Zach Johnston from Uproxx gives us a short overview of the different new bourbon whiskeys recently released as a final toast to the closing of Bourbon Heritage Month. Some of you may know a few labels on the list including Jack Daniel's Single Barrel Select Tennessee Whiskey Topflight Series and Jefferson's Finished in Singapore Tropics "Aged in Humidity" Fully Matured Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. Here's the complete list and Zach Johnston's analysis of each one.

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At this point, it's quite a familiar sign to me when I'm experiencing the onset of burnout. The things that used to be enjoyable become a chore. You start to lose motivation to even get out of bed. And the world around you just seems completely gray, dull, and uninspiring. You lose sight of what your goal is or even the meaning of trying to achieve it.

There are several ways to combat burnout. Some have suggested to take time off and just replenish your empty tank. Take a rest and take your mind off of work or the things that cause stress in your life. But Kelli Thompson of Quartz suggests that there is a difference between rest and recovery when dealing with burnout.

With the inklings of burnout creeping in, I was intentional about taking vacations over the summer, reducing my client workload, and allowing more downtime in my daily schedule.

This felt so reenergizing that I became intentional about setting boundaries and having a lighter workload for the fall when my book was set to officially launch. I prioritized recovery, not just rest.

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Rick and Morty are back for another season of shenanigans, and this trailer for the seventh seems to be showing us that there is much more to unpack in this wild, chaotic show.

Rick is back and he’s not a pickle this time. Instead, he shows an unimpressed and probably exhausted Morty that he’s a leg. It’s the start of what is a chaotic collection of clips.

Nerdist gives us a sneak peek and a quick rundown of the myriad scenes that we see from the trailer.

(Video credit: Nerdist)

About a week or so ago, the new social media app called T2, decided to rebrand and changed their app's name to Pebble. It was created by former Twitter employees Sarah Oh and Gabor Cselle with the help of former Discord engineer Michael Greer, and their plan is to build the social network that Twitter could have been.

Pebble only has about 15,000 users, but that’s intentional. The co-founders of this new social media platform, known until earlier this week as T2, wanted to move slowly and build it right—not move fast and break things.

Pebble’s founders know they’re not the only ones trying to replace Twitter—there’s Bluesky, Mastodon, Meta’s Threads, and many, many more—but they think if they can start small, grow gradually, build a good product, and foster a healthy community, they could have a real shot at being the platform that actually succeeds in claiming Twitter’s defectors.

Quartz sits down with the two co-founders who share the story of Pebble and what their hopes and ambitions are for the future of the budding social media app.

(Image credit: Screenshot of Pebble)

Type 1 diabetes is a life-long struggle and it can be tedious, cumbersome, and painful for those who have it. It requires regular maintenance and insulin injections which sounds like a heavy burden to bear for the rest of one's life. So, in lieu of that, a team of MIT engineers are hoping that the implantable device that they developed would help diabetes patients.

In trials, the implant kept the blood sugar levels of diabetic mice stable for a month. The team now hopes to scale the device to humans to help treat those with type 1 diabetes—and they believe it could be used to treat other diseases as well.

“You can think of this as a living medical device that is made from human cells that secrete insulin, along with an electronic life support-system,” senior author Daniel Anderson, a chemical engineer at MIT, said in a statement. “We’re excited by the progress so far, and we really are optimistic that this technology could end up helping patients.”

- from The Daily Beast

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Having 20/20 vision is cool and all, but in terms of different aspects of vision, humans may not be at the top compared to other animals. Lasik by OCLI Vision has attempted to make a ranking of 90 different animals based on their eyesight and how those compared to humans.

To get all of these animals ranked by eyesight, we considered factors such as distance accuracy, color and light perception, field of vision, and vision speed based on flicker fusion frequency.

Check out the full infographic on Lasik by OCLI Vision's site. - via Digg

(Image credit: Lasik by OCLI Vision)

Seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, is a type of depression which usually occurs during late autumn and winter, and the cause of which is generally thought to be the scarcity of sunlight. You might feel lethargic and a lack of motivation during the winter months because our bodies are yearning for the warmth of the sun. But SAD doesn't only affect humans. Apparently, many animals suffer it too and we are now just figuring out what that entails.

When animals are being transferred from their natural habitats to new locations—for example from southern latitudes to northern ones—they suffer similar consequences, experiencing their own version of SAD. This is particularly problematic when it comes to zoo animals, many of which did not evolve to exist in the latitudes where they live now, says Kristine Gandia of the University of Stirling, in Scotland, who studies animal welfare. 

