The Royal Household posted a job opening with the heading “Head of Digital Engagement.” Apparently, they’re looking for tech-savvy candidates experienced in digital communication content strategy and digital platform usage. The job description sounds pretty normal enough, aside from the fact that you’ll be working for the longest-reigning British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. 

Apart from reporting to the queen (or, more likely, a chain of command that eventually makes its way up to the queen), the job sounds pretty typical. The head of digital engagement for the Royal Household will work Monday through Friday, 37.5 hours per week, and be paid 45,000-50,000 pounds (about $60,000-$67,000) per year depending on experience.

Do you meet the minimum qualifications? There is still time to apply, though obviously the demand for this job is very high and slots may be running out soon. 

According to The New York Times, 200 people had already applied for the job as of Friday, December 13, but if this sounds like your dream job, you have until Christmas Eve to submit your application.

Find out more from Apartment Therapy.

Photo: S. Hermann & F. Richter / Pixabay

Estimated value of Portrait of a Lady by Gustav Klimt was $66 million--assuming that anyone could ever find it. The painting vanished 23 years ago from the gallery in Piacenza, Italy where it hung. Recently, a gallery worker found it inside one of the walls.

On Feb. 22, 1997, thieves broke into the gallery through a skylight. It is likely that they discovered that the painting was too large to get out through the skylight and so decided to store it on site. The BBC reports:

That was until a worker clearing ivy from the wall of the gallery where it was stolen stumbled on a metal panel.

Behind it lay a recess, within which was a black bag containing what appeared to be the missing painting.

Checks are still being carried out on the recovered work, which has been handed to police.

But gallery director Massimo Ferrari is confident the original has been found, because it has the same stamps and sealing wax on the back of the painting.

Police are investigating whether the thieves had left the painting hidden with the aim of removing it when worldwide media attention moved away from one of the most notorious art thefts in years.

-via Messy Nessy Chic | Photo: Yorck Project

Both my grandmothers were wonderful cooks, as far as I can remember. I also recall my mother's culinary skills as superb, even though she quit cooking at all some time ago. But my father used to tell stories of when Mom was young and burned everything. I don't recall those times myself. And I've had enough mothers-in-law to realize that you do not became a great cook just from many years of doing it. They were never masters of the kitchen like my grandmothers were.   

But none of it would really matter, because scientifically speaking, the greatness of her cooking goes so far beyond the simple spectrum of palatability. “Food memories feel so nostalgic because there’s all this context of when you were preparing or eating this food, so the food becomes almost symbolic of other meaning,” Susan Whitborne, professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts, told HuffPost in 2017. “A lot of our memories as children, it’s not so much the apple pie, for example, but the whole experience of being a family, being nourished, and that acquires a lot of symbolism apart from the sensory quality.”

Which is to say that every time I eat my grandmother’s cooking, my tastebuds act as a sort of time machine for my subconscious, transporting me back to all those times she let me eat a jar of Nutella and go ape on the drum kit she bought me. In that way, my draw to her cooking is sort of like Pavlov’s dog experiment, only in this case, I’m the dog who’s been conditioned to believe that her stews are culinary Valhalla.

That explains why your grandma's cooking is so good, while other people's grandmas could be complete failures. Science tells us the same factors may be at work to make you really hate particular foods. Read more about these findings at Mel magazine.

As part of a zero-gravity experiment, a U.S agricultural tech company is sending cannabis and coffee to the International Space Station. Via the next SpaceX resupply mission, which is scheduled for March next year, tissue cultures of java and hemp will be transported. (Hemp is a variety of cannabis that contains low levels of THC, the principal psychoactive constituent of cannabis.)

Up to 480 plant cells will be housed for about 30 days in a special incubator, which regulates temperature and allows astronauts to examine how plant cells undergo genetic mutations while in space.

[...]

After a month away, the cells will return to Earth, where researchers at Front Range Biosciences can examine the plant samples to determine how microgravity and space radiation exposure altered their genes.

“This is one of the first times anyone is researching the effects of microgravity and spaceflight on hemp and coffee cell cultures,” Front Range Biosciences CEO Jonathan Vaught said in a statement.

Check out Geek.com for more information about this news.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: herbalhemp/ Pixabay)

Despite growing to 70 to 100 kilograms, giant pandas typically weigh 100 grams at birth, which is very very light compared to when they grow up. Human babies are much heavier, weighing 3.4 kg at birth on average. With this in mind, why are giant pandas born so tiny? This unusual size difference between adult and baby pandas had left scientists puzzled for years.

With a few exceptions among animals such as echidnas and kangaroos, no other mammal newborns are so tiny relative to their mothers. No one knows why, but a Duke University study of bones across 10 species of bears and other animals finds that some of the current theories don't hold up.

More about this study over at ScienceDaily.

(Image Credit: Cimberley/ Pixabay)

Scavenge for food, find water, heal yourself from injuries and sickness, craft weapons and materials, and look for a safe place: these are some of the usual mechanics of a survival game, which is pretty much like real life. In some games, you’ll have to protect yourself from zombies at night, while in others you have to try to stay alive while competing against other players. But what are some of the best survival games ever made? Popular Mechanics offers their list to us. Why don’t you check it out?

(Image Credit: Mojang/ Popular Mechanics)

In the Ask Metafilter forum, hapaxes.legomenon told a story that cat owners can relate to in one way or another. The entire family got sick, and the litter box wasn't cleaned for a few days. When  hapaxes.legomenon recovered somewhat and tended to the litter box, which is in the laundry room, a child's sock fell into the box at the beginning of the process.

