Christmas and Hanukkah are both less than two weeks away. Between shopping for presents, tackling last-minute work deadlines, and preparing for out-of-town guests, you’ll likely need extra caffeine to check all the items off your holiday to-do list. Luckily, Dunkin’ Donuts has your back. As Travel + Leisure reports, select DD locations across the U.S. will be giving away free medium hot coffees on certain days throughout December.
The promotion began today, and runs until Friday, December 23. The first 500 guests to stop at the participating locations each day will receive a complimentary beverage. In the spirit of seasonal generosity, the chain also plans to donate $1000 to local children’s charities in each city serving free coffee.
Not all store locations have been finalized just yet, but here’s an itinerary of cities where customers can get their caffeine fix for free. For a full, updated list of restaurants, check back with the Dunkin’ Donuts blog. (Sorry, Chicago residents, you likely missed your chance, as your local DD giveaway took place today.)
Tuesday, December 13: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Cincinnati, Ohio
Wednesday, December 14: Springfield, Missouri; St. Louis, Missouri; Nashville, Tennessee
Thursday, December 15: Hartford, Connecticut; Nashville, Tennessee
Monday, December 19: Baltimore, Maryland
Tuesday, December 20: Boston, Massachusetts; Washington, D.C.
Wednesday, December 21: Providence, Rhode Island
Thursday, December 22: Metro New York; Burlington, Vermont
Pouring a beer properly is an art that many of us haven’t quite mastered. Mess it up and you’ll be left with a glass full of foam. You can either shrug and drink it, wait for the froth to settle—or you can take a cue from the American Chemical Society’s latest Reactions video, and use science to make your brew sippable.
The ACS recommends touching a piece of pizza, French fries, or even your nose, and then swirling your greasy finger through the bubbles. The oil breaks the bonds between beer proteins and hop compounds, causing the foam to dissipate. (Pro tip: Leave a little foam, as it lends the brew extra aroma and makes it creamy.) To learn more about the chemistry of beer bubbles, watch the clip above.
Fans of the LEGO Ideas website know it’s an outlet where LEGO hobbyists can share ideas for potential designs made from the plastic toys. Once 10,000 different fans support a submission, it becomes eligible for review to become a real-life, licensed LEGO product. One new member of the so-called “10K Club” is Nathan Readioff, who goes by the username “NathanR2015.” A physics PhD student at the University of Liverpool, he created a miniature version of the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator—the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Readioff drew inspiration for the design from real life experience: As part of his PhD, he’s worked at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, using data from the ATLAS particle detector to study the Higgs boson. Readioff helped run the ATLAS detector, and he also observed experiments conducted on all four of the LHC’s particle detectors, which, in addition to ATLAS, include CMS, ALICE, and LHCb.
The LEGO model came about because “I thought it would be fun to have a model of ATLAS sitting on my desk at work,” Readioff told the LEGO Ideas blog. The physics student found an ATLAS detector model on the LEGO Ideas blog, but it didn’t pass muster, so he “simply hauled out LEGO Digital Designer and started work on my own version,” he says. “Once my own little ‘baby’ version of ATLAS was finished though, I couldn’t stop until I had built the full set of experiments and built a model of the entire LHC.”
Around a year and a half ago, Readioff decided to share his creation with the world, and he posted it on the LEGO Ideas website. Now, if the toy company execs give the go-ahead, the tiny LHC may become a real-life, commercially sold design.
Readioff’s LHC model uses nearly 500 bricks—“373 bricks in the LHC ring, and a further 86 in the control room,” he says. Watch him talk about (and show off) the tiny model in the video below.
Wine can get weird. When planning your next soiree, skip the conventional vino varieties and opt for a type that’s made from unconventional (or straight-up wacky) ingredients or a unique hue. Sip on some inspiration below.
