June Turner, 82, was working at a newsstand in Hanley, Staffordshire, UK when a man entered her store and demanded money. He took cash and cigarettes and tried to make off with the whole cash register when Ms. Turner decided she had had enough of his misbehavior. The Sun reports:

The robbery was caught on CCTV at AJ and J Newsagents in Hanley, Staffs. June, who has worked there for 45 years, said: “He came up to the counter and said, ‘I want your money’ but I said, ‘You’re not having my money’. He came round the back of the counter and got some money from the till.

“I couldn’t find the panic button so I got my stick and I really belted him with it.

“It was just instinct to try to stop him and give him a good whack.

The robber fled, but not before knocking Ms. Turner to the ground. If he returns, she'll be ready:

She said: “If it happened again I’d react the same but with something heavier.”

-via Dave Barry | Photo: SWNS

As we sleep snugly under our bed sheets, many things attach to them and accumulate like dead skin cells, body oils, and dust mites which could be the source of several problems like acne or allergies. So it would be best to regularly change your sheets. But how often should you do it?

Well, according to experts who provided Self with their knowledge, at least once a week is best. But as microbiologist Michael Schmidt, Ph.D., told the wellness site, "[a] myriad of factors determine if you should wash your sheets more often than once a week based on your lifestyle."

Based on several suggestions, there isn't one specific answer that would fit everyone's preferences or lifestyles so it depends on your circumstances. Once a week is a good starting point but if you have special conditions, it would be best to do them more frequently.

-via Book of Joe

(Image credit: Lauren Kay/Unsplash)

In the age of location-based social media platforms, GPS features in the user’s phone are used by platforms such as Foursquare, Gowalla, SCVNGR, Shopkick, and Loopt to publish the person's location and offer rewards in the form of discounts, badges or points to encourage frequent check-ins. While these rewards and benefits are great, the security risks are also a matter to consider, as the US Army warned its soldiers: 

Security risks for the military:

A deployed service member's situational awareness includes the world of social media. If a Soldier uploads a photo taken on his or her smartphone to Facebook, they could broadcast the exact location of their unit, said Steve Warren, deputy G2 for the Maneuver Center of Excellence, or MCoE.

"Today, in pretty much every single smartphone, there is built-in GPS," Warren said. "For every picture you take with that phone, it will automatically embed the latitude and longitude within the photograph."

Someone with the right software and the wrong motivation could download the photo and extract the coordinates from the metadata.

(via Peta Pixel)

image credit: U.S. Army Graphic via Army.mil

GeekTyrant has a neat post featuring concept art from the Spider-Man: Far From Home movie, courtesy of Marvel Visual Studio director Henrik Tamm:

Some of it you will recognize from the movie, however, there are some shots of scenes that were not used in the final cut of the movie. Like fighting a hoard of Zombie Iron Men to facing off with a giant mosquito. Check it out and let us know what you think!

Instead of the usual catch, Debbie Geddes caught an odd-looking trout when she was fishing on Lake Champlain in upstate New York.

“When this particular fish bit, it felt like I had a nice fish on,” Geddes told Fox News. “I actually commented, ‘I hope it’s as big as it feels!’ When we got it in the boat I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! Two mouths! And yet this fish was healthy and thriving! Pretty amazing!”

The Knotty Boys Fishing Facebook page posted a picture of the fish and it received various comments.

“It’s just an old injury, not two-headed at all,” one person wrote.

Another commented, “Speaking as a fish biologist, clearly the isthmus below the lower jaw just got torn earlier in life (likely from some sort of angler related injury) and it healed over.”

“I think it is a deformity,” someone replied. “Something went awry embryologically.”

Apparently, Geddes and her husband sent the fish back into the lake after taking a photo of it.

What do you think is it?

Photo Credit: Knotty Boys Fishing / Facebook

Do you think you can tell a photograph of a real human face from one generated by artificial intelligence? It's not that easy! At Which Face is Real, you are presented with two pictures at a time. One of the images is of a real person, nabbed from Creative Commons and public domain collections, and the other is from This Person Does Not Exist, a gallery of algorithm-generated images. Select which you think is the real person. While the site will reveal the answer, it does not keep score for you, as far as I know. However, it will give you the creepy realization that you'll never be able to trust a photograph again. -via Boing Boing

Do you have plans to head over to Disney World? With the amusement park’s huge area, along with the abundance of different amenities to try out, navigating through the park can be exhausting and expensive, especially with kids. From their own experience at Disney World, Popsugar’s Katharine Stahl offers some tips to make your Disney World trip more enjoyable (and with less hassle): 

Prioritize and strategize well in advance. For a 3-year-old, the Magic Kingdom is the Holy Grail, so we focused on spending as much time there as possible. That meant getting on the road before the sun came up so we could arrive close to the park's 8 a.m. opening, when ride wait times are much lower.

