It is a hallmark of the Star Wars universe to give us a confusing plot point with no explanation, and then scramble to come up with a backstory when the audience demands one. That was the premise for the three prequel movies, after all. The latest mystery to be retrofitted is the surprising re-emergence of Palpatine, after being presumed dead for 30 years, in The Rise of Skywalker. Explanations were vague, unsatisfying, and subject to change day by day, but now Disney and Lucasfilm have an official account of what Palpatine was doing while everyone else considered him dead, written by Emily Shkoukani of the Lucasfilm Story Group. It's called Palpatine's Contingency Plan.

For many years prior to his demise, Palpatine sought immortality on the Sith planet of Exegol. It was on this planet that he and his cultists, known as the Sith Eternal, experimented with cloning. Exegol was also where Palpatine built his Final Order fleet. As an immortal Sith, Palpatine would reign supreme over the galaxy with his Sith armada. This would be the grand finale of the Contingency, known only to a select few.

When Palpatine was killed on the second Death Star, his consciousness transferred to a clone of his own body on Exegol but the body was too weak to contain him. This led to Palpatine creating more clones and strand-casts of himself in the hopes that one would offer a more suitable vessel for him to inhabit. All of this effort ultimately culminated in Rey, the daughter of one of Palpatine’s strand-casts. She was the perfect vessel — but her father and mother did everything they could to hide her from her sinister grandfather.

There's a lot more to it, in a plan that involved so many people that it would never have been kept secret in the real world, much less multiple planets. You can read the whole thing at Star Wars. -via Boing Boing

Mead is a fermented drink made from honey, which was popular in the Middle Ages. Bochet is a special variety of mead developed in France, but became completely lost to civilization for hundreds of years. Now that a 14th-century recipe has been unearthed and translated into English, adventurous chefs are making bochet. The ingredients are honey, water, yeast, and spices, but what makes bochet different is that the honey must be caramelized by boiling.

Finding a vessel that’s big enough can be a challenge, however, particularly for commercial-scale bochet. “Honey can double, possibly triple, in volume when heated to certain temperatures. For safety, the vessel would have to be four times larger than what you think you would need,” says Ricky Klein, head meadmaker at Vermont’s Groennfell Meadery. He has made small-scale, experimental bochets, and has some words of wisdom. “There are two things I will always say about a bochet. One is, you have never been scalded like getting boiling honey on your skin. It is a second-degree burn, immediately. It can be a very, very nasty burn,” says Klein. “The second thing is, what I just said.”

For some homebrewers, the danger of recreating bochet may be the very thing that attracts them to it. “People who like rollercoasters and jumping off cliffs like bochet,” says Verberg with a laugh. “You can make a sugar volcano that will explode, violently.”

Gemma Tarlach went to great lengths to recreate authentic medieval bochet, with different kinds of yeasts, fluoride-free water, and honey harvested with the honeycomb and bees included. It's somewhat of an adventure.

Here's an experimental stop-motion animation featuring matches by designer Tomohiro Okazaki. He worked on this for six months, and the result is jaw-dtopping. There is no sound. (via Metafilter)

We don't know if Arthur was a fictional character when he was first written about centuries after he supposedly lived, but he sure became one with subsequent biographies. The status of the legendary king grew with reworkings of the story by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Thomas Malory, and T. H. White. King Arthur's influence has eclipsed even his mythical deeds.

Henry VII used the popular tales of King Arthur to secure his reign upon seizing the English throne in 1485 after the Wars of the Roses. Drawing from the legend, he even traced the Tudor family tree from Arthur himself. Henry VII also named his first child Arthur, though it was Arthur’s younger brother, Henry, who went on to rule as Henry VIII—and break England from the Catholic Church in the process. Henry VIII grew up fascinated by the tales of Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table, so much so that he ordered the redecorating of the Winchester Round Table, which still hangs in the Great Hall of Winchester Castle today.

The even more contemporary stories of King Arthur's influence may surprise you. Read about them at Mental Floss.

Clink Clink is a cute and rather short animation by Jack Cunningham, James Graham, and Nicolas Ménard, illustrating people enjoying live music at a cocktail party.

