Nine years ago, I read a story from redditor rhoner. It's the kind of comment that stays with you, and it became a legend at reddit and beyond. Now Chris A. Neal has made that story into a short film. -via Metafilter

Even though most business and communications in America are conducted in English, we do not have an official language. And you may be surprised at how many Americans speak more than one language. Business Insider put together a map of the most prevalent language in each state, excluding English and Spanish. Some of these languages have been handed down from ancestors for hundreds of years, while others are due to relatively recent immigrants flocking to areas with other immigrants from the same nations. You might be interested in comparing this map to one we posted in 2014, as there have been some changes.

-via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Business Insider/Andy Kiersz)

Although nobody expected it, the Spanish Inquisition reached outward from Europe to persecute those who practiced "witchcraft" in the New World. Penn State professor Martha Few noticed how the victims of the Inquisition in Latin America tended to be women, who, being relatively powerless even among their own people, turned to magic spells to solve their problems. And they used chocolate.

Chocolate was an everyday drink, as common then as a morning cup of coffee is today. But, Few noticed, it often emerged in the records as a vehicle for women’s magic spells, and, in turn, for European anxieties about ruling a majority non-white population, filled with women who wouldn’t do what they were told. “It also became this flash point between social conflicts that were racial and gender conflicts,” says Few.

At root, the Inquisition’s crackdown on chocolate-related brujería, or witchcraft, was a campaign to eliminate indigenous and African spiritual practices from colonial society. It was an attempt that failed: Despite persecution, Latin American communities continue to practice folk healing and magic to this day.

Based on chocolate’s history as a ritual beverage in pre-colonial society, it makes sense that the drink became a receptacle for Spanish fears of sorcery. Indigenous people have cultivated chocolate in the Americas for at least 3,000 years, and archaeologists have identified chocolate residue on Mayan vessels from as early as 250 BC. Chocolate was a high-status drink, shared by diplomats and served to couples in marriage ceremonies. When the Spanish colonized the Americas, chocolate’s striking taste, caffeinated buzz, and indigenous ritual significance made it an object of European adulation and paranoia.

While we still joke about the bewitching effects of chocolate, the witch hunts in colonial Latin America were brutal. Read how religion, Spanish rule, and chocolate came together in an attempt to crush unruly women at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Carmen Deñó for Gastro Obscura)

We know Takeo Ischi as the Japanese Chicken Yodeler. Three years after his viral Chicken Attack! video, he's back with two new adventures. Chicken Pig Attack is a musical action sequence in which Ischi, along with his trusty pig and chicken warriors, battle a gang of villains. It does not end the way you expect. Both the English and Japanese are subtitled in English. The sequel is out, too.



Rat Attack begins with Takeo-san as a captive of the villains. Can his yodeling or his animal-charming talents save the day? While the rat is an obvious nod to the new Year of the Rat, it's a little unnerving to hear how they are always watching over us from less then 20 feet away. Contains NSFW language. Both videos were made by the Gregory Brothers (which now include a sister). -via Metafilter

Beetle grubs are an excellent source of nutrition, but a lot of people are squeamish about eating them. I don't know why. This one has strawberry and lemon flavors and is mixed with a lemon meringue.

Katherine Dey of @DeviantCakes made this cake that is somewhat larger than life size. The adult Hercules beetle can grow up to seven inches long, making it one of the largest insects in the world. The cake, which shows the beetle in its larval stage, is as adorable as the actual animal.

-via Super Punch

Natasha Baggett explained what happened at Facebook. The short version is that she was building an accessible desk for a young man in a wheelchair when the saw kicked back and sliced off two fingers and part of her thumb. She called an ambulance, rounded up the dogs, and spent a week in the hospital last May. The whole story is well worth a read. There are (warning) more graphic images of her injury here. Does she have any regrets?

No. And that sounds crazy but I don’t. I had an epiphany while I was recovering and changed a lot of things about myself and my lifestyle. The way I view the world and life in general has changed completely. If my accident hadn’t happened, then I wouldn’t have made those positive changes in my life that I desperately needed to make.

I also have connected with so many wonderful people in the amputee community and it’s brought me a lot closer to friends/family. It’s taught me a lot about the world and opened my eyes to many things I hadn’t realized before. Like how disabled people are treated in society and how inaccessible things are for others (just to name one example). It’s something I am passionate about now and if my accident hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have realized any of this.

Baggett recently received her new fingers, designed by Naked Prosthetics. See the fingers in action at imgur. -via reddit

(Images credit: natasha65232)

Runescape streamer Amro Elansari tried to sue Runescape’s developer, Jagex,who muted him, making him unable to communicate with other players of the game. Elansari claimed that Jagex violated his human rights, and requested a jury trial to remove the mute on his account. A federal court in Pennsylvania dismissed his case, as Vice detailed:

Unable to prove Jagex had violated his human rights, a judge dismissed Elansari’s lawsuit. He appealed and a federal court upheld the lower court’s decision.

“Even generously construing Elensari’s complaint to raise a claim of public accommodations diesciriation and assuming Elansari can bring such a claim in this context," Federal Circuit Judges wrote in their dismissal, "at no point either in the District Court or on appeal has Elansari alleged losings access to Jagex’s online game due to discrimination based on any grounds."

