While we all have our subjective opinions on what is the messiest or most disgusting part of an airplane, we can all agree that some trash cans in an aircraft are just gross. Matador Network’s Morgane Croissant  shared her opinion on this topic, stating that she would bet money “that every single person who has ever used an airplane bathroom trash can in the economy [class] has done so with absolute revulsion.”

The bathroom trash cans in this flight class have a manually operated flap, which forces people to actually touch the equipment with their clean hands– who would voluntarily do that, anyway? Imagine the dirt and bacteria there! Croissant further points out that airplane companies can actually fix this issue, by having as few touch surfaces as possible. “Airplane toilet lids should open and close on their own at every use, the toilets should flush automatically, the tap and the soap dispenser should be motion-activated, and airplane bathroom trash cans should not require that passengers put their hands halfway down the hatch,” she wrote. 

Image credit: Alexander Schimmeck

Photographer Alex ten Napel is known for his portraits, especially his focus on avian subjects. His Chickens, Hens, and Roosters series involves showing off the elegance and charisma of these feathered animals. Ten Napel was hit with the inspiration of incorporating animals into his work in 2014 while he was eating breakfast in France. A chicken wandered to him, and that’s when he had an epiphany. “Because we were, in a matter of speaking, on the same level, I saw her in a different perspective and noticed different aspects,” he told My Modern Met. “She was sociable, funny, touching, and curious. She was so human! At the same period, I was looking for a new subject to photograph. I had made many portrait series and had the idea that I had to change course. So why not portray hens and roosters?”

Learn more about his work here!

Image credit:  Alex ten Napel

A Viking settlement was established in Greenland 1,000 years ago. However, this group of people, who thrived for centuries, suddenly vanished in the 15th century. There was no evidence that was obtained from their area that could answer experts as to how and why their society collapsed. However, now, thanks to a team of scientists from Brown University, new evidence has arisen about the possible explanation behind the unsolved mystery. 

Boyang Zhao and his associates aimed to learn about the possible effect of climate change on the Viking settlement.  “From the climate change perspective, there are not actually many reconstructions from this area, so we wanted to revisit this spot in order to provide more detailed and updated records of climate history from this region and see if there's any connection between climate change and the demise of the Vikings,” Zhao explained. Learn more about the study here! 

Image credit: wikimedia commons

Sometimes we tend to be overwhelmed with the tasks we need to finish, to the point that we actually get nothing done. This feeling of having too many things on our mind is called decision fatigue, where we get caught in paralysis-by-analysis due to trying to pick and decide what to do. Inc.com’s Benjamin Harvey explained a simple method for how to reduce this overwhelming feeling and actually be productive. It all boils down to stripping down your list and picking only what’s needed to be done in a significant timeframe. “You've got to strip everything down to the bare essential,” he explained.

Image credit: ian dooley

If you know the names Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall, you should also know Biruté Mary Galdikas. Galdikas was the third member of the "Trimates," women who dedicated their lives to the study of primates, specifically great apes, under the auspices of anthropologist Louis Leakey. They were also sometimes referred to as "Leakey's Angels." Galdikas operated far away from Leakey, Fossey, and Goodall because she went to Borneo to study orangutans. That was in 1971, and she's still there.

Of the three, Galdikas' work may have the most lasting impact. Orangutans are critically endangered due to both habitat destruction and poaching. Galdikas not only gained the orangutans' trust and studied them, but also worked with local people and governments to protect them and their environment. She founded a rescue and rehab center, and has been fighting poachers for decades. This work led to the founding of the Orangutan Foundation International. Read what Galdikas has gone through in her quest to save orangutans at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Simon Fraser University-University Communications)

Twitter user Enfys J. Book (Lucky) accompanied their cousin to the Ax-Man Surplus store in Fridley, Minnesota. They found an odd collection of items, as expected, but what struck them most were the signs labeling the goods, which are well worth sharing.



Staff members have a lovely sense of humor. They see that the goods are odd, and their impressions reflect what customers are thinking anyway. We don't know what these are or what they are for, either, but they are darn cheap!  

See all the pictures and replies in the original Twitter thread, although you can see the images without having to open them at Threadreader. -via Bored Panda

(All images credit: Enfys J. Book (Lucky))

There was a time when all we knew were the nine planets (now eight) that revolve around our sun. Then we developed amazing space telescopes that can capture images outside our solar system. On March 21, NASA confirmed the 5,000th exoplanet. To celebrate this milestone, NASA put together a data visualization, a timeline on a 360° map, showing when each exoplanet was discovered.

As each exoplanet is discovered, a circle appears at its position in the sky. The size of the circle indicates the relative size of the planet's orbit and the color indicates which planet detection method was used to discover it. The music is created by playing a note for each newly discovered world. The pitch of the note indicates the relative orbital period of the planet. Planets that take a longer time to orbit their stars are heard as lower notes, while planets that orbit more quickly are heard as higher notes.

The big blue blob that appears on the left in 2013-14 represents data picked up from the Kepler space telescope. That data confirmed 1,284 exoplanets and hinted at thousands more possible exoplanets. -via Metafilter 

The would-be viral skateboarding star failed on his first attempt at the trick. Although he did flip successfully, he also lost control of his board. It was up to a Mercedes Sprinter work van passing by to rescue the recording. It performed an impromptu trick when the errant skateboard slipped under a back wheel.

Although the driver brought the van to a quick halt, it was a lot of force for a board to hold. Still, it held together remarkably well and the human was able to complete the trick, despite the damage to at least one truck.

