Once upon a time, apples were best when they were in season, but you couldn't do anything about that. You ate the variety your tree grew or your store carried, and that was that. Years later, the supermarkets were full of different varieties of apples, all bred for long-distance shipping and year-long storage. There was plenty of variety, but not much joy in their flavor. But now, thanks to consumer backlash, apple aficionados, and scientists, we are in a "Golden Age of Apples."

Apple growers are no longer looking a one variety of apple to please all consumers. Some like their apples really sweet, other prefer tart flavors, and some concentrate on apples for baking. There are people who crave a certain mouth feel when eating an apple, or enjoy the crunch under their teeth. So why not perfect apples for all these folks? But you might wonder what happened to get the apple industry to finally pay attention to the consumer.

It was the Honeycrisp. Honeycrisp apples defined what an apple could be, and its popularity spread like wildfire. If they can breed an apple like this, why couldn't they breed apples for all the qualities consumers like? Read the tale of how the apple industry went from blah to amazing at Scientific American. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Danielle Scott)

Warning: the Honest Trailer contains spoilers for Alien: Romulus in case you haven't seen it yet and still want to. The Alien franchise goes back to 1979, and of the first eight films, only the first two seem to have clicked with anyone outside of hardcore Alien fans. So Alien: Romulus went back to the original premise of a cast that encounters an alien life form no one understands. But their employers know about it, and so does the audience, and that may be a problem. The film tries to introduce some innovations, but they are all borrowed from other science fiction stories. Alien: Romulus came out in August and has grossed $350 million worldwide. Audiences liked it well enough, and critics called it better than all the Alien movies past the first two, which honestly isn't saying much. From what I can tell, it's a good time if you're into this sort of thing, but it doesn't really make a splash in the cinematic science fiction pantheon. The first two Alien movies set the bar that high. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Find a Grave is a singularly valuable resource for finding dead people. It began in 1995 as a way to share the locations of the gravesites of famous people, but since 2010 has expanded to include anyone's grave. I've used it to corroborate stories before I post them, and for checking family details, like when an in-law was born or who a cousin is related to. But Find a Grave is not a complete archive of graves- it is being expanded every day, by family and friends of the deceased, and by an army of volunteers who contribute to the site.

These volunteers, called "Gravers," fall into three categories. There are those who try to fulfill requests that certain graves be photographed for the site. This is not an easy job, as few cemeteries keep accurate maps of their plots, or any maps at all. In the second category are those who pick a cemetery, and make it their job to photograph every gravestone and memorial for posterity. The third category contains the archivists, who research the records for each grave and the person buried there. Tony Ho Tran is a Graver in the first category, running down particular graves that have been requested to be photographed. How did he get into the hobby of taking pictures of tombstones? It's a very personal story of how he found the site, and is an illustration of what Find a Grave means for the people who use it.  -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Tim Evanson)

Italian artist Amedeo Capelli handcrafts whimsical automata scenes. When he decided to make a whole orchestra of skeleton musicians, he soon found out it was a lot more work than he had intended. The finished piece contains thousands of individually carved bits of wood, plus the rope, iron, and aluminum required to wire all the movement controls together. A single skeleton's movements are controlled by levers and a wire, but to control them all without making them move in simple unison required that Capelli design an extra device. That control panel can be cranked by one person, but makes each skeleton move in its own way, which was what he was aiming for. Three weeks of intense work went into this orchestra. Here you watch them "play" Verdi's Dies Irae.

Laughing Squid shows us more of Capelli's automata, including these skeletons at a Christmas concert, and one video that is literally jaw dropping.

One of the best parts of any party is the food, and a Halloween party is no exception. You want to feed your guests and impress them at the same time, while keeping the holiday theme alive. Courtney Wright at savor_style made a gorgeous charcuterie board featuring the likenesses of the Sanderson sisters from Hocus Pocus rendered in food! Next up is a Poisoned Apple Pie that looks just like the apple that the evil queen gave Snow White. Except we don't think this one has any poison in it, just caramelized apples.



Joana posted her recipe in a video, but you'll only be able to follow it if you understand French. Some of these wonderful food creations are beyond the abilities of us mere mortals, but here is one monster that should be within our range of talents: a Monster Chicken Sammie from Hungry Planet Foods!



