Remote meetings tend to be a bit awkward or difficult. If workers aren’t struggling with the Internet connection, they’d probably be trying their best to finish the meeting without any uncomfortable moments or weird pauses. 

Inc.’s Jessica Stillman suggests one good way to kick off an online meeting. Following the words of Jackie Colburn, an online meeting moderator, she suggests kicking off meetings with a weird but effective icebreaker: people’s feet.  

"What are you wearing on your feet?" Colbourn wrote in her blog. "OK, I know this one is kind of goofy, but bear with me. I especially like using the prompt for virtual workshops because this detail is usually a mystery when dialing in from home." 

The question isn’t to let people be fashion critics but to introduce a little humor and playfulness into an interaction. It can also allow laughter to come into these meetings, and have employees feel relaxed and safe. 

"If a group is laughing together, then it suggests that our protective guard is down. This matters because there's research to suggest that when our brains are relaxed, we more easily achieve free idea association, which can lead to creativity," University College London professor Sophie Scott told the BBC.

Image credit: Anna Shvets

AnotherTomorrow, a fashion company dedicated to providing modern and sustainable luxury to its customers, is now asking people to send in their old clothes– and they’ll pay for it! 

The establishment launched its Authenticated Resale Program, which will pay people for sending their pre-loved clothing, provided that it’s from their label. The company will then resell these clothes in its store. Shoppers will then get a chance to purchase some discounted items from the set of pre-loved clothing from the program. 

Interested participants will only need to scan the QR code on their clothes and send it to AnotherTomorrow. They will then provide an estimated sale price and tell people how much they will get from the sale. After shipping the clothes to the company, participants may receive their payment via cash or store credit. 

Read more about the Authenticated Resale Program here!

Image credit:Kai Pilger

Meet Gabriele Galimberti, an Italian photographer that created the Toy Stories project, a heartwarming collection of photographs of children with their favorite toys. The collection captures the joy, innocence, and wonder of childhood. 

According to Galimberti, he began the project by accident when he was working for D di La Repubblica, an Italian magazine way back in 2010 and 2011. He traveled to 56 countries around the world, took photographs of people, and published their portraits as well as their stories.

“A few weeks before that long trip, a dear friend of mine had called me to her home to take photographs of her daughter Alessia,” Galimberti told Bored Panda. “When I arrived there, Alessia (four years old at the time) was putting her toys in order. I helped her, had the idea to advise her to put them in order by shape and color, and without realizing it I took the first photo of this project.” 

He then began another journey around the world to publish more photographs for the collection. Currently, the collection is still being updated. Photos of children and their toys from Texas, India, Malawi, China, Iceland, Fiji, and other locations are added to Toy Stories.  

The photographer aims to not only provide entertainment through these photos, but also show a child’s background, family, and culture. According to him, he noticed that children from richer countries were more possessive of their toys, while poorer kids tended to play with their friends outside.

Image credit: Gabriele Galimberti

We were honestly expecting some weird crustacean that was edible. But alas, it’s a fish. 

Government bodies and health associations usually recommend fish as a good source of protein, especially since it’s packed with omega-3 fatty acids. However, not all of the variations of fish are good for consumption. 

One of the most popular options for seafood to avoid is swordfish. This is because it is high in mercury and other contaminants. While eating this can provide protein and omega-3 fatty acids, the contaminants will be harmful to our health– which can outweigh the benefits of eating fish.

Aside from being bad for our health, hunting and consuming swordfish can be damaging to our environment. They are often overfished, which leads to an ecosystem imbalance. Farmed swordfish are fed with antibiotics and other chemicals, which can end up back in the environment and can be harmful to other wildlife. 

Read more about the swordfish here. 

Image via wikimedia commons

The Habsburgs (sometimes spelled Hapsburg) were a dynasty of Europeans from the same family who ruled over Austria, Germany, the Holy Roman Empire, and eventually countries across the continent for two centuries in the Middle Ages. You can recognize them in portraits by their pronounced jaws, called the Habsburg jaw. You are probably familiar with the last of the Spanish Habsburgs, King Charles II, from a previous Neatorama post. He is shown at the left in the image above, with his father and great-uncle Philip IV on the right. Charles had the most tangled family tree you've ever seen, outside the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. He also had a very pronounced Habsburg jaw, and so many other physical problems he never produced a royal heir. Common sense would tell you that the inbreeding caused the Habsburg jaw to become more pronounced over generations, but now we have science.