Clink Clink is a snappy animation brewed out of a series of drawings left gathering dust in the pitch vineyard. Now aged like a fine wine, it exists for the sole purpose of cultivating smiles and head bops, in a world where boozy benders are a distant memory.

-via Laughing Squid

If you're going to write a fictional story about contemporary people, you need to show them enjoying entertainment, as we all spend so much time doing. Therefore, the characters in a movie go to the movies, or watch TV, or even work on such a production. These are shows within shows, also called nested shows, and they can be as memorable as the movie or TV series itself. Famous examples are Angels with Filthy Souls, seen in the movie Home Alone, or The Krusty the Clown Show on The Simpsons. Nestflix is a compilation of such shows, curated by Lynn Fisher. There are a lot more of these than you may realize, but the archive is not yet complete. You're invited to submit your favorites if you don't see them. Browse through Nestflix here. -via Metafilter

People usually select a diet in order to lose or gain weight and/or to improve their overall health. But this is Neatorama, and we haven't discussed farts in several days. Lucky for us, Mel magazine did one of their food ranking studies and found out which of several popular diets causes the most natural gas.  

To be scientific about it, your own personal gas line is fueled by sugars such as alpha-galactose and raffinose — commonly found in foods like beans, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and pears — which can be difficult to digest at first. “When some people eat these sugars, instead of being digested, they can ferment in the gut, resulting in bad-smelling gas,” explains nutritionist Alicia Harper. “However, your gut can eventually learn to digest fruit and vegetables without flatulence.”

Still, if your gut is trying to learn something new, you might want to consult the ranking of diets by flatulence. Even if you don't change your mind about your diet, it will at least warn you of what can be expected.

Amusement parks exist to show lots of people a good time and separate them from their money. There's nothing like a roller coaster ride and something deep fried on a stick to make one sleep well at night. But no matter how much one may regret a day at the carnival, circus, or tourist attraction, things were much worse in centuries past, in several ways. Let's start with the thrill rides.

Consider the infamous Coney Island Rough Riders roller coaster, which killed seven people in a five-year span from 1910 to 1915 before it was shut down. The coaster was an homage to Theodore Roosevelt and his “Rough Riders,” the soldiers who fought in the Spanish-American War. But the coaster was almost as dangerous as Battle of San Juan Hill: According to PBS, in one accident, the speeding coaster jettisoned 16 people, killing four. In another accident, the coaster jumped the track and caused three fatalities. One woman survived the ordeal dangling from a rail with one hand, holding her child with the other hand.

Coney Island featured another coaster that wasn’t fatal, but it was certainly unpleasant. The Flip Flap Railway coaster of the 1890s was one of the first roller coasters to feature a loop-de-loop. But unlike modern loops, which are oval-shaped to lessen forces on the rider, the Flip Flap was circular. This put intense pressure on riders, knocking them unconscious and giving them whiplash. One source estimates that riders experienced a G-force of 12. For comparison, fighter pilots typically experience a G-force of 7. One newspaper declared the Flip Flap and another coaster called the Loop the Loop "the unholy terrors of the beach."

That's just the beginning. Read the disturbing ways amusement parks of the past were dangerous, offensive, cruel, and depressing at Mental Floss.

The props from the TV show MythBusters are going up for auction! Proceeds will benefit the Grant Imahara STEAM Foundation. Meanwhile, Adam Savage introduces us to the creepiest MythBusters prop ever, designed and built by Imahara. -via reddit

When men try to select an attractive picture of themselves for a dating profile, they sometimes end up sabotaging themselves. Here's an explanation that will make woman go "duh," but might be useful for men. See, men are visual  creatures, and assume that women are, too. Yeah, not so much. When men look at a woman's dating profile, they want to see someone attractive. When women look at a picture, they try to glean information about that person from what they see. An example is a fellow who posted pictures of his muscular physique, but found more success when he covered up.   

