Compared to Christmas and Halloween, there are few movies specifically about Thanksgiving. For a long time, Alice's Restaurant was the only one, unless you count Miracle on 34th Street, which starts on Thanksgiving but is really about Christmas. Then in 1987, Steve Martin and John Candy starred in the John Hughes comedy Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. It was a hit that became a seasonal tradition. But if the original plans were followed, it would have been a different movie.

The rough cut of the film was over three hours long. That rarely flies for a movie without a built-in fandom. The finished movie is only 93 minutes long. What was cut? We can imagine that Hughes looked at all the funny bits between Martin and Candy and ranked them to eliminate the lesser scenes. Personally, I would have watched the back-and-forth between those two for three hours. But Hughes also cut an entire subplot involving Martin's character's wife Susan. Laila Robins, who played the part of Susan, was rather surprised to see most of her scenes cut in the final version. She talked to Cracked about what was cut from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Read it and you'll see the story with a new understanding when you watch it this Thanksgiving.

We already know that when the big migration of modern humans (homo sapiens) flowed out of Africa into Europe about 80,000 years ago, they interbred with Neanderthals. That's why most people on earth now have some vestiges of Neanderthal DNA, although Neanderthals as a species died out. But more recent research shows the gene pool flowed the other way as well, and much earlier than we thought. Sequencing the genes of Neanderthals that died very long ago isn't easy, but it has yielded evidence that homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred long, long before the big migration from Africa that saw homo sapiens take over the world. The key to this discovery is the Y chromosome, which had been very hard to find in Neanderthal remains. But when scientists finally found it, the results are astonishing. PBS Eons explains what's been discovered, and how these new findings change the history of humanity.

Tran Thi Bich Ngoc is a tattoo artist in Hanoi who specializes in tattooing designs over scars. Her clients come from all over, with scars from injuries, surgery, burns, chemical exposure, stretch marks, mastectomies, cesarian sections, birthmarks, and an occasional bad tattoo. With so much judgement directed at their appearance, women in particular are psychologically affected by scars and skin blemishes that can't be fixed. But they can be minimized and rendered beautiful with delicate flowers and birds inked on top.

That can do a lot for a woman's confidence! Many of the floral patterns she inks have a personal meaning for the wearer besides a coverup. For all, it means that part of their body is worth showing off again. See a roundup of 50 of Tran Thi Bich Ngoc's best scar coverups in a ranked list at Bored Panda.

(Images credit: Tran Thi Bich Ngoc)

Volkswagen has unveiled a new office chair that has everything. Not only is it ergonomically designed, it is powered. This chair can travel up to 12 miles (20 km) an hour, and it has headlights, collision-avoidance sensors, a backup camera, heated seat, and a hitch on the back for towing. Cool! But what is Volkswagen doing making office chairs?

When first viewing the video, I thought this was a stunt to entice remote workers back into the office. But no one with a chair like this is going to get any work done! The "rider" will just be tootling around the office building (it has a horn), playing with the onboard screen, and probably towing a taco cart (which could lead to this). Yeah, it's a stunt, but it's for advertising the features of new Volkswagen automobiles. They apparently made just a few so that people can try them out. In Europe. -via Boing Boing

The seventh edition of The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary will be available later this month. Last updated in 2018, it contains around 500 new words that have come into common usage. All the new words are in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which is updated constantly. You may or may not be familiar with them. Here's a few interesting examples.

adulting
deadname
dox
dumpster (formerly a brand name)
eggcorn
embiggen
fauxhawk
hygge
subtweet
unfollow
unsub
yeehaw (they admit this is not new)
zonkey
zoomer

If you play Scrabble, you've probably already tried to use these words, and you could get away with it if no one in the room had an official Scrabble Dictionary. Until you get your new copy, you can refer any protesters to this post. A lot of words have been deleted from the new edition, mainly racial and ethnic slurs and otherwise offensive words. As always, the Scrabble tournament edition is somewhat different. See more of the new words in an AP article. -via Metafilter

Passports can be weird. Some of them are proof of citizenship, while others are just proof of residency. They are mainly a well-vetted proof of identification, issued by national governments. Except when they are issued by groups that aren't national governments. The legality of these non-national passports varies, and so do their value. Not all of them are accepted for crossing borders, at least not by all countries. In a few cases, whether a border agent will accept one of these non-governmental passports depends on how the agent feels that day. Then there are some such passports that are not only very valid, but also confer extra benefits, like those issued by the United Nations and Interpol. The video length is 4:50; the rest is an ad. -via Digg

Tino Cardasis recorded a lecture when he was in college. His economics professor was making a point using the beef industry as an example. Cardasis later edited the video to include only the times he said "beef." That was 125 times, which isn't all that often in a 90-minute lecture, but it hits differently if that's all you hear. The video has been around for a few years, but the first time I saw it was in Annie? Rauwerda?'s viral Tweet from a few days ago. She was in the same class, and was surprised to see Cardasis' edit a few weeks after the lecture. Cardasis says that yes, the professor has seen it.

