We've already read about the worst Christmas gifts, which was quite sad. Here's a gift guide that's a little more lighthearted that recommends actual products you can order -as long as you allow plenty of time for delivery. Supply chain issues, you know. When you feel obligated to give a gift to someone you really don't like, you don't show your hand by getting something way too cheap, or used, or ridiculously mundane. No, you get them something with plausible deniability. It's new, it's trendy, it came at the expected price, but it will eventually cause problems for the recipient.

Naomi Kritzer has published her annual gift guide for people you hate, broken down into categories. How about a kit or some supplies for a difficult new hobby that the recipient never expressed any interest in? Or maybe gadgets for a home office that is already cramped, or even your public office, where a tape dispenser that plays the cymbals when you use it will amuse coworkers (shown above). There are always single-purpose kitchen appliances that will be little used, but take up valuable kitchen space, whether on the counter or in the pantry. And you might consider a subscription to a magazine that completely counters the recipient's political ideology. Charity donations are good for that, too. Read more of these ideas, with links to specific products for giggles, at Will Tell Stories For Food. -via Everlasting Blort

"When it rains, it pours." You've probably said this when something bad happens, then something else bad happens, or many bad things happen all at once. It's an old proverb that makes sense, right? Except it's not an old proverb at all. It's an advertising slogan from Morton Salt. Their advertising agency originated the saying, which has nothing to do with coincidence, but everything to do with humidity.

Morton salt was innovative in other ways. The distinctive cylindrical box with a spout on top is the way every brand of salt is packaged now, but it was so unique when it launched in 1911 that they patented the metal pouring spout. And that's all before we get to the Morton Salt girl, which is explained in detail at History Daily. -via Metafilter

Enjoy a minute of creative animation by Michel Gondry (previously at Neatorama), starring a dozen eggs doing quite ridiculous things. You may wonder why it appears to be making a big deal about this being shot on an iPhone, which is how most people record video these days. That's because it's an ad for Apple, specifically the iPhone 13 Pro. Maybe Apple thinks there may be people out there who don't understand that an iPhone will record nice footage. There's no doubt that Gondry put in plenty of work on the animation after the footage was shot. -via Nag on the Lake

We've all heard of King Solomon's mines, but that's mainly because of the 19th-century adventure book that was made into quite a few movies. The mines are not mentioned in the Bible, but King Solomon was crowned in precious jewels and made extensive use of copper. In the 1930s, archaeologist Nelson Glueck found evidence of ancient copper mines in southern Israel's Timna Valley. He declared the area the site of King Solomon's mines.

By the 1970s, archaeology had grown skeptical of the designation, and as a discipline was starting to look askance at claims made by archaeologists with an agenda of proving Biblical claims. There was no concrete evidence that King David or his son King Solomon even existed. In Timna, an Egyptian temple was uncovered that long predated the era of Solomon, and the mines were deemed to be part of the northern reaches of the Egyptian Empire.

Israeli archaeologist Erez Ben-Yosef took another look at the mines of Timna in 2009. He had no Biblical agenda; he was an agnostic looking for historical changes in the earth's magnetic field. What he found were artifacts that carbon dating placed at 1000 BC, far later than the Egyptians, but right around the time of David and Solomon. Since then, many more artifacts have emerged at the mines from that time period, including fibers of purple fabric. The puzzle for archaeologists is that while there are plenty of artifacts, there are no buildings, no permanent structures, besides the much older Egyptian temple. It's possible the mines could have been worked by Edomites, who were nomadic, or by Israelites, who also mainly lived in tents at the time. Read what we've found at Timna so far and what it could mean at Smithsonian.   

The blurb at Digg said this video was about how Jean Shepherd gave birth to "a salacious historical novel that was completely make up..." Of course, my first thought was, aren't all novels made up? But I soon learned that he didn't write I, Libertine, he just made up the fact that it existed at all. And people fell for it! In the process, Shepherd made a point about pretentiousness and cultivating one's image through pure lies.

Jean Shepherd was a radio star and humorist with plenty of stories to tell. Decades after the I, Libertine saga, he used some stories from his own childhood to write and narrate the film A Christmas Story.

