Sorry for the late update. As I noted last night, I ended up with an early appointment that ate up most of the day. Unrelated to my broken elbow I saw the doctor, had some tests, and apparently I'm just fine. Speaking of things that are just fine, the avatar system in our forums is just fine again, after being broken for a while. It turns out the fix during the summer for the UTF-8 text bugs we had suffered from caused the system to reject uploaded avatar images. No one mentioned the problem until Ant came across it. His background in QA kicked in and after a bit of puzzling, Frans figured out the problem and fixed it. So there. If you tried to upload and avatar and failed, apologies for the problem. You can now feel free to have at it again.

Doctored up Round-up
Thanks Ant and Neutronbeam.

Breakfast Links

• Fiennes Talks Changing M's "Spectre" Fate. A bloody hero!
• James Cameron Confirms Legendary Myth Behind His 'Alien$' Pitch. Thanks Max.

Stories

• How Oklahoma Became a Marijuana Boom State (may require registration or subscription). Thanks Neutronbeam.
• Endangered orangutan in New Orleans has 1 healthy baby.
• How the pigeon's reputation turned from the Ferrari of birds to 'rats with wings.' Thanks Max.

Science

• Intermittent fasting: Eight things scientists discovered about the diet in 2021.

Media

• Questions at the Gas Pump. Thanks VideoSift.
• Aviation’s best Christmas adverts. Thanks RedEye9.
• Japanese man lights house on fire during stream. Was not even aware of smoking streams. Thanks VideoSift.