1. ROSE PETAL WINE
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Located in West Sussex, England, the small, family-run Lurgashall Winery produces wines, spirits, and meads from fruit and natural ingredients like birch sap, brambles, honey, and walnuts. The Royal National Rose Society, a specialist plant society in England that focuses on rose care and cultivation, commissioned Lurgashall to make a rose wine from handpicked flower petals. The pink-hued vintage is reportedly aromatic and medium-dry. No word, however, on whether it tastes as fragrant as its parent plant smells.
2. METEORITE WINE
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In 2012, Ian Hutcheon—who then worked as manager of Tremonte Vineyard in Chile’s Cachapoal Valley—merged his love of wine and astronomy: He released a Cabernet Sauvignon that was fermented in a vat with a 4.5-billion-year-old meteorite, believed to have crashed into the Atacama Desert around 6000 years ago. Fittingly, Hutcheon named the vintage “Meteorito.”
Originally, Hutcheon only sold the wine at his observatory, Centro Astronomico Tagua Tagua, which he opened in 2007. “The idea behind creating the wine was to blend astronomy with winemaking, and offer the wine as an entertaining product visitors to our observatory could take home as a souvenir,” Hutcheon told The Drinks Business in 2013. But the space-inspired wine ended up garnering international attention, and wine lovers from other countries—including the U.S.—clamored to try the celestial drink for themselves.
3. BLUE WINE
Gik Live
Wine is typically red, white, pink, or yellow. But thanks to a start-up composed of six young Spanish entrepreneurs, we’ll soon be able to drink a blue variety. The company—and its wine—is called GIK, and its founders (who have no prior wine-making experience) partnered with the University of the Basque Country and the food research department of the Basque Government to make the cerulean beverage.
Gik’s wine is made from a red-and-white grape blend, with a non-calorie sweetener added to the mix. Surprisingly, its vivid hue doesn’t come from dye—it reportedly is the result of a natural pigment found in grape skin, combined with indigo from the Isatis tinctoria plant. You can buy Gik online in Europe, and it’s also available for pre-order in the U.S.
Know that feeling near the end of the day, when you’re not sure if you need a cup of coffee to perk up or a glass of wine to unwind? Friends Fun Wine certainly does. The Florida-based company sells different types of canned wine, including what they bill as the world’s first coffee wine. Currently, it offers Cabernet Coffee Espresso and Chardonnay Coffee Cappuccino, as well as non-coffee beverages like sangria and moscato.
5. PUMPKIN WINE
Not into pumpkin spice lattes? Give its alcoholic cousin—pumpkin wine—a try. Maple River Winery in Casselton, North Dakota, makes the seasonal drink from local pumpkins. According to staff, the autumnal drink is so popular that it sells out quickly each fall (hence it’s not listed on their website). However, vineyard visitors can still sample other unusual flavors—including apricot, gooseberry, lilac, and strawberry-rhubarb—depending on their seasonality.
Birthday Cake Vineyards’ name gets straight to the point. The New York-based company makes wine that, according to them, tastes like birthday cake. Customers can choose among a variety of white wines that taste like strawberry shortcake, cheesecake, and cake batter, and reds flavored like coffee cake and black forest cake.
7. JALAPENO WINE
Cardinal Winery
Brave enough to eat a jalapeno pepper whole? Try drinking an entire bottle of them. Located 30 minutes north of Philadelphia, Cardinal Hollow Winery in West Point, Pennsylvania makes more than 25 different types of wine—including strawberry, blackberry, and dandelion—but one of their best-selling creations is jalapeno wine. If the idea of sipping alcohol made from fiery chili peppers seems more terrifying than tasty, you can still cook with it. Cardinal Hollow Winery recommends using it to marinate meat, sprinkle on salads, and adding it to other types of wine for an added kick.
8. BEER-WINE HYBRIDS
Dogfish Head
Drinkers typically identify as either “wine” or “beer” people, but a handful of breweries have blurred this line (and confused everyone’s taste buds) by creating a variety of unique beer/wine hybrids. Brewers will add grape juice, whole grapes, and must (a blend of skins, seeds, stems, and other grape products) to their product, or ferment beer using wine yeasts.
