If not, then there’s always time to learn new things! Keyboard shortcuts can save you some time, especially if you’re in a rush to finish a deadline for work or school. Lifehacker shares eleven keyboard shortcuts that every computer user should know. Check the slideshow here! 

Image via Lifehacker 

With the speed technology has been improving, we keep replacing our current gadgets with new and improved versions that are sold at stores. Almost every year, a new phone is introduced, and some willingly set aside the old phone they’re using for a new model. But what do we do with the old gadgets in our home? If you haven’t sold or discarded your old smartphone, check out PC Magazine’s piece on how to reuse your old gadgets. 

Image via PC Magazine 

This civil war is largely forgotten in the West, despite the involvement of officers from multiple western countries. The Taiping Rebellion broke out in 1850, thanks to the evident corruption within the ruling power and the influence of American and European nations on Chinese shores. After decades of social discontent, economic strain, and increasing subjugation, the rebellion lasted for fifteen years and set the Chinese empire of that time on the path to collapse. Check out the Collector’s full piece about this bloody rebellion here. 

Image via The Collector 

Is it made with some percentage of crab meat or artificial flavor? Regardless, imitation crab meat is good, whether eaten as is or added to your sushi or kimbap. Imitation crab is actually made of surimi, a paste that is basically mashed-up fish. Surimi is a combination of different fish such as such as Alaskan pollock or Pacific whiting fish that have been put through a complicated manufacturing process and turned into a gel-like substance, as Mashed details: 

A seafood paste might not exactly sound all that delicious, so in order to create the right taste and texture that you'll find in your California roll, manufacturers add in starches, sugars, artificial flavorings, and sometimes MSG (via SF Gate). All of these additives significantly decrease the nutritional value of imitation crab and it can become a menu item that those who are gluten-free should stay far away from. 

For starters, real crab meat is simply healthier than imitation crab, as it has more Omega-3 fats, less sugar, and more protein, and vitamins such as B12 and zinc (via Healthline). When you dine on imitation crab meat, you will ingest less sodium than if you have a plate of the real thing in front of you, so if that's something you're trying to watch in your diet, then you may want to consider this seafood alternative. 

Image via Mashed 

Once upon a time, wax seals were an important form of identification. Messy Nessy Chic introduces us to some of the more elaborate and elegant seal making tools from past centuries, such as this Victorian wheel that allows a user to choose from a variety of symbols to press into wax. Each intaglio--the carved gem--conveys a different sentiment to the reader.

Perhaps, like letter writing, sentiment could move us moderns to experiment with this ancient, deeply personal practice.

Photo: Antique Boutique

With slight, precise, carefully-timed taps of his hammer, Simon Berger cracks glass so that the fracture lines depict vibrant faces. Five years into his exploration of this medium, Berger has already astonished exhibition visitors with the beauty of shattered glass. He described to My Modern Met how his first experiments lead to joy through a new type of art:

I was immediately enthusiastic about this possibility because I was always striving to find a new form of representation. I like creating beautiful things through destruction.

In this video from last year, you can see Berger at work creating one of his enormous glass portraits.

Yeah, you read that right! Meet the Sacred Band, an ancient fighting force from the city of Thebes. Known as some of the most fearsome fighters in Greece, the group remained undefeated until they were wiped out at the Battle of Chaeronea, in 338 B.C. Did you know that the fleet was composed entirely of lovers? One hundred and fifty couples, to be exact! This was because of the Greeks’ belief that no man would exhibit cowardice or act dishonorably in front of his beloved:   

Sixty years after George Taylor’s horse stumbled, further excavations revealed a large rectangular burial site near the Lion. Drawings that were made at the site show seven rows of skeletons, two hundred and fifty-four in all. For “The Sacred Band” (Scribner), a forthcoming book by the classicist James Romm, the illustrator Markley Boyer collated those nineteenth-century drawings to produce a reconstruction of the entire mass grave. Black marks indicate wounds. A number of warriors were buried with arms linked; if you look closely, you can see that some were holding hands.

Image via The New Yorker

Oh, so two actors on The Bold and the Beautiful are getting close, moving in for a kiss. How do they do that and maintain COVID-19 protocols?

No, wait, that's not an actress. That's a mannequin. What the heck is going on here?

Her skills are amazing. Meet Lara Mason of Cake Anything Bakery who posts videos of her creations on Tiktok. When one follower of hers requested a Prince Harry and Meghan lifesized cake, Mason rose to the occasion and was able to fulfill the request quite wonderfully. Check out more of her wonderful creations here! 

Image screenshot via Unilad 

For geography nerds, it's a valid question: Which country is the squarest in the world? None are perfectly square, as national boundaries are ruled by geographical features like coastlines and rivers, and cultural histories like where people choose to settle and the legacy of invasions.