By the way, the book is out of print, but you can still find a few vintage copies of I, Libertine for sale. -via Digg

Rich people are different from you and me. Great wealth often requires hosting lavish banquets to bring friends and allies together, to shower favors, and to show off one's taste and generosity. Great wealth also allows one to use friends and allies for entertainment purposes, to exact revenge, show contempt, or to feel power over others. So every once in a while, there have been black banquets, or hell banquets, in which invitees were expecting the usual fancy evening of food and camaraderie, but instead were terrified by all-black decor, seats with accompanying tombstones or coffins, and disgusting food displays.

As with many things, we don't know if the custom originated from fact or fiction. A first-century hell banquet was described by a writer a hundred years later, which inspired others to pull the same prank. But we don't know if that written account was at all true. Hell banquets happened occasionally from ancient Rome to the 19th century. Read what they were and how they horrified those who attended them at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Rodolfo Reyes for Gastro Obscura)

If a picture is worth a thousand words, about 400 of them would be "haha" in this case. Redditor Johnny-Virgil and his wife were vacationing in Mexico, at a hotel that had a hammock. He set up the camera timer to take a picture, then rushed to join her to get a nice couple's selfie. But you know what happens when you rush to get in a hammock.

To drive home the point of how perfect this image is, JiveMonkey made them a digital painting. He calls it "Falling in Love."


Of course, it's not the first time this has happened. In the replies, magnament shared a note from 1949.



Hammock disasters are common, but the existence and timing of this photograph are a miracle to brighten our day.

What was the worst Christmas gift you ever received? I don't recall any traumatic gifts, but once my boyfriend's cousin stopped at a convenience store and bought a 50 cent coffee cup because he didn't know I was coming to the family gathering until the last minute. I was touched, because he needn't have gotten me anything at all. But if you ask enough people, you will get some pretty horrific stories. An AskReddit thread posed the question, and generated more than 16,000 comments, many of them with awful gift stories.

People tell stories of receiving used gifts, unthoughtful gifts, and inappropriate gifts (a dish towel for an 8-year old?). Some stories involve bait-and-switch, when one gift is promised and another delivered. Others are sad tales of siblings who were obviously shortchanged in favor of another child. And some folks use the occasion to get rid of extra stuff lying around the house, like the 36-year-old man who received a kindergarten backpack that was rejected by a child years earlier. Read an overview of the top worst gift stories at Digg, or even more of them in the original reddit thread.

Max Read found himself pulling up familiar old movies to watch while he was at home with a new baby during lockdown. He got to thinking about what they had in common and why he liked a particular kind of movie so much, and so did his contemporaries, Gen X men who are now raising kids and populating the internet. He dubbed these movies Dad Thrillers.

If you're anywhere near me in age, you know the kind of movies I'm talking about: Movies set on submarines; movies set on aircraft carriers; movies where lawyers are good guys; movies where guys secure the perimeter and/or the package; movies where a guy has to yell to make himself heard over a helicopter; movies where guys with guns break the door into a room decorated with cut-out newspaper headlines. Movies starring guys like Harrison Ford, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Costner, and Wesley Snipes and directed by guys like Martin Campbell, Wolfgang Petersen, Philip Noyce, and John McTiernan. Movies where men are men, Bravo Teams are Bravo Teams, and women are sexy but humorless ball-busters who are nonetheless ultimately susceptible to the roguish charm of state security-apparatus functionaries. Movies that dads like.

He not only identified and named these movies, Read analyzed them and gives us a guide to recognizing them, with several graphs and charts that you will relate to. See them in his recent newsletter. If this is your kind of movie, you'll find plenty of titles that you'll want to watch, even if you've seen them more than once before.  -via Boing Boing

移動してないけど人の脳は矢印に逆らえないのデース pic.twitter.com/wCx22ZhO2I

— じゃがりきん (@jagarikin) November 4, 2021

Japanese digital artist @jagarikin serves up the trippiest optical illusions on a regular basis. If you look closely at the circles above, you'll see that the black and white patterns move consistantly, and the circles themselves never move. But your eyes, or rather your brain, makes the circles go in the direction the arrow is pointing. Let's see that same illusion in a more colorful format.

なんと動いてません#ド直球に言いますがフォローしてください pic.twitter.com/qthgo7k2UN

— じゃがりきん (@jagarikin) April 21, 2021

Are the circles moving? Yes, the colors in them are going around and around. But the circles themselves aren't traveling relative to the background, that's just your brain at work once again. We've certainly embraced the symbolic meaning of an arrow, haven't we? But wait, what if that's not it at all?