He told me he saw it when it first blew up. When I graduated he said he shows it every year

— Tino Cardasis (@CardasisTino) November 14, 2022

The video is an example of semantic satiation, in which the listener hears the same word too many times and it loses all meaning, and even starts to sound weird. It's also an example of how creative people can make something special out of nothing. -via Metafilter

This post contains spoilers for a 34-year-old film.

It's become a traditional sign of the approaching holidays: online arguments about whether the film Die Hard is a Christmas movie. As if anyone is arguing otherwise. There is no better proof than the popularity of the Die Hard Advent Calendar. This is a laser-cut 11.5-inch model of Nakatomi Tower made of birch wood. It illustrates Hans Gruber (portrayed by Alan Rickman) falling to his death one floor at a time as you advance him day-by-day. Gruber's body has a magnet attached to a metal strip on the tower.  

Three years ago, redditor lammage01 constructed a whimsical Advent calendar depicting that memorable scene at the climax of Die Hard. The villain advanced down a floor each day when you pull a tab.

Firefighter and woodworker Brandt Builds, a big Die Hard fan, was intrigued by the concept. He went to work refining it, developed the magnet idea, and designed his own Nakatomi Tower. He launched the product last year at his Etsy shop, LeatherheadLaserWork. Now he sells the Advent calendar (in plain and color versions) along with Christmas tree ornaments of Gruber, John McClane, and Nakatomi Tower. The Advent calendar went viral in October, and other vendors have suddenly copied the design. You can find it cheaper, but Brunt's hand-made calendars are the original. You can even get it personalized. Advent begins on November 27, so get your orders in!

The United Nations has dubbed tomorrow "The Day of Eight Billion." On November 15, 2022, the world population will cross eight billion people. The UN is not looking at this milestone as a catastrophe- the reason why the population is that high is that people are living longer on average, and fewer children are dying. This interactive video graphic illustrates the change in death rates. Russia is a notable outlier.

The number of people living in extreme poverty has also fallen, from from 44% in 1974 to 10%. Read more statistics about the current world population. But there are still challenges, as the world is currently reeling from pandemic, war, and climate change. 

We marked the population reaching seven billion only eleven years ago. However, the rate of growth has actually slowed down from previous decades. At this rate we can expect to reach nine billion in 2037, fifteen years from now. -via Metafilter

When stars run out of fuel, they collapse, burst into supernovas, then become very dense neutron stars. Under most circumstances, the supernova explosion obliterates any planets or blows them into deep space. But thanks to the radio waves some pulsar neutron stars emit, five planets have been detected that still revolve around collapsed neutron stars.

Three of these stars are the first exoplanets ever discovered, back in 1991. They are named Phobetor, Draugr,  and Poltergeist, and all three orbit the collapsed star called Lich, 2,300 light years  from Earth. They are thought to have formed after Lich went supernova. A large planet called Methuselah does a dance with a white dwarf star in the star cluster Messier M4, as they both revolve around a shared gravitational center. It is thought that Methuselah once orbited a different star and was captured by the white dwarf pulsar. Then there's the densest planet ever discovered, which may be made of diamond, and is believed to be itself a remnant of a star. This planet is designated PSR J1719−1438b, but is informally called Diamond World. It now revolves with a pulsar 4,000 light years from Earth.

That only scratches the surface of how weird these planets are. Read what we've learned about them at The Conversation. -via Geeks Are Sexy

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

With the cost of food these days, you may be reluctant to try something new, lest it go to waste if you don't like it. The internet is here to help! The website Apple Rankings rates 58 different variety of apples and ranks them on a 100-point scale. The factors that go into each rating are: taste, crispness, skin, flesh, juiciness, density, beauty, branding/consistency, and cost/availability. These factors are weighed equally except for taste, which counts twice a much as the other factors. You can look up your favorite apples, or a new variety you want to try, by name, or see the list of ranked apples here. Each apple has its own page with a complete breakdown of its qualities or lack of, plus additional information, links, and comments. This site makes it clear that I haven't tried enough apple varieties, or else I don't remember my impression of them.

