A few years ago, Alex posted about kudzu, and it floored me that so many people did not know about kudzu. Here is another example of something that is very familiar to those in certain parts of the world, and completely new to those in other places. It's a shoe dryer. A real appliance you can buy. Redditor joeChump posted it under the title Norwegian shoe drying machine. In response, people from other Scandinavian countries, Alpine countries, and Canada let him know that these are common in any area that deals with a lot of snow. I had never heard of them.

It's AMAZING. If you've been outdoors playing in the snow and want a break to relax, you head inside and pop those tubes in your shoes and get a cup of hot chocolate and eat some Kvikk Lunsj. When you're done with the chocolate and Kvikk Lunsj and you feel like going out again you pop on the warm shoes and it's like walking with the warmth of an angel wrapped around your feet as you go out to battle the ice giants once again

This was certainly not something I'd expect seeing high up on my feed! Being from Norway myself, I had no idea this device would be seen as peculiar to anyone. This is the great thing about reddit.

Now I want one. They say you can get them at Canadian Tire, but if I lived anywhere near a Canadian Tire, I would have already known about them.

Checking the level of opioid drugs in a person’s bloodstream would require a blood sample to be taken, in the current time at least. Scientists have now developed a breath test for opioid drugs, however, and this could mean that things would be much less invasive.

The system was developed by a team at the University of California-Davis, led by postdoctoral researcher Eva Borras and Prof. Cristina Davis.

People who are being tested start by breathing normally, into a collection device. Droplets of their breath condense within it, and are then frozen until they can be placed in a mass spectrometer within a lab. That machine is capable of detecting both the original drug and metabolites (compounds produced by the body as it breaks down the drug) within the droplets.

In a test of the technology, six chronic pain patients were initially given infusions of medications such as morphine and hydromorphone, along with oral doses of oxycodone. When their opioid metabolite levels were subsequently checked via both blood samples and the breath test, figures for the two techniques were very similar.

This process is less painful and less stressful for the patients.

(Image Credit: Cristina Davis/ UC Davis)

Oyakodon is one of the most common items on Japanese restaurants’ lunch menus. Oyakodon is composed of chicken and egg served over rice, with a savory and sweet sauce that ties the dish altogether. In a hunt to find the first restaurant to offer oyakodon, SoraNews24 found it located in Tokyo, still in business.

Tamahide, a hotpot restaurant, was the first establishment to offer oyakodon in its menu. Located in downtown Tokyo’s Ningyocho neighborhood, the restaurant’s samurai estate aesthetic fits its own history. Founded in the 1760s when Japan was still ruled by the Tokugawa dynasty, the restaurant only began to serve oyakodon a hundred years later, when they noticed that some diners would take the leftovers from their hotpot, pour it over a bowl of rice, and mix it with egg. Taking that into consideration, Tamahide began serving its first oyakodon in 1891.  

image credit: via SoraNews24

A four-and-a-half month old condor has successfully made its first flight attempt from Utah’s Zion National Park. The condor chick stretched its wings and stumbled out of its nesting cave, located on a red-rock cliff. Being the only condor chick in the national park, the hatchling’s flight was a sign that California condors are coming back from the brink of extinction, as the Los Angeles Times detailed: 

Tim Hauck, who manages the condor reintroduction program for the Peregrine Fund group, described the 4½-month-old condor’s flight attempt as a “controlled fall.”

“The chick soared downward from the nest and landed on a lower cliff ledge,” Hauck said. “We expect it to stay there for a while with its parents.”

Park rangers have nicknamed the surviving chick “1K” because it was the one thousandth condor hatched as part of the lengthy effort to boost the population.

“We’ve been looking forward to this all summer, and we’re excited to see the chick continue to learn how to fly,” said Eugene Moissa, a park spokesman.

The new chick’s parents are the only identified condor breeding pair in the park and are estimated to have been together two years. 

image credit: National Parks Services / AP via the Los Angeles Times

The Swedish Embassy in Japan hosted “WikiGap”, an event that aimed to increase articles on women in Wikipedia, to narrow the gender gap on the Internet. Many women who merit entries for their achievements are not featured, the embassy told The Mainichi, as they noted that 90 percent of the content in Wikipedia are made by men. The event was organized under the Swedish government’s advocation of the gender equality policy, with similar events held in 60 countries, as the Mainichi detailed: 

According to the embassy, only 17 percent of individuals given Wikipedia entries were women across all its sites in some 300 languages. The ratio was 22 percent for the Japanese version.

