December is the darkest month of the year, so candles, once necessary, are now associated with Christmas. You are liable to light a few yourself, so you may as well learn the science behind what makes them dangerous. See, what actually burns in a candle flame is not the solid or liquid wax, nor the wick, but the vapor of the wax.  

James Orgill of the Action Lab (previously at Neatorama) starts this video with a spectacular reaction you may not see coming. Maybe we should have noticed that he's using a long stick to keep it far away. Apparently this reaction is internet fodder, yet is rarely explained accurately. It's not really new, either, as one commenter relates.

This looks dangerous, but it's a phenomena that would rarely happen in everyday life. Don't try to replicate this stunt, and you'll just need to follow the safety rules we all know about burning candles. The video has a two minute skippable ad at 2:30.  -via Damn Interesting 

It seems simple: people who evolved near the equator have dark skin to protect their bodies from the sun, while people who settled closer to the poles lost melanin to take advantage of scarce sunlight. It's not quite that simple. New research shows that most European people, who settled there 45,000 years ago, had dark skin up into the Iron Age, about 3,000 years ago, when the number of pale-skinned people became the majority. Even more surprising, the genes for lighter skin didn't proliferate from mutations in northern Europe- they migrated in from what is now Turkey.  

These findings come from genetic studies on individual Europeans, such as Cheddar Man, who lived 10,000 years ago, and Ötzi the Iceman, who lived 5,300 years ago, plus others even older now that we have tools to analyze degraded DNA. You might also be surprised to learn that blue eyes became common in Europe long before pale skin and hair. Read about the genetic studies that revealed what ancient Europeans looked like at ZME Science. -via Real Clear Science 

Tomorrow is the first day of Advent--the countdown to the birth of Jesus in the Western Christian tradition. Advent calendars marking out these individual days are popular. In the past, we've seen Advent calendars inspired by Die Hard, filled with whisky, and one using a Dalek as its shape.

The Czech firm of Podnikovka offers this Advent sausage. Slice off a piece each day in preparation for Christmas.

-via Messy Nessy Chic

The iconic "Hotel California" by the Eagles has been covered in many different genres, including bluegrass, and instruments, such as bagpipes. It remixes well and calls to people from different cultures and generations.

So it is proper that Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox ("Today's hits yesterday") would put the 1977 classic into a prior era. In this case, that's midcentury Cuban jazz. Actor and musician Rogelio Douglas, Jr. performs it. It's beautiful and, as one commenter puts it, authentic:

In a world where everyone and their mother are using AI to do genre-bending covers, PMJ still stands head and shoulders above the rest with real talent and incredible singers and performers.

-via The Awesomer

in my friend’s apartment, there is a subway LED banner with live updates of when the trains by him depart

I NEED ONE IMMEDIATELY pic.twitter.com/Z16zElnx5E

— whizwang (@whizwang) November 14, 2025

When does the next train on the red line depart from the station nearest your home? It might be helpful to have an up to date banner sign within sight so that you always know by just turning your head.

Nook Woodworking in Brooklyn makes this LED sign for, specifically, New York City. It stays synced in real time with your preferred MTA lines. Hopefully, they'll offer it for other cities in the future.

-via Super Punch

The purpose of a tree, as far as the tree is concerned, is to gather sunlight and water. The fact that a tree magically converts those things into building material and fuel is the purpose of a tree as far as humans are concerned. But first, trees had to compete with all other plants to get that sunlight, so they grew tall, and had to come up with a system to gather and utilize water over distances. 

That system relies on physics that are hard for humans to replicate. It also depends on a form of cellular suicide. The upshot is that even when a tree is healthy and functioning, a majority of it is dead. The dead parts form a strong scaffold for the tree to grow tall and to protect it from the dangers of the world around it.    

Kurzgesagt explains what's happening on the inside of a tree in a way that will make you respect these plants more than you already do. This video is less than ten minutes long (they promise a part two); the rest is promotional. -via Nag on the Lake 

The blessing of getting old is that you survived long enough to do it. Randall Munroe of What If? and xkcd didn't put much of his personal life into his comics when he first started out, but we all knew when he fell in love. Then in 2010, Munroe's fiancée (now wife) was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer. He related some of his emotional journey in his webcomic xkcd. We learned how profoundly hardcore the treatment is, and how precarious the prognosis is even after treatment. But the couple made sure to stuff a lot of experiences into the time they have. 

Munroe posted updates every so often, like the two year "biopsy-versary" and the seven year mark. Now it's been 15 years since the diagnosis that changed their lives, and Munroe has commemorated it with another comic. The panel above is only a small snippet; you need to go see it in a larger size (and there is a hover text, too). The past is in lighter ink to bring us up to new material, in bolder drawings. -via Metafilter 

You know that song about Rudolph, you love it, but you've never heard it like this. It's just the thing for someone who is not at all serious about the Christmas season. All kinds of singers and bands have recorded Christmas songs, but they usually keep the original tune, if not the original style. In this version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," the tune is changed as well as the style, to that of "Higher" by Creed. The vocals are not Scott Stapp, but rather Dustin Ballard of There I Ruined it (previously at Neatorama). 

