What your family eats for Christmas is always the right thing, because you've had the same celebratory meal for years and years, and you don't have those foods the rest of the year. For those same reasons, people around the world celebrate Christmas with foods that may be very different. In Texas, it's tamales. In Japan, It's Kentucky Fried Chicken. In eastern Europe, it's a fish that has been swimming in your bathtub for a few days. And the sweets that go along with the holiday vary, too. In Scandinavia, you have to placate a variety of mischievous legendary spirits, so children in Denmark leave out risengrød, a special rice pudding with cherry sauce, almonds, and whipped cream to please the nisse (elves) who may otherwise cause trouble for the household. Read about that and several other Christmas food traditions at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: cyclonebill)

Star Trek: The Next Generation aired from 1987 to 1994, with 187 episodes in all. The title of this compilation video is "3 Seconds of Every Star Trek: TNG Episode," which doesn't sound like much fun at all. But that is misleading. What Mason Grime (SentinelOfSomething) did was find the most outlandish line or scene in each episode, completely void of context. Alone, each one is pretty funny. Strung together, they are super weird and make you want to know how on earth they got to that point. Why does broccoli make Geordi nervous? What does Picard find romantic about horses? And while we aren't surprised to hear Worf make physical threats, it turns out that he is very often on the receiving end. -via Laughing Squid

A unique job opening for two people has been posted by East Brother Light Station in California. If you've dreamed about becoming a lighthouse keeper, this opportunity comes with living quarters overlooking both San Francisco Bay and San Pablo Bay, which is worth more than most jobs pay in itself. The salary is variable, but the last couple who held this position split $140,000 for a year. You also get health benefits and two weeks paid vacation. The downside is in the job description.

Innkeepers must assume the role of maid, boat captain, gift shop attendant, tour guide, host and chef with “high-quality culinary experience” to prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner.

***

Additionally, at least one of the innkeepers must have a Coast Guard Merchant Mariner Credential boat operator’s license, in order to safely ferry guests

You see, East Brother Light Station became a bed & breakfast (with supper) in order to pay for its own maintenance and preservation. Guests pay $475 to $525 a night to stay in one of the tiny island's five guest rooms. So you can see that the job comes with none of the solitude that the title of lighthouse keeper normally implies. After all expenses are paid for both the lighthouse maintenance and the business, the two keepers split what is left. So if you thought board would come with the room, keep in mind yours will come out of the profits. The job application is online. The position is for a two-year term, so be sure you can get along with your partner that long before applying.  -via Fark

Redditor /u/the_colorist is an adherent of the Burning Man lifestyle. Every year, he attends that countercultural festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada.

One of his recurring problems is that the beers that he carries on his bicycle go flat as it bounces around. He needed to hold them steady, so the_colorist invented and printed this automatic stabilizer.

In the reddit thread at the Burning Man subreddit, many commenters urge him to patent the idea, as they think that it has great money-making potential. He refuses to do so, but freely gives the CAD files to anyone who wishes. As a true believer in the Burning Man lifestyle, he sees profiting from the joy he can bring his fellow festival-goers as morally indecent.

-via Core77

What could be more festive than watching the family pets gather 'round the Christmas tree? Having them complete the tree trimming, of course! Your dogs might work collaboratively, but they would more likely take the ornaments off than to put them on a Christmas tree like this group of Spot robots. They are all good boys, and deserve all the head scritches and lithium grease treats you can give them. Until they turn on us. Yeah, yeah, I know- that would violate Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, but a robot is only as good as its programmer. Let's not think about that too much right now.

This is the new Christmas greeting from Boston Dynamics. Be sure to keep watching for the blooper at the end, which is bit comforting to see because we're not really ready for robots to be perfectly programmed all the time. However, I'm slightly disappointed that they didn't include a clip of Spot lifting its leg to relieve itself on the tree. -via Reddit

The town of Tallinn in Estonia claims to be the first town to ever put up a public Christmas tree, in the year 1441. Riga, Latvia, disputes that and claims to have been the first. But in Estonia, public Christmas trees are made into soda, specially produced to mix with gin. Estonian couple Maarit Pöör and Tarmo Virki established Lahhentagge Distillery in Saaremaa, and in 2019 began producing Estonic Soda, which comes in spruce, fir, and juniper flavors that come from the branches and needles of town square Christmas trees after the holiday is over. Unlike Christmas trees in a home, these massive municipal  trees stay fairly moist and fresh over the holiday by standing outside in freezing weather. The 56-foot tree in Kuressaare will produce enough infusion for 40,000 bottles of soda, and trees from other towns will be used as well. Read about turning Christmas trees into Estonic Soda at Atlas Obscura.

Redditor Bloodlustftw is visiting Enterprise, Alabama, for the holidays. He took this picture of a statue in front of the McDonald's outlet there. That's about the strangest Ronald statue we've ever seen, and we've seen some weird ones. It may remind you of Scrat from the Ice Age movies, or maybe Gonzo from the Muppets. Commenters who know Alabama instantly recognized it as a boll weevil. But why would a fast food mascot be turned into a boll weevil? The answer lies in Enterprise's history. The town has a permanent monument to the boll weevil, and its Wikipedia entry gives us a bit of history.   

The boll weevil (Anthonomus grandis), sometimes referred to as the "Mexican cotton boll weevil"^[3] was indigenous to Mexico, but appeared in Alabama in 1915. By 1918 farmers were losing whole crops of cotton. H. M. Sessions saw this as an opportunity to convert the area to peanut farming. In 1916 he convinced C. W. Baston, an indebted farmer, to back his venture. The first crop paid off their debts and was bought by farmers seeking to change to peanut farming. Cotton was grown again, but farmers learned to diversify their crops, a practice which brought new money to Coffee County.

In 2019, Enterprise launched a community art project to honor the 100th anniversary of the conversion to peanut farming, in which fiberglass boll weevil statues would be sponsored and decorated, the way Chicago did with cows and Cincinnati did with pigs some years ago. The result is Weevil Way, with dozens of 6-foot-tall insects with long proboscises, dressed for different occupations. This particular statue is named Ronald McWeevil, and his restaurant is at 652 Boll Weevil Circle. And now you know why Ronald McDonald looks funny in Enterprise.   

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