There are already vending machines that use AI, but they are limited in scope. This one is a test drive of artificial intelligence in business management. Anthropic built an AI named Claudius to run a retail business, meaning it would select and order products and then sell them at a profit. To test it out on a small scale, they used it in a simplified vending machine. It was so simple that it ran on the honor system and needed a human assistant to do the actual stocking. They installed this machine in the offices of The Wall Street Journal, because they would get publicity out of it, if nothing else. 

Journalists and other workers could communicate with Claudius, which is where the stress test really is. Claudius would learn from its customers. It wasn't long before customers convinced Claudius to order items like live fish and a Playstation for the vending machine. And they convinced it that the best move was to give everything away free. Anthropic had to add another AI to supervise Claudius, but Seymour was soon outsmarted as well. Was the resulting publicity worth the humiliation? Anthropic would like us to think so. -via Metafilter 

In the late 19th century, the Vanderbilt family owned the railroad passing through Park Avenue in New York City. In response to complaints about the noise and smoke of the coal-powered steam locomotives, they constructed a shallow tunnel to conceal the trains. But the smoke not only filled the Park Avenue Tunnel, it still escaped into the city. Commuters still needed to get into the city, and so rode through the dangerous tunnel. That is, until January 8, 1902. That day, a commuter train was stopped in the tunnel, and the smoke escaping out of the end was so thick that the next train didn't see the signals nor the stopped train at all. Its last two cars were smashed like an accordion, and 15 people were killed.  

The wreck was a reckoning for the city. Something had to be done about the trains. If they were electric, they could all be run underneath the city in tunnels without the danger of steam or smoke. It would be an expensive upgrade, but railroad engineer William J. Wilgus, who headed the project, came up with a way of funding it. The underground tracks would free up so much New York real estate on the surface that the system would pay for itself. His plans led to the beginnings of New York's subway system, and also the design and construction of Grand Central Station. Read how all that happened at Smithsonian. 

The formula works this way: 
1. Christmas song becomes popular.
2. Christmas song gets played a lot. An awful lot.
3. People hate Christmas song. 

Now, Batman and Superman are often portrayed as best friends, or at least cordial to each other. They both live in the DC universe, both have alter egos, both were orphaned at a tender age, and both fight crime. But they also have fundamental differences in style and attitude, and it's sometimes implied that Batman is envious of Superman's super powers. Considering all this, what will these two superheroes get each other for Christmas to continue this love-hate relationship? This year, Batman is inspired by the downside of Superman's powers, specifically, his ability to hear everything going on. Superman may have more natural abilities, but you have to remember that Batman has more amazing gadgets. This super Christmas story is from How It Should Have Ended.  

Notice the annoying song in this story is never truly identified. You can slot in whichever Christmas song annoys you the most. 

The 1946 Frank Capra movie It's a Wonderful Life is a beloved Christmas classic today, but the film had a hard road getting there, mainly because no one liked it. It was based on a 1939 short story that no one wanted to publish. You have to wonder what that story was, because as it moved toward film, everything was changed because no one liked the details. Quite a few movie stars turned it down because they didn't like the script or the characters, even as all that was being re-written. And movie audiences didn't like It's a Wonderful Life, either, maybe because it was so long and the first 90 minutes are rather depressing. It was a financial loss, and even the owners didn't like it enough to protect the copyright. 

It's a Wonderful Life became a hit after it went into the public domain in 1974. When it was shown on TV, word of mouth spread that the ending was worth it. Read some behind-the scenes stories about It's a Wonderful Life at Cracked. Not all of it is about how people disliked it. 

Or, to be more precise, it's a didgeridoo with a curved shape that resembles a saxophone.

The Strawberry Man is a musician who got is name by wearing strawberry-themed outfits early in his career. When he encountered the didgeridoo, he was fascinated with its mesmerizing sound and decided to learn how to play it.

The didgeridoo looks like a simple pipe, but playing it is a physically demanding task. It requires circular breathing--simultaneously inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth without pausing.

