Generation Z, sometimes called Zoomers, have never known a life without social media. They started sharing -or oversharing- their lives in middle school, and now have their own children. And many of them are vowing to never post pictures of their own kids online. Then there are those whose parents jumped on the internet during the rise of mommy bloggers or YouTubers. Their entire lives were published for the entertainment of others, and often for profit.

The race for viral fame and a comfortable living is not the childhood they would have chosen. One young woman tells how, as a child, she was responsible for supporting her family by starring in her parents' videos. She is contemplating cutting off all contact with them when she turns 18. Her story reminds us of Hollywood stage mothers who lived off their child's labor and corrupted their formative years in the pursuit of fame and fortune.

Social media influencers can make a lot of money at the expense of their children, but the ultimate cost can be high. Teen Vogue looks into the lives of children who grew up as internet content, only to regret the permanent archive of their formative years.

Wil Wheaton responded to the article with his own thoughts, because as a child actor, he could see it coming. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: George Norkus)

The oldest continually-operating business in the world is the Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan, a hotel in the mountains of Japan. That doesn't mean it hasn't changed. Or changed ownership. And the title itself is open to interpretation. It all depends on how you define your terms. This hotel was once the oldest continually-operated family business in the world, but the current owner is not technically of the same family, but was pretty much adopted into the business, if you aren't hung up on legal terms. Anyway, Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan started out as a place where you paid to camp and bathe in the hot springs, and is now a luxury hotel with all services. However, it is still the same business and it's never closed up shop. It is still pretty low-key and doesn't seek out a lot of publicity for its historic title. Tom Scott had the opportunity to stay at this lovely place and explore its history.

I know that it doesn't look like a pillow, but it's designed to function as one. The crew of Sora News 24 found a strange product on Amazon and insisted on trying it. This invention is called the "Practical Model Pendulum Neck Stretcher Comfortable Sleep Pillow / Revolutionary Sleep Pillow With Your Own Head Weight for Comfortable Sleep."

Pillows are supposed to provide a place to rest your head during sleep. You can think of this invention as a hammock for your head. The straps wrap around your head and keep it suspended a couple inches off the ground with a tripod.

In addition to keeping your head off the ground, it's supposed to stretch your neck. So it's a lot like this device that Barney Fife used on The Andy Griffith Show to increase his height:

When death comes to families, there is often a need to clean out homes quickly. This can be challenging for families in mourning, so they may hire professionals to do the job. In Japan, there's a growing industry of people who respectfully and efficiently pack up a deceased person's possessions for storage, sale, or disposal. It's called ihinseiri.

Anne Allison, a professor of anthropology at Duke University, has studied the cultures of death in Japan for many years. She describes the ihinseiri industry at LitHub.

Animism is foundational in Japanese culture. There is, as a result, attachment to and attribution of meaning to physical objects owned by deceased people. Ihinseiri workers are not simply laborers who work as movers, but professional mourners who sort and arrange possessions in emotionally and spiritually sensitive ways.

Ihinseiri firms can move quickly after someone has died, but it's also possible to hire them before someone has passed on. As a client is preparing for the final journey, s/he can hire these companies to do much of the preliminary decluttering and packing before death. Dr. Allison was able to shadow some of these workers on the job. She described the activity "as if a gentle dust buster had been programmed to silently, automatically empty the house."

-via Nag on the Lake | Image: Death Sweeper by Shou Kitagawa, a manga about people who clean up after death

The visual style—especially the human movements—of the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise is instantly recognizable. Autoescola Brasiliense chose well to release its latest ad to resemble Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. It shows the viewer playing a student who enrolls at this full-service driving school to learn how to operate motorbikes, cars, buses, and commercial trucks.

The actor is Matheus Senna, a bodybuilder and cosplayer. His Instagram page is filled with similar cosplays of Grand Theft Auto in real life. Ad director Anderson Mascarenhas perfectly executed this project with Senna’s help, making you feel like you’re really playing the game.

-via My Modern Met

The premise of the HBO series The Last of Us is that a fungus of the parasitic Codyceps genus infects humans and turns them into zombies. Just a few days ago we posted about how we don't need to worry about Cordyceps in real life. But maybe Cordyceps should worry about us.

