With Thanksgiving drawing near, people across the country must be preparing meticulously by now. Throwing a turkey into the oven and waiting for the timer to to pop are of the good old days now. Preparing a Thanksgiving meal has “become a taxing, high-stakes enterprise.”

In 2019, a proper turkey must — at minimum — be submerged for 24 hours in salty-sweet brine to safeguard guests from dry breast meat, the ultimate culinary failure. Ambitious cooks will deep-fry their (brined) turkeys in a cauldron of scalding oil — adding a bracing element of danger to the holiday meal — or they’ll smoke them over hickory chips on the backyard grill. While crispy, golden skin remains the hallmark of a perfectly cooked turkey, today’s cutting-edge birds often feature fancy glazes made of cider, citrus, coffee, curry, etc.

Don’t want to go through the trouble of brines, barbecues, glazes, and cooking oil? Try going classic and seemingly travel back through the ages — to the time when Thanksgiving occurred over candlelight, ovens were still wood fired and not electronically-powered, and the people that gathered at the table probably did not bathe. Transport your family and friends to 18th century Thanksgiving and have an unforgettable time with them.

Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library has resources to guide your gastronomic time travel.

“The Beinecke Library houses one of the world’s largest and most dynamic collections of rare books and manuscripts, including many historic and culturally significant cookbooks, and we’ve been delighted by how faculty use these resources in teaching,” said E.C. Schroeder, the library’s executive director. “Diligent researchers doubtlessly will also discover any number of intriguing recipes on which to base a crowd-pleasing holiday meal.”

In the library’s collections you’ll find “The New British Jewel or Complete Housewife’s Best Companion,” a slender volume from 1785 that offers “a choice variety of useful family receipts [recipes],” plus gardening tips, home remedies, and, helpfully, “a method of restoring to life people drowned, or in any other manner suffocated.”

More details about this one are at YaleNews.

(Image Credit: YaleNews)

It’s difficult to tell someone that you’re sick over the phone. Sending an email is an easier and better option. That’s what local TV reporter Nick Vasas did a few days ago. He decided to email a few of his colleagues to let them know he wasn’t going to work that day.

Unfortunately for Nick, he made a monumental blunder leading to a flood of concerned emails, a shrine being created and the hashtag #PrayersForNick being widely used on Twitter.

Instead of telling the handful of colleagues who would be affected by his absence, the traffic reporter for Kansas City FOX4 accidentally emailed the thousands and thousands of employees of the entire company, made up of stations across the country, using the 'breaking news' contact list.

Employees were then bombarded with 'reply all' responses with concerns for Nick as well-wishers sent their 'thoughts and prayers' from as far as Buffalo and Las Vegas.

Some however, did not see the humorous side of what happened.

What are your thoughts about this one?

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Thailand — After a video of an elephant squishing a car driving through Khao Yai National Park, park officials published on Wednesday 10 rules to follow when encountering a wild elephant.

The elephant, called Deu, sidled up to a car in Khao Yai National Park around 4pm Tuesday. In the video, he can be seen rubbing against it, before sitting fully on the vehicle. The panicked driver only drove away after his car suffered some damages.

“He usually likes to come to greet tourists anyway, but he never hurt anyone or any vehicles,” park director Kanchit Sarinpawan said Wednesday. “There were many factors that contributed to this, as we can see in the clip. We can see the driver was able to drive out, but he may have been too panicked to do so.”

While both the driver and the passenger remained unharmed, the car’s roof was dented, and the rear and side windows were broken.

(Video Credit: Khaosod English/ YouTube)

Nobody *expects* the Cybertruck pic.twitter.com/khhYNFaVKs

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2019

During the unveiling of Tesla’s Cybertruck, a staff managed to break the truck’s window using a rock. This left the Wall Street unimpressed. As the window shattered, the window of opportunity for the truck to sell also was shattered (aside from the failed presentation, critics also point out the strange design of the truck). The Cybertruck is made of stainless steel used in rockets and is priced at $39,000 and above.

Despite the presentation going horribly wrong and the failure to impress Wall Street, Tesla shares rose 4% on Monday, as Elon Musk tweeted that his company received 200,000 orders for its futuristic truck.

More details about this over at Reuters.

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(Image Credit: Elon Musk/ Twitter)

Want to know what’s better than a bowl of noodles with meat? That’s right! It’s more meat! This soba joint, called Fuji Soba, lets you add on to the regular amount of meat by ordering a double-size portion of meat. But the staff of SoraNews24 wonders, can they go even further than the double-size portion? They contacted Mr.Kudo, a representative of the soba joint.

“Mr. Kudo, can we ask for even more meat?” we asked, to which he cheerfully answered “Sure! How much were you thinking of?” “Well, uh, how about 20 times the normal amount?” we asked, fulling expecting him to shoot the idea down.

Instead, though, he smiled again and said “Sure!”

But while his mouth said “Sure!”, we couldn’t help but feel his eyes saying “Haha very funny SoraNews24. Yes, I am calling your bluff.” We weren’t bluffing, though, and so we headed to a Fuji Soba in Tokyo’s Koenji neighborhood with Mr. Kudo accompanying us. As we entered, Mr. Kudo introduced us to Mr. Takahashi, the Kichijoji branch’s manager.

Head over at the site to know what happened next.

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Radio presenter Dave Matthews has been struggling for a way to get his daughter Eden to brush her teeth for two minutes, which is the desired time frame when toothbrushing. So he launched a podcast titled Brushy. The podcast shares information that children like Eden might be interested in, like dinosaurs and worms. The said podcast is voiced over by none other than his adorable daughter Eden.

