Occasionally we run across a story in which the government lists someone as dead when they are not. It's a nightmare for an individual who is suddenly thrust into a battle with a massive bureaucracy. And it happens more than you think- about 12,000 people a year are incorrectly listed as dead in the US alone! When the Social Security administration thinks you are deceased, everyone else does, too, including the DMV, your bank, your credit card company, etc. etc. Trying to prove you're alive by showing up in person doesn't cut it, because you could be an identity thief. Who are they going to believe, you or government documents? Half as Interesting explains the problem, but the "solution" is really just a punch line. -via Digg

We know that quite a bit of what Americans see as Chinese food is not really Chinese. In China, you won't get fortune cookies at the end of a meal, and you won't find General Tso's Chicken on the menu, either. And now we learn that the ubiquitous folding takeout box we are so familiar with isn't Chinese, either!

The design was patented by an American named Frederick Weeks Wilcox in 1894. But the box wasn't for Chinese takeout at all. Its purpose was to carry oysters. The oyster pail was designed to be waterproof, easy to assemble, and able to allow steam to escape from the top. When it was invented, oysters were sold all over New York City, because they were plentiful and therefore affordable. The transition to carrying Chinese food in them happened due to changes in the oyster market and in the rise of Chinese restaurants occurring at the same time. Today, it's hard to think of anything else when we see that small folded paper box with its distinct bucket shape. Read how the Chinese takeout box came about at The Dieline. -via Kottke

The transportation research firm Skytrax crunched the numbers from 13 million customer surveys over the last two years to come up with ranking for the top airlines. There were 356 airlines represented in those surveys. The surveys asked about things like friendliness, ease of booking, seat comfort, meals, and in-flight entertainment. You can imagine that international flights were overly represented, since domestic flights don't have meals and entertainment these days, at least not in the US. It's not clear whether price was a factor in the rankings, but considering who came in at #1, the cost of tickets probably wasn't part of the equation.

1. Qatar Airways
2. Singapore Airlines
3. ANA All Nippon Airways
4. Emirates
5. Japan Airlines
6. Cathay Pacific Airways
7. EVA Air
8. Qantas Airways
9. Hainan Airlines
10. Air France

Note to self: when naming an airline, use a "Q" without a "u." You may have noticed that no US-based airline made the list. There is a separate ranking of North American airlines, which you can see at CNBC. -via Digg

From 1961 to 1989, the Berlin Wall separated the city into sectors controlled by Communist East Germany and by West Germany. West Berlin was completely surround by East Germany, but was considered part of West Germany as agreed when the country was partitioned by Allied forces after World War II. For decades, people risked their lives to cross into West Berlin. Many were shot, but others were successful. Of several clandestine tunnels dug underneath the wall, Tunnel 57 was the deepest, at 30 feet below ground. It led from a backyard outhouse to an abandoned bakery in West Berlin. In October of 1964, a daring escape took 57 East Berliners through the tunnel, but not without bloodshed.

Andreas Springer was one of the 57 people who escaped by crawling several hundred feet on all fours through the narrow tunnel. For decades he rarely spoke of how he got out of East Germany. Now 78 years old, Springer tells us about that fateful night in an article at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: N-Lange.de)

In 1954, schoolchildren in the Gorbals section of Glasgow, Scotland, heard that a vampire had killed two local boys. Angered and hoping to be heroes, several hundred children made their way to the Southern Necropolis, the neighborhood's largest cemetery, because where else would a vampire hide? They climbed the cemetery walls carrying homemade weapons and making plenty of noise. Glasgow police were astonished to find who was making the ruckus. There were so many children that the event went down in history, although it wasn't the only time that Glasgow children went hunting for monsters.

