Altruism can be defined as showing selfless concern for the well-being of others. Though it may not look it, we do experience humans expressing altruism in more ways than one. Apart from non-profit organizations or volunteer groups, whose sole purpose is to engage in activities for the welfare of a particular group that they are catering to, there are individuals who have launched their own altruistic initiatives and have found success in helping out others.

Now a study has found that this trait of altruism is not only present in humans, but also in bees. Furthermore, their altruistic nature is not merely instinctive but hereditary. And the way this is expressed is truly fascinating. Since every hive can only have one queen, this begs the question, what do the other female honey bees do? Well, they serve the queen, and they do so by taking care of the queen's offspring. This may sound horrendous for some, but it is in the genetic makeup of the bees that leads to this behavior.

Of course, as humans we probably wouldn't think of giving up our entire life for the service of one particular person, although there are people who do that, and it is quite a noble and honorable thing to do. But I would think a lot more people would have different means of expressing altruism. Salon has distilled the most salient points from the paper which was published on Molecular Ecology.

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Pet owners will know that sometimes our pets will do the silliest random things that will be enough to brighten our day. Perhaps, that's one of the reasons why they do it as they probably feel when we're stressed and need some means of releasing all the pent-up tension within us. At times, they are just instinctively crazy, at least in my opinion. All the same, we love them for their antics and some owners luckily were able to capture their pets' silliest moments and are now sharing them in this latest TikTok trend, where they show videos of their pets' craziest moments with Hamilton's "Dear Theodosia" playing in the background.

The photo above was shared by billyboy_cat on TikTok and for a second, you might think that the box around the cat's head was a filter, but when you look closely, it's an actual box fitted over the cat.

Another photo, uploaded by domesroams, in the same vein as the first shows our little feline friend sporting a plastic bag from a bagel store and giving a whole new meaning to the word catwalk.

And perhaps my personal favorite out of this collection is the one posted by wisaandthecattos with yet another plastic bag draped over their head making it look as though they were a newborn baby. And what a cute baby it is.

For a look at all 50 photos, check them out on Bored Panda.

(Image credits: billyboy_cat, domesroams, wisaandthecattos)

Out in cinemas for the past two weeks now, The Exorcist: Believer is a reboot of the 1973 original directed by the late William Friedkin. Following the tradition of David Gordon Green's reboot of Halloween, The Exorcist: Believer will be a sequel to the original film disregarding other previous sequels. It might seem odd to sort of sever the continuity of The Exorcist franchise, but it makes sense, in that Green wants to build upon the foundation that the original film established using a new set of perspectives, themes, and milieu.

Ellen Burstyn, who starred in the original film, will be reprising her role of Chris MacNeil, but instead of the story revolving around her character, Green takes on a different approach with the concept of synchronized possession. Nevertheless, we will still see Burstyn's character now fulfilling the role of the expert on demonic activity. For other details on the concept of The Exorcist: Believer as well as the technical aspects such as makeup which was highly acclaimed for the original film due to the superb work of the late Dick Smith, check out Martyn Conterio's article on NME.

(Image credit: Angel Paredes Aldrete/Pixabay)

After a long day at work, sometimes you just want to kick back and relax while watching your favorite Netflix series, however, you find that there's nothing for you to eat in the fridge. What better way to enjoy your night than with a delicious meal? So, instead of ordering food online, why not try out some of these dinner recipes that will only take you less than 30 minutes to prepare?

From healthily appetizing meals like Citrus Coconut Steamed Cod to savory Salsa Steak Garlic Toasts, you will find all sorts of recipes submitted to Taste of Home by various people all around the United States. Some are even contest-winning recipes like Jennifer Pemberton's Chicken with Mushroom Sauce. Others are delightful hybrids of savory desserts such as Sue Gronholz' Meat Loaf Cups. Take a look at 80 Quick Dinner Recipes at Taste of Home.