A study in the Annals of Human Biology focuses on 15 members of the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs from different generations who had realistic portraits painted. First they gleaned information from the family tree and assigned each of the subjects an inbreeding coefficient. Charles' inbreeding coefficient was so high that he never had a chance. Then separately, they asked mouth and jaw surgeons to examine the portraits and rate facial features that would indicate mandibular prognathism (protruding jaw) and maxillary deficiency (sunken midface). Then they compared the data from the two studies to determine that the Habsburg jaw was, indeed, likely to be the product of inbreeding. Get the details on this study at Smithsonian.

Passover is a Jewish religious observance to commemorate the Hebrews' exodus from Egypt. The name comes from the night the angel of death passed over their homes when killing the Egyptian's firstborn children. The traditional Seder is a meal in which every dish and every procedure has a story behind it, to teach and reinforce that history for the next generations.

However, this was a problem in the Soviet Union. Jews in Russia had suffered under many regimes, and the Bolsheviks were the least oppressive, considering their communist idea of equality. The communists wanted to welcome Jews into the fold, but they also wanted to stamp out religion. Their solution was to make Jews into an ethnic group instead of a religious group, by changing their religious traditions to suit the new ideology. That was the impetus behind the "Red Seder," in which the traditions were bent to reflect communist themes of throwing off the shackles of the capitalist bourgeois. Red Seders were promoted in the 1920s and '30s, after which they were deemed successful and then discarded under Stalin, who had his own feelings about Jews as an ethnic group. Read about the Bolshevik Red Seders at Atlas Obscura. 

(Image source: Hagadah far gloybers un apikorsim, 1923)

Francis Zuber was skiing through the trees at Mt. Baker in Washington state when he ran over an inverted snowboard. The board belonged to Ian Steger, who was still attached to it, but buried upside down in a tree well. Tree wells can have up to 20 feet of soft snow, and if you fall into one head first, you can disappear from sight forever. Steger was snowboarding with two friends, but they were ahead of him going downhill, and they might never have found him. When they called him, he couldn't reach his radio.

Zuber didn't know how long Steger had been buried, and frantically went to work finding his head so he could get air. This video contains NSFW language. Steger tells his side of the story and says he assumed he was going to die. He doesn't mention injuries, so we can assume he's okay now. -via Metafilter

Paleontologist Michael D'Emic found something interesting when he cut the bones of the Majungasaurus. He found that the dinosaur that measured up to 7 meters high grew "really, really slowly." The prevalent idea amongst paleontologists was that big dinosaurs became big through rapid growth spurts, so what D'emic found through his investigation was rather surprising, which prompted him to look further into other dinosaur bones to see if there are different growth strategies in them. What followed was a decade-long study, and with the time that passed came new knowledge of the distant past. As it turns out, the strategy of carnivorous dinosaurs to get big fast was less predominant than what paleontologists previously assumed.

Understanding an animal's growth strategy may seem trivial at first, but it is essential in understanding a creature's life and environment. Did the animal grow in a competitive environment? Was it a hot environment or a cold one?

Growth strategy also has a correlation to an animal's lifespan and number of offspring.

More about this over at Quanta Magazine.

(Image Credit: Skye McDavid/ Wikimedia Commons)

There had been previous attempts to extract genetic material from Beethoven's skull fragments in the past but to no avail. But thanks to modern advancements in DNA sequencing, we now have a better understanding of the composer's cause of death. A recent study suggested that the composer died from liver disease caused by several factors. Found in his DNA are two copies of a gene called PNPLA3, which is linked to liver cirrhosis. Also found are two variants of the HFE gene, which is a gene that can cause hereditary haemochromatosis. Finally, traces of Hepatitis B virus were found in his DNA. It also didn't help that Beethoven became a heavy drinker, especially in the year before his eventual demise.

Historical accounts of the composer's death seem to strengthen the findings from the recent DNA analysis. It is said that he developed jaundice, and his limbs swelled months before he passed away. Both conditions are telling signs of liver failure.

The loss of Beethoven's hearing remains a mystery, however. Perhaps a mystery that will probably be solved sometime in the future.

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Some people really enjoy conversations with their barbers. The rest of us would like to just get a haircut and move on to the next task of the day.

A chatty barber who doesn't pick up on social cues is annoying and Beyond the Pale Barbershop in San Francisco doesn't want to annoy its customers. The San Francisco Standard reports that this shop lets customers select "silent mode" from the beginning. The barber then knows not to even try to chat with the customer.

It's quite a shop. Owner Anthony Larrasquiti has designed his operation to be not just a business, but an experience for customers. You have a variety of haircut options, which might end up free. If you can hit a bullseye on the dartboard, your haircut is free and you get a beer.