"Becoming aware of the gender gap in information on Wikipedia, which is influential in the present-day digital society, will remind us of the gender gap around ourselves," an embassy official said.

In the event held at the embassy in Tokyo, about 40 people wrote new entries for Japanese female writers and athletes based on reference materials. They also translated English articles about foreign women into Japanese.

image credit: screenshot via the Mainichi

Born in 1884, in rural Illinois, was the filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. Micheaux was the son of former slaves, and when he was born, movies barely existed. When he left his home at the age of 17, however, movies had progressed far beyond the galloping horses of Eadweard Muybridge. Micheaux wanted to be a part of this emerging industry, and so he decided that he would make films as well.

He would start making his own films in 1919, though they were fairly different from the mainstream fare coming out of the new Hollywood studios. Micheaux’s movies featured predominantly black casts, playing characters who pushed back against the cruel caricatures of black Americans seen in popular films like The Birth of a Nation. Working out of his own independent company on a shoestring budget, Micheaux gave his characters a dignity and humanity that was rarely seen on screens at the time. He presented an unflinching look at the legacy of white supremacy in America with his famous—and, at the time, controversial—film Within Our Gates.

More details about his life and works over at JSTOR Daily.

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

LOLcats is an internet meme of funny pictures of cats alongside amusing captions, which are often grammatically incorrect, but hilarious nonetheless. Thus the term “LOLcats” which is a combination of LOL (“laughing out loud”) and cats. This term is believed to have originated in 2006. The concept, however, is from a time much earlier.

Enter Harry Whittier Frees (1879-1953), an American photographer “who dressed his cats, Rags and Fluff, as well as the pets of his friends and neighbors, and posed them in human situations with props, often with captions.”

Frees utilized specially designed outfits, sewn by his mother, to hold the animals in standing poses waiting patiently for the shot he wanted. In Mr. Frees' own words, "These unusual photographs of real animals were made possible only by patient, unfailing kindness on the part of the photographer at all times."

Check out the pictures over at the Amusing Planet.

(Image Credit: Amusing Planet)

A raven by the name of Grip is a central character in the 1841 Charles Dickens novel Barnaby Rudge. What you might not know is that there was a real Grip. In fact, Grip led Dickens to develop an affection for ravens that lasted the remainder of his life.  

In his preface to Barnaby Rudge Dickens reveals that the fictional Grip was based on two real ravens.  The first was the model for Phiz’s illustrations in the first Cheap Edition of the novel, and Dickens, who at the time was living at no.1 Devonshire Terrace, near Regent’s Park, loved it dearly.  But in the spring of 1841 it suffered an untimely death, a loss that Dickens would have us believe left him inconsolable.  He broke the news to his friend, the painter Daniel Maclise, in a letter sent in an envelope with an enormous black seal.  The raven had in fact been ill for some time, and in spite of (or because of) the attentions of a local veterinarian by the name of William Herring, who fed it quantities of castor oil, it went into a steady decline.  Talkative to the end, its final croak was “Halloa old girl!”, which, as Dickens explained to Maclise, had been its favourite expression.

Dickens mourned the passing of Grip, but that was far from the end of the old raven's story. His carcass was stuffed, and went on a whole new set of adventures. There were also a couple of new ravens that came to take his place in Dickens' life, with their own personalities. Read about the ravens who inspired Charles Dickens at London Overlooked. -via Strange Company

Taking a vacation from work, school, or whatever occupies your time the most, would help you rest and feel renewed and refreshed after. There are several ways to take a vacation but for now, let's take a look at these seven vacation words to get away from it all.

(Image credit: Chen Mizrach/Unsplash)

Yes, this is a roasting pan depicting Han Solo frozen in carbonite. It's part of a new collection of cookware from French company Le Creuset featuring baking pans of all sorts with Star Wars themes. There's also a Darth Vader Dutch over, a Death Star trivit, and mini cocottes designed around the various droids. They are also offering a very limited edition Tatooine Dutch oven complete with twin suns!

