Thanksgiving originates as a Christian holiday, but that doesn't stop the Jewish Meme Queen from getting into the spirit of the occasion. She made this challah loaf shaped like a turkey. It's called the Turchallah.
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Les Fo'Plafonds is a French musical ensemble that makes instruments with found objects and plays them masterfully with covers of popular songs. In this video, they recreate Henry Mancini's iconic jazz theme for The Pink Panther film series. They use plastic pipes, rubber chickens, steel drums, and an impressively large number of plastic pink pigs.
The other covers by Les Fo'Plafonds include the theme to The Smurfs, AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" featuring a refrigerator door and a toaster, the Simpsons theme with bottles, PVC pipe, and a steam iron.
-via The Awesomer
Although I prefer to attribute the origin of the Reuben sandwich to divine intervention into the fallen human world, a more historical acknowledgment belongs to a man named Reuben who invented the sandwich for his weekly poker games at the Blackstone Hotel in Omaha, Nebraska.
The Crescent Moon Alehouse across the street from that hotel produces its Reubens in the classical style. It also holds an annual ReubenFest that celebrate's America's greatest sandwich. Featured variants of the Reuben include the Reuben Chimichanga and Reuben Pierogi.
This is one of sixteen restaurants that Takeout insists are the best in the country for Reubens.
My fondest memory of the Reuben is a now long-defunct Greek restaurant named The Oven on Dolly Ridge Road in Birmingham, Alabama that served Reubens on pumpernickel buns the size of footballs. They were, alas, too good for this world.
Photo: Crescent Moon
My proposed monopoly house rules:
— Harmony Ginger (@Gingerblast) November 21, 2025
Pot of Greed - If you have the most money at the start of your turn, you may draw 2 cards from a standard deck of playing cards. They are worth money equal to their value x 10 or may be used in combat (see combat rules below)
En passant capture… https://t.co/89wD5gu2sD
Tabletop gamer Harmony Ginger suggests some custom rules for Monopoly to spice up gameplay.
I especially like the idea of Free Parking Random Encounter, although it would necessitate each player have a complete character sheet.
Perhaps players could also, instead of taking turns, roll for imitative each round to determine who goes first.
What house rules do you use for Monopoly?
Design Boom reports that engineers at Northwestern University have developed a haptic feedback device that allows users to interact with digital environments with high resolution. The VoxeLite functions like a bandage that wraps around a finger. The very thin sheet is covered with tiny nodes where the fingertip is. Each node has its own electrode that adheres it to a surface when voltage is applied.
The VoxeLite replicates human touch for digital screens without blocking the natural sensation of physical contact. The researchers hope that future versions will allow for use with tactile maps or provide for haptic feedback in games.
Photo: Northwestern University
John Williams is perhaps the most widely known orchestral composer due to his long career of music authoring for films, including Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Saving Private Ryan.
One associates Williams with grand, dramatic spectacles that use a whole orchestra to emotionally enrapture audiences, not...calypso.
But that's what he made when Sherwood Schwartz's 1964-1967 sitcom Gilligan's Island. Williams introduced the characters and premise for the pilot episode. Schwartz disliked it and instead went with the more familiar version by George Wyle.
Wyle's version written in the standard "ballad metre", which is why it's possible to sing it to the tune of "Amazing Grace" and "The House of the Rising Sun."
Lady Chatterley's Lover is a famous or infamous erotic novel by D.H. Lawrence. He published it privately in 1928. It was banned in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, and other nations as obscene. It was scandalous for not only its sexual content (or so I've been told; I've never read it), but because it upended class norms by depicting an affair between an upper-class woman and the lower-class gamekeeper who worked at her estate.
In 1959, the US Supreme Court ruled that the law banning the novel violated the First Amendment to the Constitution. That same year, Field & Stream, an American magazine about hunting and fishing, reviewed Lady Chatterley's Lover. It is, after all, a novel about gamekeeping. Ed Zern wrote the brief review:
Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been reissued by the Grove Press, and this fictional account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is still of considerable interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper.
Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savor these sidelights on the management of a Midlands shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion this book cannot take the place of J.R. Miller's Practical Gamekeeping.
Ed Zern, a humorist, is being facetious: there is no such book as Miller's Practical Gamekeeping. But it would make sense that much of Lawrence's novel contains scenes that are extraneous to the needs of hunters.