Book everyone's FastPass+ ASAP. If you're staying at a Disney resort, you'll get one of those nifty MagicBands, which entitles you to score FastPass+ reservations (they let you skip the general line) for three attractions 60 days before you arrive. Use these wisely. Try to make all of your FastPass+ reservations as early in the day of your visit as you can. Once you use all three, you'll be able to hit up one of the FastPass+ kiosks in the park and make additional reservations. 

Tip: if the FastPass+ system overwhelms you, don't worry. Book your online reservations early, and once you get to the park, find one of the countless cast members and ask for help. They're all eager to do so.

Stay on property. For us, this was a big one, since we knew we'd probably need a place to take an afternoon break, which we did from about 3:30 to 5 p.m. (Weirdly, both my husband and I took a catnap while our daughter watched more Disney shows on her iPad.) 

Rent or bring a stroller. Even if your child has long outgrown stroller mode, you'll be surprised at how much time she'll spend in it while at the park. My husband's pedometer logged 22,000 steps on the day we spent at the Magic Kingdom, which is at least seven miles of walking. We rented a single stroller ($15 a day; double strollers are $31), and while parking it for every attraction was a bit of a pain, it was either that or carry our 40-pounder, and we still did plenty of that while waiting for rides.

Download the My Disney Experience app. The app will let you manage your previsit FastPass+ and dining reservations (make them, and — just a tip — Be Our Guest is the only restaurant in the park that serves alcohol), find park amenities easily, and, most importantly, track all attraction wait times. We found that any line with a 20-minute wait time or less seemed to go pretty quickly.

 Remember: for preschoolers, a little Disney is still a lot of fun. Before we left for our crazy Disney day, my mom said to me, "Even if she only goes on three rides, it will still be one of the greatest days of her life." 

image credit: wikimedia commons

In New York’s continuing battle against the rodents that frequent the city, officials reveal the latest machination against the rats. According to New York officials, the scheme involves three things: a machine, a trap door, and a pool full of liquid alcohol. According to Anthony Giaquinto, the president of Rat Trap, who imports the device, rats get knocked out and “drown eventually”  in the liquid pool contained inside a bucket. A month long trial in Brooklyn was held, where 107 rodents were lured and killed, as BBC detailed: 

The rats are attracted with bait by a machine and sent through a trap door straight into a pool of alcohol-based liquid.

it's a bucket which lures rats and then sends them to their death.

The rodent dies in the tank - which can hold up to 80 rat carcasses.

During a demonstration of the machine sanitation workers opened the container, showing several dead rats floating in a green liquid.

image credit: via wikimedia commons

Over 500 million years ago, there was a worm that resembled an ear of wheat. It moved along an area of sediment underwater. It then paused, then left a detailed imprint in the wet earth, moved a little more, and then eventually died.

Its body, seven inches long and segmented, became a fossil. So did its near-final resting place, creating a mortichnia: a body preserved with its final “death march.”

This happened at least 10 million years before the Cambrian Explosion — the era “during which many of the animal groups that exist today appeared” — began.

The creature, Yilingia spiciformis — named after the Yiling district in which it was discovered — was a complicated one by the standards of the Ediacaran Period: mobile, segmented, trilobate (each body segment composed of three lobes) and bilaterally symmetrical.

[...]

Yilingia and its death march are the subject of a study published on Wednesday in Nature. The worm is remarkable itself, as is the record of its death. A mortichnia is very rare — the imprint-maker tends to wander off. “It’s like in forensics,” said Shuhai Xiao, a geobiologist at Virginia Tech and one of the authors of the study. “You find a footprint and can probably tell something about the suspect, but you’d rather catch the suspect on camera.”

Head over to The New York Times to know more about this worm.

(Image Credit: Zhe Chen, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology and Shuhai Xiao, Virginia Tech)

This Louisiana man spent 17 years in jail simply because “he looked like he was a serial robber.”

“Oh, this is such a scary story,” the reporter said. “Those who have been exonerated by DNA evidence, nearly three-quarters of them were convicted in the first place because of faulty eyewitness testimony. What happened to Royal Clark Jr., you will understand why.”

Royal Clark Jr. was 24 years old back then when he was charged and later convicted of armed robbery on a Burger King restaurant in Terrytown, Louisiana, in November 2001.

“Man, I didn’t know where Burger King was,” Clark said in his interview with CBS News.

The assailant had used a cup in the store and left fingerprints on it, but the prints were determined “unusable for identification purposes.”

Three employees chose Clark from a photo lineup. However, at the trial, only one person, a 19-year-old, was certain that he was the guy.

“What does that feel like when you know you weren’t there, and this witness is saying, ‘it looks like him?’” the interviewer asked Clark.

“Like everything shut down at that moment,” Clark replied.

Fortunately, the prints on the cup were re-analyzed and it was proven that the armed robber was not Clark, and Clark was freed.

More details of this over at the site.