-via Born in Space

For almost a hundred years, Tavira, Portugal, was a town centered around the tuna fishing industry. When the supply of tuna declined, the town focused on other things, but a remnant of that legacy remains. No one knows who first arranged out-of-service boat anchors on the beach at Praia do Barril, but after they did, it became a custom for others to add to the collection any time they discarded an anchor. Now hundreds of them stand in formation as a monument to bygone days of fishing. It's called the Anchor Graveyard, and draws tourists to Tavira.

The Anchor Graveyard is just one of the many specialty scrapyards, er, cemeteries around the world where old objects go when they are no longer useful. Messy Nessy Chic takes us on a tour of graveyards for bicycles, airplanes, fiberglass statues, concrete statues, phone booths, rickshaws, tanks, firetrucks, and even ice cream.

(Image credit: VITIMan)

Dr. Ernesto Di Maio is a professor of Materials Science and Technology at the University of Naples. He is also allergic to yeast. Naples is the birthplace of pizza. In a confluence of biology and geography, Di Maio was destined to develop a way to make pizza crust without yeast. In a normal pizza crust (and most bread), yeast produced carbon dioxide bubbles as it ferments, which causes the dough to rise, making it light and airy. Di Maio's team looked for a way to infuse raw dough with carbon dioxide artificially.

To artificially aerate the crust, the team placed the dough—a mixture of flour, water, and salt—into an autoclave, a chamber with controlled pressure and temperature settings. They then flooded the golf ball–sized dough with gas at high pressure, similar to carbonating a soda. When they gradually released the pressure and increased the heat inside the chamber, the team watched the dough rise.

They ended up with several mini-crusts, which they declared tasty. This experiment may lead to specialty pizzas and even breads that can be tolerated by people with yeast allergies. Read more about the experiment at Smithsonian. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Breville USA)

😺 It's a fact of life that cats shed (and sometimes, they throw up a hairball) but you don't have to let all that fluffy fur go to waste. Instead, just do what Twitter user @MiniraDairy did and needlefelt some house slippers for your cat. A-meow-zing!

🐋 This lost young narwhal have found a new family: a pod of beluga whales that "adopted" it.

🎹 There are many cover of this famous video game theme music, but Scott Bradlee of Postmodern Jukebox has managed to give us chills some playing the Super Mario Bros. theme music as ragtime piano medley. Fantastic!

🗄️ The one thing that's more impressive than the quantity of Sailor Moon collectibles owned by @clipnotebook is the next level organization she employed.

Image: @MiniraDiary/Twitter

🤖 Doctor Frankenstein, I presume? Scientists have made lab-grown living "xenobot" robot that can replicate and make more of themselves. And they're shaped like Pac-Man!

💑 Hollywood rom-coms are wrong: science has debunked "opposites attract" as researchers found that friends and lovers actually tend to share beliefs, values, and hobbies.

🦥 Got a home gym? Perhaps a Peloton that's now serving as a laundry station? Then this comic title "Smart" Home Gym Equipment for the Less Active by Gemma Correll will surely resonate.

🎵 "Every song has been tempo matched, beat synced, harmonized and spliced together perfectly. Honestly, it's a work of genius": 600 Songs from 1990 to 1999 remixed. What a fun musical blast from the past.

Image: @Douglas Blackiston and Sam Kriegman

Want more neat stories? Check out our new sites: Pictojam, Homes & Hues, Infinite 1UP, Laughosaurus, Pop Culturista, Supa Fluffy and Spooky Daily.

🐱‍👤 Featured art: Lone Ronin and Cub by indie artist Dr. Monekers | More New T-Shirts

We take lace for granted in the age of mass produced textiles. Lace in the modern era is priced in the range of other fabrics, although that range can be quite wide. But before machine looms, lace was a precious commodity because it was hand made, and the finest of lace was made in Alençon, France. Point d’Alençon needle lace was very expensive because it was so labor intensive. Every square centimeter (less than half an inch) required around seven hours of painstaking labor. It took entire teams to produce the lace, from the designer who drew it to the finisher who polished it with a lobster claw. Lace was so expensive that wearing it was naturally restricted to the very wealthy or royalty. The lace industry involved so much money that there were importers, smugglers, tariffs, trade wars, and a campaign to produce domestic lace that gave rise to Alençon lace. Read what made Point d’Alençon needle lace so special, which entails a description of how it was made, at Jstor Daily. -via Strange Company

Mass production can be a beautiful thing. This video is a compilation of machines that we rarely get to see, and the amazing way they get things done. You probably won't learn a whole lot from watching this (or you just might), but how they do what they do is almost like art. We get to see materials we don't recognize perfectly formed into things we suddenly recognize. But it's not just manufacturing. Get a close up view of large equipment farming, cooking, street cleaning, earth digging, and more. None of the clips are long enough to get boring. They just move on to the next machine. -via Nag on the Lake

Sin taxes are taxes on behaviors that the taxing authority (a government) wishes to discourage. They are punishments for socially disreputable actions such as, for example, remaining unmarried. This specific type of tax is called a bachelor tax, as it is designed to encourage men to settle down, get married, and have children in wedlock.

In Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue: Tax Follies and Wisdom through the Ages, economists Michael Keen and Joel Slemrod describe how some of these taxes have resulted in unintended consquences.

In 1900, Argentina had a bachelor tax in place. To avoid paying the tax while remaining single, the bachelor had to swear that he had proposed marriage to a woman, but was rejected.

This situation created a perverse incentive: some women, dubbed "professional lady rejectors", would reject marriage proposals for a fee.

-via Super Punch | Photo: Pixabay