I Tried Giving My Daughter The Worst Xmas Gift Ever & I Didn’t Expect This Reaction pic.twitter.com/44cJytI83m
— LGND (@iamlgndfrvr) December 20, 2019
YouTuber LGND in Tampa, Florida tried to pull a prank on Aria, his young daughter. He offered her a banana as a Christmas present. An older child might have been upset at such a cheap present, but Aria was delighted. She could only squeal happily as she unwrapped the best banana ever.
You can see an extended video here.
-via The Mary Sue
Among women, there is a commonly misunderstood and misdiagnosed condition known as premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD).
PMDD is much more intense than its better-known relative, PMS, with physical symptoms including fatigue and migraines, while the psychological symptoms can include the severe mood swings and anxiety [...] . The disorder can be so debilitating that 15% of those with PMDD have attempted suicide, and some young women affected are opting for hysterectomies.
While PMDD is a very serious condition that can cause aggression and impulsivity linked to violent activities, more research needs to be done in order to better identify and understand the symptoms, especially in criminal cases where an accused woman pleads “diminished responsibility due to a premenstrual condition.”
Head over to the full article from BBC.
When you travel "home" for the holidays, that often means visiting older relatives, who would like you to to take a look at what's wrong with their computer, phone, TV, or other tech devices. Geeks make jokes about this constantly, so when I saw the headline as written above, I thought this might be a comedy list on how you can mess those things up so they'll never ask for your expertise again. No, this is a serious list that would be seriously useful in getting things situated at Grandma's house. It would also be a great New Year's list for yourself, as you have put off some of those tech maintenance tasks for too long. Start 2020 fresh and secure with the tech tasks listed at Gizmodo.
(Image credit: John Schnobrich on Unsplash)
Fluoride is believed to have protective effects for people’s teeth. However, there are those who are skeptical about the benefits of community water fluoridation, and in 2007, the people of Juneau, Alaska, voted to stop putting fluoride in their drinking water.
Ultimately, it was an expensive move to take out fluoride from the population's drinking water, more costly, in fact than keeping it. For kids below 6 years old, the average number of annual procedures for treating cavities increased by a small number, according to a study published in the journal BMC Oral Health.
Find out more about this from Science Alert.
Photo: Lisa Fotios / Pexels
Show your love for instant ramen with this footwear made by Italian brand Bottega Veneta, which will be released in 2020.
The footwear is part of a collection conceived by English designer Daniel Lee, whose name became very popular in the fashion industry after he won four awards in the British Fashion Awards this year.
Granted, Lee is probably unaware of the cultural significance of the instant ramen since he's not on social media.
"I don’t have social media. I try and use my cell phone as little as possible. I definitely prefer human interaction. That’s very important to me and to the work I do," he told Vogue.
I wonder how much this pair of sandals will cost?
What are your thoughts about this one?
(Image Credit: diet_prada/ Instagram)
The phenomenon known as the Fata Morgana mirage causes seafarers to see things that don't exist on the horizon. It's not due to seasickness or hunger or the relentless boredom of sailing driving one mad, but those things probably didn't help. It's a real illusion caused by the way light works with the atmosphere and the sea.
In 1818, when British explorer John Ross entered Lancaster Sound while seeking the Northwest Passage, he saw a mountain blocking his ship’s course and decided to sail no further. Ross named the mountain range the Croker Mountains, but a later expedition showed that they did not exist. In 1906, American explorer Robert Peary viewed a vast land northwest of Ellesmere Island and named it Crocker Land after his patron George Crocker. A couple of years later, Donald MacMillan went in search of the island and for five days chased the frozen apparition in vain before realizing that like Peary what he was seeing was an illusion.
A conspiracy theorist might see meaning in the similarity of the names, but these are just a couple of the big mistakes caused by the mirage. Read an explanation of how the Fata Morgana mirage works at Amusing Planet.
(Image credit: Flickr user Juris Seņņikovs)
Artist Jenny Jinya is an illustrator who also does comics. She wrote a graphic tale about black cats that went viral, and now had added a new chapter that will tug at your heartstrings. Read the entire story on one page at Jinya's site. And if you enjoyed that one, you can also read a story about a little dog who's a good boy. Bring a hankie. -via Bored Panda
It has been suggested multiple times that nuclear power can be the alternative to the diminishing supply of fossil fuels as the demand for the energy source increases. The suggestion has increased traction as the climate change crisis becomes more urgent. However, is this alternative worth it? While it is a plausible source of energy, the risks can outweigh its benefits, as seen in Chernobyl and Fukushima. Chernobyl and Fukushima are major nuclear-power disasters, where lives were lost. The New Yorker retells the Fukushima tragedy as the discussion for nuclear energy arise again. While nuclear energy is a great alternative, is the world ready for its production? Or are we going to have another major disaster again, as we cannot handle nuclear power well at the moment?
image via wikimedia commons
Miyu Kojima is an employee of a firm that specializes in cleaning up homes in morbid pasts. She cleans up after the kodokushi (“lonely deaths”), where people who live alone are found dead in their homes. To show an aspect of the kodokushis’ lives before their deaths, Kojima creates dioramas of the rooms where they died. Her horror-esque dioramas are dark and grotesque, carefully detailed and eerily realistic, as Japan Times details:
Scattered on a circular chabu-dai coffee table are empty jars of “one-cup” sake and shōchū (distilled spirits), the moldy remains of a convenience store bento-box lunch and horse-racing stubs — hints that the inhabitant may have met his sudden, solitary death while contemplating his chances at the racetrack.
In another room, a blue tarp holding a pool of blood is spread out below a severed noose tied to a ladder leading up to the loft. On the wall, written in tape, is the word “gomen” (“sorry”), while what appears to be a last will sits on the desk.
