I remember when I was about three or four years old, my dad would read fairy tale books to me before going to sleep. I always loved those moments and I anticipated them every night. At times, I remember having to force him to read to me. Understandably, not all fathers may have the time or the energy to do that all the time, however, a new research has shown that dads spending time with their children can go a long way in their children's development.

A study by researchers from the University of Leeds found that dads' involvement in their children's lives, especially during their formative years, through interactive activities like reading, playing, and storytelling can help boost their children's performance at school.

Dr. Helen Norman, Research Fellow at Leeds University Business School, who led the research, said: “Mothers still tend to assume the primary carer role and therefore tend to do the most childcare, but if fathers actively engage in childcare too, it significantly increases the likelihood of children getting better grades in primary school. This is why encouraging and supporting fathers to share childcare with the mother, from an early stage in the child’s life, is critical.”

Furthermore, they also found that dads being more engaged in their children's school activities contribute positively to the kids' academic performance. The research suggests that playing, drawing, or singing with their kids every week and spending even 10 minutes a day reading or storytelling with them proves to have long-lasting effects for their children's scholastic achievements. On the other hand, the mom heavily impacts the kids' emotional and social development. With this in mind, they encourage both parents to share in the responsibility of childrearing as it greatly impacts the cognitive abilities of children.

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I'm not completely familiar with the struggle of finding a place to put your purse in the car, but I think it's understandable how women would prefer having a convenient and secure slot inside their car where their purses will go since all of their essentials conveniently go in it.

The passenger seat may be an option, but there's always the possibility of the purse falling off when you unexpectedly have to come to a screeching halt or, even on the go, it might accidentally slip. I can imagine the difficulty of having to put your purse at the back of the driver's seat. It would be too much of a hassle, especially if you quickly need something from your purse. And it would just be completely out of reach if you were to just place it on the back seat.

With this problem in mind, car designers thought of a few ways for women to have a place in their car to put their purse. One solution is having electronic gear shifts. Instead of the gear shift being mechanically connected to the transmission, some cars are designed where the gear selector sends electronic signals, through a row of buttons on the lower dashboard, thus freeing up some space where the gear stick is supposed to be. Other designs have a carved out space under the shifter console where purses and other stuff can go. In Volvo's EX30 EV, the center console functions as a drawer of sorts where compartments can slide out and allow you to fit coffee cups, phones, and even your purse for a hassle-free drive. What do you think about these designs? - via Fark

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The idea that we can create human-animal hybrids sounds deranged and downright absurd. Such a thing, we would think, only belongs in fiction, folk tales, or myths. After all, how would it be possible for human DNA to mix with that of an animal? Moreover, there is something about these chimerical combinations that obviously crosses ethical boundaries. It's best to leave them etched only in myths or folklore. However, one Soviet doctor had been so obsessed with the idea of a hybrid human-ape super warrior that he went to great lengths to create them. His name was Ilya Ivanov.

Ivanov had been successful in artificially inseminating horses so that one stallion can breed up to 500 mares. Apart from this, he also specialized in interspecific hybridization of animals, which led him, at some point in his scientific career, to become fixated with creating a human-ape hybrid, which he thought would be incredibly resistant to disease and even potent enough to become super warriors a la Planet of the Apes.

Imagining an army of half-human, half-ape chimeras, clad in red, rampaging through Europe was not enough, he knew, to convince the Soviet government to give him the funds for his research. However, he also knew that Vladimir Lenin and his compatriots were heavily anti-religious. Using this as an opportunity, he presented the idea that creating a human-ape hybrid would basically make them gods who could refashion genetics, anatomy, and physiology. He got the funding and set out to Africa.

However, Ivanov quickly found out that making his very own "humanzee" was not as easy as he thought it would be. He faced various hurdles to the point that he became desperate and almost had to forcefully inseminate women. Thankfully, he was caught and deported. But his pursuit of human-ape hybrids didn't end there. He continued his experimentation until his death, albeit unsuccessful in achieving his goal. Until in 2019, when a collaboration of scientists from the US, China, and Spain successfully created a human-monkey embryo. Is this finally the start of the realization of Ivanov's dream? Only time will tell.

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After 25 years of renting out physical DVDs to customers, Netflix finally bids farewell to their rental business. And it comes as no surprise since even the global sales for DVDs and Blu-rays have been gradually dwindling over the past several years, with a 19 percent decrease from 2021 to 2022. The streaming behemoth announced in April that the last shipments of DVDs will be done on September 29th, marking the close of that chapter for DVD rentals.

Netflix first started shipping DVDs in 1998 with Beetlejuice, and since then, they have shipped 5.2 billion movies to over 40 million customers. Over the years, as consumer preferences shifted toward streaming, Netflix also shifted gears, offering movies and TV shows on-demand, later producing and distributing their own content on the platform.

