As he has in years past, Clark Zhu has taken the biggest movies of the year and compiled them into an emotional three-minute video. Relive the memories of 2019, at least those memories made in a theater. You'll find a list of the movies used, with timestamps, at Zhou's website. He hints that this will be his last year-end compilation.

When you were a kid, it was always fun to play Operation, a game in which you fished parts out of a patient named Cavity Sam, and you had be precise or you'd complete an electric circuit and a buzzer would sound. It was not the first game based on an electric circuit- Ben Franklin actually developed one! And the idea behind Operation was originally based on believe it or not, desert survival.

John Spinello created the initial concept for what became Operation in the early 1960s, when he was an industrial design student at the University of Illinois. Spinello’s game, called Death Valley, didn’t feature a patient, but rather a character lost in the desert. His canteen drained by a bullet hole, he wanders through ridiculous hazards in search of water. Players moved around the board, inserting their game piece—a metal probe—into holes of various sizes. The probe had to go in cleanly without touching the sides; otherwise it would complete a circuit and sound a buzzer. Spinello’s professor gave him an A.

Spinello sold the idea to Marvin Glass and Associates, a Chicago-based toy design company, for US $500, his name on the U.S. patent (3,333,846), and the promise of a job, which never materialized.

Read the story of how Operation came about, and how it charmed several generations of players at IEEE Spectrum. -via Boing Boing

Have you ordered your Christmas cards yet? If you've been waiting to see what artist PJ McQuade has new this year, you're in for a treat. New pop culture Christmas cards include the cast of Dune, The Neverending Story, and the Thicc Thanos card you've been clamoring for.



These designs join old favorites such as the Star Wars collection, which has expanded to 15 images with new designs and updates to give old favorites more holiday flavor.

He also has Christmas cards from Star Trek, Alien, The Karate Kid, Die Hard, Godzilla, The Office, Breaking Bad, Twin Peaks, It, and more. Check them all out at McQuade's new online store Castle McQuade. Pull down the "categories" menu to find something from your favorite pop culture world. Many of these designs are available as Christmas tree ornaments, refrigerator magnets and stickers as well.   

You'd recognize what "vomit art" is, even if you've never heard those words together before. The term arose from social media quite recently to refer to a certain style of vintage kitsch. According to Urban Dictionary, it's

“A mid-century trend where it was fashionable to suspend pieces of rocks and glass in color resin, often made into mantlepiece clocks. The result looks like regurgitated gelatin salad full of fruit bits. The term ‘vomit clock’ came into popularity on a thrift store Facebook page. Any other object made this way can be called ‘vomit.'”

But it's not just rocks and glass. You also see examples with shells, insects, or bits of food such as corn enshrined in resin. An article at Par To Perfect looks at the resurgence in popularity of such objects, but it's not clear whether people want them because they honestly like them, or they just want to make everything else they own look better by comparison. It could be that no one is actually buying vomit art; they could be just taking pictures in thrift shops to share on the internet. -via Metafilter

Think of the two most awkward, wooden acting performances you've seen in your life. Yeah, that would be Hayden Christensen in the Star Wars prequels and Tommy Wiseau in The Room. This mashup from PistolShrimps puts them together, not only in the same story, but in an intimate relationship that somehow produces a son named Mark (Hamill). The story also involves Obi-Wan, Yoda, Leia, and Kylo Ren. The tale is completely bonkers, but the editing is exquisite -except for that stupid football.

There are 91 new Christmas movies available this year, almost all of them made for TV. They can be found on the Hallmark Channel, Lifetime, Netflix, and a few other outlets. Most of them have already premiered, but will be shown again and again (check your cable listings), and streaming services have them on demand. Vulture has a synopsis of all of them. You can have fun with this list without even watching the movies, by matching them up with John Atkinson's Christmas Movie chart. Within those parameters, they vary by flavor from cinnamon to peppermint. And sometimes they are even self aware.   

A Christmas Movie Christmas (UPtv, October 27 at 7 p.m.): This Christmas movie is about a fan of Christmas movies named Eve who finds herself transported into a Christmas movie (in this, a Christmas movie) on Christmas Eve. This is both a genius premise and a prime opportunity for me to endorse one of my favorite movies of the decade, Disney Channel’s Teen Beach Movie, a teen beach movie about teens on a beach who get sucked into a teen beach movie within the teen beach movie.