The incredible thing with this is that if you look at the image from an angle at a bit of a distance, there is no "movement", the movement only happens when you look at it straight on.

— Jeremy Fisk #FBPE (@FiskJeremy) November 14, 2021

Well, hooda thunket, the arrows have nothing to do with it. So what makes these circles appear to move? ScienceAlert clues us in. If you look closely, you'll see a very thin border on the outside and inside of each circle. It's this border that changes in contrast with the background and the rest of the circle, and therefore changes your perception. The border movement is not consistant, but is coordinated with the appearance of the arrows. Whoa! They go on to explain how this trick works on our brains. Still, understanding it doesn't make the effect go away. -via Damn Interesting

Toot? Yes, but more than that. You might think you pass gas a lot, maybe even an abnormal amount, but an average person farts 10 to 20 times a day, and can produce up to 1,500 milliliters of gas. That's normal, even if it's embarassing. But if you notice changes in your flatulence, and not just in the sense that you start paying more attention, then the gas you pass can tell you what's going on in your body. Fart a lot more than you used to? You could be pregnant, or maybe you're just getting older. You might be starting to become lactose intolerant, which can happen at any age. Or it could be a sign of several different maladies. There are other possibilities as well. Discover magazine goes over what to look for, when to see a doctor, and tips on how to stop farting so much.

(Image credit: Towsonu2003~commonswiki) 

Yeah, I know, we had an Honest Trailer for Dune less than two months ago. But that was for the 1984 movie. If you're a fan, you have probably already seen the 2021 version in theaters. So has Screen Junkies, and they are here to give us their honest opinion. Spoiler alert: the story is just as complicated as it ever was, but they helpfully explain the basic setup, which is itself rather complex. There are other spoilers, I guess, but nothing that would diminish your enjoyment of the film. Yes, there are comparisons to Star Wars, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and other space, fantasy, and time travel adventures. And a very large cast to introduce. 

Since the beginning of railroad travel, there have been people hitching a ride on freight trains. This lifestyle reached a peak during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when thousands of unemployed men traveled around the country looking for work. We called them hobos. You may have read about the graffiti they left for each other at railroad stops, cryptic symbols that conveyed information such as how welcoming a town was, whether work was available, and who was likely to give a man a meal.

The truth is, however, that men who spent decades riding the rails are unfamiliar with such a code. People who tell of the hobo code know because they read it somewhere, probably in a newspaper, in which pictures of the code were known to be staged. The one hobo who actually wrote about it was most likely trolling. It's true that hobos left graffiti, but it was for a completely different reason, which you can read about at Atlas Obscura.

For some time now, we've been referring to the history of cinema as a century, but that's not quite accurate anymore. It's more than a century and a quarter at this point. This restored and colorized sequence was filmed in 1896. It features Pope Leo XIII, the first pope to ever appear in a motion picture (and who was also noted for his preferred wine). Leo was born in 1810, during the reigns of Napoleon and King George III, and was 86 years old when the film was shot. It is thought that this makes him the earliest-born person to ever appear in a motion picture. If anyone was born before 1810 and can be seen in moving pictures, I'd like to see them. Meanwhile, enjoy a blessing from the pope, 125 years after the fact.

What makes a good song good? It may sound like a silly question, since everyone has their own tastes, but there are some songs that become worldwide hits, and some songs that stick around decades after their time. They must have something in common.

Scientists at Aarhus University in Denmark looked at Spotify to see what people listen to throughout the day. They found that the type of music preferred varies over a 24-hour cycle, and certain types of music tend to please people in different blocks of the day. These blocks were divided into morning, afternoon, evening, night, and late night/early morning (in radio, those are called dayparts). They found that slower songs are preferred in the morning, faster tunes in the afternoon, and dance music in the evening.

So what song has the features that would make it popular in all parts of the day? "Every Breath You Take" by the Police. The 1983 hit is not extreme in any of the audio features studied, and many consider it bland, but it works in any part of the day. Whether that makes it "good" is a different question altogether. Most musicians would rather produce a song that people love part of the day than a song that is acceptible around the clock.

The original paper did not mention lyrics or a song's subject matter in the audio features studied. The audio features were divided and ranked by artificial intelligence. Read more about the research at NPR.  -via Damn Interesting