It’s probably your first time to hear of McKee, a small rural town in Jackson County, Kentucky, and one of the poorest counties in the U.S. But it hopefully won’t be the last. This Appalachian town is home to small business owners with big ambitions, like Peoples Rural Telephone Cooperative CEO Keith Gabbard, who have made leaps and bounds to bring fiber-optic broadband to their humble hometown. Now, PRTC subscribers enjoy internet speeds of up to 1 gigabyte per second!

There’s a sit-down restaurant, Opal’s, that serves the weekday breakfast-and-lunch crowd, one traffic light, a library, a few health clinics, eight churches, a Dairy Queen, a pair of dollar stores, and some of the fastest Internet in the United States. Subscribers to Peoples Rural Telephone Cooperative (P.R.T.C.), which covers all of Jackson County and the adjacent Owsley County, can get speeds of up to one gigabit per second, and the coöperative is planning to upgrade the system to ten gigabits.

But the process to get where they are at was definitely an uphill climb, and the rural town residents had to get creative. 

In the most rugged terrain around McKee, the crews relied on a mule named Old Bub to haul the cable two or three miles a day. “We’ve got mountains and rocks and not the greatest roads, and there were places we couldn’t get a vehicle to,” Gabbard told me. “Farmers here have been using mules for centuries. It just made sense that, if a place was hard to get to, you went with the mules.” Old Bub, he said, was able to do the work of eight to ten men.

The effort took six years, at a cost of fifty thousand dollars per mile. “Someone has to build to the last mile,” he said. “The big telecom companies aren’t going to do it, because it’s not economical and they have shareholders to answer to. We’re a co-op. We’re owned by our members. We answer to each other.”

The introduction of high-speed internet to McKee has provided a ray of hope for those suffering from the harsh consequences of poverty and unemployment. For many, there are now opportunities to get easier access to online educational resources and to engage in work-from-home vocations.

On the other hand, Gabbard and McKee residents are conscious of the fact that broadband is not going to magically make their lives better nor poverty go away. But it can sure help with education, entertainment, the economy, and health care. And that’s more than enough. 

Gabbard says,

And I even think that people’s mind-set—how they feel about themselves—can be improved just by not always saying ‘We don’t have nothing here.’ In this case, we have something to be proud of. We have something everyone else wants.”

Read their incredible journey at The New Yorker.

Photos: P C / Pexels ; Sue Halpern / The New Yorker ; Mika Baumeister / Unsplash

Me *orders our food fluently in Italian to impress my date*

McDonalds drive-thru employee: what

— Jon (@ArfMeasures) November 12, 2018

Classic date trick.

wow huge congrats to toilet pic.twitter.com/nHIpiHBd3i

— becca t @ CALA 🌞 (@beccateeth) July 22, 2016

Pavel Jirásek has way too much time on his hands, and for that, I am thankful. This video gets really amazing around the two minute mark. It was edited from original footage by ACETrainsUK. -via Metafilter

What creatures live in the depths of the sea? Manatees go about 6 meters into the depths of the water. Polar bears will dive down as far as 24 meters. A thick-billed murre, which is a bird, will search for food as deep as 210 meters.

It's a long, long way down past that. Neal Agarwal, who previously brought us a scroll-able scale model of space, now offers the same for the ocean depths. Just click here and keep scrolling down.

Eventually, you'll find the hadal amphipod, which lives at over 10 km down. Then you'll find even deeper waters.

-via Flowing Data

Toni Patanen--"Pupsi"--of Finland is a professional ocarina maker. His works are usually ceramic, but what's wrong with taking the back streets? He gets the same effect with melons which he has carved into practical instruments.

The first part of the video consists of the instrument construction. At 1:45, he begins playing. He plays so well that he can ignore that shape of an L on your forehead.

-via Geekologie

Hooray for wildlife conservation! The Svalbard Reindeer, which populate the Norwegian archipelago, are thriving contrary to the downward trend of endangered reindeer species across the northern hemisphere, says a study published in The Journal of Wildlife Management.