Read about all 91 movies, many of them with trailers, at Vulture. -via Digg

(Image credit: UPTV)

A fan film by MaxeBaumannFilms2013 uses footage from the movie Revenge of the Sith combined with the Disney+ TV series The Mandalorian to give us a battle between Darth Sidious (also known as Emperor Palpatine) and Baby Yoda. One is a Sith lord, while the other is an infant without the strength or muscle control to walk, but who can harness the Force and wield a lightsaber with the best of them. If you're concerned about the title having "2" in it, you aren't missing anything, because this video has all of part one in it, plus the end of the battle. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Stop-motion animation is such a familiar idea to us that young children try it at home. But you have to wonder about the pioneers that came up with the idea more than 100 years ago. Aftre all, it was a serious investment in both time and money back then. Vox takes us back to the early 20th century, when Wladyslaw Starewicz had a hard time getting stag beetles to fight each other for an educational film. -via Kottke

Toothbrushes have been around for hundreds of years. This article is about electric toothbrushes, which are less than 100 years old -but probably older than you had imagined. The history of the electric toothbrush is written here from a United Kingdom point of view, but don't be so fast to make jokes about British teeth. Research shows the state of British dental health has risen immensely since the National Health Service was instituted. Today the market for electric toothbrushes is dominated by two companies.  

Now, there are 41 different electric toothbrush options on the Oral-B website alone – some of which are different colours of the same essential kit (staid “black” versus exciting “anthracite grey”, for instance), but many of which have different features. They range in value from the Vitality Plus, which you can get for less than £20, to the all-singing, all-dancing Genius X Limited Edition with Artificial Intelligence (really), which will set you back £340. At the time of writing, Oral-B’s main rival, Philips Sonicare, offers the CleanCare+ for £18, the DiamondClean Smart for a rather steeper £299.99, and a wide variety of options in between. The high-end options are, of course, Bluetooth® enabled. The industry is worth – depending on which market report you believe – between £1 billion and £2 billion a year, and is projected to keep on growing. As developing economies grow and gain disposable income, more and more people in once-poorer countries are buying them.

But in the end, they’re still toothbrushes. They still have a single goal: to make your teeth and gums healthier. The question is: do they work?

And that's the question. The real value in the article is how it explains the state of the research into electric vs. manual brushing, and what it means for consumers, at Wired. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: William Warby)

A story from the 17th century illustrates how very easy it was to ruin someone's life with the slimmest of evidence. Was it superstition, a personal vendetta, or a tendency to go along with the crowd that brought down a man named Looten? It may've been combination of all three.  

Local intelligence had it that Looten, a 60-year-old man who lived in the parish of Meteren in French Flanders, was a sorcerer. When Looten gave a boy some plums, and the boy died a month later, his neighbors put two and two together and realized that Looten must have cursed the fruit. Disturbed at the accusation, Looten trusted that the authorities of his community had enough sense to clear him of any wrongdoing. In September 1659, the concerned cattle merchant turned himself in to bailiff (and prosecutor) Jacques Vanderwalle, asking for a trial. Vanderwalle agreed and put Looten under arrest.

After two days of inquiries, Vanderwalle had made up his mind. Looten was obviously guilty of the charge,and twelve witnesses who could confirm it were willing to testify against him.

That was only the beginning of Looten's problems. Thereafter followed trial, torture, humiliation, theft, and death. Read the grisly details at Bizarre and Grotesque. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Luisfi)

Every year, these friends get together and spend the month of November growing their beards -except for the guy on the right; he is an EMT and cannot grow a beard due to his job. It's part of No Shave November, a campaign to promote cancer awareness. And every year since 2013 they get together to do a picture based on a theme. And also every year, redditor jammies shows us what they've been up to. This year that theme is the Old West. As you can see, they are the maniac, the bank robber, the sheriff, the fighter, and the bartender. Her boyfriend is the bank robber. Here is a collection of all seven years that have been photographed.

You can enlarge the image here.