Dr Claire Hart is Associate Professor of Social and Personality Psychology at the University of Southampton. She suggests that women aren’t judging the content of these photos, but their implications instead. “Research suggests that women (and indeed men) find well proportioned muscular men more attractive. Based on our ancestral past, signs of physical strength would be linked with an increased chance of survival,” she explains.

“[But] without knowing much else about that person other than what is presented on their dating profile, you may make certain attributes about them which negatively impacts their desirability,” she continues. “For example, how much time do they devote to maintaining their musculature body? Would they do this at the expense of spending time with you? Do they have narcissistic tendencies? You might not stop to find out.”

In other words, how a man chooses to present himself in a picture means more than his basic attractiveness. At least for the most part. Read more about this phenomenon at Refinery29. -via Digg

CGP Grey is back to show us how the smallest thing can have a fascinating backstory. The name Tiffany exploded in popularity in the 1980s, but we know it goes further back than that, because of the jewelry store. But a little (meaning a lot of) digging takes the history of the name back to antiquity, and in tracing the story, we meet quite a few really neat Tiffanys along the way. While other names might not be as long-lived, you bet Grey could make an entertaining story of it.

Elyse at Second Glance History decided to prepare for a trip to Milwaukee not by checking out its attractions on the internet, but by looking through the newspaper archives of the 19th century. What she found told her that Milwaukee was famous for cheese, old maids, theatrical cats, and haunted places. And puns.

Milwaukee boasts of a haunted distillery, which is just the place where one would naturally look for spirits.
    
– The Columbian, October 1, 1875

Check out quite a few newspaper blurbs that tell us about all those things, in a post that's filled with puns, both current and historical, cheesy but not hysterical, at Second Glance History. -via Strange Company

(Image source: Library of Congress)

I was always told that it's rude to eat in front of hungry people, unless you are feeding them at the same time. I was also taught not to hang around the neighbors at meal time, because they didn't want to feed me. So what do you do when a park bench is the only place to eat? This stop-motion animation by Rich Webber is quite short, and you might get a kick out of it. -via Everlasting Blort

The Tower Bridge in London is a tourist attraction, and it carries tons of traffic over the River Thames -more than 20,000 vehicles a day. It is also a drawbridge that lifts up when a tall boat goes beneath, due to an old law that says river traffic has the right-of-way. Recently, Tom Scott had the opportunity to participate in lifting the bridge for a boat. I don't know how long ago that was, but on the day he uploaded the video, Tower Bridge became stuck open in its upright position and traffic is currently a mess.

honestly, you let @tomscott press a couple of buttons and all hell let's loose.

— Hair Bear (@hair_bear_18) August 9, 2021

Thanks a lot, Tom.

Barkha Kumari encountered a street snack in India that intrigued her. The vendor was cutting paper-thin slices off of what looked like a log, but was obviously softer. This was Ram Kand Mool. But what kind of a plant did it come from?

“It’s a root. It can grow five feet deep and 300kg,” he explained, in response to my shock. He sources it, he said, from the neighbouring state of Kerala, from people who “get it from the forests.” He hasn’t seen anybody extract the root, but has seen the tree it comes from. “It’s like a climber. It gives flowers. It grows near the sea. It’s called Bhoochakara Gadda in south India and Ram Kand Mool up north.”

Can a root be this massive? Especially the root of a climber or vine? Before I could ask Google, my snack was ready. It was seasoned with salt, chili powder, and lime; my husband’s had sugar and lime. It was crunchy, juicy, and refreshing, but had no taste of its own.

The snack sent Kumari down a rabbit hole trying to identify the plant that this food came from. She quickly figured out that the vendor, and others, either did not know or did not want to divulge the exact source of the "root." So she consulted food scientists and botanists, who did not know, either.

Soon enough, I’d learn that my idle curiosity was, in fact, a mystery that has baffled and, at times, infuriated botanists for decades. This snack has been widely sold on the streets for decades—from the city of Haridwar in the north to Pune in the west and in several places in the south—and yet, somehow, no one seems to know what it is.

But Kumari kept searching and asking questions. She may have found the answer, but there are always more questions, which you can read about at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Kailash Mohankar)