However, the value in this video goes way beyond the original question. Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones (previously at Neatorama) start off guessing countries, and gradually slide into a rhythm. Then you suspect that they might be rhyming with each other. Finally it spills into a full-blown comedy song. While there may be no square nations, a lot of them are shaped like animals or something else that you hadn't realized before. They eventually determine which country is the closest of them all to being a square. -via Digg

With the customization options given to players in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, creating an island to one’s desires is easier to achieve. This player was able to recreate (with the items and features available in the game) the newly-released Airship, called Skeld, from Among Us. Reddit user sillyruckus used props, furniture, floor patterns, and clever landscaping. But what about the vent system from Among Us, where the designated impostor of that round could teleport from one area to another? He used the Warp Pipes from the Super Mario update, so anyone who goes in any pipe would be warped to another area in the island: 

However. You can't murder people in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, as much as you might want to, so a full game of Among Us is... probably not entirely possible. Maybe if you replaced "murder" with "hitting each other with bug nets"? This idea may need some extra workshopping.

Unfortunately, although the creator posted the Dream Address on Reddit (DA-5648-9931-8461), the island has been removed by Nintendo for "inappropriate and/or harmful content", which means that somebody reported it. This is why we can't have nice things!

Image via NintendoLife 

The festival of Berikaoba has been a tradition in the country of Georgia for thousands of years. To welcome spring, the festival begins with a wrestling match and then there's a procession featuring
berikas, the spirits of the season.

As the berikas continued down the street, shrieking and lashing the pavement with their whips, villagers offered them gifts of eggs, bread, and wine. The offerings, they believe, will increase their chance of having a fruitful spring and avoiding misfortune. In return, the berikas dole out a special greeting, caressing spectators’ faces with their muddy hands. Howling, splashing through puddles, dancing with liters of homemade wine, the berikas—local men in homemade costumes—evoke the energy of a world emerging from the long, cold winter.

“Thousands of years ago, the procession began from a pagan temple,” says Eka Veshapidze, the local Berikaoba aficionado. “And if townsfolk couldn’t provide food or wine, the berikas would run inside the villager’s house, roll around on the floor and effectively curse the family. Afterwards, they might steal a chicken from the yard. Even if it was the last one.”

They don't steal chickens anymore, which is good, but the entire festival has died out in most Georgian villages over the past few centuries, as Christianity discouraged the festival due to its pagan origins. Veshapidze is trying to reverse that decline, and her efforts have added street theater, feasts, and wine tasting to the Berikaoba festival activities in her town of Didi Chailuri. It's become somewhat of a tourist draw since then, and other villages are beginning to re-embrace the ancient festival. Read about the revival of Berikaoba at Atlas Obscura.

Cats can be liquid, cats can be buff, and the weirdest ones remain in our memories. Starting with viral pictures of cats we've all seen, YouTuber kekeflipnote was inspired to make pixelated animations of their strangeness. Sometimes the original picture comes first, and then takes off into another universe, and other times we get the animation first, leading up to a surprise photograph. -via Everlasting Blort

One of my biggest pet peeves about role playing games (RPGs) is the random encounter system employed. The random encounter system forces players to spend hours in dungeons fighting random creatures. While that system helps players to grind levels, there are times when you just move one tile in a dungeon after a battle and another enemy pops out. Seriously, it’s annoying. This new RPG Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi managed to fix the old battle system: 

To keep that from becoming overwhelming, Dimengeon battles feature unique mechanics. Players can grab power-ups during fights that’ll increase their attack power or steal a turn from an enemy. Combine that with the game’s base combat system that involves lining up shots to hit multiple enemies at once and these brawls become a satisfying test of how well players can spatially reason on the battlefield.

The most obvious benefit is that it cuts down on the number of times players are whisked into battle. Going off the beaten path to hunt for treasure feels less obnoxious when it doesn’t mean trudging through another 20 minutes of fights. That keeps the pace of the game surprisingly brisk. The whole adventure is over in 15 hours, and it’s easy to see how traditional random battles could have stretched it way further.

Image via Inverse 

Yikes. Researcher David Valentine discovered the environmental disaster after working with some rumors and a hunch. Valentine went 3,000 feet below the ocean’s surface (with his underwater camera) and immediately found dozens of decaying barrels of toxic waste in what is otherwise a barren, desert-like sea floor. Valentine estimates that the total barrels on the seafloor is around half a million: 

After 70-plus years of inaction, Valentine's research has finally helped initiate a huge research effort to reveal the extent of the contamination.

But this offshore dump site is only a part of the story of environmental damage from years of DDT discharge along the coast of Southern California — a story which likely won't be closed for decades to come because of its ongoing impact, including a recently discovered alarming and unprecedented rate of cancer in the state's sea lion population, with 1 in every 4 adult sea lions plagued with the disease.

To learn more about the story, check the full piece here. 

Image via CBS News