However, your enthusiasm might fade a bit when you see how much they cost. The baking pans are hundreds of dollars, and while you might be able to afford the $30 mini cocottes, keep in mind they are "mini," and hold only eight ounces of food each, meaning you'll need more than one to impress dinner guests. The Star Wars x Le Creuset Collection will be available beginning November first. -via Geeks Are Sexy

We learned in grade school that onomatopoeia is the formation of words based on the sounds with which they are associated. For example, the clucking of a chicken or the banging on the door. There are many words formed in this way. However, there are some that we might be unaware were onomatopoeia. Check out some of these uncommon onomatopoeia at Merriam-Webster.

(Image credit: ken chan/Unsplash)

Apple’s new iPhones will use recycled rare earths in its “Taptic Engine”, a key component that lets iPhones mimic a physical button click, despite having a glass screen only. Rare earths are a group of 17 specialized minerals used in weapons, consumer electronics and other goods. Apple’s use of recycled rare earths from its old devices is for the company to maintain a steady supply of minerals, not because of China’s planned restriction of rare earths sales to the United State, as Reuters detailed: 

“This is one of those happy coincidences where what is good for the planet is really good for business at the same time,” Jackson told Reuters. “One of the things we talk about a lot internally, just in general, is how much more resilient this makes our supply chain.”

In consumer electronics, rare earths reside in tiny speakers and actuators. The parts are so small that collecting them for recycling is difficult and expensive.

Apple said on Wednesday that aluminum from enclosures recovered through its trade-in programs will be melted down and made into new MacBook Air laptop computers. The company previously disclosed that cobalt recovered from iPhone batteries disassembled by robots at its recycling labs in Texas is put into new iPhone batteries.

image credit: via wikimedia commons

Scientists from the Stanford University School of Medicine have found a molecular defect present in almost all Parkinson's patients which, when targeted and addressed, may help identify people who are vulnerable to the disease and prevent the disease's progression.

“We’ve identified a molecular marker that could allow doctors to diagnose Parkinson’s accurately, early and in a clinically practical way,” said Xinnan Wang, MD, PhD, associate professor of neurosurgery. “This marker could be used to assess drug candidates’ capacity to counter the defect and stall the disease’s progression.”

The scientists also identified a compound that appears to reverse the defect in cells taken from Parkinson’s patients. In animal models of the disease, the compound prevented the death of the neurons whose loss underlies the disease.

(Image credit: Louis Hansel/Unsplash)

I made a tuna casserole, and it turns out that I’ve been right all along. The American idea of classic comfort food is often revolting. Like eating sadness. pic.twitter.com/z0PTgLNOyT

— emily nunn (@EmilyRNunn) June 1, 2019

Most of us know about tuna noodle casserole, but does it stand up today? First, Emily Nunn laid out the argument that the dish is a disappointment in her article The Comfort Food Myth. The classic dish began as a desperation meal for those who couldn't afford better, became a convenience recipe using canned soup in the 1950s, and is now only eaten as a nostalgic comfort food. As such, the only recipe many people can enjoy is the exact one from their childhood.

Samantha Irby responded with another article, Tuna Noodle Casserole: It Only *Sounds* Disgusting. Her position is that there is nothing wrong with comfort food, and she even tells us how to make tuna casserole if you don't already know.

First you need to call your mama, ask her to leave the old Corningware baking dish she stole from your grandma on her front steps, then swing by there on your way home from the grocery store and pick it up because tuna casserole just doesn’t taste right unless it’s from a weird, faded glass dish that only old people care about.

Ahem, you can borrow my CorningWare only if you promise to bring it back within a week. Grandma replaced my thievery decades ago. But I'm kidding myself. One kid won't eat tuna and the other won't eat noodles, and neither will touch mushroom soup. Anyway, Nunn's article from July is still getting vehement responses from people on both sides of the tuna casserole debate. -via Metafilter

A deer stormed into a clothing store in Cortina d’Ampezzo, a Italian mountain resort on the Italian Dolomites. The deer, estimated to be 4 or 5 years old, got trapped inside among the Tirolese outfits the store sold. Cortina’s shopping square was blocked in order to allow veterinarians to catch the animal, anesthetize it, and bring it back to the wild. The deer was brought back to the woods then freed, Cortian mayor Gianpaolo Ghedina reassured AP News. 

image credti: via Time