This is Caroll Spinney, the Muppeteer who gave Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch their voices for almost 50 years. He passed away last Sunday at his home in Connecticut, according to the Sesame Workshop. He was 85.

The legendary puppeteer lived for some time with dystonia, which causes involuntary muscle contractions, the Sesame Workshop said in a statement.

Spinney voiced and operated the two major Muppets from their inception in 1969 when he was 36, and performed them almost exclusively into his 80s on the PBS kids’ television show that later moved to HBO. His death comes on the same day that “Sesame Street” is being honored for lifetime achievements in the arts as a Kennedy Center Honors recipient.

Learn more about his life over at AP News.

(Image Credit: AP Photo/ Reed Saxon)

Struggling to lose weight? Try out this approach which could prove to be beneficial for you, according to a new study published in Cell Metabolism.

The approach is simple: limit your daily eating window to only 10 hours.

This means that if you take your first bite of food at 8 a.m., you'd need to consume your last calorie of the day by 6 p.m.

Researchers tracked a group of overweight participants who followed this approach for about three months. "Typically, people would go for an 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. eating window," explains Dr. Pam Taub, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Diego's School of Medicine, and an author of the study.

During the fasting period, participants were encouraged to stay hydrated with water. Each day, they logged the timing of their meals and their sleep in an app.

"We saw a 3% reduction in their weight and a 4% reduction in abdominal visceral fat," says Taub.

More details about this study over at NPR.

(Image Credit: TeroVesalainen/ Pixabay)

Christmas trees usually range from $50 to $80. With that said, is there a better way to acquire a Christmas tree without spending much? Thankfully, there is, and that is by harvesting your own tree, which would only cost you $5, “and you could go to any national forest or BLM lands.” Yep, you’ve heard it correctly: it will only cost you $5.

“Traditions like these are a great way to learn about public lands,” says Wes Siler. “Forests… are managed for multiple use, so they exist to provide a commercial benefit from timber harvest as well as animal conservation and recreational access. By harvesting a small tree today from an overcrowded grove, we’re actually participating in forest management.”

More details about this over at Outside.

What are your thoughts about this one? 

(Image Credit: JillWellington/ Pixabay)

The Kittisaurus cats have learned a few things about plastic wrap since they first encountered the "invisible wall" in the previous video. Here they are challenged by a maze made from plastic wrap, but what fun is finding your way around when you can defeat those invisible walls so many other ways?  -via Digg

Cameos, elusive details and references, mini mishaps, and many more. You don’t have to be The Chosen One to appreciate all these Easter Eggs from Phantom Menace to Force Awakens. So, brace yourselves for these minor details that you may have missed from the beloved saga.

Head over to here for all 21 Easter Eggs!

(Image credit: LucasFilms via BuzzFeed)

Cats may have a bad reputation for being antisocial, mean, pesky, rude and self-important--hold on, I’m really just describing Mr. Grinch-- but see if you still dislike cats with a fiery passion after checking out these melt-your-heart tweets compiled by Casey Rackham

Chunky boy wants to get the feather! pic.twitter.com/bVRrygTSGZ

— Awwwww (@AwwwwCats) November 4, 2019

enjoy this video of my cat’s 6th attempt to jump on the counter. pic.twitter.com/D1nnhVMG09

— great value sophie turner (@savannah_moon_) September 28, 2019

My turn! pic.twitter.com/BtVgK6fmcP

— Mr. Meowgi (@Mr_Meowwwgi) November 10, 2019

Please forget all the bad things in the world for 20 seconds and look at this cat wearing glasses. pic.twitter.com/CRldukcHhz

— ᎽᎪᎬᏞ (@elle91) September 25, 2019

My 8 week old kitten started doing this thing to where she will know i’m about to come in the room and she will hide by the bathroom door and jump out to scare me when i’m walking up. 🤣 just thought I’d share this cuteness 🥰 pic.twitter.com/SOz1ckGGpr

— so rock it. (@_TakivaBreanna) June 30, 2019

Aww… such pure creatures!

Check out all 15 tweets over at BuzzFeed.

Photo: natsdorf via Gyfcat

Whether it’s on a slice of hot, toasted bread or plain by itself, fried egg or "sunny-side-up" is one of the simple culinary joys in life. How you cook your egg makes all the difference in the world. So, try out these pro tips (hint: a lot of olive oil and just the right amount of heat) and make your loved ones think you’re a master chef with the perfect fried egg, according to Spanish tradition with an American twist.