Check out a lot more of these artistic and ghoulish Halloween treats at Bored Panda.

Many people go to a psychiatrist or some other kind of therapist to get a professional opinion on what they are doing wrong with their lives. But in this guy's case, you don't need a professional therapist. Any fool who has ever been to a movie theater can tell what he's done wrong, but we might be at a loss over what he can do about it now. Not that he would take your advice -he's obviously in denial about it. I think what he really needs is a certified exorcist. But that's the thing about a curse, once you have been cursed, half the stories we've heard tell us there's nothing you can do about it; you're doomed. But the other half offer some loophole or quest to get a curse lifted. However, that only helps if you have one curse. This guy has them all! This skit for Halloween came from the twisted mind of Ryan George, who always plays all the parts.

In the mountainous region of northern Georgia, East Tennessee, and western North Carolina, you can still hear tales told of the moon-eyed people who only come out after dark on moonless nights because light hurts their eyes. If you leave them alone, they may do your farm chores for you. The origin of these folk is supposed to go back way before pre-Columbian America. They pre-dated the Cherokee in these mountains, and when the Cherokee drove them off their lands, they started avoiding all human contact. They are short, pale-skinned, and have unusually round eyes.

Who were these short, round-eyed people who predated European colonization? Some speculate they could have been Welsh, a people who were also called "moon-eyed" at one time because they worked in deep mines and could see in the dark. Could they have been a race of albinos? Strangely, white skin weren't a part of their description by the Cherokee. Except these supposedly Cherokee tales aren't even part of Cherokee culture. They first appeared in print in 1797, as a legend told by white settlers about the Cherokee. But the moon-eyed people are still thing, and the park rangers at Fort Mountain State Park, where a short stone wall is said to have been built by the moon-eyed people, get plenty of questions about them. Read what we know about the legendary race of moon-eyed people at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Cherokee County Historical Museum)

By now, we all know that Christopher Columbus ended up in the New World by accident, a result of mistakes in navigation and  lack of knowledge. The result was that the Old World and the New World were brought into contact, for better or for worse, which would have happened eventually anyway. But that's only the first of a string of miscalculations and screwups that led to the way the United States is today. Some of these mistakes were the result of hubris, while others were just incompetence or stupidity. Then again, some of these movers and shakers were confronting problems never seen before. Would Japan have surrendered if they had really grasped the power of the atomic weapons the US had developed?

That's a big one, but other mistakes you've never even heard of may have led to permanent changes in the US. These eight historic errors are not presented in chronological order, but you can place them easily if you know anything about American history.

October 22 has been celebrated as International Caps Lock Day since the year 2000. It was so much fun that a second Cap Locks Day was later launched on June 28 in honor of pitchman Billy Mays. The pseudo-holiday is to celebrate the confounding habit some people have (or had) of typing all their internet messages in all capitals. We still don't know why people did that, but trying to get them to stop was difficult, if not impossible. In text, the use of all-caps comes across as shouting at the recipient, or even worse, the audience.

One method of changing habits is to get rid of the caps lock key altogether, which Google did in 2020, when they took the caps lock keys off their Chromebooks and replaced it with a search key. You can still turn on all-caps, but it requires the use of several keys. The habit of typing in all caps is dying out, though, and younger generations who text on smart phones rarely use capitals at all. But we still set aside this day to remember the struggles of the early internet when grandpa somehow found the caps lock key once and could never find it again to turn it off. -via Metafilter

(Image source: Know Your Meme)

It happens every year, and it's always adorable. The 34th annual Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade was held on Sunday in New York City, and thousands of people came out to show off their dogs or enjoy watching the parade. The pooches were dressed to the nines, with imaginative costumes and vehicles, including the number one Halloween costume this year, Bob from Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Dogs were dressed as historical figures, pop culture characters, other animals, and more than anything, food. Don't miss the puppy dressed as the house from Up!, the Target shopping cart, and the pair of werewolves. Dog owners were out in costume, as well. One couple dressed up as their dog, who wasn't wearing a costume, making it a trio. If you want to see the whole parade, it's available at YouTube. See more pictures in this article. These are all very good dogs.

