Any type of work that consists of you sitting on a chair for eight hours straight or more needs to be reconsidered. There are many health risks in living an inactive or sedentary life, something that Shawn Kittelsen found out a couple of years ago.

He had been working as a writer for two years, all day sitting on a chair writing. Until one day, a jolt shot through his back and he was unable to move. He developed herniated discs which left him immobile for the better part of several months.

Of course, he knew that the best solution was to exercise and get his body moving but it caused him too much pain and suffering to do so. He was trying to look for other methods to deal with his situation and he found salvation in VR. This is his story.

(Image credit: ESA/Wikimedia Commons)

Strong dog here.

Workers unexpectedly found this dog near where they work — at an oil rig some 135 miles off Thailand’s coast. Upon seeing this canine, the workers immediately took action and rescued the shivering doggo.

From CNN:

Rig worker Vitisak Payalaw, an offshore planner with Chevron, told CNN that fellow staff members spotted the dog swimming towards the platform on the afternoon of April 12, and held out a pole for him. But, buffeted by the waves, he was unable to climb up, his grasp repeatedly slipping.

"I thought that if we didn't move quickly, I would not be able to help him," said Payalaw. "If he lost his grip, it would be very difficult to help him."

After lifting the dog on board and giving him some water and some electrolyte drink, they named him Boonrod, which means “survivor.”

(Image Credit: Rescue Team Members of Chevron Thailand Exploration & Production)

Kids love their parents, but come to think of them as old and out of touch. Eventually all of us realize that our parents were once young, and have a lifetime of experience that they might never have told us about. Leo_nardo has a picture of his mom casually strolling through a line of armed National Guard troops at a 1969 protest in Berkeley. While pregnant. She met the photographer at an exhibit weeks later and got a copy of the picture. ThomCarn showed us his dad at age 22, when he flew a Mirage F-1 for the French Air Force.

Some were warriors or brave immigrants, others took to the road for adventure. One even pinned Chuck Norris. Some just looked too cool for the next generation to believe. See 76 such pictures in a ranked list at Bored Panda.

What a thoughtful and adorable little fellow.

Derek C Lalchhanhima, a 6-year old Moziram boy, accidentally ran over his neighbor’s chicken. The worried boy then went home and begged his parents to bring the chicken to the hospital, to which they asked him to go himself. Derek eventually went back home upset.

From Hindustan Times:

“His parents finally had to explain to him that the chick is dead and that there’s nothing they can do at the hospital,” she said, adding that Derek’s father was surprised at his son’s reaction. “He’s always been a rather unique kid,” he told her.

The post about little Derek has received over one lakh [100,000] reactions, more than 87,000 shares and a ton of comments on Facebook.

Would you the same as well?

(Image Credit: Sanga Says/ Facebook)

It was considered a crucial point in history when we humans transitioned from hunting and gathering and herding. The intensive production of food brought about technological advances that have enabled life today. I guess less time to worry about food, more time to study the world.

“How and when did this take place?” That would be difficult to answer. Fortunately, a new study published in Science Advances tried to reconstruct history through a different source: human and animal pee.

From PHYS.org:

Whereas dung is commonly used in all sorts of studies, "this is the first time, to our knowledge, that people have picked up on salts in archaeological materials, and used them in a way to look at the development of animal management," says lead author Jordan Abell, a graduate student at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The team used the urine salts to calculate the density of humans and animals at the site over time, estimating that around 10,000 years ago, the density of people and animals occupying the settlement jumped from near zero to approximately one person or animal for every 10 square meters. The results suggest that domestication may have been more rapid than previously expected. They also support the idea that the Neolithic Revolution didn't have just one birthplace in the Fertile Crescent of the Mideast, but rather occurred across several locations simultaneously.

See more of this amazing discovery at phys.org.

(Image Credit: G. Duru/ phys.org)

Every few years, you may be surprised by the number of Easter egg trees both inside and out. The custom spikes and then fades in America, but its roots go back further than you might know.

In 1890s New York, it was even something of a craze. But despite brief bursts of popularity, Kaufman writes, today “egg trees are a dismal failure when compared to Christmas trees, found only in a few public fora and very scattered homes.”

