Microwave ovens have been around for more than 50 years now. They come in all configurations, and people have different habits in using them. Do you try to get to it before the the time expires to avoid that annoying bell? Some folks hit the stop button just before the timer runs out, while others just open the door, assuming no microwaves will escape. I hear this is not good, especially for older microwaves, and can wear out the mechanism that stops the cooking when the doors opens. And there are some people who just open the door, leave it open, and never clear the remaining time. Namely, my younger daughter.

Whichever kind of microwave user you are, there's a browser game that might be very satisfying. Microwave is simple. There are four seconds left in the cooking time. Your goal is to open the microwave door as close to zero as possible without letting the bell go off. Your score will depend on it. The highest score is 10,000, and the sooner you open the door, the lower the score will be. There are plenty of reports of people achieving 10,000, but rarely on the first try. Others are still trying. -via Kottke

It's not quite as difficult as it used to be to get into the Guinness Book of World Records, because the categories have gotten very specific. Also, I would imagine the book has gotten very heavy. On November 26, Sky Elements Drone Shows (previously at Neatorama) teamed up with UVify to stage a Christmas display over Mansfield, Texas. A portion of the show was deemed worthy of a Guinness World Record for "largest aerial display of a gingerbread village image displayed by multirotors/drones" with 4,981 drones. It's so new that Guinness doesn't have a listing for it yet, but they do have pages of world records involving aerial drone displays, many of them from Sky Elements Drone Shows.

But world records aside, the Christmas light show featuring almost 5,000 drones was quite beautiful, from the massive turkey (this was before Thanksgiving) to Santa Claus waving to all. -via Laughing Squid

Every sitcom in the 1980s tried to present a Christmas episode, but there's only so many ways to get festive and heartwarming and still subvert expectations to make the audience laugh. The series Married... with Children went there with a rather gruesome premise that aired on December 20, 1987, totally played for laughs. In the episode "You Better Watch Out," a mall sales promotion went wrong, and a skydiver dressed as Santa Claus crashes to his death in the Bundy's backyard. Ed is obliged to dress up as Santa himself to distract a crowd of children who witnessed the fall so that the coroner can remove the body. You can see the episode at YouTube. It aired with a rare parental guidance warning.  

What you might not know is that the inspiration for the episode was a real Christmas skydiving disaster that happened in 1932. In that incident, no one actually died, but many children were left traumatized by witnessing Santa Claus falling from the sky and crash landing. Read how that came about at Cracked.

Sometimes chemical reactions are so cool that you don't need to fully understand them to be fascinated by them. Here's an experiment in physics and chemistry that will blow your mind. There aren't many metals that are liquid at room temperature. Besides mercury, there's an alloy called galinstan that's composed of gallium, indium, and tin. It has such a low melting point that it can be used as a substitute for mercury, which is quite toxic.

James Orgill of The Action Lab (previously at Neatorama) explains some of the properties that make galinstan so darn cool. It reacts with other chemicals in a way that animates it like the metal blobs are living things. But because these reactions are purely chemical and physical, they can be controlled. Can he make a blob of galinstan find its way through a maze? You bet! There's a skippable ad from 4:48 to 6:16. -via Damn Interesting

The South Korean TV series Squid Game took the world by storm in 2021. The drama features a clandestine game show in which 456 desperate people compete for one enormous cash prize. The catch is (spoiler alert) that the 455 people who don't win will be eliminated by death. It's a bloody dystopian commentary on wealth inequality and unchecked capitalism. Season two begins December 26th.

In a promotion rivaled only by the real game show Squid Game: The Challenge in missing the point, McDonald's Australia is offering a special meal and a contest based on the show. Macca's Squid Game Meal is not exactly a Happy Meal, but it comes in a decorated box and includes ten Chicken McNuggets, fries, a drink, and dalgona candy, a Korean treat stamped with shapes like those featured in season one of Squid Game, plus one stamped with McDonald's arches. If you can nibble your way to the arch shape, you'll be entered into a drawing for a Squid Game tracksuit. The promotion runs from December 11 to January 7 in Australia only. Only Aussies will be able to chomp down on McNuggets while thinking about those 455 people who didn't make it out of the game. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: McDonald's)

In 2002, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland brought us 28 Days Later, which introduced zombies that moved swiftly and were therefore even more dangerous. In 2007, we got the sequel 28 Weeks Later. You may have been under the impression that the trilogy was complete then, but it turns out that the 2000 film 28 Days has nothing to do with zombies. At any rate, the third movie in the series is coming to theaters. 28 Years Later will be released on June 20, 2025.