Researchers from Oxford University found out that vegetarians have a lower risk of coronary heart disease compared to meat-eaters. However, they may have a greater risk of getting a stroke. However, the study “could not prove whether the results were down to diet or some other aspect of the participant’s lifestyle.”

The World Health Organization and other major scientific bodies have encouraged people to adopt a plant-based diet, or at least cut out meat due to its benefits to both personal health and the environment.

An increase in alternative meat and dairy foods made without animals is one of the defining food trends in recent years. However, as meatless diets take off, researchers say further scrutiny is important.

“Vegetarian and vegan diets have increased hugely in popularity over the past years … but we actually know very little about the potential health benefits or hazards of these diets,” said Dr Tammy Tong, lead author of the study.

The study, published in medical journal The BMJ, followed 48,000 people with no previous history of heart disease, angina and stroke between 1993 and 2001 before a follow-up survey in 2010.

Head over at the South China Morning Post to know more details about the study.

(Image Credit: Sponchia/ Pixabay)

In a feat of kindheartedness, a woman saved a bunch of stray dogs from Hurricane Dorian as it hit the Bahamas. The good Samaritan is Chella Phillips, who runs The Voiceless Dogs Of Nassau, Bahamas nonprofit that pairs local stray dogs with rescue agencies in the US and regularly dishes out food and medicines to stray animals. Phillips saved 97 dogs from peril as she took them into her Nassau home, The Huffington Post detailed: 

Phillips told ABC News it was “either leave the dogs on the street to fend for themselves...or do something about it.”

“I just want these dogs to be safe,” she said. “I could care less about the dog poop and pee in my house.”

She did not immediately return HuffPost’s request for further information.

But in a second post on Monday, Phillips wrote, “we are alright after a stressful night.”

“All services are down, all TVs are fried from the lightnings so no more cartoons for the sick dogs until we can purchase new ones,” she wrote.

She added: “I don’t see how any dogs or any living being could have survived outside. My heart goes out to them. Thank you for the outpouring support and heartfelt prayers.”

image credit: via ABC News

A few years ago, Bobby Seagull sat down and tried to work out why he had been so unlucky in life. “I was 32 or 33, I was single, I loved maths and science – I thought: ‘Can I use maths and science to help me?’ It was a genuine, earnest attempt.” And attempt he did. He used mathematics to try to solve his predicament.

Inspired by Peter Backus – a Manchester University economics lecturer who in 2010 wrote a paper titled Why I Don’t Have a Girlfriend – Seagull used the Drake equation, developed to estimate how many intelligent alien civilisations there might be in the galaxy, to determine his number of potential partners. “You start by assuming there’s infinitely many, then you keep on making the pool smaller and smaller.”

From the total female populations of London and Cambridge – the cities between which he split his time – Seagull selected those roughly his age and up to 10 years younger. Then he reduced that group to the proportion that were likely to be university educated, to reflect the reality of his networks, as a school maths teacher and doctorate student.

What happened next? Find out over at The Guardian.

(Image Credit: TheDigitalArtist/ Pixabay)

People love to flex their life and achievements on social media platforms. If one wanted to flaunt their outings with friends, it’s easily done with a photo uploaded on any social media platform. But what if one doesn’t have people to take photos with? Well, this Japanese company might be the answer to that dilemma! Real Appeal is a company that aims to make its customers appear so popular that they move up in the world. This company’s specialty is to portray its customers in the best light on social media, by providing their customers with people they can take photos with. Potential customers can go to the company’s site to avail their services, as Weird Asia News detailed : 

Customers go to the Real Appeal site. There, they select potential “friends” from a catalog of Real Appeal staff members. Customers can choose based on age, sex, and physical attractiveness. Once selected, a staff member shows up and will pose in social media photos for two hours. The price for the service is 8,000 yen, which is about $70.

You can purchase as many “friends” as you would like. However, there is no bulk discount. Additionally, the customer is responsible for covering all the travel expenses and meals for their new “friends.” If you were planning to try out the service and live outside of Japan, prepare to break the bank.

image credit: via Weird Asia News

Months after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, a lot of children reported PTSD. One of the ways psychologists and officials decided to help children on their path to recovery was to provide them with art education and workshops. Karen Caraballo, chief executive of Puerto Rico Rise Up and a psychologist, told NBC news about their organization’s efforts and the children’s path to recovery: 

“The kids have learned to identify their feelings, to handle conflict in a healthier way and to express themselves in a way that is nonthreatening through dance, music and painting,” Caraballo said.

Dr. Daniel Martínez Ortíz is one of the clinical psychologists who teaches the music therapy workshops with the help of college students from Carlos Albizu University in San Juan. Ortíz said Puerto Ricans of all ages are experiencing PTSD symptoms, such as high levels of anxiety and depression.

“We are still working with the communities that need help, and it’s never ending," he said. "There are a lot of schools that need help."

image credit: Marcela Valdivia / USC Annenberg via NBC news