Much like the Christmas tree, the custom likely came to the United States with German immigrants, entrenching itself among the Pennsylvania Dutch. (Although the Easter egg tree is typically a bare-branched tree hung with eggs, rather than an evergreen.) Across parts of Pennsylvania and Appalachia, Kaufman writes, women considered egg trees a type of good-luck charm, especially when it came to fertility.

But hanging eggs on a tree has never become a widespread tradition in the US. Maybe the Easter egg tree never caught on in a big way because it doesn't serve the purpose of a Christmas tree. In the dark, cold days of winter, an evergreen tree with lights is a delightful respite. By Easter, warmer countries already have plenty of flowers blooming. Read about the varying tradition of the Easter egg tree at Atlas Obscura.

If you are in any way aware of internet culture, memes, and the anime community, you might have heard of the phrase "notice me senpai" which usually involves a young, teenage girl adoring an older guy, usually her senior in high school, and wanting him to reciprocate her affections.

But often anime caricatures or representations aren't completely accurate in its depictions of ordinary life in Japan. And the term "senpai" doesn't generally convey a romantic connotation. In this guide, you may learn a little bit more about the term, its meaning, and how to properly use it in context.

(Image credit: Jean Wei/Tofugu)

The one that gave birth to all other things, the first molecule, has been found by astrophysicists. This confirms what they already knew had existed. The molecule is a helium hydride ion (HeH+).

Though what they found wasn't exactly the original, they say it has the same molecular structure as that which came first.

"For the first time, we've detected the same type of molecule in a nearby nebula," said David Neufeld, co-author of the study in the journal Nature, who's a professor and astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

We now have several pieces of the puzzle that would give us an understanding of the events that took place at the beginning, the Big Bang, and how the rest of matter came into existence. All we need to do is to try and put them together.

Of course, even after all the data and evidence, we might still only have a rudimentary understanding of the universe's origins but we must continue to forge onward. And these efforts are making it possible to reconstruct the events that occurred at the beginning and those that followed to unveil the secrets of the universe.

(Image credit: William B. Latter/SIRTF Science Center/Caltech; NASA/ESA)

A new voting method was proposed in Colorado: quadratic voting. This was the result of some concept work by Microsoft Research economist Glen Weyl. The rules are simple. The number of votes is multiplied by itself. Think of it as X squared. 

1 vote? $1.00. 

2 votes? $4.00 

5 votes? $25.00.

From Wired: 

“Fundamentally, quadratic voting addresses the problem of the tyranny of the majority, a standard criticism of democracy,” Weyl says. “Standard rules are based on the notion that everybody is exactly the same and cares the same amount. If you doubt that’s a problem, think about the plight of African Americans in the United States, or the drug war, which dramatically affects certain groups of people.” But with quadratic voting, you can vote harder on what’s closer to home. And when the vote is over, all the money in the pot gets distributed to each voter equally, which is supposed to sort of re-grade the playing field for next time.

Like a lot of other similarly intricate ideas, quadratic voting sets out to solve a fundamental problem in the field of “social choice,” which is to say, how groups of people choose what they want. It may seem like the purest solution is one-person-one-vote, sometimes delightfully abbreviated as “1p1v.” But it doesn’t work as well as it should. Like, a “plurality election” is where the candidate with the most votes wins, but when you have multiple candidates, it’s possible for someone to get a small number of votes but still win if his or her total was higher than the next candidate down. (That happens in a crowded presidential primary.) The American Electoral College system allocates points on a state-by-state, winner take all basis, which means someone can lose the 1p1v “popular” vote by quite a lot and still win. (Hello, Mr. President.) And in the US, slightly more than half of voters, or half of congress, can enforce their will over the other less-than-half—even if the numbers are really close or the will is really disproportionate.

What could be the reason for this kind of voting system to be proposed? Find out on Wired.

(Image Credit: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos / Wikimedia)

What do you think? Is this woman pretty? You might want to think what your answer will be… or you might get assaulted.