In the trailer above, the soundtrack stands out as particularly intriguing. It is a famous recording, a 1915 recitation of the Rudyard Kipling poem "Boots" read by actor Taylor Holmes. The poem is about the forced marches of British soldiers across southern Africa during the Second Boer War, its cadence echoing the psychological torture of the march. Read more about the poem and find more links at Metafilter.

Santa Claus does magical things every Christmas, like flying all over the world and fitting down a chimney, not to mention surviving at the North Pole. The real historical figure he's based on, Nicholas, the 4th century Bishop of Myra in Turkey, is also credited with many miracles, although his were not appropriate fodder for children's bedtime stories. People apparently treated each other terribly back then.  

We know little about the historical Nicholas. There are no contemporary accounts, and he left no writing. But he had a reputation as a generous man, giving away his inherited wealth, and for standing up for common people. Centuries after his death, stories were circulated about St. Nicholas, which have evolved over time. One of them involves a butcher who chopped up three little boys and stored their remains in a tub of brine. Nicholas arrived seven years later and brought the boys back to life. Even if a person's faith made them believe in the miracle, the crime itself makes no sense at all. It's a horrifying tale, but the boys' rescue is the kind of thing Nicholas would do. Read about that one and seven other rather gruesome miracle stories attributed to St. Nicholas at Mental Floss.

(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's ...sort of both. We think about bird flight as flapping wings, and plane flight as fixed wings and propellors or jets. But there is a lot more to bird flight than flapping wings. Birds take off by hopping into the air with their spring-loaded legs. A new drone project called RAVEN (Robotic Avian-inspired Vehicle for multiple ENvironments) combines the mechanics of birds and planes to give us a bird-inspired robotic drone, with vertical takeoff and landing.

Getting a bird's takeoff right wasn't easy, as you'll see in this video. Real birds have to learn how to launch themselves, and so do robotic drones. Notice they haven't exactly mastered the vertical landing yet, but they'll get there. Read about the research that went into the birdlike takeoff in the journal Nature. Then when you see a bird in the air, keep in mind that it could be a raven or maybe a RAVEN. -via Metafilter

Imagine, if you will, going to bed on Christmas Eve and instead of visions of sugarplums dancing in your head, you encounter Freddy Krueger invading your dreams! The Montreal Comiccon Holiday Edition was held over the weekend. This Christmas party gave cosplayers from all over a chance to get festive while still portraying their favorite pop culture characters, and boy, did they! They were pretty imaginative in mashing up movie characters and comic book superheroes with Santa Claus and his elves. Not all cosplayers went for a Christmas mashup, and some went totally Christmas. A few weren't even human!

Yes, that's Johnny Five from the 1986 movie Short Circuit, being all alive dressed as a Christmas tree. Geeks Are Sexy was there to take portraits of the best cosplayers, as they do. See and explore 47 of the best costumes from the Montreal Comiccon Holiday Edition in their gallery. Click on each photo to bring up the full-size version.

We all recognize the image of Nefertiti, the wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten, who ruled Egypt in the 14th century B.C.E. The limestone and stucco sculpture is 47 centimeters (18.5 inches) tall, with its original colors mostly intact. If the image is accurate, she was a beautiful woman. The visage matches other depictions of Nefertiti from the city that Akhenaten built, Tell el-Amarna.

The bust of Nefertiti resides in the Neues Museum in Berlin, a gift from German art collector James Simon in 1920. Simon did not find the bust, but he financed the German archaeological expedition that did. A team led by Ludwig Borchardt unearthed the bust on December 6, 1912, from a workshop identified as that of the sculptor named Thutmose. Borchardt wrote of the bust, "Description is useless, must be seen." The custom of the time was that Egyptian artifacts would be split between the archaeologists and Egyptian authorities, but there is some doubt as to whether those authorities ever got to fully see Nefertiti.

The ownership of the bust has been a sore spot between Egypt and Germany ever since. Even Hitler got involved, which is why to bust is still in Berlin. Read about the bust of Nefertiti and the hundred-year controversy over where it belongs at Smithsonian.  