“Animals, including humans, have evolved rhythms to synchronize their internal environments with the external environment,” says Gandia. “When internal clocks are not synchronized with external cues like light and temperature, this can cause adverse effects.” Gandia’s team wanted to understand how SAD affects zoo animals, so they picked 11 giant pandas to study, and published their findings in Frontiers in Psychology.

Read more about Gandia and her team's research on Nautilus.

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Located in the Southern portion of the Pacific Ocean near Australia, 95 percent of Zealandia, the most promising eighth continent of the world, was submerged underwater, until recently when researchers have finally mapped out the rest of the land mass.

The latest research, led by Nick Mortimer, dredged the northern two-thirds of the submerged area, pulling up pebbly and cobbley sandstone, fine-grain sandstone, mudstone, bioclastic limestone, and basaltic lava from a variety of time periods.

By dating the rocks and interpreting magnetic anomalies, the researchers wrote, they were able to map the major geological units across North Zealandia.

“This work completes offshore reconnaissance geological mapping of the entire Zealandia continent,” they said.

More on this from Popular Mechanics.

(Image credit: NOAA/Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

An odd-looking baby is abandoned at the church steps and is taken in by a nun. The "troll girl" grows up as an outcast, trying to hide her true nature. She just wants to blend in and be left alone, but she is bullied relentlessly. Along the way, she finds inner talents that come in handy when she has to save the only person who ever loved her unconditionally. Troll Girl was written and directed by Kay Carmichael of Giantslayer Studios.   

Chad Smith has been the drummer for Red Hot Chili Peppers since 1988. The group was inducted in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2012. And in this video, Chad Smith shows us why he's such a legend. Asked to do the drum parts for 30 Seconds to Mars' song "The Kill" which he hasn't heard before, the results were quite surprising. - via Digg

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(Content warning: the video contains loud, shocking sounds)

There are a lot of sounds and background music in horror movies that elicit feelings of panic, dread, suspense, or general distress and discomfort in us. But perhaps, the Aztec death whistle is the scariest sound you will ever hear produced by a whistle. - via Digg

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When we think about invasive species, what usually comes to mind are organisms like parasites that terrorize a natural habitat by hording resources, pushing naturally-occurring species, and at times, preying on the local species. But little do we know that there are some species, which we might often see, that are not native to where they are now.

In “Human Footprint” on PBS, Biologist Shane Campbell-Staton gets up-close and personal with invasive species you may not have realized were invaders at all. Could your favorite plant or animal be on the list? You might be surprised.

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Yup, you read that right. Netflix is doing a reality show based on the South Korean drama "Squid Game". And no worries. No contestants were harmed during the making of this reality show.

Similar to the show it’s based on, Squid Game: The Challenge sees 456 contestants from around the world go up against each other in challenges based on the games within the show, and some specifically for the competition.

Whoever wins gets the $4.56 million prize, and the losers do not get shot after getting eliminated, they just get sent home.

Gizmodo gives us a scoop on the new Squid Game reality show.

(Video credit: Netflix)

You may have heard that several authors from the Authors Guild of America has decided to sue ChatGPT a few days ago over copyright claims. The writers include George R.R. Martin and John Grisham, and this has even led Amazon to start making restrictions on selling self-published books on their site.

In their filing, the Guild alleged that OpenAI may have downloaded authors’ books from pirated ebook sites and used them to train its ChatGPT models. The authors say that OpenAI should have paid a reasonable licensing fee or opted to train their models using works that are already in the public domain.

AI models have made it a lot easier for written works to be produced lickety-split, which makes certain people's jobs a lot easier, but also others, such as professors in academia, might have a harder time checking students' work for any sign of AI assistance. What could be the best way to harness the potential of AI models such as ChatGPT while mitigating the possible negative effects? That is something we can only wait and see.

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Even after watching all 236 episodes of Friends, I fail to recall this quite dark revelation about one of its funniest characters, Joey. And quite frankly, he's not the only character with quite a distressing backstory from a show that brings unadulterated laughter and joy to its viewers.

But then again, the best comedians are those with some very deep past experiences which they use as a source for their material. What makes them great is how they are able to find a silver lining despite the circumstances they faced. And at the end of the day, when the worst has passed, those painful experiences become merely a part of our history, and slowly, we are able to make light of even the most serious of our circumstances.

JM McNab from Cracked gives us this list of sitcom characters who have surprisingly dark backstories.