Archaeologists have long studied remnants of ancient cities that arose and then were suddenly abandoned, which happened over and over before civilization got a real toehold. It appears to have happened every couple of thousand years. Çatalhöyük in Turkey is the oldest farming community yet discovered, dating back more than 9,000 years, where the houses were so densely packed that people entered through the roofs. It was abandoned fairly suddenly in 6,000 BCE. By 4,000 BCE, other cities grew up in what is now Ukraine, but were abandoned a thousand years later.

The layouts of these cities and others show that in each iteration, people became somewhat more distanced from their neighbors. Could these communities have been abandoned because of communicable diseases? Could they have been bad enough to give up city living for a millennium? Scientists have found DNA from some diseases, and are running simulations to test their hypothesis about city density and disease in shaping the beginning of civilization, and you can read about it at the Conversation. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Murat Özsoy 1958)

We've all seen this illustration in movies and cartoons when a character has to make a moral decision- a small devil stands on one shoulder, and an angel on the other, whispering in the character's ear to persuade him to do the right thing or the wrong thing. The devil represents temptation, and the angel represents the conscience. It's pretty much the perfect way to illustrate a moral dilemma, but where did it come from? You won't be surprised to learn that the basic idea goes way back, at least a couple thousand years or so. But why are these figures small and standing on someone's shoulders? Duh, the easier to whisper in his ear, my dear. Everyone knows what it means, and it's certainly less boring than just using a disembodied voice to explain to the audience what the character is thinking. Which one will he listen to? Well, for that you will have to watch the movie.  -via Laughing Squid

New York Comic Con 2024 was held over this past weekend, and there were many awesome costumes that looked like they just walked off a movie set, or a spaceship, to be honest. However, I've always been drawn to cosplayers who show some imagination and cleverness. John Farrier was taken with a woman dressed as a Pizza Hut. My pick among those unexpected costumes is this guy who attended the con as a Muppeteer. He had the puppets, but which Muppet master would he dress as -Jim Henson or Frank Oz? Splitting his body down the middle, he didn't have to decide, and was able to carry two Muppets. You have to wonder if he did the voices, too. I tried to find out who this cosplayer is, but I have not found his name yet. This picture is just one among an astonishing gallery of 43 magnificent NYCC cosplay pictures posted at Buzzfeed.

Update: I heard from the cosplayer, and he is professional puppeteer Rick Lyon. You can find him on Instagram and at Facebook. -Thanks, Rick!

One way to get everyday people on board with a robot is to make it less like a human, and therefore less creepy. LimX Dynamics introduces the TRON 1, a bipedal robot that looks relatively unthreatening. It's only half the height of a human, and resembles robots we are familiar with from the movies (Tron, Star Wars, Robocop, Battlestar Galactica, etc.). All in all, it resembles an ostrich of sorts more than a human. For a two-legged robot, it balances really well, and has three different "foot" modes that can be switched out. And boy, can it dance!

You can have your own Tron I for just $15,000. I'm sure it can do things besides walk upstairs and dance, but what it's supposed to be useful for isn't really explained. I can't see it pushing a lawnmower or washing dishes. I'm sure it would be easy to attach a machine gun or a flamethrower to it. -via Boing Boing

What most people know about alchemy is that alchemists were looking for a magical way to convert lead or other common material into gold. They were also looking for a magical formula for immortality. This is a rather simplistic view of a discipline that changed and evolved over a thousand years' time.

In the beginning, alchemy was science, although rudimentary from our modern point of view. You could call it beginner's chemistry. Alchemists did experiments to learn the properties of materials and what could be done with them, although their theories were often derived from philosophy, religion, and a belief in what we would today call magic. Alchemists were mysterious, because those hoping to manufacture gold kept their activities private, and even with those who didn't, it was hard for anyone to understand what they were doing.

In the 16th century, there came to be a split between alchemy and pure science without the philosophy attached. Religion also moved on and considered alchemy to be heretical. But the alchemists made some pretty important discoveries while they were trying to manufacture gold. Read about alchemy and how it changed over time at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Joseph Wright of Derby)