Somehow, at this moment, the echoing cavern off her brain made an incredible leap of logic. I myself did not uncover this understanding for several days.

The problem is thus: she has associated sock-in-box with litter-box-gets-cleaned and, it being the third fact her brain possesses, will not let go of the notion no matter how untrue it is.

I clean it every day, but she keeps dragging socks and other small clothing items in there. She doesn't go on the material, just puts it on top of the litter, but it still gross. I've been washing everything but that doesn't seem super hygienic (the alternative seems both expensive and environmentally wasteful). With the litter box in the laundry room she has easy access to victims, but even when I've been diligent about not leaving out a single scrap of fabric in there, she'll drag something through the entire house to pursue her objectives. I have witnessed it, and was scared it was a mouse. It was another white toddler sock.

The question is, how to get a cat to un-learn this idea? Cat lovers know that some kitties collect things, often small items of clothing. They also develop weird habits. My white cat puts two hair elastics in the shared kibble pan, which annoys the other cats. It might be a territory thing, but I remove them and then all is well. Read the full story, the experiences of other Mefites, and suggestions on how to change the cat's mind.

(Unrelated image credit: Flickr user schmilblick)

In the latest installment of his True Facts series, Ze Frank tells us all we need to know about mudskippers. These are unusual fish, and not just because they are funny-looking. They did not evolve to walk on land, but they do it anyway. And that's just the beginning of their weirdness.  

I believe that all of us have already met a selfish person at least once in our lives. It might be someone from work, or our classmate in school, or even someone we are close to. I also believe that all of us have experienced being the selfish person. But what is really going on in our minds when we think of being generous or selfish? Is there a difference between deciding whether to think about self or others? A recent study at RIKEN suggests that there might be a difference in processing whether to be generous or selfish.

A RIKEN team, led by Hiroyuki Nakahara of the Laboratory for Integrated Theoretical Neuroscience at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science, discovered this when they examined 36 healthy volunteers aged between 20 and 32 years. Their aim was to find out which parts of the brain are activated when considering giving rewards to others.

Find out more about this study over at Neuroscience News.

(Image Credit: geralt/ Pixabay)

Shown above is a patent illustration for a peculiarly masochistic device called the Mama Robot. The South Korean patent is held by 정인필. Check out what it's supposed to do.

The Mama Robot is creepy in many ways. As far as I can tell, it's a device that allows children to punish themselves when they know they've been naughty but their parents are away.

The child is able to decide how many lashes with a cane they deserve, and the Mama Robot will then deliver the punishment. As it does so, the prerecorded voice of the parent will admonish the child, but simultaneously the Mama Robot will weep "such that the sad feelings of the parent punishing are conveyed to the child."

Since patent illustrations are often simplistic and hard to date by just looking at them, you may get the idea that this is pretty old by its purpose. No, the patent was granted in 2017! You have to wonder what potential manufacturers think of the idea. Read more about the Robot Mama at Weird Universe.

Do you still remember your high school English? Challenge yourself by taking this quiz and see if you do better than most adults. The questions contain English Literature and Language lessons from the GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) exams administered in most British territories. 

Take the quiz from BuzzFeed here! And don’t worry there’s no time limit.

How well did you do?

Photo: Robin Higgins / Pixabay

Simon's Cat meets an annoying crow in this Christmas cartoon. The story is only two minutes long; the rest is an ad, with a short preview of an upcoming cartoon at the end.

The number to beat is 6.5 billion for the highest views on a YouTube music video from the 2010s. “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee has achieved certified video viral gold along with other leading artists like Ed Sheeran, Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth, Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars, Psy, Justin Bieber, Maroon 5, Katy Perry, and OneRepublic.  

But if you’re looking for musical hits outside of this decade, YouTube has got you covered with their list of every top music video from the 1980s onwards. 

Guns N' Roses reigns over both the '80s and '90s, thanks to "Sweet Child O' Mine" and "November Rain," both of which have garnered more than 1 billion views. Coming in at Nos. 2 and 3 on the '80s list are A-ha's still-infectious "Take on Me" and Cyndi Lauper's iconic "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," while Nirvana's classic "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and The Cranberries' gritty smash "Zombie" were the second and third most-watched of the '90s.

Check out the complete list via Hollywood Reporter. 

Photo: Christian Wiediger / Unsplash

Stephen Shkuratoff from Alberta, Canada, may have a blind condition but that’s not stopping his deep love for dogs. A member of the online community, Dogspotting Society, where users can share heartwarming dog photos and stories, Shkuratoff posted this request on the Facebook page:

“I love being a member of this group!” … “I am blind and was hoping to ask for more dog descriptions. Personality traits are more helpful than colors. Like how soft the dog is, for example. Bonus as always for dogs full of kisses and snuggles. Thanks for making me feel included. Hope no one minds me asking for descriptions a lot recently.”

Over 2,000 responses came in from fellow dog owners and they sure did not disappoint. The visual descriptions are as endearing as they are thoughtful and help to inspire more appreciation for our loyal pet companions and other gifts we may take for granted. 

“All these descriptions are so lovely and I am very thankful,” he said after reading through the overwhelming number of responses.

Read the full story from People.com. 

(Image credit: Stephen Shkuratoff / Facebook)

Many geek gifts consist of little more than tee shirts, posters and the like... but while those are great, they also aren't exactly sophisticated. If you're looking for a tasteful gift that still has a geeky edge, you won't want to miss this round up of classy gifts for the nerds in your life.

The list includes everything from original artwork to jewelry and from customized glassware to surprisingly naturalistic Minnie Mouse ears. Don't miss the full list here.