Author: Kirstin Fawcett

Throwing a holiday shindig? Here’s a cool party trick: Take a clove of raw garlic, slice it in half, put it in a garbage bag, and recruit an intrepid volunteer to stick their feet inside the bag. In an hour, they will report tasting hints of garlic—and no, it’s not because they overdid it on the garlic dip.

In their latest Reactions video, the American Chemical Society explains the science behind this stunt. According to them, the molecules responsible for garlic smell can actually penetrate your skin, enter your bloodstream, and travel to your mouth and nose. Learn more by watching the clip above.

[h/t Reactions]

Banner image: iStock

The holiday season is all about unity, but few topics are more divisive than which Christmas movie is the ultimate seasonal film. For every Home Alone fan, there’s an Elf enthusiast. To settle the score, the folks at online TV service provider CableTV.com have collected the top-rated yuletide films as rated over at AMC, and cross-referenced them with Google Trends state data from the past 10 years. They crunched the data, and compiled it into a map of each state’s favorite holiday flick.

Residents of Connecticut, Illinois, New York, and Vermont liked films set in their home states: Christmas in Connecticut, Home Alone (filmed in Winnetka, Illinois), It’s a Wonderful Life (set in the fictional city of Bedford Falls, New York), and White Christmas (set in the fictional town of Pine Tree, Vermont) all came out on top in those states, respectively.

As for Southern residents, they preferred Christmas cartoons and comedies, like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Home Alone, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. In New England, movie fans kept it cozy with the classics, including White Christmas and Miracle on 34th Street. Pockets of the Midwest appreciated National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, and residents of the Atlantic Seaboard and the Great Lakes region liked Home Alone and Elf. And out West, the Nightmare Before Christmas reigned supreme.

Check out the full results in the map above.

The Afternoon Map is a semi-regular feature in which we post maps and infographics. In the afternoon. Semi-regularly.

If you’re feeling pressure to buy the perfect Christmas or Hanukkah present, experts have some advice for you: Don’t try so hard. According to The New York Times, social science researchers say that most people are satisfied with receiving a generic, boring, or even regifted gift instead of one that’s surprising, novel, thoughtful, or unique. To put it bluntly, as researchers concluded in a 2012 study, “If you want to give a gift that someone will appreciate, then you should focus on getting a good gift and ignore whether it is a thoughtful gift or not” [PDF].

Next time you hit the mall, follow a few guidelines to save time and effort. One major rule of thumb is to buy loved ones a practical object—not a novelty object intended to astonish or delight, the Times advises. In a recent study published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, business professors from Indiana University and Carnegie Mellon University found that gift givers often focus on how someone will react when they open their present, and not on whether the gift is actually something they will keep and use.

“We exchange gifts with people we care about, in part, in an effort to make them happy and strengthen our relationships with them,” Jeff Galak, a study co-author and associate professor of marketing at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, said in a press statement. “By considering how valuable gifts might be over the course of the recipient’s ownership of them, rather than how much of a smile it might put on recipients’ faces when they are opened, we can meet these goals and provide useful, well-received gifts.”

To avoid feeling like you’re giving a boring gift, study co-author Elanor Williams recommends pairing a practical gift with a fun accessory, like a blender and margarita mix, for instance.

Studies also show it’s best to just give the people what they want. Researchers from Stanford and Harvard business schools published research in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology that revealed that—gasp!—most people prefer getting something they’ve asked for.

If your loved ones don’t provide you with a wish list, there’s no shame in giving a gift card—just choose one that gives them flexibility in how they use it. A study published in The Journal for Consumer Research found that people are less likely to redeem a gift card if it’s to a specific institution. “For example, a giver might personalize a gift card for a friend who loves sports by getting him a gift card for his favorite sporting goods store or a local sports venue,” the study’s lead researcher, psychologist Mary Steffel, said in a press statement. “However, the sports lover might prefer a more general card, like a Visa- or Mastercard-backed gift card, as it would allow him to purchase sporting equipment, tickets to a sporting event, or anything else that he might want or need.”

Another tip: Don’t feel like you need to give everyone in your life a personalized gift—especially when the recipients don’t know each other. A study published in the Journal of Consumer Research shows that the more specific you get with your presents in order to avoid giving the same gift to multiple people, the more likely you are to choose one that someone doesn’t like—so if you’ve found an object that will win over everyone on your holiday list, stick with it. For example, if several of your friends like sports, go ahead and give them all subscriptions to a sports magazine.

