Raising a child has always been a very difficult responsibility for parents. I can’t imagine how hard it was for parents in the ancient times. Thankfully, it’s a bit easier now thanks to the huge number of books and materials about parenting. But not all tips will do us nor our kids good, like these ones from the 1800s, which Mental Floss compiles.

In the 19th century, it was common practice to quiet a fussy or sick child with "medicines" like Stickney & Poor’s Paregoric Syrup—a substance that not only contained more than a tenth of a gram of opium per ounce, but that was almost 50 percent alcohol! No wonder it was able to deliver on its promise of calming children down. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only toxic remedy that parents embraced in the days of yore: Kids were regularly made to ingest turpentine in order to rid themselves of tapeworms, while mercury was believed to be a cure for dysentery or edema.

Check out the other bad parenting tips over at this video.

(Video Credit: Mental Floss/ YouTube)

I believe that, at one time in our lives, we were able to come across a philosophical paper or article that’s pretty technical and really difficult to understand that it made us scratch our heads in confusion. Thankfully, we have other ways to learn about philosophy and that is by having someone explain a philosophical joke to you. Not only do you learn philosophy, you also learn a new joke for you to tell your friends!

Big Think gives us five philosophical jokes as well as the philosophy behind them. Here’s one from the five.

Thales walks into a coffee shop and orders a cup. He takes a sip and immediately spits it out in disgust, he looks up at the barista and shouts, "What is this, water?"

Thales is commonly referred to as "The First Philosopher" because he is the earliest philosopher whose name we know…

His best-known idea is his metaphysics; he argued that water was the basis of all other substances. No matter how unaquatic something might seem to be (think of dry dust or fire) Thales argued that as it comes from water, and it remains water at the most fundamental level despite its changing traits.

Check out the other philosophical jokes over at the site.

(Image Credit: morhamedufmg/ Pixabay)

Because of the current situation, Cara Fields and her husband were forced to work from home, while at the same time help their children with digital classrooms. Cara is the Marketing Chief of Staff of Elanco, an animal health company based in Indiana. Knowing how stressful her job is, Cara’s husband decided to lighten things up by showing up in the background wearing silly costumes.

After Cara shared pictures of her husband’s gags on LinkedIn, they immediately went viral. “He has always loved wearing ridiculous things in public to embarrass me,” Cara told Bored Panda. “So when I converted our dining room into an office where my camera faced the dining room table, he saw a virtual opportunity to embarrass me during the pandemic.”

At first, Cara’s husband just wore things he already owned, for example, his cowboy hat, hunting gear, and Hawaiian shirts. But things quickly began to escalate. “Friends started mailing him Halloween costumes. I’m told that more costumes are in transit!” the woman said.

More details about this funny story over at Bored Panda.

(Image Credit: Cara Fields)

This video is well-enhanced by the title. Bird Guy lives up to his name as he waits for his Evening Grosbeaks to come visit. Seems like a great life, but that hoodie will need laundering often. Worth it. -via Metafilter

Brian May was admitted to a hospital earlier this week  ...for a torn butt. The guitarist/astrophysicist injured himself while gardening, which is a bit reminiscent of the line from the movie This Is Spinal Tap in which one drummer's death is attributed to a "bizarre gardening accident." May is expected to recover, but it may take some time.  

Writing on Instagram, the Queen guitarist said: “I managed to rip my gluteus maximus to shreds in a moment of overenthusiastic gardening. So suddenly I find myself in a hospital getting scanned to find out exactly how much I’ve actually damaged myself. Turns out I did a thorough job – this is a couple of days ago – and I won’t be able to walk for a while … or sleep, without a lot of assistance, because the pain is relentless.”

May is 72, and had been at his home after Queen was forced to cancel a tour due to the pandemic. Now he is recovering at home, and requests peace and quiet. -via reddit

Movie star Robert Mitchum is best known for his many roles that combined allure and menace, in movies such as Cape Fear and The Night of the Hunter. Oh yeah, and for his rowdiness that included being fired from at least one movie and that memorable arrest for marijuana possession. But his life before Hollywood would make a good movie in itself. When Mitchum was only 14 years old, he was sent to live with his sister, but he didn't stay there long.

Mitchum (1917-97) left his sister’s home in New York. He hopped a freight to who knows where. Life was an adventure to be gained and this was how it would start. He rode flatbeds, freight cars, refrigerated trains, teeth-chattering, knees-kocking, met old timers who knew no other life and gave him advice on what to do, and who to avoid, how to steal food and clothes, hunt squirrel, panhandle, and keep clear of the law.

This was an education. This was the hobo life Mitchum had read about and long-wanted to follow. He felt at home among these outsiders, though some of them thought him no more than a tourist, a “scenery-bum”, just along for the ride. Near train stops and train yards, he’d find hobo hideouts and sit by fire light listening to stories told by world-worn travellers.

It didn't take much time before the young teen was arrested for vagrancy in Savannah, Georgia. He was put on a chain gang doing hard labor, and soon knew that his life was in danger if he didn't escape. Read the exciting story of Robert Mitchum's jailbreak at Flashbak. -via Strange Company

Which classic novel would you like to read? Penguin Books makes many classics cheaply available with its iconic covers. You can make your own cover with Nicholas Love's easy web tool.

You can see many funny results in this Twitter thread. Now if you'll excuse me, I have an urgent need to find photos of my co-workers.