Mary Farmer had always lived in poverty, but things had turned worse. Her husband James lost his job, and she'd just had a baby. They all lived in a hovel, a rental house in upstate New York. Mary wanted more. She wanted a bigger, nicer home for her family, like the one that belonged to their landlord, Sarah Brennan. Sarah's husband Patsy had been James' supervisor before he lost his job. They lived in a well-built two-and-a-half story home next door to the Farmers.

Mary Farmer wanted that house, and in October 1907, she decided to take it [PDF]. She went down to the office of the county clerk in nearby Watertown seeking to transfer possession of the Brennan home, as well as her own residence, to her name. Posing as Sarah Brennan, she told the clerk that the Farmers had purchased the properties from her for $2100. She said that all she needed was a document declaring the Farmers the rightful owners.

If the clerk had any suspicions, he didn’t act on them. He notarized the deed and Mary made it official by forging Sarah’s signature. Now, the only thing stopping her from moving into the home were its current residents.

Once Mary pulled off the deed deed, so to speak, the plan to occupy the house went into overdrive, leading to murder charges. Read the story of the tenant and the landlord at Mental Floss.

(Unrelated image credit: Flickr user saxarocks)

DM: ‘You come to large wooden door.’

Cat: ‘I knock at the door.’

DM: ‘An orc opens it and asks you to come in.’

Cat: ‘I do nothing.’

DM ‘He asks you to come inside again.’

Cat: ‘I do nothing.’

DM: ‘Eventually the orc tires and closes the door.’

Cat: ‘I knock at the door.’ pic.twitter.com/j4BntWApxW

— DungeonMaster Ewington (@AndiEwington) November 26, 2019

What happens when a dog and a cat play Dungeons & Dragons? Dungeonmaster @AndiEwington knows. The world they enter is magical, but the dog and the cat still act like, well, a dog and a cat. They see the world through different eyes, and only follow instructions the way they do in everyday life.

Dog: ‘I want to cast Animal Friendship.’

DM: ‘On what?’

Dog: ‘The cat in my party.’

DM: ‘Cat, roll for your saving throw’.

(Passes)

DM: ‘It doesn’t work’.

Cat: ‘I’m going to kill you in your sleep tonight.’

Dog: .... pic.twitter.com/zUWqvgnaVj

— DungeonMaster Ewington (@AndiEwington) November 26, 2019

Follow the game at Threadreader, or the entire Twitter thread with responses. Ewington also posted a version without the pictures if that's easier for you to read. -via Metafilter

If you were around in 1997, you might recall seeing this Pizza Hut ad featuring the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev was a reformist who opened the door to peaceful revolution, yet represented the Communist Party to the end. However, the collapse of the Soviet Union brought perilous economic turbulence that affected Gorbachev as well as millions of everyday Russians. By the mid-90s, he needed money. And Pizza Hut, which had stepped into the Soviet Union just before it ended, saw an opportunity.

The concept obviously exploited the shock value of having a former world leader appear. But the ad played on the fact that Gorbachev was far more popular outside Russia than inside it. As late as October 1991, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed that 54 percent of Americans wanted to see Gorbachev as the head of the Soviet Union, compared with only 18 percent for Yeltsin. And warm feelings toward Gorbachev persisted in the West long after the Soviet Union dissolved. “In contrast to his unpopular standing at home,” the political scientist Andrew Cooper writes in Diplomatic Afterlives, “Gorbachev retained superstar standing abroad as a visionary statesman.” At home, Gorbachev was a pariah. Abroad, he was an elder statesman and celebrity, far more beloved than the buffoonish Yeltsin.

Still, getting Gorbachev to promote pizza was a complicated story, which you can read at Foreign Policy.  -via Damn Interesting

Once upon a time, there were no remote controls for television sets. Dads everywhere taught their children to change the channels so they could stay in their recliners and watch. I was put to work doing that at an extremely young age, and it wasn't hard to figure out what channel Dad wanted because we only had two. The first remote controls were connected to the set with wires. That was a floor hazard, though, and in 1955, a wireless remote hit the market. The Zenith Flash-Matic was a flashlight that you aimed at the front of your TV set. Really. The complicated bits were on the TV itself, which you can read about at Vintage Everyday.  -via Nag on the Lake