There are about 750 identified species in the Cordyceps genus, and it only stands to reason that people would eat at least some of them. Some species known as "caterpillar fungus" are grown as crops, although a very difficult crop, in Asia. These mushrooms are used in traditional medicine. Modern mycologists are developing farms to grow the species Cordyceps militaris without having to go through that whole zombie insect phase. They sell Cordyceps in a dried form for a flavor enhancer in soups, salads, and other dishes. Some folks even eat them by themselves! Read about the edible forms of this fungus at Atlas Obscura, where they have recipes for Cordyceps Tea and Miso & Cordyceps Ramen.

If you've ever wondered how the American West got so many lovely and awe-inspiring rock formations, here's an explainer. The western US was a very active place between 25 and 40 million years ago. The Rocky Mountains were formed by plate tectonic activity, and there were a lot of volcanic explosions, the largest of all happening in Colorado. They call this the "Mid-Tertiary ignimbrite flare-up." The Wikipedia entry for this event is so short and full of jargon as to be incomprehensible. A few graphics and a lot of everyday language would make this a lot more clear, and that's what PBS Eons gives us in this video. They describe the biggest volcanic explosions ever from the earth's past and what caused them. But the big surprise is how plants and animals survived this period without a huge extinction event, which they also explain. This story is a couple of minutes shorter than the video length indicates.

Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity revolutionized how we think about light, gravity, and heavenly bodies today. Through this theory, Einstein was able to calculate how the Sun's mass bends the space around it. But Einstein didn't stop there; In 1917, just two years after his general theory of relativity, Einstein went on to the quest of modeling the shape of the Universe. If his theory modeled how mass is distributed throughout the Universe, Einstein thought he could calculate the Universe's shape. It was a bold move, and he thought he might be sent to a madhouse with his controversial ideas about the cosmos.

But without any data to work with, how could Einstein model the shape of the Universe? The answer was with simplifications, assumptions, and estimations. Less data available meant more freedom to speculate. And speculate Einstein did, and he drew from his worldview. Back at that time, most people believed that the Universe was static, and Einstein belonged to this group. He did not like the idea of an expanding Universe.

In 1929, however, astronomer Edwin Hubble proved that the Universe was expanding. Two years later, in 1931, Einstein discarded his idea of a static universe when he met the astronomer in California.

(Image Credit: ParentRap/ Pixabay)

When you get the chance to travel to a rainforest in Southeast Asia, do keep a keen eye for dead leaves. That's because some of them might be special. These special dead leaves can spring back up to life, you see. The reason? They're not really dead in the first place. They're not leaves, either. They're a species of butterflies called the Kallima inachus. But they are called "dead leaves" or "oak leaves."

Kallima inachus butterflies are usually found flying through the undergrowth and along streams, feeding on tree sap, puddles, and ripe fruits. Once they sense danger, these butterflies suddenly drop into the foliage, close their eyes, and stop moving to avoid detection. Their strategy is, unsurprisingly, effective against the birds that seek to eat them. Thanks to the veins in the underside of their wings that resemble the veins of a leaf, and with the white and black spots on their wings that look like mold and lichen, a Kallima inachus can pull off the most convincing disguise.

These butterflies are found in various countries in South Asia (India, Bhutan, Bangladesh), East Asia (China, Japan, Taiwan), and Southeast Asia (Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam.)

(Image Credit: Hsu Hong Lin/ Wikimedia Commons)

Beloved actor Tom Hanks won back-to-back Oscars for Best Actor: for Philadelphia in 1993 and then for Forrest Gump in 1994. He's also won a half-dozen Emmys and a bunch of other awards. Last night, Hanks won his first Golden Raspberry Award, known as the Razzies, which are given to the worst of movies from the previous year. Hanks had nominations for two movies, for Pinocchio in the Worst Actor category and for Elvis in the Worst Supporting Actor category. His win last night was for Worst Supporting Actor for portraying Colonel Tom Parker in the movie Elvis. Hanks won a second Razzie in the category of Worst Screen Couple along with "His Latex-Laden Face (and Ludicrous Accent)." He also had a hand in the winner of the Worst Remake, Ripoff, or Sequel award, which went to Pinocchio.