There are eights days left until Hanukkah begins and nine until Christmas—happy shopping!

[h/t The New York Times]

Holiday feast season is here—but if your food processor is made by Cuisinart, think twice before using it to whip up your tasty treats. This week, the company announced that it’s voluntarily recalling around 8 million units, after 69 people reported finding broken pieces of its riveted blade in processed food.

According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, “the food processor’s riveted blade can crack over time and small metal pieces of the blade can break off into the processed food. This poses a laceration hazard to consumers.” Already, they’ve received 30 reports of mouth lacerations or tooth injuries.

Wondering if you own one of the problematic models? Flip your food processor over, and look at the model number on the bottom. According to CNET, you’re good if the model number starts with FP or ends in Y, or is a DLC-6 model.

If your food processor contains any of the following numbers, stop using it immediately, and contact Cuisinart for a free replacement blade:

CFP-9
CFP-11
DFP-7
DFP-11
DFP-14
DLC-5
DLC-7
DLC-8
DLC-10
DLC-XP
DLC-2007
DLC-2009
DLC-2011
DLC-2014
DLC-3011
DLC-3014
EV-7
EV-10
EV-11
EV-14
KFP-7
MP-14.

Need additional reassurance? Check the food processor’s blade. If it has four rivets and a beige center, it’s getting recalled—but if it doesn’t have rivets, it’s fine.

To get a replacement blade, contact Cuisinart at 877-339-2534, or visit the company’s website and fill out a replacement form. Nobody wants to book it to the emergency room or dentist’s office when they should be relaxing in front of a fire with family and friends.

[h/t CNET]

All images courtesy of Cuisinart. 

Christmas trees outnumber people in Oregon. The state is the nation’s largest supplier of the festive evergreens—and Holiday Tree Farms in Corvallis, Oregon, is one of the largest Christmas tree farms in the world. The serene, 8000-acre farm sells over a million trees a year, and come Christmas season, its workers only have six weeks to harvest them. To expedite the process, they rely on helicopters, which load the chopped trees into trucks. Listen to Mark Arkills, Holiday Tree Farms’s senior production manager, explain the labor-intensive process to the folks over at Great Big Story.

[h/t Great Big Story]

Banner image: iStock

Few entrepreneurs would opt to open a brick-and-mortar VHS outlet in 2017, but Los Angeles-based video collective Everything is Terrible! is temporarily reviving the business model, and adding an absurdist, ‘90s-inspired twist. As /Film reports, the group has stockpiled more than 14,000—yes, 14,000—VHS copies of Jerry Maguire (1996), and will soon launch a pop-up store for fans willing to show them the money.

The Jerry Maguire Video Store will open in LA’s iam8bit Gallery on January 13, 2017, and run until January 29. Visitors can expect an exact replica of a 1990s video rental store—the era of Jerry Maguire’s release. But instead of carrying everything from Kevin Smith comedies to Steven Seagal flicks, it will only stock VHS versions of Cameron Crowe’s catchphrase-heavy film.

“Seeing thousands of Jerrys finally reunited will forever destroy the viewers’ previous perception of culture, waste, and existence as a whole,” Everything is Terrible! said in an online release. “The Jerrys are a beautiful thing.”

The pop-up store will run for two-and-a-half weeks, but Everything is Terrible! has been hard at work collecting Jerry Maguire VHS tapes for approximately eight years. As LA Weekly reports, the video collective solicits “Jerrys” (their nickname for the film) from donors across the country, but not because they love the film.

“We honestly don’t have many feelings on the actual movie,” Dimitri Simakis and Nic Maier, co-creators of Everything is Terrible!, told LA Weekly. “We don’t really care about it as a movie.” However, one of the collective’s main objectives is to rediscover—and highlight—bizarre and overlooked VHS movies. Jerry Maguire was a blockbuster when it was released, but aside from its quotable lines, it’s actually the box office’s lowest-grossing number one film of the past 20 years.

“We always have noticed since the beginning that there seems to be nothing but just Jerry Maguire tapes filling our nation’s thrift stores,” Simakis told NPR in 2010. “I have no idea why.”

Instead of letting the Jerry Maguire tapes go to waste, Everything is Terrible! uses them to create bizarre art installations. They’ve built a throne made entirely from VHS copies of the movie, and after the pop-up Jerry Maguire Video Store has run its course, the group plans to use donations received at the outlet to construct a giant pyramid made from “Jerrys” in the middle of the desert.