Lizeth Guadalupe Ramirez, a 20-year old woman in Texas, allegedly attacked her husband after asking him if she was pretty and receiving only silence from him. Apparently, the husband did not hear the question as they were inside the theater. This greatly made Ramirez upset, and she urged the both of them to leave the theater.

From Fox:

During their ride home, Ramirez's husband claimed she allegedly hit him repeatedly. At their home, she allegedly continued to hit him and even assaulted a family member who tried to intervene, according to the news outlet.

(Image Credit: Webb County Sheriff’s Office)

Looks like this woman brought misfortune — instead of good fortune — to the other passengers of Tianjin Airlines.

A 66-year old woman surnamed Wang got arrested after throwing 6 pieces of coins at the plane’s engine to pray for a safe trip. The old woman was then placed under administrative detention for 10 days. The flight was delayed for two hours, but it managed to take off, and the passengers reached their destination safely. Well, at least her prayer worked.

From Shanghai.ist :

Fortunately, the coins were noticed by a worker. When an announcement was made for the thrower of the coins to step forward, Wang remained seated. However, she was revealed as the culprit by surveillance footage.

…

This is now at least the seventh time that this kind of thing has happened in China in the past two years. Somehow, it’s only becoming more and more frequent.

I just hope people would trust airplanes more.

(Image Credit: Shanghai.ist)

Cary Huang of Abacaba made a moving bar graph tracking the popularity of internet memes from 2004 to 2019. As you might expect, it moves dizzyingly fast. The data comes from the site Know Your Meme and from Google Trends. However, Know Your Meme only launched in 2007, and although it is a valuable resource, it's not as widely used as you might think. Huang admitted as much at the YouTube page, where he noted some egregious omissions and other errors. Still, it's neat to see how memes you may have forgotten about zoomed into our consciousness and then disappeared.

Warning: Looking up memes you are not familiar with may bring up NSFW and even offensive material, particularly in the earlier years of this study. Even the text titles of some are NSFW. Many of the safer ones can be brought up through Neatorama's search box.  

-via Laughing Squid

 

The company Thames Water was working on a pipeline project in Oxfordshire, England, when they discovered the burial spots for 26 people. Archaeologists took over, and declared the find to be quite unusual, showing what might possibly be human sacrifice.

The graves contained the skeletal remains of both men and women, some of whom may have been the victims of human sacrifice, according to the Cotswold archaeologists. As CNN noted in its coverage, one woman was found with her feet cut off and her arms bound behind her back. At another grave, a skull was found placed at the feet of a decapitated skeleton.

The Iron Age skeletons are thought to be about 3,000 years old, and part of the Childrey Warren settlement, the same people who constructed the famous Uffington White Horse. Read more about the bizarre burials at Gizmodo. 

(Image credit: Thames Water)

When I sleep, I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night only to find that I have tossed aside my sheets unconsciously and was lying bare to the cold air and all the other elements of the night. So at times, I decide to go to sleep without them which is fine considering the conditions in a tropical country.

Still though, bed sheets can offer added protection while you sleep. But not all bed sheets may be perfect for you. Food52 lists different types of sheets that could meet the needs of every type of sleeper. Check them out here.

(Image credit: Andreea Popa/Unsplash)

There has been a recent dispute between the startups Bird and Lime against a San Diego company which they allege have been taking abandoned scooters from the streets and giving them back to the startups in exchange for money.

Scooter Removal says that they are doing this for a noble cause both for the environment and the city which they say have been littered with a lot of scooters. 

The dispute highlights a larger tension in tech, in that it lays bare some pretty fundamental questions about Silicon Valley, i.e. are so-called mobility companies actually helping us solve some of our larger transportation issues? Or is really what we have at the end of the day just a bunch of new trash?

But Bird and Lime retaliated by saying that Scooter Removal's motivations aren't purely altruistic.

Both scooter-rental startups sued the company—known as Scooter Removal—and its founders last month, arguing that the company’s removal of scooters was in many cases illegal. 

Workers from the company, Bird and Lime say, “lay in wait” for tourists and other scooter riders to get off the scooters in San Diego, before “swooping in” and loading them onto a truck, taking them to storage and holding them for “ransom.”

(Image credit: Grendelkhan/Wikimedia Commons)