It has only been live for a week but there are already seven episodes to choose from, with Mr Matthews' daughter Eden prepared to pre-record more in the future.

At the beginning of each mini podcast Eden's voice encourages kids to pick up their toothbrush and apply toothpaste, before starting to brush.

It’s adorable and very informative.

(Image Credit: Daily Mail)

We may just regard scrambled eggs as the most basic dish. We may think that preparing such a dish is super easy, until we become the ones who prepare it. Despite it being deceptively simple, it is in fact one of the most difficult dishes to master.

So how do you make perfect scrambled eggs? Lifehacker provides us some tips on how to do so, no matter how we it cooked, whether fluffy or creamy. Check it out over at the site.

(Image Credit: Claire Lower)

Good news for people who suffer from migraine attacks. There is now a new drug that can relieve pain after just two hours, according to a new study.

For the estimated six million people in the UK who suffer migraine attacks, the new drug being trialed in the US offers hope for treatment – particularly for those who cannot take existing medication because of a heart attack or stroke risk.

The most common medication taken for migraines are triptans, which narrow the blood vessels in the brain. This process, however, is not safe, especially for those with pre-existing cardiac problems.

The new medication, Ubrogepant, is an oral pill that instead works by blocking a protein called GCRP (calcitonin gene-related peptide) in the nervous system, which is involved in pain signalling, blunting any discomfort.

More details about this medicine over at Independent.

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It’s that time of the year again where we gather around the table with our family or close friends and eat good food. But once you’re on the table with people, politics becomes an inevitable topic — you will talk about it, whether you like it or not. The Thanksgiving table then becomes not as a table of peace, but as a table of debate, insults, and quarrels. So how do you survive this season with such things in mind?

The Washington Post provides us some insightful tips on how to handle quarrels within the Thanksgiving table. Check them out over at the site.

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When 82-year-old bodybuilder Willie Murphy was preparing for bed, she heard a man outside asking for help. However, she would not let the man in. After all, why should she let someone into her house?

The man then became furious and broke in. But, unknown to him, he picked the wrong house.

“[The] young man is in my home,” recounts Murphy. “ [He] broke the door. And you know what? It was kind of semi-dark and I’m alone and I’m old,” she continues. “But guess what? I’m tough,” she says with conviction while showing her muscles on camera.

Find out what she did over at Today.

(Image Credit: Today)

Thanks to the advancements in technology, we can now access information with much ease. Don’t know the meaning of a word? Just type in the word and you have your answers in less than five seconds. Need references for your research? Just type in the keywords of your desired topic and you now have thousands of sources. But at what cost do we pay for such advancements? It seems that we lose as we get immersed in the Web, we lose a part of ourselves. But what is it?

...Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

More about this topic over at The Atlantic.

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Solar farms could be playing in the near future an essential role in the energy system 24 hours a day. A breakthrough trial has proved that they can help in balancing the grid at night. 

National Grid used a solar farm in East Sussex to help smooth overnight voltage fluctuations for the first time earlier this month, proving solar farms don’t need sunshine to help keep the lights on.

Lightsource BP, the owner of the solar farm, said an inexpensive tweak to the project’s electrical equipment meant it could help balance the grid with only two seconds’ notice. Kareen Boutonnat, the company’s chief operating officer, said: “We have proven that solar plants can play a larger role across the electricity network. But this is only the beginning.”

I hope this development will encourage everyone of us to use solar power. Although it might be expensive at first, it will cost less in the long run (and it’s eco-friendly, too!).

More details about this news over at The Guardian.

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Malaysia — The last of the Sumatran rhinoceros, named Iman, died of natural causes last Saturday due to shock in her system, according to the Wildlife Department in eastern Sabah state on Borneo island. Iman had uterine tumors ever since her capture in March 2014. Her death has made the Sumatran rhino extinct in Malaysia.

Department director Augustine Tuuga said in a statement that Iman, who reportedly was 25 years old, was suffering significant pain from growing pressure of the tumour to her bladder but that her death came sooner than expected.

It came six months after the death of the country’s only male rhino in Sabah. Another female rhino also died in captivity in 2017 in the state. Efforts to breed them have been futile but Sabah authorities have harvested their cells for possible reproduction.

[...]

The WWF conservation group estimates that there are only about 80 left, mostly living in the wild in Sumatra and Borneo in Indonesia.

This is sad news indeed.

(Image Credit: Reuters/ SCMP)

Schools across America are facing a major problem. About one out of two students in grades 4 through 12 have reported that they have experienced being bullied at least once in the past month. About one out of three students admitted to bullying others in the same time frame.

To try and solve this problem, this school tries to teach students the effects of bullying through the use of virtual reality.

“We needed a way to convey to those people, if you knew what this felt like, you might not do it,” says Michael Davino, the superintendent of the Springfield School District, who introduced VR technology into the curriculum last year.

“[The ultimate goal of virtual reality videos is] to open up to as many young people and adults as we can the serious and long-range impact of being mean-spirited, just to satisfy yourself, and that in the end, your satisfaction is fleeting, and those people are suffering.”

Check out more details about this news over at CBS.

What are your thoughts about this one? Do you think this will be effective?

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Can you feel the chilly winds of Thanksgiving? We are in that season again where we stuff ourselves with delicious food that will make our taste buds explode with joy and satisfaction. But which food rules them all? Of the many foods served in the season of Thanksgiving, which is the best?

The L.A Times offers us their official list of Thanksgiving Food Power Rankings. Check it out over at their site.

Do you agree with their list?

(Image Credit: Martina Ibanez-Baldor / Los Angeles Times)