Resolving to eat healthier foods on the next year, but worried that you’ll have to sacrifice taste? No need to worry: you don’t need to give up taste in exchange for health, and these cookbooks can help you make your healthy meals delicious.
Outside Online has compiled their list of the most nutritious cookbooks of 2019 that they will be sticking with in the New Year. Why don’t you check it out over at their site?
(Image Credit: Daria-Yakovleva/ Pixabay)
The decade is closing in a few days, and what better way to reminisce about the past year and the closing decade than to look back at the music? Refinery29 lists its top 10 albums of the whole decade, and while you might not agree on some (or any, music is subjective after all) of their picks, we can all agree on one thing: there’s a lot of good music that came from the 2010s. Maybe you can take inspiration from them and list the albums that define your decade as well!
image credit: via wikimedia commons
Temperatures across affected areas in Australia are soaring as fires have destroyed nearly 4 million hectares of bush land. For local residents and wildlife, seeking protection from the intense heat, which can be fatal, is a must. On Monday, Reuters shared this news update:
A family in the upper Hunter region of New South Wales filmed a 70 kg (154 lb) kangaroo taking a dip in their swimming pool at the weekend as temperatures topped 42 Celsius.
Various wildlife sanctuaries and rescue groups have evacuated hundreds of animals in time before the flames hit. But the task remains a difficult one, especially when deciding whether to evacuate or stay with the wildlife animals who may face worsening heat and fire conditions.
Reuters covers the full story here.
Photo: Ethan Brooke / Unsplash
There has been talk for years about looking into the time when Obi-Wan Kenobi stayed in a cave in Tatooine, watching over young Luke Skywalker from a distance as he grew up. Jamie Costa has produced a 15-minute fan film doing exactly that. He portrayed Han Solo in the fan film Han Solo: A Smuggler's Trade three years ago, so it appears that he's staying one step ahead of Disney. Kenobi also stars James Arnold Taylor, Tommy Snider, and Maxine Phoenix. Yes, Hollywood is full of Star Wars geeks.
Scientists who study the natural world have to spend at least part of their time in that world. The work can be grueling and uneventful, but spend enough time outdoors and something memorable will happen ventually. Like the time paleontology professor Don Esker and his team were caught in a sudden storm in Montana. Most of the crew hurried to tents (that collapsed) while he was in a van.
After a bit, we started to hear hard *pings* as objects ricocheted off the van, and we realized we were getting hail, steadily increasing in abundance and size. The vehicles rocked ominously and the hail fell, and the wind blew and blew and blew and we were silent. Gradually, the storm abated.
We went out to check on Mason Jane Milam, who had remained in her tent. As we approached, she emerged, smiling ruefully, streaked with green and brown. Her tent was filled with 15 to 20 centimeters of sludge of the same colors. Cow patties had been sent aloft when the storm first hit, blowing them into Mason’s door-less tent despite all her efforts. When the rain came next, it had rehydrated the excrement and turned her tent into a bathtub of bovine sewage.
In addition to bovine sewage, scientists tell us stories of falling off rock formations, negotiating mine fields, dealing with floods and charging bulls, and even finding a crime scene, at Gizmodo.
(Unrelated image credit: Petrified Forest)
Twitter user Schadenfreudelish calls it a "Baby Yodarita". Just add two black cherries for eyes, two lime wedges for ears, and tie a napkin around the stem for a robe. Intoxicating it is.
This is the right way to start Christmas morning!
-via Proper Opinion
In an ironically waggish plot twist, firefighters in Lathrop, California, came to the rescue of a German shepherd that was stuck in a tree after chasing a black cat. Amusingly, upon the arrival of first responders who brought a ladder with them, the dog still would not relent in his pursuit.
The Lathrop Manteca Fire District Facebook page shared photos of the cat-dog conundrum with the caption:
You may have heard that our firefighters get cats out of trees, but what about dogs?!?! Right after Truck 30 and Engine 35 dropped off Santa that was exactly their next call. Glad to hear that all turned out well for this pooch, and we are all pretty sure he’ll think twice about chasing cats up the next tree...nice work Engine 35!
In the post, you can see just how hair-raising of a height it was and the moments of relief after the successful rescue.
Head over to CNN for the full story.
Yule log videos are helpful if you don't have a fireplace but would still like to experience the sights and sounds of a warming fire. We've seen cat internet star Lil Bub and Nick Offerman make their own soothing videos. Now it's time for Luke and Anakin Skywalker to get into the action. This video by Benjamin Apple loops the funeral scene from Return of the Jedi for five hours.
-via Instapundit
The Guardian gives us a list of the 13 worst trends from the past 10 years, which “were full of questionable ideas and purchases.” They cover everything from the rising influence of social media and celebrities to marketing trends in smart technology and fast fashion.
As you take a short trip down memory lane, you might find yourself asking, “What were we thinking?” Although there were a lot of awesome viral moments in the past decade, it comes with its fair share of cringing and let’s-not-do-that-again. Oh well, that’s popular culture for you.
What do you think about this?
Check out the full list from The Guardian.
Photo: Oleg Laptev / Unsplash
The year is not over yet and there is more to come before we bid 2019 a final farewell. An annual solar eclipse is expected to occur “at 3.43am Universal Time on December 26, 2019. If you're in Southeast Asia, that'll be between 11am to 1pm local time Christmas Day.”