(Image credit: Philip Pikart)

Have you ever been in for a medical exam of some kind and then decided that you wanted a second opinion? Sometimes you run into a doctor who has a biased outlook, or maybe you get the idea that he doesn't know what he is doing. In this case, it could well be both. This poor fellow just wants his vision checked, but it seems it's the optometrist who is looking for a second opinion. Just how clearly do you see these clues?  

It's not the client's vision that needs to be checked as much as it is the doctor who needs to be examined. I guess a random guy who might or might not need glasses is as good a subject as anyone. And after all this, the poor fellow will be billed $150 or so for his vision tests, not counting the glasses. The doctor should be paying him! -via reddit

We now have an online app that uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to examine your photos and render judgement. Former Google engineer Vishnu Mohandas and friends harnessed this app to Google’s computer vision API to render a detailed description of what AI sees and can figure out about your lifestyle from the details most people just gloss over. It's called TheySeeYourPhotos.

Our friend at Geeks Are Sexy uploaded the photo above, and the machine, against all odds, determined that he is a geek. I'm sure you are shocked. You can read the complete breakdown of the photo here. I tried it myself and found that the app does not work with images that have an .HEIC suffix, but it works with .jpg, .png, and probably other formats. Depending on the photo, it might return surprisingly accurate and creepy details about you. Mind you, I don't know if the images you upload to this app are stored and how they might be used, so think twice before you try it with images of people who might not want that. I tried this app with a couple of personal photos that I don't mind releasing into the world. The descriptions are pretty wordy, so you can continue reading if you're at all interested.

Tom BetGeorge has a real challenge to outdo himself with his holiday light shows. This Christmas, the computerized lights are supplemented by projections, laser lights, and fireworks, too! The segment above is a medley of songs from the 1980s, from Survivor, Van Halen, Wham!, Eurythmics, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, Journey, Fine Young Cannibals, Europe, Toto, Phil Collins, and Guns 'n' Roses.

BetGeorge moved to a more rural area in Linden, California, a few years ago with more room to put on his spectacular Halloween and Christmas light shows without bothering the neighbors. He also runs his own light show company. Here is the entire 23-minute show.



The full show begins with three Christmas trees who serve as masters of ceremony. The songs are as follows:

0:36 "Carol of the Bells" by Lindsey Sterling
4:03 "Satisfaction" by Benny Benassi
7:29 1980s medley
14:40 John Williams medley
20:01 "Wizards in Winter" by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra

-via Geeks Are Sexy

See BetGeorge's light shows from years past and see how they've grown.

You might not know the name Henry Every, but he was the pirate who made sailors want to be pirates. He gave the occupation its romantic aura because in 1695 he pulled off the most lucrative act of piracy in history, and then got away with it.

Every went from a career in the Royal Navy to employment as a captain in the slave trade. His life of piracy began when he was first mate on a Spanish expedition that involved raiding French ships. Paperwork stranded his ship and crew for months, and they were not paid, and so finally mutinied, taking the ship off to a life of plunder. Every was a talented leader of the pirates. Each ship they raided brought more and more men onto his fold, which tells us how well governments and trading companies treated their sailors.

Every built a fleet and allied with other pirates, and set upon a Mughal fleet that included the Ganj-i-Sawai, Emperor Aurangzeb's treasure ship laden with gold, silver, gems, and women slaves. The estimated take was between £325,000 and £600,000, a lot of money in 1695, which was the largest pirate plunder in history. That led to giving Every another distinction, as the first target of a global manhunt. Every's exploits ended up in newspapers, songs, literary works, and plays, giving piracy an exciting and romantic reputation. Read what Henry Every did to establish the Golden Age of Piracy at Amusing Planet.

Insect metamorphosis is astounding. We know that a caterpillar is the larval stage of a butterfly or moth. When they form a chrysalis and change into an adult, all their cells are ripped apart into a mass of living goo, which then reorganizes into a butterfly. Now, neurobiologists who study humans cite evidence that our memories are coded by the connections between neurons in our brains. When these brain cells are separated as they in butterflies, one would think that the process destroys all the caterpillar's memories -but it doesn't! There might be something in the neurons themselves that retains memory, or in the chemicals that make up the brain, or there might be something in the process of metamorphosis that we don't yet understand. It could also be that insect brains are just way different from mammal brains.

What else is amazing is how they figured this much out. What kind of memories does a caterpillar have that we can study? Tom Lum of SciShow explains the research into insect brains and metamorphosis. There's a 45-second skippable ad at 3:30.