-via Aelfred the Great

In his book Secrets of Polar Travel, explorer Robert Peary speaks about a ration that he brought on his expeditions to the Arctic between 1886 and 1909. Among his supplies in his trips, he considers this ration as the “first in importance”. What’s more, he comments that this is one meal that “a man can eat twice a day for three hundred and sixty-five days in a year and have the last mouthful taste as good as the first.” What is this that Peary says is food that you won’t get tired of eating everyday?

Peary was talking about pemmican, a blend of rendered fat and powdered, dried meat that fueled exploration and expansion long before his attempts to reach the North Pole. Archaeological evidence suggests that as early as 2800 BC humans hunted the bison that roamed North America’s Great Plains and blended their meat, fat, and marrow into energy-dense patties with a serious shelf-life. A single pound of pemmican lasted for years and might’ve packed as many as 3,500 calories.

More details about pemmican and how to make it over at Atlas Obscura.

Yum!

(Image Credit: Sam O’Brien for Gastro Obscura)

When Sam Goree and his colleagues came across articles and blog posts that claim or ask that websites today look very similar to each other, they were intrigued. Unfortunately, since these articles didn’t have an empirical study to back them up, they ran a test to determine whether this claim had any truth to it, and if so, the reason behind it.

We ran a series of data mining studies that scrutinized nearly 200,000 images across 10,000 websites.

And what did they find out? Websites, indeed, were becoming very similar.

More details about this study over at Fast Company.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: 200degrees/ Pixabay)

TAKE THAT!
Spruce up your next teleconference meeting with Ace Attorney backgrounds!
Perfect for adding a touch of legal proceedings to anything your agency does, or for having arguments about what those metal things with steps on them are called. pic.twitter.com/98N89kzymo

— Ace Attorney (@aceattorneygame) April 29, 2020

As even lawyers now work from home, and trials are now held via Zoom, I guess it would only be appropriate if they had a background that’s related to their job. And what background would that be other than the courtroom? But even if you’re not a lawyer, you can still use these Zoom backgrounds released last week by Capcom’s Ace Attorney, via Twitter. You can use the 2D background from the original trilogy, or opt for the 3D one from the more recent games.

Take that! And no objections, please.

(Image Credit: Ace Attorney/ Twitter)

As there have been countless cases of Zoombombing in the recent weeks, the security in the video conferencing platform Zoom has been doubted by its users. In response to this, Zoom finally announced on Thursday that they will be implementing and offering end-to-end encryption.

With the acquisition of Keybase, a New York-based startup specializing in encrypted messaging and cloud services, Zoom will finally be able to make good on its claims of offering end-to-end encryption.

“We are excited to integrate Keybase’s team into the Zoom family to help us build end-to-end encryption that can reach current Zoom scalability,” CEO Eric Yuan said in a Zoom blog post on Thursday.

Unfortunately, not all Zoom users will benefit from the company’s new move, as the end-to-end encryption feature will only be available to users who have paid plans (which start at $14.99/month, by the way) on the video conferencing platform.

If a meeting’s host has enabled this feature, participants will be barred from joining by phone and cloud-based recording will be disabled. In Thursday’s blog post, Yuan emphasized that the feature will not store the encryption key on Zoom’s servers, so the company will not be able to see any part of the call.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Zoom/ Wikimedia Commons)

There’s nothing stopping Jimmy Donaldson aka Mr. Beast from giving away money, this time doing it via video calls. Watch as he and his friends pretend to be a news reporter, school professor, and many others as they interview people, and then surprise them by giving them thousands of dollars. Some recognize him and his team, however.

“A lot of people are going through a ruff time right now so I tried my best to do some good,” he said in the video description. He also posted this on his birthday, and said that liking or subscribing would be “a dope present.”

Very wholesome.

(Video Credit: MrBeast/ YouTube)

What would it look like to approach Earth during a flyby mission? When it swung back past Earth last month as it journeyed to Mercury, ESA and JAXA’s robotic spacecraft BepiColombo captured its flyby of our planet in this nearly-10-hour-time-lapse video.

The Earth is so bright that no background stars are visible. Launched in 2018, the robotic BepiColombo used the gravity of Earth to adjust its course, the first of nine planetary flybys over the next seven years -- but the only one involving Earth.

Unfortunately, the video is only in black and white, and I wonder what it would look like if it was colored. Still, it is magnificent to look at.

(Video Credit: APOD Videos/ YouTube)

Astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and other institutes have found the black hole that is currently the closest to Earth. The aforementioned black hole lies just 1000-light years from our planet, and is closer to our Solar System compared to others found to date. What’s more, it is part of a triple system that can be seen with the naked eye.

They say this system could just be the tip of the iceberg, as many more similar black holes could be found in the future.

"We were totally surprised when we realised that this is the first stellar system with a black hole that can be seen with the unaided eye," says Petr Hadrava, Emeritus Scientist at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Prague and co-author of the research.

More details about this finding over at ScienceDaily.

(Image Credit: JohnsonMartin/ Pixabay)

なかなかアートなメッセージ
読めますか？ pic.twitter.com/swywHlwd3N

— 和田 賢治 @ TSUBAKI LAB.代表：木を科学していく (@simplife_plus) May 5, 2020

What seems to be just a page full of bubbles turns out to be a heartwarming message when viewed from a distance. This newspaper from Gifu Shimbun was issued on May 6.

Utilizing a form of bubbly negative space to render the text, the newspaper spelled out a message to its readers about social distancing. The magic is you have to maintain an appropriate social distance to read the letters.

The message reads, 離れていても　心はひとつ, which means even though we’re apart, our hearts are one.

Thanks, Japan!

(Image Credit: @simplife_plus/ Twitter)