Nick Chipman of DudeFoods is one of the great pioneers of extreme food preparation. In the past, we've seen his corndog made with five different types of sausage, ice cream cone made out of Fruity Pebbles, pizza crust stuffed with cheese balls, a crookie (a combination croissant and cookie), s'mores chicken wings, Reuben sandwich cone, a sandwich with fillings for each letter of the alphabet, and a hamburger bun made of French fries. He's what would happen if Leonardo da Vinci and Julia Child had a baby together.
Chipman's most recent creation is a pan of brownies stuffed with entire McDonald's apple pies inside. This is definitely the sort of pie that should be available at the Thanksgiving table.
What does food say about the nation that prepares it? This is the starting point for research by Óscar Cabral, whose article in Frontiers in Political Science examines the menus of 457 state dinners presented by Portugal between 1910 and 2024. Cabral treats menus as political documents that express trends in Portugal's internal politics and diplomatic objectives over the course of a century.
The first year, 1910, is fitting because it is the year in which a revolution permanently overthrew the 800-year old monarchy. In a press release, Cabral explains that although Portugal has not had a clearly defined "culinary diplomatic strategy" since the foundation of the Portuguese republic, certain trends are clearly evident.
For example, during the nationalist Estado Novo period, state dinners offered less of the traditional French cuisine offered to foreign diplomats and instead emphasized authentic Portuguese foods. This trend culminated in a 1957 state dinner offered to Queen Elizabeth II with a menu designed by Portugal's most respected ethnographer at the time.
-via Discover magazine
Mike Judge's finest character creations are perhaps Beavis and Butthead, the stars of the entertainment franchise that bears their names. Yes, these two teens from Highland, Texas have delighted generations of fans since their initial appearance in 1992, ultimately appearing on 298 television episodes and 2 feature films).
Entertainers such as Beavis and Butthead sometimes produce children's books to demonstrate that their artistry extends beyond the screen. Hence this parody of the works of Dr. Seuss.
Lumbass the Dumbass by Dr. Beavis & Dr. Butthead#BeavisAndButthead #DrSeuss pic.twitter.com/EkBTt1qKFd
— Badgerclops (@beeclops2) November 13, 2025
Content warning: crude and juvenile behavior typical of Beavis and Butthead.
-via reddit
Since its initial publication in 1947, the picture book Goodnight Moon written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd has enchanted and haunted generations of readers.
Could you sleep in such a room? Even if the spectral old woman in the room whispering, "hush"? Let's find out by staying at this special hotel suite at the Sheraton Boston Hotel. Fast Company reports that guests can book it from now until February 28 with prices that start at $399 a night. Amenities include a copy of the book, a bunny plush, and themed cookies inspired by the bowl full of mush.
Photo: Marriott
When the people of Texas overthrew the Santa Anna's shackles of centralist tyranny and established the Republic of Texas, General Sam Houston served as the second President of the Republic.
President Houston's government was located in the sixth and penultimate capital of the Republic--the nascent City of Houston. Pictured above is the Presidential Residence in 1837, a year after independence.
The Texas historical X account Traces of Texas informs us that the famous naturalist John J. Audubon visited President Houston and his cabinet in this home. It was a rough but serviceable home. A current Google Street View of the location at 405 Main Street reveals significant construction since 1837.
When we first see a holodeck on the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Data uses it to create a beautiful forest. We later see it in the franchise for recreational and training purposes. And let's not mention Reginald Barclay's unique and private uses for the holographic technology.
Adam Schwartz, a YouTuber who makes videos that lampoon Star Trek, gently suggests that "what happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck." He knows exactly how he would use it if granted sufficient privacy and confidentiality.
Where is your mind going? No, that's not what Schwartz has in mind for his holodeck time.
-via reddit
The annual Farmer's Almanac, which provided readers with weather predictions and tips for cooking, gardening, and home medical remedies, will cease publication in 2026 and its website will shut down in December of that year. The Hill reports that this icon of Americana was first published in 1818. It has financially struggled for years and is no longer a viable enterprise.
NiemanLab notes that the Farmer's Almanac is distinct from the Old Farmer's Almanac, which appears in calendar format and provides weather predictions. That publication, which first appeared in 1792, will continue to provide people with occasionally accurate weather forecasts.
-via Marginal Revolution
Ricardo Daniel de Paula is an engineer. But like every working person in the world, he's actually into sales. He's selling himself to prospective employers and this business card is an ingenious way to immediately stand out among his competitors in the job market as an inventive and skilled engineer.
At Hack A Day, de Paula describes how he designed and built this PCB board with a USB-C interface that turns this business card into a peripheral keyboard. It demonstrates capacitive touch technology, which is one of de Paula's specialties, and is inexpensive enough that, in limited numbers, de Paula can give it away.
-via Nag on the Lake
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