The Strawberry Man took his didgeridoos on tour, but found transporting them on planes very challenging. He needed a more compact instrument. The result of his experiments with collaborators is the Saxo-Didge--a didgeridoo that retains its traditional sound while fitting into a much smaller space.

-via The Awesomer

If you recall the original Predator movie from 1987, the alien was ugly, but we didn't know that for most of the movie. It used a cloaking device that rendered itself invisible. All we could see were some strange digital glitches over the background that instilled plenty of dread. That's the same type of fear engendered by the hidebehind, a monster you never saw because it would hide behind a tree... until it was too late for you to escape. The legend of the hidebehind grew among American lumberjacks to explain why some loggers never came back to camp. The only defense against a hidebehind was a drink or two of alcohol, although it stands to reason that drinking alcohol was more likely the cause of the hidebehind. 

However, the hidebehind is far from the only monster you can't see. I know, you don't see any of them, but that's beside the point. Still, some monsters defy description even in the legends because they are invisible, hiding, or will kill you if you look at them. Dr. Emily Zarka of Monstrum explains why monsters you don't see are even more terrifying than the ones you see. 

You might recall reading about President Andrew Jackson's 1829 inauguration party that turned into a drunken brawl. The story of Jackson's final White House party is just as wild, and much stranger, as it revolved around a giant 1,400-pound wheel of cheddar cheese. Jackson had received the cheese as a gift, but it had remained in the White House for two years uneaten. 

When Jackson threw his last party as president in 1837, he decided it was time to get rid of the cheese, and invited people to come and have their fill at the White House. The idea of free food from the president took precedent over all dignity among Washington's cheese-lovers. Read the story of the odd reason why President Jackson came to own the giant wheel of cheese and how he got rid of it in one day at Popular Science. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image source: The White House Historical Association) 

Nathan Yau, a statistician who runs Flowing Data, created an interactive chart that illustrates how are we connected to the people that we spend time with over the course of a day. Yau used data from the American Time Use Survey conducted by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics between 2022 and 2024. It's adjustable by sex, age, and either weekend or weekday.

As a chronologically well-endowed man not yet retired, most of my time is spent with co-workers, but that trends toward my wife in the evening. I assure you that under no circumstances am I with friends at 2 AM.

When a young man receives a Christmas gift that he doesn't like, it's time for a story. And it's a beautifully animated story about a wolf -the very first wolf- who finds he has no friends. Like the description says, "It's not easy to make friends when you eat them." Can this poor wolf change his life in such a way as to make the other animals tolerate him, or at least stop fleeing in fear? He gets some helpful advice from a hedgehog and other animals along the way. 

"Unloved" is an ad for the French grocery store chain Intermarché from the studio Romance Agency. You won't mind that, because the actual advertising is only a few seconds at the end. You won't mind it being in French, either, because there are subtitles for the scant dialogue. However, the focus is still food, and that comes across as very French as well.  -via Metafilter 

On Japan's Mount Zao, winter snows will form huge snow monsters, shown above. They are huge, and in some areas can resemble an army of monsters. These snow monsters are completely natural, and are formed by specific weather conditions on the snowy hillsides that cause heavy snow and ice to build up over the fir trees underneath. It's so thick that you can't see the trees at all! 

Weather conditions can do strange things with snow and ice. Different types of snowfall, wind, extreme or changing temperatures, and geographic conditions combine to produce phenomena that's often hard to wrap your head around. In Finland, you might find giant snowballs formed by nature. In high altitudes, ice may form penitentes, large and sharp shards of ice sticking up from the ground. And in Antarctica, there are brinicles, but you won't see them yourself because they are underwater. There are also snow rollers and pancake ice, which look just like their names. Learn about all these weird snow and ice formations at Mental Floss. 

(Image credit: Raita Futo) 

The 1997 movie Anaconda sent a bunch of movie stars into the Amazon, but some of them weren't yet stars at the time. The story is about a world-record-size anaconda, a type of boa constrictor. In other words, a big snake. The film is overstuffed with sweat, sex, and over-the-top special effects, which is all well and good if you're into that sort of thing, but didn't have much else to offer. Critics didn't care for Anaconda, and the film was nominated for six Razzie Awards. It would have won some if it weren't for Kevin Costner's movie The Postman. Still, Anaconda eventually became a cult classic -as a "so bad it's good" comedy. 