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Have you ever gotten a receipt from Costco with a smiley face drawn on it? It seems like a very unusual thing to encounter, and perhaps you have wondered what it actually means. Well, much like Starbucks is known for their baristas writing customers' names on their cups haphazardly, Costco apparently has this tradition of drawing smiley faces on customers' receipts and the reason for them doing this is quite simple than you would expect.

Reader's Digest shares that, for as long as Costco has had the practice of checking receipts as customers are going out the door, Costco employees just want to make people smile in any way they can. Initially, the smiley faces were meant for children but even teenagers and adults found them cheekily enjoyable, as the TikToks on RD show.

Not all Costco stores have this tradition, though, as some stores say that it depends on their employees. Furthermore, there are some branches which have prohibited their employees from continuing to engage in the said practice. However, if you are lucky enough to come across a Costco that still doodles smileys on your receipts, consider yourself lucky.

(Image credit: Ann Fitz/RD)

Some photographs are so intriguing that you see them over and over your entire life. The one above that became known as Lunch Atop A Skyscraper can give you the willies just looking at it. The picture itself was staged, but the subjects were real steelworkers building a skyscraper in 1932. The building in New York City is now known as 30 Rockefeller Plaza. In 1932, the men were lucky to have jobs at all, but their cavalier attitude as to the height they could have fallen from impressed us all.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but the story behind this one doesn't take all that long to read. You'll also find out about that picture of Princess Diana dancing with John Travolta, the Blue Marble, and the iconic image of Albert Einstein sticking his tongue out along with four other unforgettable photos, at Mental Floss.

Last month we had a new video from Cyriak called Honk. The new animation from Jonti Picking/Mr. Weebl is also titled Honk, but it's completely different. In this video, a trucker is tootling along in his tractor without a trailer, and he's in a really good mood. That is not allowed, so he gets pulled over by a cop. Then things get really weird. You start the video thinking that the "honk" will come from the truck's air horn, but that isn't the case at all. In fact you will find it hard to detect any honks in this story at all, despite seeing several possible honkers. Spoiler: there are extraterrestrials, but they don't come in a form we normally expect. There is also a banjo. It's not deep or thought-provoking, but it is silly and fun. What else would you expect from the guy who gave us Badgers? -via Metafilter

The 20th century saw an amazing rise in technology and innovation. It had both the first airplane and the first moon landing. We went from short, silent movie sequences to 24-hour streaming information. The list goes on, and those innovations were powered by fossil fuels, which led to the trajectory of climate change we are dealing with now. How different would our world be if we had solar power during all that time?

You might be surprised to learn that a Canadian inventor named George Cove started a business to install household solar panels in 1905. Really. His company garnered a lot of publicity about the possibilities of solar power. Then in 1909, Cove was kidnapped. The details of the incident are sketchy, but the kidnappers told Cove the price of his freedom would be for him to give up on solar power. Cove refused, and was freed anyway, but he lost all interest in promoting his business and it faded away. It would be another 40 years before anyone seriously began research into solar energy again, and even longer before it was available again to the public. What would our world be like if that kidnapping hadn't happened? Read about George Cove and the history of solar power at the Conversation.  -via Kottke

(Image credit: Popular Electricity magazine April 1910)

As Rick & Morty (NSFW) teaches us, squirrels are not just cute, furry little creatures, but a well-organized collective conspiring to maintain their domination of the human race.

They're smart, but sometimes they screw up. On reddit, a user with a username that I can't repeat in polite company found a building outside of New Braunfels, Texas that Google Maps identifies as "Secret Squirrel Facility." The campus includes several satellite dishes, which are presumably used for sicurian mind control projects.

Google Maps no longer reveals this label, so we can assume that the squirrels have quickly corrected this error. Their intrigues continue.

-via Dave Barry

Last year, the Spanish band Broken Peach gave us a Halloween edition of the song "Don't You Want Me," originally by The Human League. This year, their holiday special video is Blondie's "One Way or Another." Watch them perform as a squad of skeleton cheerleaders and give the lyrics their creepiest interpretation ever!