What spurred the children into such a stunt? It couldn't possibly be a distraction from the misery of the poverty-stricken Gorbals area. It couldn't possibly be the long tradition of Scottish ghosts and monsters the children heard about all their lives. It must have been the comic books. Read how the Gorbals Vampire Hunt led to a Scottish ban on horror comics that is still on the books (yet rarely enforced) at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Magnus Hagdorn)

Sada Yacco introduced kabuki theater to the West and became a sensation as the only female member of her troupe. Her life story reads like that of Forrest Gump. Born under unfortunate circumstances, Yacco was sold to a geisha house when she was only four years old. Yet she was singled out to be trained in not only the arts, but martial arts and other manly pursuits as well. She was also taught to read and write, a rarity for Japanese women of the time. In 1893 she married experimental showman Otojiro Kawakami and continued her lifelong series of alternating bad luck and celebrity interactions that made her a star when Kawakami took his kabuki theater to the United States and then Europe.  

A Western fascination with Japan at the time helped launch Yacco into stardom, but it was tinged with pressure to perform stereotypical Japanese tropes to satisfy the audiences' notions of Japanese theater. Eventually, Yacco and Kawakami returned to Japan, where they introduced Western theater, particularly Shakespeare, to their homeland -with an experimental twist, of course. Read about Sada Yacco and her multicultural adventures at Messy Nessy Chic. 

It's an event we look forward to every year. The voting has started in the 2021 Fat Bear Week competition! Every year since 2014, Katmai National Park in Alaska shows off their many brown bears in an online tournament. The bears have spent their summer putting on pounds to help them get through winter hibernation, so for them, fat is a good thing. It's a bit dangerous to put bears on a scale, so weight gain must be estimated by pictures. The fattest bears, plus one fat bear cub that won a play-in poll, are competing for nothing but internet fame, yet the tournament draws human attention to Alaska's wildlife and the challenges they face. Some bears have also gained lifelong fans by packing on the pounds. We're glad to see Otis back, and Holly, a previous winner who took last year off to raise a cub. The daily elimination polls can be found here. The daily matchups will continue through October 5, and the winner will be announced a few days later.

When is a species considered extinct—when it no longer exists in the wild or when it no longer exists at all?

The cactus species Mammillaria tezontle evolved to grow on a mineral produced from lava called tezontle. An exposed piece of tezontle is the only place you will ever find this cactus in the wild. In Mexico, tezontle is extremely useful as a building material because it is strong and lightweight, so it is dug up and used when discovered. In fact, the cactus M. tezontle was discovered and identified as a species at a quarry. With supplies of the rock tezontle dwindling, the cactus is thought to be near-extinct in the wild.

But there are plenty of M. tezontle plants growing all over the world- in clay pots in people's homes. It turns out that the cactus will grow in garden center potting soil formulated for cacti. It has traveled all over by both legal and illegal means. It is not a particularly large, pretty, or useful cactus, but its very rarity drives people to own and propagate it.

That brings up a question of species conservation: Should we keep a species going when its natural environment is completely gone? The cactus Mammillaria tezontle may live forever as a houseplant, but it is only an example that brings up the larger question of polar bears and other familiar creatures. Read the story of M. tezontle at The Walrus. -via Damn Interesting

The new movie version of Frank Herbert's Dune is set to hit theaters on October 22, so it seemed to be a good time for Screen Junkies to revisit the first attempt at turning the sprawling 1965 sci-novel into a film. The 1984 David Lynch version was critically panned and turned out to be a box office failure. However, the disappointment stuck in the consciousness of Gen X so well that another film was inevitable. Anyway, here's a critique pointing out what was wrong with the first Dune so we can be on the lookout for whether it will be fixed this time. Maybe they'll do it justice this time around. Stay tuned, in another month or two we'll have an Honest Trailer for the new Dune.

PS: If you aren't familiar with Alan Smithee, read this.

In 2000, a gamer known as rsln released his Super Metroid Speed Guide and FAQ. Take a look through the whole thing, or even just the disclaimer blurb above, and see if you can figure out what makes it unique. You don't have to know anything about the game, or any game, to see what it is.