And now it has become a real comedy. The 2025 movie Anaconda starring Paul Rudd and Jack Black opens on Christmas Day. They play Anaconda fans who try to remake the movie and instead end up reliving it. So it's only natural that Screen Junkies went back to 1997 to bring us an Honest Trailer for the original Anaconda. It's a rich vein of material for them to mock.  

Every December, various dictionary publishers pronounce the trendiest word of the past year to be the Word of the Year. Whether we will still be using these words five years from now is anyone's guess. 

Merriam-Webster often selects normal familiar words that represent what people were talking about. Recent selections were authentic, vaccine, and they, except in 2022 when they chose gaslighting. For 2025, they continue this trend by selecting a familiar word that has gained a new meaning. It is slop, which has come to refer to useless junk that floods the internet in order to draw clicks and cash. Their definition is “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” We all need to learn how to recognize AI slop, but the process can be disappointing. 

The Oxford Dictionary selected brain rot as their word of the year last year. For 2025, they chose another internet term, rage bait, defined as "Online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media account." In other words, they're just trying to make you mad. We used to call it trolling. 

Dictionary.com went in a slightly different direction with their Word of the Year for 2025, selecting 67 (pronounced six-seven). How do they define it? They say, "we’re all still trying to figure out exactly what it means." They offer several theories, but it boils down to young people enjoying saying something that outsiders don't understand. You can call it generational trolling. 

Each of these dictionaries also have a list of runners-up, including words like conclave, performative, broligarchy, tariff, and biohack. You can read about those by going to the above links. 

(Image: an example of AI slop, from Wikimedia Commons) 

Remember the story of The Ugly Duckling? If you ever wondered what happened to the subject of that tale, this song will continue the story after he rides off into the sunset. Except here, he remains a duck instead of a swan. Except he's more than a just duck- he's a cowboy! Or rather, a Western gunslinger, because there's no cows in sight. Okay, he's a duck gunslinger who goes by the name Bird Cowboy. A story doesn't have to make sense when it's this much fun. 

It's a Western tale of a solitary hero with plenty of action and a little romance. The rhyming scheme and cadence are familiar for a cowboy ballad, like that of "A Boy Named Sue" or "One Piece at a Time." You can almost hear Johnny Cash singing this. But it's from Mummy Joe, and the illustrations are both silly and adorable. -via Everlasting Blort 

The Hanford Site in Washington state was built in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project as a facility to refine plutonium for atomic bombs. Plutonium production continued there until 1971. The nuclear waste produced at the Hanford Site was sealed into metal containers built to last for 20 years and buried. Twenty years seemed like a long time, but the first nuclear bombs were deployed 80 years ago. Over time, the Hanford Site and the town named Richland that grew up around it became one of the world's most contaminated sites. 

On the one hand, the nuclear waste was out of sight and out of mind. On the other hand, no one really knew what to do with it. So what is going on at the Hanford Site today? They are making glass. Not commercial glass, but glass specifically to contain nuclear waste. Nuclear waste is retrieved a little at a time and mixed with silica, then heated to forge glass logs. After the logs are cooled, those that contain low-level nuclear material are re-buried and the higher-level nuclear logs are shipped off to another nuclear waste facility. Read about the process of cleaning up nuclear waste by vitrification at New Atlas. 

Then you have to wonder what happens in 100,000 years when those glass logs are discovered and treated as buried treasure. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: Washington State Department of Ecology) 

The challenge is to concentrate as many Christmas lights into a small space as possible, or so it seems. Why else would you decorate a tiny room with no furniture? Watch as Justin strings lights in a closet and adds extra Christmas enhancements. You know he fell off those ridiculous homemade stilts at least once. And how many plug-ins can one electrical outlet hold? When the big moment comes, you expect a fire instead of Christmas lights. Watch the video before you continue reading.