Broken Peach has released a Halloween video every year since 2015. You can find a list of them at the YouTube page, although you will have to click "more"in the description to see it. -via Metafilter

In the video game Assassin's Creed, the Order of Assassins battle the Knights Templar. The Knights Templar were real enough, but the Order of Assassins is fictional. However, they are based on tales of the medieval Nizari Ismailis, a breakaway sect of Shiite Muslims that flourished between the 11th and 13th centuries. They were so devout in their beliefs that they were willing to kill and to die to bring the Nizari to power, and keep them there. It got to the point where any political assassination in Egypt or Syria was ascribed to the Nizaris.

The popular image of the the Nizari Ismailis in the West began with the travelogues of Marco Polo, which may have come from Sunni sources, and other wild legends that had been filtered through retellings, often with political aims. The Crusaders had plenty to say about the assassins, but those tales were greatly exaggerated and embellished. Strangely, the fictionalized version of the sect used in the game Assassin's Creed is more in line with the historical Nizari than traditional Western accounts. Read about the real Nizari Ismailis at Smithsonian. 

The title of the YouTube channel 5-Minute Crafts implies that this is a craft that can be completed in just 5 minutes. I'm skeptical that this rather involved prop creation can be done that quickly, but perhaps it is possible with a lot of prep work, like on a cooking television show.

Would this be a good decoration for your upcoming home Halloween party? Yes, but I propose another use beyond confusing your intoxicated guests looking for relief. A terrifyingly monstrous mouth eating humans from the bottom up is exactly what a toddler needs for toilet training. This mouth toilet would make going potty all the more fun.

-via Technabob

Tom Scott is going off on the peculiarities of the English language again. We use a lot of contractions, but there are a lot of other possible contractions that we could use, but we don't because they are weird. Oh sure, there is a logical explanation, which is what this video is all about.

The example he leads with is "Is this introduction weird? Yes, it's." Then he goes on to explain why that's weird. It sure is, because anyone who wants to use a contraction in this case would have said, "Yes, 'tis." The contraction "'tis" is old fashioned, but that has been the contraction of "it is" for quite some time. He eventually gets around to that one. Still, there are linguistic reasons we don't have words like "there'dn't've" (there would not have) but we do have words like "gonna" (going to). Tom explains them as clitics with syntactic gaps and stress patterns. Try to keep up, this is complicated.    

When I was a young boy, there were a few things that fascinated me and two of them were insects: spiders and butterflies. I thought spiders were pretty cool and butterflies were pretty. There were a few things that creeped me out and didn't like to have in the house, and even today I still don't like them and I have no holds squashing them the moment I see them, and those are cockroaches. All other critters in between are fine by me. I'd much prefer that they not invade our personal space, and if possible, it's best to release them into their natural habitats.

I have just found out that there are some insects that are totally okay to kill; even scientists encourage it. The reason being these bugs are invasive species and they can disrupt entire ecosystems just by existing. Some may be hard to get rid of though, as my experience with hornets proves, but with the right methods, we can surely eradicate them. Gizmodo has the full list of insects here.

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All things that happen inside our bodies are, in one way or another, connected to the brain, the control tower of the nervous system. Of course, every organ has its own cells and those cells have their own specific functions, but the brain is central in our daily lives. In fact, without it, we couldn't live. Of course, there are instances wherein people fall into a coma (essentially brain-dead) and come out of it after months or years, then recover after much therapy. But the fact still stands that the brain is vital to our bodies. And now, scientists have been able to create the largest-ever map of the human brain so far.

What does this mean? There's so much information that can be taken from knowing the different brain cells and how they work. We can find information about diseases, physiology, anatomy, and much more just by studying the 170 billion cells in our brain. Scientists say that by analyzing all of this new information, we may be able to find the root cause of neuropsychiatric conditions like Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, depression, and even autism.

It is the largest map ever made, but it's not yet all-encompassing. There's still much work to be done, yet this is a major step toward understanding brain physiology and the neural network that explains much of the functioning of our bodies as well as how dysfunctional parts came to be.

(Image credit: Milad Fakurian/Unsplash)