One notable example is Dogfish Head Brewery, the craft beer heavyweight in Milton, Delaware. One of their beers, called Noble Rot, contains two white wine grapes: pinot gris and viognier grapes. (The latter are infected with a “benevolent fungus” called botrytis, a.k.a. “noble rot,” to reduce their water content and maximize their sweetness.) Another brew, Sixty-One IPA, is made with Syrah grape must. And Midas Touch is a hybrid wine/beer/mead beverage inspired by ingredients found in 2700-year-old drinking vessels that archaeologists discovered in the legendary King Midas’s tomb.
9. VODKA WINE
Un costume sur mesure pour Absolut Tune, mariage d’un sauvignon blanc néo-zélandais mousseux et de la célèbre vodka Absolut! pic.twitter.com/zuNW5TWA1a
In 2012, Absolut Vodka launched Tune, a sparkling Sauvignon Blanc spiked with vodka. (It reportedly had a 14 percent ABV, which suggests that the drink had relatively little actual hard alcohol in it.) The following year, Tune was recalled in 10 states after it was discovered that the brand didn’t disclose whether the wine contained sulfates. Eventually, Tune was discontinued, but a few online retailers still appear to sell it.
BONUS: WINE MADE FROM GRAPES GROWN IN SPACE (FORTHCOMING)
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In the future, humans may enjoy wine made from grapes grown in a plant growth chamber on the International Space Station. In 2015, officials announced that the commercial spacecraft SpaceX Dragon would deliver wine grape seeds to the habitable satellite on its upcoming commercial resupply mission that April. Turns out, wine grapes are perfect for space travel: they don’t require much water, they produce strong fruit, and they yield little waste.
Rolf’s German Restaurant in New York City’s Gramercy Park neighborhood has one of the city’s most over-the-top holiday decoration displays—but visitors have to step inside to see it. As Business Insider reports, the restaurant spends between $60,000 and $65,000 each year to festoon the tiny eatery’s interior with twinkling lights, baubles, and garlands.
Approximately 15,000 ornaments, 100,000 lights, and 800 figurines hang from the ceiling, walls, and bar, Rolf’s manager, Suhal Uddin, tells Business Insider. The restaurant begins its extravagant decoration process in late September, and after several weeks of sleepless nights, workers typically finish the festive project by November 1.
The restaurant is inundated with reservation requests during the holiday season. Rest assured: This year, Rolf’s decorations will stay up until the end of May, giving you plenty of time to wait for the crowds to die down and check them out in person.
Check out pictures of Rolf’s over-the-top Christmas display below.
When playing Santa for a long-distance loved one, the only thing more important than selecting the perfect gift is ensuring it arrives on time for Christmas Day festivities. Remember these US Postal Service shipping deadlines to guarantee a timely delivery:
If you finished your shopping nice and early, you can ship your presents with USPS Retail Ground Service (formerly Standard Post) by December 15 and have them arrive before the 25th. Rates start at $6.75, and your parcel should arrive in two to eight business days. (This is a good option for larger packages, as you’re permitted to send shipments up to 70 pounds and 130 inches in combined length and girth.)
Sending small gifts (weighing up to 13 ounces) or Christmas cards? Opt for First-Class Mail, and ship them out by December 20. They should arrive in one to three business days. Rates start at 47 cents (for a First-Class Mail Forever Stamp).
For last-minute gifts, use Priority Mail (deadline: December 21) or Priority Mail Express (December 23). Priority Mail delivers your gift in one to three days, based on where your package starts and where it’s going. Rates start at $6.45. Choose Priority Mail Express and your package should arrive overnight. Rates start at $22.95.