There's a reason why this particular phenomenon is also called the "ring of fire" and sometimes, "ring of light". That's because watching the 3 minute 40 second eclipse without any protection for the eyes can lead to total blindness.
While it's not expected to be impressive since the New Moon is further away from the sun and will only be blocking the center of the sun's disk - about 97 percent of the sun, experts say the spectacle would still be beautiful to look at.
Don’t worry if you miss out on this one, there’s another eclipse expected to take place on June 21, 2020, and it may even be a rarer spectacle than this one.
Head over to Mashable for the full article.
Photo: Jongsun Lee / Unsplash
Up in the chilly Arctic, the frozen bodies of woolly mammoths can be so well preserved that they still have blood in their veins. With their flesh still pink, it is no wonder why some people have thought of eating meat frozen for 35,000 years. In fact, there have been tales of dining on woolly mammoths frozen since the Ice Age, which range from the fantastical to the truer and grosser. Let’s begin with the fantastical ones.
In 1901, a male mammoth was discovered by an expedition to the Beresovka River in Siberia. The mammoth was so excellently preserved that it still had grass in its mouth.
The mammoth’s bones and skin were put on display in St. Petersburg, and its flesh was, supposedly, served at a “mammoth banquet.” The meal was a hit, according to one glowing account, ”particularly the course of mammoth steak, which all the learned guests declared was agreeable to the taste, and not much tougher than some of the sirloin furnished by butchers of today.”
Fifty years later, in 1951, an exotic feast was put up by the Explorers Club in New York. This time, it was said that the meat came from a carcass found in the Aleutian Islands, according to a Jesuit-turned-geologist known as the Glacier Priest.
Each diner got mere slivers of meat, but those slivers made quite the impression. Guests went home bragging of their Ice Age dinner. But they later disagreed over whether the meat was really supposed to be mammoth or mastodon or an extinct giant sloth called megatherium.
DNA analysis say otherwise, however. The meat from the 1951 feast was none of the above mentioned. It wasn’t even prehistoric.
What was the meat from the 1951 feast? And what about the account of the “mammoth banquet” of 1901? What happens to meat frozen for tens of thousands of years? Answers over at The Atlantic.
(Image Credit: Dmitry Bogdanov/ Wikimedia Commons)
A woman from the U.S. shared this heartwarming Facebook post of how she repaired a butterfly’s broken wing with a few tools and a guide she found online. Romy McCloskey helps dozens of butterflies go through metamorphosis by taking caterpillars indoors and releasing them into the wild once the transformation process is done. For one particular insect, its right wing came out deformed and Romy decided to take action by creating an artificial wing for him.
The procedure looks something like surgery for butterflies and thankfully,
Romy is a costume designer and does embroidery by trade, so it made the delicate procedure of creating an artificial butterfly wing much easier for her.
Romy then posted updates of the butterfly flying in nature with his new prosthetic wing.
Check out the full article from Megaphone.
(Image credit: Romy McCloskey / Facebook)
Glenn Druery entered his Tonkinese cat, Gus, as a wild-card contender in the Scotland Island dog swimming race, which has been held every Christmas Eve for the past 44 years. Although Gus is unlikely to win the race because of the physical advantages dogs have over cats, it does make for a good story.
Other dog owners who joined the race weren’t too hot about the cat joining the race in the interest of the safety of Gus and the other dogs too. In general, “[b]ig water dogs, such as labradors and other retrievers, predictably fare best overall.” The winners are categorized based on 3 dog sizes and receive their respective share of the prizes, which doubles as the entry fee of a beer bottle and a tin of dog food.
The Guardian gives more details about the origin of this holiday tradition here.
Photo: Sharon McCutcheon / Pexels
Re-post cause it blew up on tiktok, which way is he facing? pic.twitter.com/hG4DY9rg0v
— T U P P E R (@ectupper) December 22, 2019
Eric Tupper posted an old video he took of a guy on a swing set in Fairbanks, Alaska. The question is: which way is he facing? Is he swinging toward the building, or toward the camera? The lack of definition in his form and his face not being visible led to conjecture across the internet. People weren't so much arguing about which way he was facing as they were arguing whether this was a new "what color is this dress?" argument. Or maybe the "Yanny or Laurel?" question. Yeah, you can watch this and deliberately change what you think you see with effort. But there is a definite answer.
Tupper confirmed what the video shows us: the guy is facing the camera. -via The Daily Dot
“From out of the forest I appear, to proclaim that Christmastime is here!” Santa — real name Tim Zander — exclaims as he arrives at a workshop in Berlin to train a handful of newbies how to act like him.
"A really epic arrival is good, just like I just performed," he tells a roomful of recruits, "complete with the bells, the ho-ho-ho, and a heavy knock on the door. But not so hard that you break it." The applicants, one wearing a full Santa suit, sit around a conference table, taking notes.
Across Europe and North America, hordes of Santa impersonators like Zander have been preparing children for Christmas. In Germany, however, the number of people willing to play Father Christmas has declined quickly, after a student union that traditionally supplied candidates ceased doing so last year due to a lack of interest by students.
More details about this over at NPR.
(Image Credit: Rob Schmitz/NPR)