The Netflix film Blonde won Worst Picture, and Jared Leto won his second Razzie for Morbius. The Razzies also gave themselves an award for the blunder of nominating a 12-year-old actress this year, a nomination they rescinded after the backlash. From now on, all nominations will go to people 18 or older. You can see all the winners of the 2022 Razzie Awards at their website.  -via Uproxx

There seems to have been a few instances in the 18th century of women dressing down, way down, for their wedding. It was said that if a woman went through the wedding ceremony naked, she would be forgiven of her debts. However, "naked" here means that she only wore a shift, smock, or chemise, which was something like a nightgown or undergarment. There are many newspaper accounts of such "naked marriages" throughout the 1700s in England and America. There is one instance of a bridegroom being forgiven of his debt if his bride removed her clothing at the ceremony.

Note that we have little information on how much money was forgiven, if any, by these weddings. Still, if the debt was small, it may have been worth a creditor's forgiveness just to see such a wedding. It did not always go off without a hitch. At one wedding in 1794, three male witnesses were required, so neighbors were recruited. One man was so flabbergasted at the sight of the bride that he was unable to swear his witness, and the debt forgiveness was thrown into doubt.

These newspaper accounts of "naked marriages" are at All Things Georgian. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: The British Museum)

The wildest party I've ever attended was one I threw myself. Residents were evicted from three apartments, and around two dozen guests were arrested. To be fair, I didn't invite anyone; I just underestimated how many friends the guest of honor had. At least no one died. That can't be said about some of the wildest parties in history. How can you top a party in which the dancers caught on fire? That really happened in 1393, and one of the dancers was the king of France. There was also the party where someone dumped four buckets of liquid nitrogen into the pool, sending eight people to the hospital. And 1896 saw a party in which more than a thousand people were trampled to death by a crowd seeking souvenirs. Find out more about five historical party disasters that serve as a warning of what not to do as a host at Cracked.

The YouTube channel Just Rolled In compiles video evidence of eye-popping automotive cases sent in by mechanics from all over. You have to wonder how they ever managed to get the vehicle to the shop. Oh yeah, some had to have been brought in by wrecker, but often we learn they've been driving it that way for weeks. Most of these disasters are caused by the owner trying to do their own repairs when they don't know as much about cars as they think they do. Many are due to people ignoring a small problem with their car until it becomes a big problem. We also see cases of theft and vandalism, a few factory defects, and the delicious instances of drivers not consulting their manuals to find out which button controls what function.

Just Rolled In has a new compilation every few days, and watching them can become addictive. You can let the playlist roll, or check out the "best of" compilations for each quarter and each year. If you want to further explore a particular problem presented, they post a timeline with notes for the clips at each video's YouTube page. -via Metafilter

In the relatively early days of the medical profession, doctors weren't all that trusted and got little respect. That went double for medical students, who were condemned for cutting into dead bodies to study them. We've posted many times about how they got those bodies, from grave robbers, resurrectionists, and body snatchers who stole them from cemeteries. So how did that gruesome supply chain change into what we have now, which is voluntary bequests of earthly remains? The body supply business went through several difference stages as the medical business itself went from shady to crucial. Changing attitudes about death played a role, as well as the breakthrough in organ donation, allowing us to save or improve someone's else's life through own own deaths. And as the article asks, would you want a surgeon carving on you who had never practiced with a real body before? Learn the history of medical school cadavers at The Conversation. -via Geeks Are Sexy

It's only natural to be horrified at the idea of being buried alive. Yet at one time, like flagpole sitting or dance marathons, it was a competition for publicity and bragging rights. The fad reached its peak in the 1960s. Although the stunt was not new, earlier attempts at the record amount of time spent underground were not well documented, so spending the longest time buried was a challenge.

On February 21, 1968, 33-year-old Irish laborer Mike Meaney had himself buried in Kilborn, England. He was trying to go for the record set by Bill White of Texas, who had emerged after being buried for 55 days. But Meaney did not know that White was also being buried again at the same time, trying to top his own record. The stunts therefore became a real-time competition for who could stay buried the longest.

An article at Mental Floss has the details of Meaney's burial, including the particulars of his life-sustaining coffin, the history of the fad of premature burial, and a video of the public celebration when Meaney returned from the grave. -via Strange Company