How do you like your eggs in the morning? 

Find out more here.

(Image credit: Gear Patrol)

The banana taped to a wall by Maurizio Cattelan, who priced it at $120,000, has sparked an age-old debate once again: what constitutes art? But Maurizio Cattelan was not the first one to make such an absurd artwork; there were many people before him who made controversial artworks.

Check out some artworks that shook the world of art over at CNN.

(Image Credit: Tim Ireland/ AP)

The answer is, yes it does. Research says that giving bad gifts can hurt our relationships with people, which, for me, is an unsurprising finding. I would feel bad myself if someone gave me a bad gift.

“Choosing the wrong gift can be kind of risky for relationships because it says you don’t have anything in common,” says Elizabeth Dunn, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada and co-author of Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending. Her research has also showed that undesirable gifts can sometimes negatively impact the receiver’s perception of a relationship’s future potential.

Since you don’t want your holiday gift to cause more harm than good, how can you be sure to choose a gift the receiver will love? Psychology may have the answer.

Find out more about this topic over at BBC.

(Image Credit: qimono/ Pixabay)

Just what it says on the tin. The greatest movie quotes are those that people know and use over and over. You can see from this supercut that Inigo Montoya's prepared speech from The Princess Bride can be used for many different situations. While not all the quotes are exact, there is no doubt who inspired them.  -via Laughing Squid 

Musician Dimitri Manos offers this unique object: a record with six playable . . . well, sides isn't quite the right word.

Each side of the two-sided record has three overlapping circles, each of which has its own track. You can play by placing the record on the turntable with the right hole among the five in the center.

In this video, Mike Dixon gives a demonstration of how it works. Manos's band American Monoxide composed a piece specifically to make use of the record's unique properties. Because the record makes a chirping sound when the needle crosses two overlapping tracks, the composition incorporates that sound.

Content warning: foul language.

-via Core77

There was a fossil skull discovery that was recently determined to be a prehistoric snake with legs. While a snake with legs is impressive, even more impressive is how anyone could tell that from just a skull. But the find brings up a question: is a snake with legs still a snake, or is it just some kind of lizard?  

Sara Ruane, a herpetologist and evolutionary biologist at Rutgers University who studies living snakes, has some answers. “Snakes are just fancy lizards,” she says. More precisely, she explains, snakes represent a distinct branch of the lizard evolutionary tree. Both types of animals are squamates, the largest order of reptiles, and snakes belong to the suborder Serpentes. In other words, all snakes are technically lizards, but not all lizards are snakes.

It’s also true, Ruane says, that early species of snake once sported gams. But all these legged snakes are extinct today, meaning that you’d be unlikely to confuse a snake for a lizard in the wild.

But while there are no snakes in existence today with legs, there are lizards around that are legless. You might think that a legless lizard would be a snake, but that's not the case at all. Read how to tell the difference between a legless lizard and a snake at Atlas Obscura. As if you were going to stick around either of them long enough to observe those differences.

(Image credit: Stu's Images)

Have you ever wondered how animals view the world? A new software intends to make the perspective of bees easier to picture for us humans. While the images produced by this software are not an exact replica of what other organisms see (as we do not yet fully understand how our brains and eyes process the world), it is a good omdication of how other animals see the world.

Learn more details about this over at Discover.

(Image Credit: Jolyon Troscianko/ Discover)

Did you know that for this year alone, Americans have spent $72.56 billion on their pets? That just goes to show how much we love our pets, and I believe there is nothing weird in giving them something that they will enjoy. After all, they are our companions for life, or rather, we are their companions for their short lives.

One must wonder, however, as to what is the best gift for their pet this holiday season. Check out some gifts you might consider giving to your pet over at Slate.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

British tinkerer Colin Furze builds amazing things and screams (which is why I usually watch his videos muted). In the past, he has made a lamp powered with a chainsaw motor, a bumper car with a 600 cc engine, and a bicycle with wheels made of ice. They're amazing, unconventional machines. When the apocalypse comes, you want him on your survival team--especially since he has literally built a bunker for that purpose.

Whatever trouble is coming, he saw it long ago in a galaxy far, far away. To promote the new Star Wars film, he built a functional landspeeder. Yes, it has wheels instead of hover engines. But it's otherwise a completely-scaled up model of a landspeeder toy--the ideal commuter vehicle.

-via Nag on the Lake