“This is the stupidest incarnation of the American dream and it must be realized,” Everything is Terrible! concluded.

No word on whether Tom Cruise knows about the project. And while Crowe was unavailable for comment, his office told mental_floss that Crowe himself donated a signed VHS copy of the film to Everything is Terrible! a few years ago.

Watch a commercial for the Everything is Terrible! pop-up video store below, and learn about upcoming events, shows, and parties held at the venue here.

[h/t /Film]

In Japan, massive appetites meet their match at Umakara Ramen Hyouri. As Kotaku reports, the Tokyo-based ramen restaurant offers hungry customers an intimidating, yet lucrative challenge: Finish a heaping bowl of chicken-topped, chili powder-sprinkled noodles in under 20 minutes, and you’ll win 50,000 yen (nearly $440). Polish it off in 30 minutes, and you’ll score 30,000 yen (around $260).

Si vous mangez ce bol en moins de 20 min, ils vous paient 50000¥. En 30 min vous aurez 30000¥. #foodchallenge par Umakara #Ramen Hyouri. ? pic.twitter.com/TFDJwSYeu4

— Japan FM – IGAM Ent. (@japanfm) December 7, 2016

Traveling to Tokyo and want to attempt the delicious feat for yourself? You’ll have to fork over 3000 yen (around $26) to participate in Umakara Ramen Hyouri’s “mega serving” challenge. There are also a few ground rules: Your friends can’t help you eat the bowl of ramen, which contains four servings of ramen noodles, nearly nine pounds of bean sprouts, and nearly 24 ounces of broth. And if you throw up, you’ll have to pay a penalty fine of around $90.

This dare might prove impossible even for customers with prodigious appetites. But according to Japanese website My Navi, nine people have proven victorious since the restaurant first began offering the challenge around three years ago. (They likely didn’t spend the prize money on ramen.)

[h/t Kotaku]

Autumn is over in Japan, but locals continue to enjoy the brilliant foliage in the form of “ochiba art,” or “fallen leaf art.” As RocketNews24 reports, the recent trend involves sculpting, raking, and arranging colorful dead leaves into shapes, patterns, animals, bouquets, and other designs. (Way more fun than simply raking them into piles.) Check out a few of the nature-inspired works below.

[h/t deMilked]

The pain—and humiliation—of getting hit in the head with a soccer ball during gym class fades with time, but Gavin and Dan, a.k.a. The Slow Mo Guys, decided to re-create the mortifying moment as adults and immortalize it in slow motion.

For the uninitiated, the Slow Mo Guys are YouTube sensations that film chaotic moments (examples: rapidly cooled glass exploding, a fire tornado twisting through the air) in slow motion, using high-speed cinema cameras. In their latest video, the duo fill a soccer ball with water, and Gavin hurls it at Dan’s face.

To the casual bystander, the painful moment occurs too quickly to register Dan’s reaction—but a camera filming the impact at 2800 frames a second captures how the heavy sphere impacts the daredevil’s face, causing his cheeks, lips, and nose to undulate as he recoils in pain.

Watch the painfully fascinating process below, in 1000x slow motion.

Banner image: iStock

Skype users with contacts around the globe can use Skype Translator to interpret nine spoken languages in real time, and more than 50 languages while instant messaging. Introduced in 2014, the feature only worked with Skype-to-Skype calls—but now, The Verge reports, the app is expanding the feature to calls made to landlines and mobile phones.

Want to try it for yourself? The feature is still in development, so callers will need to download the Skype app’s latest beta version. You’ll also need to register for Microsoft’s Windows Insider Program (which lets people with a Windows 10 license sign up to access early builds of the operating system) and purchase some Skype credits.

Once everything’s all set, you pull up the Skype dialer, hit the “Translate” switch, choose the languages you plan to speak in, and make your call. The recipient will hear a brief message informing them that the conversation will be recorded and translated, and the rest of the phone exchange will be interspersed with brief pauses as Skype deciphers various phrases.

At the moment, Skype Translator supports English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, and Arabic. And as with all automated translation services, it’s not foolproof; so if you’re planning on holding any cross-cultural conversations, you may want to play it safe by speaking slowly and having a foreign language dictionary on hand.

[h/t The Verge]