Nowadays, video on-demand has simply taken over the market, and as streaming services continue to grow, we might soon shelve DVDs and Blu-rays along with other technologies from a by-gone era. Disney's move to stop production of DVDs and Blu-rays in Australia is one tell-tale sign that the industry has decided to steer toward digital distribution, which makes sense from a business perspective as it costs less but gives a much wider reach.

However, one good thing did come about this as Netflix also announced that whoever still has rentals in their possession would get to keep them. Furthermore, they may even request up to 10 more movies simply so that the company can finally get rid of all the remaining stock. So, for anybody who still would love to get physical copies of their favorite movies, go and check to see if Netflix still has a copy and request them right away. From Engadget.

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Have you ever been to a movie that made you tense up anticipating the evil force, and when it was finally revealed, you thought, "That's it?" You might have even laughed when you finally saw what was supposed to be so scary. We know from Jaws and many Alfred Hitchcock movies that the psychological suspense of a monster we can't see is deliciously scary, but often even the best special effects makeup, or even CGI, can't live up to our imaginations. A reddit post in r/movies asked filmgoers which movie monster was a real disappointment to see after building up a lot of tension. More than 3,000 comments came in discussing those films. Cracked picked out a list of the best, and gave them to us with illustrations. The picture above from the 1956 movie It Conqered the World may be an outlier in its sheer ridiculousness, but we can get a laugh out of it.

It Conquered the World. Paul Blaisdell specifically designed his monster to be seen partially in the shadows, but Roger Corman wasn't having it. He said "I paid for a monster and I'm damn well going to see a monster", so they rolled the giant evil cucumber out into the broad daylight of Bronson Canyon, painfully obvious it was on a little furniture cart.

The same redditor told us more about this alien from Venus. Read about 22 films that built up tension, and then revealed an underwhelming monster, at Cracked.

A crew aboard the EV (Exploration Vessel) Nautilus watches the camera feed from their ROV Atalanta and spots a dumbo octopus (Grimpoteuthis), shining ghostly white in the lights. There are quite a few species in this genus, named dumbo after the Disney elephant because of its fins that look like ears. Or who knows- maybe these are its ears that it uses for swimming, just like Dumbo used his oversized ears for flying. This footage was recorded 5,518 feet (1,682 meters) under the surface at the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument near Hawaii.

These ROV videos are great because we get to see deep sea creatures in their own habitat, but also because we get the real-time reaction from the scientists watching from the ship. Their enthusiasm is contagious. One says, "I'm glad we got to see a live one!" That indicates they saw a dead one earlier. So why is it white? Octopuses have the ability to be any color they want, so this one may have turned white to match the bright light from the ROV. Or the light may have been so bright that it would show up white to us regardless of the real color. Or maybe it's combination of both. -via Born in Space

The earliest G.I. Joe action figures from the 1960s were a foot tall, in line with Barbie doll proportions. In 1982, the toy line was rebooted, and the action figures were rescaled to 3.75 inches tall. This allowed for more military vehicles and equipment to be made for them. They got jeeps and tanks and airplanes, but the biggest G.I. Joe playset came out in 1985- an aircraft carrier! The U.S.S Flagg Aircraft Carrier Playset was not exactly built to scale- if it were, it would have been 65 feet long. But it was still a massive toy, at seven and a half feet long, three feet wide and three feet tall. And you had to assemble it yourself. Or rather, parents did.

Every kid who knew about the U.S.S Flagg Aircraft Carrier Playset wanted one, but it cost over a hundred dollars, which was a lot to spend on a toy in 1985. Besides, it was a rare family that had room for one of these in their house. Those who actually purchased it got a lot for their bucks, including support vehicles, a PA system, and a captain. Read about this amazing playset that's now a collector's item at much higher prices at the Toy Collectors Guide. -via Nag on the Lake   

Robert J. Cumming, an astronomer in Sweden, and several colleagues at various astronomical research institutions in Europe, have submitted for publication a scholarly journal article arguing, in all seriousness, that every observatory should have a disco ball.

The authors note that pinhole cameras are frequently used in observatories. A disco ball, with its hundreds of mirrored surfaces, is basically a pinhole camera with hundreds of different apertures. They are cheap and readily available, thus avoiding serious expense in acquiring a specialized tool for observing bright objects, such as the sun. The article describes at length how the authors use a disco ball to observe a solar eclipse.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Pexels

We all know the Acme Corporation. They were the ones who supplied Wile E. Coyote with all the gadgets and supplies he needed to catch the Road Runner. They didn't work all that well, but he could get them delivered out in the desert. Since those days, the name Acme has been used as a generic business name when you don't want to use a specific name. But wait, those Warner Brothers cartoons weren't the first to use Acme as a generic business name- they are just the most durable and universal media we have from 70+ years ago. Using Acme as a business name was already a Hollywood thing.