Antlers may look like an accessory, but they’re actually weapons. Males of the deer family—moose, deer, elk, and reindeer, to name a few—grow the large, bony structures to scare away (or in severe cases, fight off) romantic rivals trying to woo their mates. In the video above, created by YouTube video series Deep Look, host and writer Amy Standen explains how the animals grow the massive appendages, and why they need to sprout new ones each year.
Life is full of little mysteries. Why do we run out of conditioner before we’re out of shampoo? Why do we blush, even when we’re not embarrassed? And perhaps most frustratingly for people with chatty co-workers, why can’t we concentrate on work in our noisy, open-plan office when we have no problem focusing in a busy coffee shop?
The first two questions remain a mystery, but The Telegraph reports that researchers may have found an explanation for why your loquacious office peers drive you crazier than a rambling barista or clattering dishes: People trying to focus on a task find work-related conversations to be far more distracting (and annoying) than random, meaningless chitchat.
A team of acoustic scientists, led by Takahiro Tamesue, a professor at Yamaguchi University in Japan, conducted a study that looked at how background noise affects concentration. They asked subjects to perform tasks requiring intense focus while listening to various sounds, including random noises or productive, work-related discussions.
During one test, volunteers had to count how many times a red square flashed across a computer screen over the course of 10 minutes, while listening to both random noise and human speech at different pitches. In a second trial, they were asked to identify and count an infrequently heard noise among a sea of other noises, including background noise, music, and meaningful words. Subjects were asked to rate how annoying the “distracting” sounds were. During both tasks, scientists monitored participants’ brain waves through electrodes placed on the scalp, to gauge whether they were processing the sounds or were tuning them out.
Researchers found “that more meaningful noises, such as music and conversation, had a stronger effect on levels of subjective annoyance than meaningless noises—and led to a greater decline in performance on cognitive tasks involving memory or arithmetic tests,” as they concluded in a news release. Additionally, the participants’ brain waves showed that their selective attention was influenced by how meaningful the noises were.
According to Tamesue, the study’s findings suggests that employees should consider not only sound level, but how meaningful sounds are, while creating a workplace ambiance. “Because it is difficult to soundproof an open office, a way to mask meaningful speech with some other sound would be of great benefit for achieving a comfortable sound environment,” he said.
In short, if you’re going to have a discussion about work with a co-worker, consider opting for the soundproof conference room instead of talking in the middle of the office. Your colleagues will thank you—and end up being way more productive, to boot.
Black cats aren’t always considered bad luck. In the English Midlands, brides are given dark-hued felines to bless their marriage, and in Japan, the animals are believed to be auspicious (particularly for single women). Now, the Associated Press reports, the police force in a small Pennsylvania town says a black cat helped them solve a crime.
In late November, the Ephrata Police Department was searching for a 23-year-old man wanted on an outstanding Lancaster County bench warrant (legalese for an arrest warrant that’s issued by a judge or court). Authorities found the man in a local home’s backyard, but he fled the scene, prompting the police to follow him.
Cops searched the surrounding area, but they didn’t spot the fugitive. Thankfully, a witness stood nearby—the black cat. As most pet owners know, there’s often no rhyme or reason to feline behavior, but one officer noted that the kitty’s eyes seemed to be fixed on two sheds in the backyard. One of them was empty—but sure enough, the second shed housed the runaway offender.
The man was taken into police custody, and the Ephrata Police Department later shared news of the crime-fighting feline on Facebook. “The Ephrata PD is thankful for any crime fighting assistance we get, whether human or feline!” they wrote. If the kitty sticks around, we sense a reality show in the works …
From Tamagotchis to Teddy Ruxpin, everyone remembers the coveted holiday toys of their childhood. Some parents stood in line for hours or paid premium prices for these sold-out items, while others simply waited out the hype (and the cost) to score one as a Christmas or Hanukkah gift.
Online shopping portal Ebates took a festive walk down memory lane and created the infographic below. It lists the most desirable children’s presents from 1983 and beyond, and even hints at which toy is likely the must-have item of 2016.
