expect from a luxury toilet: UV light sanitation, a bidet that can sweep through all of your precious areas, an automatical misting bowl, a heated seat, and an air dryer. You can control all of these features with a handheld remote control.

I don't see any indication that these advanced toilet commands can be controlled by Alexa. That's a shame because I like to keep both hands freed up, not bound to a remote control.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Kohler

Tom Scott did a video on London's 18th century fire brigades a few years ago. Now he's retracted it completely because it was based on a premise that was just plain wrong. The story of how that happened illustrates how narratives can arise based on assumptions from random observers, and then the facts assumed become urban legends, and if repeated enough, they eventually transform into history. Tom got his information from reputable sources, which in turn got their facts from what they thought were reputable sources, but you have to go back even further to find out that "the way it was" just ain't so. He not only owns up to it, but explains how it all happened and gives us the real story as he learned it after exhaustive research by a professional researcher. Sometimes you have to go much further down the rabbit hole than you think necessary to uncover the truth.

Back before every home had a computer with graphics programs like Photoshop, people still went all out to produce funny yet personal Christmas cards. This was when "cut and paste" meant cut with scissors and paste with glue. Then you had to run the whole thing to the local print shop to be copied. The print shop would also supply you with envelopes, but you still had to go to the Post Office to buy stamps. Imagine the coordination of the design to get the photographs right in the card above, because you couldn't just zoom in- you had to size everything during the photo shoot and get the photographs printed while crossing your fingers. It all seems so quaint now. But if you had a good enough sense of humor, you didn't even need scissors and glue.

These folks didn't know we'd be laughing at those cards 60, 70 years later. Check out a festive collection of personalized Christmas cards from the mid-20th century designed to make the recipient laugh, at Bored Panda.