Since 1925, the Norwegian government and scientists have implemented crucial steps to preserve the Svalbard reindeer, the world’s smallest subspecies of caribou and the only living herbivore mammals residing in the northernmost parts of the earth. One successful measure was tighter restrictions on hunting, which almost led to their extinction. 

Mathilde Le Moullec (photo above) and her team at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology were able to document over 22,000 reindeer on Svalbard, twice the original estimate a decade ago!

Still, the recovery process for this once over-hunted species is a slow one, and it would take sustained efforts to protect these animals from new anthropogenic and environmental pressures like industrialization, landscape fragmentation, climate change, predation, and disease. 

Svalbard’s reindeer are resilient, however. They populated the islands long before humans set foot there in the 16th century, the researchers say. And today, they can be found in the harshest corners of Svalbard, Le Moullec says.

Svalbard reindeer are survivors, but this study shows the real impact humans can have on their population. More action on climate change needs to be taken now to secure their future, Le Moullec says.

As the Jurassic Park tagline goes, “Life, uh, finds a way.” But let’s not forget our role, no matter how small, in ensuring the protection of these animal species. 

Claire Cameron gives the full scoop at Inverse. 

Photo: Nancy Bazilchuk / Norwegian SciTech News

A mountain rescue team finds a skier who needs help. But this is the day that everything will go wrong. More so than you ever imagined, but you'll still laugh. The award-winning French short Hors Piste was directed by Léo Brunel, Loris Cavalier, Camille Jalabert, and Oscar Malet, students at the Ecole des Nouvelles Images.

The perpetrator, a donkey in Waterford, Connecticut, was apprehended by police on Tuesday night. They joke on Facebook:

Could this be an attempt at field sobriety tests, “Sir, walk the line.”

Could it be a new donkey patrol that Chief Mahoney has instituted without us Facebook people knowing?

Maybe, just maybe it’s a large dog?

Officers were merciful to the donkey, a local resident, and escorted him back home.

-via Dave Barry

George was a Jack Russell terrier who lived in Manaia, Taranaki, New Zealand. In 2007, a group of five children were walking home when they were attacked by two pit bulls. Nine-year-old George raced to defend the children, and was gravely injured in the fight. His owner, Alan Gay, reluctantly consented to euthanasia. George was posthumously awarded a medal for bravery by the Royal New Zealand Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals awarded George the PDSA Gold Medal. Soon after the incident, this statue by artist Fridtjof Hanson went up in Manaia, where George will never be forgotten. That's a good dog. -via reddit 

(Image credit: Kaulano)   

The public health agency of Ottawa, Canada would like to remind you to get your monthly flu shot. I'm sure that the social media manager could find an appropriate photo in any stock photo collection. But when the agency lost access to its account, it had to improvise.

The result is amateurish, but effective. The artist might even have a second career open.

-via Marilyn Bellamy

The Hapsburgs or House of Austria was a royal dynasty in Europe often associated with having a prominent jawline called “Hapsburg Jaw,” as evident in their surviving portraits. Charles II (see photo above), dubbed the most inbred Hapsburg in history, had a slew of physical disabilities, which researchers suggested was a result of inheriting highly recessive, harmful genes from the then-common practice of marrying and having children between close relatives. 

It’s a popular notion that inbreeding results in physical deformity, however one researcher wanted to point out that inbreeding does not necessarily cause, but it exacerbates certain, already existing family traits. So, 100 years of inbreeding down the line, what was once a trait for a perfectly acceptable but still big chin from uncle Philip manifests in the next generation of royalty as an obviously dysmorphic lower face.

The prominent jawline feature is a complex trait, meaning it is a result of many different genes that are either dominant or recessive. 

You can find more historical Hapsburg portraits at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Prado (Madrid), or Kunsthistorisches Museum (Vienna). 

For the full story, head over to Inverse.

(Image Credit: Juan de Miranda Carreno / Wikimedia Commons)

Artist Keith Williams shows his craftmanship wonders on leftover pieces of wood.

Sébastien Matos piques our curiosity with a digital exhibit where you can follow nearly four decades of change in the scrollbar design from the classic 1981 Xerox Star to the minimalist Windows 10 in 2015. Matos created it using CSS and Javascript during a course under ECAL, a Swiss university of art and design located in Renens. 