Creed's version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is from the new There I Ruined It album titled A Very Ruined Christmas, featuring "99 Problems:Christmas Edition" and "Rap God: Christmas Edition." Alas, it is only available to Patreon members. Still, its existence hints that we may have more Christmas songs from There I ruined It coming soon. 

Kate Wagner has discovered a home for sale in Alvin, Texas (near Houston), that she says really should be in Florida, I guess because it's blue and it has portholes. Now, I'm not averse to houses coming in unconventional colors, having one such house myself, but I can't imagine using the same color scheme in every room. This 8-bedroom, 10-bathroom home takes blue to the extreme. But it's not just the color; it's the oversized everything and the rococo decorating that make this place as ugly as you can make a nearly $3 million home. 

You can try to be kind and say that the person who had this built had a clear vision of what their personal dream home would be, and made sure it happened. But then you see it was built in 2023! That means that the person with the dream saw the finished product and said, "Naw. I don't want this." Or else the landowner was confident that someone in the area with plenty of money would really want a house with so much blue you can't do much about it. Read Wagner's takedown at McMansion Hell. 

Cat lover Half-Asleep Chris (previously at Neatorama) has a new kitten named Henry, who is active, adorable, and much funnier than his adult cats. So Henry was the perfect choice to test out a series of ten mechanical animals for their value as cat toys. Oh, the other cats, Bella and Ralph, got a chance to interact with the toys, but they quickly figured out they weren't real animals, so their reactions are only shown here when they add to the video's humor. Henry, on the other hand, is in kitten heaven. 

Henry's reactions to each animal robot are not exactly scientifically significant, but they are entertaining. He also spends quite a bit of time in this video licking cat food off a glass table. And somewhere along the way, you get the idea that Chris and his cat experiments are an excuse for buying more and more toys.  -via Laughing Squid

Neuropathy in the extremities--a loss of sensation--is an effect of diabetes. When a person with this condition loses sensation in the soles of their feet, they experience increased falling risks. Design Boom reports that the startup company MYNERVA in Zurich, Switzerland is developing socks with electrodes that help people with diabetes experience sensation while walking.

The company has named the device Leia because the visual appearance of the sensors are reminiscent of Princess Leia's hairbuns. The socks, which are controlled with a smartphone app, indicate to the user when they are in contact with the ground.

MYNERVA plans to release the product in the USA in 2027.

Olly Hawes is a British actor with experience on the stage and screen. Years ago, during a student production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Hawes had the titular role. As he writes in The Guardian, he was unprepared for the necessary realism that one of his fellow performers brought to the assassination scene. Due to a mishap, the performer of Brutus stabbed him with a real knife:

There was a sharp piercing feeling. The knife was supposed to have been quietly slipped to me – instead, it had gone into my back. I realised what had happened while acting out my character’s death, and thinking: I have to lie here until the lights go down.

But the show must go on, so Hawes lay still with a blade a mere centimeter from his aorta. When the lights went down, Hawes asked for an ambulance. He left while the play continued with the audience unaware of the accident.

It's unclear who took up the role of Caesar's ghost after Hawes left.

Instagram user June Cleaver's Vintage Closet shared this image of a Thanksgiving dinner-themed Enterprise model. Its five hour mission is to explore strange new dishes, seek out new tastes and new recipies, and to boldly expand the waistline where no stomach has gone before.

I think the design originates with MakerWorld member Fixumdude. Various alterations are available to reflect different preferences in pies, as well as light meat vs. dark meat. He also provides downloadable files and specific 3D printing filament suggestions. Now load up your plate, pour some Aldebaran whiskey,  and get ready to watch the parrises squares game on the viewscreen.

UPDATE 12/3/2025: Geeks Are Sexy was delighted by this design and 3D printed their own. Then they made this song about the toy:

Have you ever seen a snail that looked old, ugly, saggy, or tepid? Of course not. Snails always look youthful, vibrant, and moisturized. So it makes sense to pay spas a lot of money to put snails on your face.

Ideally, you want to biggest snails available, specifically giant African land snails (Lissachatina fulica) because they have the most mucus. According to one cosmetics company, the mucus not only rejuvenates your skin, but also gently massages your flesh as the snails roam across your body (you can opt for locations other than your face).

Who would like to go first?

-via David Thompson

Dr. Claire Lamman is an astronomer at the Ohio State University. She is also--in her own words--a "procrastibaker." She bakes elaborate sweets inspired by astronomical phenomenon and equipment, including a Voyager I gingerbread space probe and Very Large Array radio telescope, both made of gingerbread.

This Thanksgiving, Lamman made this precisely shaped and colored pie that looks like the Kitt Peak National Observatory, which is in southern Arizona.

It looks a lot like the real facility.

Photo of Kitt Peak by NOIR Lab