Every year or two I remember what’s probably the most scarily/stunningly impressive linguistic feat I’ve ever seen. Every time, I think I must be mistaken, then I read the thing, and I just shake my head in disbelief. It’s been twenty years. Let me tell you about it.

— Matt Gemmell (@mattgemmell) September 24, 2021

You can try to figure it out for yourself, or you can follow the Twitter thread, or you can continue reading to find out what makes this document special.

If you want to run a railway, you've got to train people to control the tracks, so that trains can get where they need to go without crashing into each other, or snarling up traffic for hours at a time. In Germany, these signal operators are trained at the Eisenbahnbetriebsfeld in Darmstadt. The facility has a model train that may not be the biggest or prettiest in the world, but it is probably the most accurate, because it is used to teach rail traffic control.

However, not every train station in Germany uses the same controls. The Eisenbahnbetriebsfeld model train can be controlled by mechanical switches, which can be a hundred years old, or by electronic switching from the mid-20th century, or by computerized systems that only the wealthier cities have. If you want to be a railway signal operator in Germany, you'll have to learn all the systems. Tom Scott shows us how it's done.

Vintage Halloween pictures are often quite unsettling, because the costumes are creepily unprofessional and the lack of color makes them even creepier. It's as if these clowns wanted to inspire laughter, but ended up terrifying the crap out of us. But this isn't a vintage picture.  

Photographer Tara Mapes does beautiful full color portraits, but her heart is in the creepy side of the art. Every fall she stages a photo shoot for halloween to bring out the horrors associated with the holiday. Check out last year's portrait gallery, and a photo shoot at an abandoned asylum.

This year, Mapes went to the cornfield and brought some clowns. What could be more terrifying than that? Oh, you'll find out, when you check out the rest of the gallery for Halloween 2021.

The guy who goes by Backyard Racing has a large back yard and plenty of time on his hands. He spent four months and $9,000 building an enormous Hot Wheels track. Why? So he could strap a camera to some wheels and share a POV video with us! We soar through every corner of the property, including a leap through the air, a couple of underwater sequences, and loop-the-loops.

The effect of watching this is akin to going on a roller coaster ride without waiting in line or tossing your cookies. Keep your eyes on the tracks going around the turns and you'll know what I mean.

There is a planet nearby that is totally populated by robots. But we are going to Mars eventually, or at least of few of us humans will. Therefore, we have to consider all facets of human life as they might be played out on Mars, and that includes death. Sending a dead body back to earth would not be a priority, but what would happen to that body on Mars?

On earth, a dead body that is not embalmed eventually decomposes due to the effects of bacteria and other microbes, insects, fungus, scavenger animals, moisture, and weather. On Mars, there would be no other life forms besides those microbes we carry in our bodies, and the majority of those need oxygen to survive. They also need warmth, and Mars temperatures range from freezing to very much colder.

So what would happen to a deceased human on the red planet? Cremation would be an unnecessary expenditure in oxygen and energy, so burial is a sensible alternative, yet that doesn't mean ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Alison Klesman at Astronomy explains what would likely happen to a dead body in the Martian environment, and offers options for how to deal with it.  -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Kevin Gill)

Before social media, before iPhones, before YouTube, even, there was Homestar Runner. It was goofy and subversive, but it was funny and innovative. The experimental Flash animation didn't need any promotion because it had no competition on its level. It didn't need search engine optimization because it was shared granularly. If that sounds like jargon to you, what it means is that everyone liked Homestar Runner because it was weird and innovative, so people turned their friends and acquaintances onto it. This video takes a look at how Homestar, Strong Bad, and the other characters took over the early internet to the delight of all who explored the web back when you were desperate to find anything really worth the effort. It succeeded because it was fun, and fun was what we were looking for.

The cartoon survived the demise of Flash. As old (in internet terms) as Homestar Runner is, it's still there, even though the videos are now hosted by YouTube. -via Digg