Then there’s the bathroom. Here, a red soupy liquid fills the bathtub, its contents unknown, and overflows onto the tiled floor.
image credit: Alex Martin via Japan Times
The use of food-related themes in art has been widespread as years pass by. From artists using food as a motif to speak about social issues, to using food as the main material in different mediums, from paintings to sculptures, food isn’t a newcomer in the field of art and self-expression. It seems that food is now also the main motif in decorative pieces. Inedible art decorations are everywhere, from food shops to cafes and home decor stores near you, these food objects are accessible and can be displayed in any corner of your home. The appeal behind this sudden trend of displaying inedible food may be related to the satisfaction of viewing the food you can’t eat, or just for the aesthetic.
(via Vogue)
image via The Webster
Night-mode is a smartphone feature that shifts the colors of your screen from cold to warm tones, aiming to make you sleep better. However, a study led by Dr. Tim Brown suggest that relying on your phone’s night mode to help you sleep wouldn’t work. Blue light actually don’t disrupt sleep, contrary to popular belief. In fact, your phone’s yellow lights during night mode is actually worse, according to the study. The Guardian has the details:
According to the study, brightness levels are more important than colour when it comes to stimulating the body clock. However, when the light is equally dim, blue is more relaxing than yellow.
This makes basic sense: daylight is yellow, twilight is blue, and sunrise and sunset are pretty reliable ways to tell your body clock what time it is. Of course, at this point, we only know it works on mice – and mice don’t have phones. “We think there is good reason to believe it’s also true in humans,” says Dr Brown.
There is perhaps a more obvious truth to be drawn – if your phone is telling you to switch to night mode, it is time to put down your phone.
It is not the colour of the screen that is keeping you awake; it is all the stuff your phone offers as an alternative to sleep at 2am. There is only one real night-mode switch: the off button.
image via wikimedia commons
Sleep is something mysterious, and not fully understood even by scientists. But one thing’s for sure: it is something essential in our lives. It has a crucial role in immune function, metabolism, memory, learning, and other vital functions.
Sleep has many great benefits in the body, especially in the brain. This is just one of the many benefits of sleep in the brain: it organizes the flow of fluids that can wash away build-ups of proteins as well as wastes around neurons.
When you sink into a deep sleep, a cycle of activity starts behind your closed eyelids. First, a slow electrical wave pulses through the brain. A few seconds later, the amount of blood within the brain drops. Then a wave of cerebrospinal fluid reverses its usual direction of flow and moves upward through large cavities in the lower and central portions of the brain. The pattern repeats about three times a minute for the duration of non-REM sleep, the typically dreamless phases when your eyes remain still.
In a recent study, researchers observed the rhythmic sequence uniting these three phenomena in humans for the first time and found the causal links between them. Their finding clarifies how sleep may protect the brain’s well-being by driving elements of an obscure “plumbing system” found in the brain only a few years ago.
In the near future, this newly discovered mechanism might be the basis for new treatments to prevent cognitive decline in patients with Alzheimer’s disease as well as other conditions.
More about this study over at Quanta Magazine.
(Image Credit: ColiN00B/ Pixabay)
Scientists at Swiss university ETH Zurich have found a way to make chocolate shimmer, without the artificial colorants. The stunning incandescence is achieved through a surface imprint that disperses light to display an array of hues, similar to a chameleon’s skin. Instead of a coating, the researchers tried to do an impression on the surface, which allows a colorful shimmer to appear. Researchers plan to refine the chocolate shimmer to a glow. Geek.com has the details:
Thanks to experts from the FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, who developed a mould that makes it possible to imprint more than one chocolate at a time, this unique method can be scaled up for industry.
The scientists are in discussions with major chocolate producers, according to ETH; they even plan to establish a spin-off company. A patent for the process has also been filed.
“The project was only successful because different disciplines worked together,” the university said in a press release. “Fresh ideas prevented the project from stalling at crucial moments.”
image via Geek.com
Major depression is one of the most common mental disorders in the United States. In 2017, an estimated 17.3 million adults in the country had at least one major depressive episode. This number represented 7.1% of all U.S. adults. These people have had few treatment options, until now.
In March, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug called esketamine (Spravato). It is...
a fast-acting nasal spray derived from ketamine that is the first genuine advance in treating depression in more than 30 years.
First synthesized in the 1960s and still used globally as an anesthetic on battlefields and in surgery, ketamine became popular as an illicit club drug known as Special K in the 1980s and ’90s because it triggered trippy dissociative side effects. But nearly two decades ago, researchers noticed it banished depression even in people who are suicidal or resistant to treatment. Another plus: Their response was swift and profound.
Find out more about this drug over at Discover.
(Image Credit: Anemone123/ Pixabay)
The editing battles on this began after an Austrian teenager launched the Wikipedia entry.
If you ask Google “what is OK Boomer?”, Google would answer back that it is “an ageist catchphrase and internet meme that gained popularity throughout 2019, used to dismiss or mock attitudes stereotypically attributed to the baby boomer generation.”
Google’s answer comes from the then-current English language version of the OK Boomer Wikipedia page, which means that “the knowledge from the online encyclopedia branched out to the wider net”. It also helps explain why the editors behind the Wikipedia article feel so strongly about its content.
The online encyclopedia has been known in the past for its infamous edit warring, where editors delete changes and try to hijack a page to slant the encyclopedic summaries toward a subjective point of view. It seemed worth investigating the OK Boomer Wikipedia page to see if there were in fact signs of a fully digital, young-versus-old bloodbath.
But on his investigation, Stephen Harrison found an entirely different thing.
[It] was a generally respectful editorial process and a few young people who were contributing in good faith.
Find out more about this over at Slate.
This is wholesome.
(Image Credit: TeeFarm/ Pixabay)