Apple Rankings is the brainchild of Brian Frange, a writer and comedian who is known for his rants about apples. With the website, he's putting his money where his mouth is, both literally and figuratively. He is the one to blame if you don't agree with his apple rankings. Also keep in mind he is a comedy writer. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Dllu)

A boy referred to as Michael was 14 years old when he confided in his parents that he was the son of the devil and had urges to kill people. They were shocked by his sudden mental illness, and took him to the local psychiatric ward. Over the next year, Michael was convinced he was a cat, a bird, a devil, or the comic book character Swamp Thing. He was also convinced that the family's cat was talking to him, trying to control him, or kill him, or convince him to kill his sibling. He talked to his action figures. Doctors tried psychotherapy and a pharmacy of drugs, with no improvement. After other mental illnesses were tested and discarded, Michael was ultimately diagnosed with schizophrenia, which isn't curable, but can be managed with drugs. But no drugs helped Michael's symptoms. Several months in a premiere psychiatric center in another state didn't help.

Meanwhile, Michael's father set out to research his son's illness on his own. Combing through psychiatric literature and studies, he found a syndrome that fit Michael's symptoms. It had only been identified and described a year before Michael's break from reality. But it seemed so odd- could Michael's illness be caused by an undiagnosed bacterial infection?

The family had already spent more than a year and some $400,000 seeking help for their son, who was no better off. Because the syndrome was so "new" and because of entrenched medical biases, it took some time to locate a clinic that might believe the father's theory. Read the gripping story of the kid who became Swamp Boy at Now This News. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: Mado Peña)

Many of the dishes we traditionally serve at Thanksgiving were not consumed by the Pilgrims in 1621 (I have researched this). For example, they didn't have sweet potatoes, but since they are indigenous New World vegetables, they work well in our Thanksgiving feast. But how did we ever come up with sweet potato casserole with toasted marshmallows on top? It makes for a strangely sweet side dish, especially since we already have sugar-laden cranberry sauce.

It turns out this recipe is another of the many examples of food manufacturers creating recipes to use their products. The first mass producer of marshmallows joined Campbell's soup and Jell-O gelatin in concocting cook books showing ways to use their product, in 1917. This even predates s'mores. But it still makes the recipe more than a hundred years old, and in the United States, that's plenty long enough to make a tradition. Read the history of marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes at Mental Floss.

There had never been a set of surviving elephant twins born in the US. But two weeks ago, at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, New York, an Asian elephant named Mali gave birth to two male elephants, who are thriving well enough to announce the miracle event. Mali produced the first baby elephant at 2 AM on October 24th. That calf was 220 pounds and appeared to be healthy. Then at almost noon, zoo staff were stunned when she had another calf, which weighed 237 pounds and was noticeably weak. They didn't know that Mali had been carrying twins.



Mali is taking good care of the twins, although zoo staff is supplementing the second calf with elephant formula. Their prognosis is good at this time. Mali's placenta was taken to a research lab in order to study EEHV, a herpes virus endemic to elephants that is a leading cause of death in young pachyderms. Mali lost two earlier offspring to the disease in 2020. -via ZooBorns

Brett Berk borrowed a 2023 Cadillac Escalade with two purposes in mind. He was taking a week-long vacation, and he was going to review the car's hands-free highway driving system. That system is mind-blowing, but the real story happened when Berk stopped to fill the car. He automatically put a whole tank full of unleaded gasoline in. They drove along for another 250 miles before the car conked out and he discovered that it required diesel fuel. You can imagine how he felt at the realization, but he was also puzzled at how it survived as long as it did. GM engineer John Barta explains what will happen when you put gasoline into a diesel vehicle.

“Diesel actually lubricates the pump,” Barta said. “Gasoline is basically a solvent. So when you remove that lubricant, and then wash it away, you end up with a significant amount of wear in that pump.” After just a few miles in this state, draining and flushing the entire fuel system is necessary.

Without the usual lubrication, metal shavings start to gunk up the entire engine. Read about that experience, and what the damage was. Keep in mind that Berk showed a great amount of courage in admitting his mistake online.  

(Image credit: Cadillac)