Even so, the name didn't spring up in Hollywood. It was a common real business name during the early 20th century, selected for a mundane but genius reason. While a few businesses that use the name Acme are still around, startups rarely select it because of its association with Wile E. Coyote and his many failures in using their products.

The city of San Francisco grew quickly and haphazardly starting with the California Gold Rush in 1848. Many thousands of residents were buried in the city's cemeteries, and over the years, they ran out of room. Besides, that valuable urban property was needed for other purposes. Burial in San Francisco was halted, and existing graves were dug up reburied elsewhere. Starting in 1930, they were sent to Colma for reburial, and the small town was established as the official burial site for San Franciscans.

But those reburials started as early as 1868, when thousands of graves were dug up from the Yerba Buena cemetery with a $10,000 appropriation from the city. That was not nearly enough money. When the funds ran out, the project was declared finished. The U.N. Plaza stands at the site today, above thousands of bodies still buried there. The same approach to moving graves went on in other cemeteries, which is why San Francisco now has a historical Chinese cemetery covered with a golf course and a Native American cemetery underneath a road and school. There are efforts to bring attention to and memorialize those forgotten graves that may never be recovered, which you can read about at Atlas Obscura.   

(Image credit: Library of Congress)

Cyriak Harris (previously at Neatorama) has been producing bizarre and surreal animations for almost twenty years now, although not as often as we'd like. Except for a commissioned music video, this is his first animated project he's shared in two years. Cyriak has a talent for turning everyday objects, often animals, into Eldrich horrors. The subject this time is a goose, which is a silly animal to begin with, but this one is a contortionist, as you would expect.

I noticed that this video comes with YouTube's fairly new transcript feature. What would it say besides "honk"? It doesn't even say that!

I will have to start checking out other videos' transcripts to see if they are as nonsensical.

When capital punishment wasn't enough of a deterrent for criminals to stop committing offenses, the British Parliament deliberated on what would be a better way to deter people from committing crimes, and that's when they passed the British Murder Act of 1751. It is considered quite brutal and even said to be a fate worse than death. Weird History tells us about the BMA of 1751 in the video above. - via Digg.

(Video credit: Weird History/Youtube)

It was when Dr. James Wade was doing research at the National Library of Scotland when he stumbled upon something rather extraordinary. In a 15th century manuscript, he read what seemed to be notes and details for a live comedy act. Today, we have stand-up comedians writing material and going on the road to test that material out on audiences. Sometimes, they would have spontaneous moments on stage creating comedy magic. I would think that minstrels, the entertainers of the Medieval Age, generally performed impromptu or extempore, but having this manuscript with the writer giving details of the sequences he would perform, is definitely rare especially for medieval literature. Read more about it on Sci Tech Daily. - via Metafilter

(Image credit: National Library of Scotland)

When I was a kid, I learned that there were four distinct tastes: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. There is a fifth taste, umami, which is basically that savory sensation described by the Japanese. Apart from these five, researchers are saying that there is a sixth. Or, to be more precise, we can divide the salty taste into two different sensations: one where the saltiness is just right and you can enjoy the flavor of the food being accentuated by the salt, and the other when there's too much salt and you feel repulsed.

In the case of salt, scientists understand many details about the low-salt receptor, but a complete description of the high-salt receptor has lagged, as has an understanding of which taste bud cells host each detector.

“There are a lot of gaps still in our knowledge — especially salt taste. I would call it one of the biggest gaps,” says Maik Behrens, a taste researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology in Freising, Germany. “There are always missing pieces in the puzzle.”

In our culture, we have a condiment made of fermented fish or shrimp paste with salt. If you eat a handful of that, it tastes awful. It's not exactly bitter, but it's a repugnant taste. That's what high levels of salt must taste like. It's not salty the way we would define salty. It's a whole class altogether, and I think that's what taste researchers are looking into. Although, not everybody is convinced. Amber Dance writes about these nuances on Knowable.

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There have been several times when I have observed our dog moving while she sleeps, and I wondered whether she was having a dream. Of course, I couldn't know. Apparently, there are some animals that exhibit behavior similar to what humans do during REM sleep. Behavioral ecologist Daniela Rößler and her colleagues found that spiders seem to experience a similar rapid eye movement at particular intervals.

Though the spiders are motionless in the run-up to these REM-like bouts, the team hasn’t yet proved that they are sleeping. But if it turns out that they are — and if what looks like REM really is REM — dreaming is a distinct possibility, Rößler says. She finds it easy to imagine that jumping spiders, as highly visual animals, might benefit from dreams as a way to process information they took in during the day.

Furthermore, spiders aren't the only creatures that might be dreaming in their sleep. It is possible that bearded dragons, cuttlefish, octopuses and even pigeons also enter into a REM sleep state. Learn more at Knowable Mag.

(Video credit: Knowable Mag)