According to his GitHub profile (which is where you can download a copy of the file for free),

Some iconic scrollbars recreated as faithfully as possible.

The interactive aspect has been particularly well looked after.

Which one is your favorite?

Check out the complete Evolution of the Scrollbar here!

(Image Credit: Anna Selezniova and Andy Barnov / Martian Chronicles)

New evidence published in the journal Ecology Letters would suggest so. As temperatures start to rise, more researchers are beginning to discover the previously undocumented effects of climate change on species adapting to changes in their environment.

In 1978, the study’s lead author, Brian Weeks, noticed the staggering number of birds fatally colliding with buildings during spring and fall migration. He decided to start a study on such specimens, and the results were quite consistent across the broad range of migratory bird species involved. Over 40 years, Weeks and his team of volunteers and scientists collected and analyzed 70,716 specimens from 52 North American migratory bird species.

The evidence suggests warming temperatures caused the decrease in body size, which in turn caused the increase in wing length.

He says the birds most likely to survive migration were the ones with longer wingspans that compensated for their smaller bodies.

The scientists aren't exactly sure why warmer temperatures cause birds to shrink. One theory is that smaller animals are better at cooling off, losing body heat more quickly due to their larger surface-area-to-volume ratios.

These findings support the theory that climate change causes shrinking in certain species, as other studies since 2014 have shown similar conclusions. 

-via Kelsey Vlamis / BBC News

(Image Credit: Frank Cone / Pexels)

Soon after the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the US government began rounding up people of Japanese descent along the West Coast. The first ones incarcerated were the Issei, men who immigrated from Japan before 1907 and by law could not become American citizens. The dragnet expanded over the next year, and thousands of American-born citizens were sent to facilities such as racetracks to live until the inland internment camps were built and ready to receive them. Two-thirds of the population of the camps were American, and the immigrant Issei not only suffered from the disruption of their lives, but also found themselves surrounded by young second-generation Nissei who barely knew the Japanese language. But they got to work, first building all the things the internees needed but couldn't bring with them, then by producing art to restore the soul, decorate the camps, and pass the time. Some of these long-forgotten art objects were eventually sought out and enshrined in the book The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps 1942-1946 by Delphine Hirasuna, who tells us what she learned while researching the art of the camps.    

What’s impressive when you look through The Art of Gaman is not just how beautiful these objects are, but also the ingenious use of found materials, putting todays’ upcyclers to shame. Because the camps were built so hastily, the Corps of Engineers and WRA contractors left piles of scrap wood lying within reach.

“I have pictures of the scrap piles,” Hirasuna says. “There was so much lumber around that people were grabbing it and using it to build chairs and other furniture. Because the Army was still building the camps when the Japanese Americans were moved in, the workmen would discover that their hammers and saws were disappearing. When I’d ask Nisei about it, I’d say, ‘Did your father steal a hammer or saw?’ One woman told me, ‘No. Nobody admits to stealing, but everybody admits to knowing somebody who did.'”

Butter knives from the kitchen, with the help of the furnaces, were turned into scissors, pliers, carving knives, and chisels. To me, a Gen Xer, it’s amazing to see all these things that were made from hand with very little resources. But I have to remind myself that in the time between the Civil War and World War II, Americans were still making many things by hand, building furniture and barns, sewing their own clothes, some even doing their own blacksmithing. Issei men who were born in Japan were likely trained in the art of joinery, which is helpful when you need to make furniture and can’t buy nails.

“Certainly, the first generation of Japanese men came to America as itinerant workers around the turn of the century,” says Hirasuna, who is a Baby Boomer. “They learned to make-do and be ingenious in solving problems. At camp, probably some of them said, ‘Hey, I helped build the railroads, so I know how they use those furnaces to throw coal and forge railroad ties.’ I don’t think our generation could do that. Those were the times when housewives were canning and men repaired their own farm equipment. Everybody knew how to sew their own clothes. If my generation were incarcerated today, I’d be completely lost. I’d have to order from Amazon.”

The story of the art created in the Japanese internment camps follows the story of the mass internment itself. Read the experiences of some of those artists at Collectors Weekly.