It's popular: Larrasquiti says that he has about 350 regular customers who schedule appointments with him. That's especially impressive since Beyond the Pale has been open since only February.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Beyond the Pale Barbershop

Animals are individuals. And because they are individuals, they also have personalities distinct from one another. Some animals are reckless, and others are shy.

Similar to how our personality affects the way we function and perform in daily life, the innate personality of an animal also affects its performance in an experiment.

If this is truly the case, does this imply that the findings from numerous animal behavioral studies are inaccurate and biased? For many scientists in the field, the answer is yes. Christian Rutz realized this problem years ago when he conducted a study on New Caledonian crows. Knowing this problem, how can we solve it?

Rutz and his colleague Michael Webster suggest this new framework in animal behavioral research: the STRANGE approach.

STRANGE is an acronym for factors that behavioral researchers should consider when they conduct studies. These factors are:

• Social background
• Trappability and self-selection
• Rearing history
• Acclimation
• Natural changes in responsiveness
• Genetic makeup, and
• Experience

While Rutz acknowledges that removing all biases in a study could be impossible, he still encourages his fellow researchers to ponder how these factors affect their studies. He also calls on them to be transparent with these said factors. In this way, the findings of animal behavioral studies can be more meaningful and reliable.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

When I try to start conversations with strangers, one of my go-to questions is "What's the most surprising thing you've ever encountered in a colonoscopy?"

It doesn't have to be the person's own colonoscopy--just one that the person has experienced.

This gentleman (that's a man in the photo) had ladybug in his colon. A 2019 article in the medical journal American College of Gastroenterology Reports briefly describes the surprising appearance of a harmonia axyridis, one of 6,000 ladybug species in the world. If I understand the article correctly, the doctors assume that the patient swallowed the bug. His consumption of a full gallon of polyethylene glycol as part of the colonoscopy preparation may have protected the ladybug from digestion.

-via Science Girl

How do we know how hot our Sun is? How do we know the internal structure of stars and the type of fusion processes occurring inside them, despite not taking a single step into them? Believe it or not, the answer is seismology, the study of earthquakes.

The story begins with the development of the seismograph, which allowed us to record ground oscillations. With the power of science and mathematics, these oscillations became the key to mapping our planet's interior.

Fast forward to the 1960s, the decade of powerful telescopes. These tools not only allowed us to zoom in on the heavenly bodies, but they also allowed us to see them in finer detail. And with this advancement, scientists realized that the Sun oscillated, too. This gave them the revelation that the methods of seismology might also apply to our Sun. This gave birth to helioseismology. And if seismology applies to our Sun, then it would also work for other stars out there. This realization gave rise to asteroseismology.

Big Think tells more details about this fascinating story.

(Image Credit: Hinode JAXA/ NASA/ Wikimedia Commons)

In early September 2022, curious fishermen took a video of two megamouth sharks swimming together off the coast of San Diego. Little did they know that they were very fortunate to spot the shark species and how significant their footage is in the study of megamouth sharks.

Megamouth sharks are a very elusive species. Since its discovery some five decades ago, there have only been 273 sightings of the species, most of them spotted because they were caught in fishing gear. Of these sightings, only five are sightings of megamouth sharks swimming freely, so this new footage is a truly rare opportunity.

The footage in question was analyzed by a team of scientists led by Zachary Skelton, who described the video as humanity's only knowledge of the social lives of megamouth sharks.

Analysis of the footage suggests that one of the sharks was male and the other female, implying that the two were "engaging in courtship or mating behaviors." Furthermore, neither shark was seen attempting to feed, strengthening the claim that this was indeed a mating ritual. However, Skelton admits they heavily relied on other studies and species to make sense of the short footage.

This only shows how much we still don't know about megamouth sharks. As the director of the Shark Research & Conservation Program at the University of Miami — Neil Hammerschlag — puts it, the topic is a "black box to scientists."

(Image Credit: David Stabile/ Live Science)

The Tim Burton movie Beetlejuice opened nationwide on March 30, 1988. It seems like just yesterday. It flipped the script on the standard haunted house story by making the ghosts (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) good people who become entangled with a humorous but malevolent ghost-for-hire, Beetlejuice, played by Michael Keaton. The producers didn't much like the title Beetlejuice, and they suggested House Ghost to make the plot more clear. Burton offered a counter suggestion: Scared Sheetless. He was astonished that they took him seriously and even considered it. But it remained Beetlejuice, and upon release, quickly made back five times its budget. Meanwhile, young Winona Ryder hoped the film would raise her status at high school, but it only made the bullying worse. You'll find all kinds of trivia tidbits like that in a list at Cracked celebrating the movie's anniversary.