According to PennLive, Elansari has a history of filing ridiculous lawsuits. In another case, Elansari attempted to file a class action lawsuit against Tinder (something he can’t do, as he’s not a lawyer) because he felt the dating app was scamming people. These are just two of the ten lawsuits Elensari has filed in the U.S. Eastern District Court in the last 18 months. 

image via Vice

If you ever feel like eating at random times of the day, even if you just had a meal, there might be other factors that made you hungry, besides having not eaten enough. While it is actually not bad to eat every three to four hours, according to dietician Rebecca Ditkoff, there could be other legitimate reasons as to why you’re always craving another batch of food. GQ has the details: 

1. You need to get better sleep: Sleep is important for basically everything you do during your waking hours—it affects how alert you are during a morning run; it affects your sex drive—so it’s no surprise that it impacts your hunger levels, too.

“When we don't sleep enough, it increases our hunger hormone, ghrelin, that can increase our appetite and make us think we’re more hungry than usual,” says Lori Zanini, RD, CDE, and creator of For The Love of Diabetes.

2. You’re not drinking enough water: It’s normal to confuse thirst with hunger, according to Ditkoff. “In order to make sure you are staying adequately hydrated, you should be drinking about half of your body weight in ounces of water every day,” she suggests. For example, if you weigh 180 pounds, try drinking 90 ounces—or 11 glasses.

3. You’re not fueling with the right foods: You might be trying to stay keto-friendly (hey, John Wall does it) by limiting yourself to steamed chicken breasts all day, but your body needs a range of foods to feel full.

4. You’re just not eating enough: There are loads of factors that prevent us from eating enough to fuel our bodies throughout the day. Maybe you’re trying out a new fad diet, or perhaps you just missed lunch because Matthew in accounting just had to have that report by 2 p.m.

image via wikimedia commons

The year is 2020, and the world is now controlled by artificial intelligence and machinery. At least, that’s how most science fiction writers mostly envisioned the world in 2020. While the real 2020s are nowhere near machinery takeovers and dystopias, isn’t it fun to think about how the people in past decades envisioned the present? Tim Maughan lists fictional works that created their own world set in 2020. Head over to his piece on Medium to read more. 

image via Medium

Have you ever wondered what it would look like if the media (and the world) treated other professions as if they were professional athletes? Key and Peele created a segment that does just that. In the new episode of “TeachingCenter”, watch as Boyd Maxwell and Perry Schmidt report on the latest developments in the exciting world of pro teaching . You might even see the teacher’s play of the year!

Wood, concrete, and steel are a big no nos for these European researchers. They envision mankind living in natural, living, and eco-friendly monolithic structures made of living fungus. Yes, imagine tall stacks of structures made of mushrooms and other types of fungi. From the walls to the ceilings, all made of fungus.Researchers claim that these monolithic structures would revolutionize the environment and economy, as Futurism details: 

“We propose to develop a structural substrate by using live fungal mycelium,” reads the paper. “Fungal buildings will self-grow, build, and repair themselves.”

The idea is a response to the prospect of catastrophic climate change. Growing our building materials from biological materials, the theory goes, would make construction less dependent on fossil fuels and environmentally-destructive mining operations.

“Fungal materials can have a wide variety of mechanical properties ranging from foam-like to wood-like to polymer-like to elastomer-like,” Han Wösten, a microbiologist at The Netherlands’ Utrecht University who co-authored the not-yet-peer-reviewed paper, told Futurism. “The fact that we can make wood-like materials implies that we can use it for the building industry.”

So far, they say, no one else has explored the possibility of building monolithic structures out of living fungus. 

“The selling point of our materials is that it is biodegradable, thereby helping to create a circular economy,” Wösten said. “At the same time, it should not degrade when actually used as a building material. We can work around this apparent paradox by coating the material. In fact, we also coat wood with paint of oils to protect it against degradation.”

  “It may be that we will find a fungus that creates wood-like materials without the need of pressing,” he said.

Important to note: those ideas, like much of the team’s research, remain fairly speculative.

image via wikimedia commons

In 1909, there was a policeman at the 37th precinct in the Bronx who was a former sailor. He apparently annoyed his co-workers by bragging about his physical abilities back in his seafaring days, when he wasn't quite so stout. Bill O’Malley was called out to prove his stories when a distraught Mrs. Erickson came into the station to report an abused kitten.

“It was a shame, Captain, an outrage” she said. “You must send your men right away and have it stopped.” Her tears reportedly flowed so heavily that the captain could barely make sense of her words.

“Calm yourself, madam, and speak slowly, and I will help you,” he told her. Mrs. Erickson told him about the little kitten on top of a telephone pole, where it had perched since the day before.

“Wicked boys are throwing pieces of ice and sticks at it,” she said in between sobs. “If you don’t send your men right away to stop them I will climb the pole myself and bring down that kitten if it breaks my neck.”

Captain Post called for Policeman O’Malley, knowing he had once been a sailor. “You’re always bragging how you used to be a sailorman and loved to lay aloft in a howling gale,” the captain said. “Now, here’s your chance. If you can climb like you say you can, go with this lady and shin up that pole and save that kitten.”

O'Malley was game to give it a try, which you can read about at The Hatching Cat.

Executing condemned convicts is a task steeped in tradition, in order to kept it solemn, efficient, and fair (although many would argue with the last part). One part of the execution process we've become familiar with through movies and newspaper accounts is the last meal, in which a doomed prisoner can have anything he wants to eat. There's even a blog about them. How far back does that tradition go? It's possible that it may have grown out of feasts for Roman gladiators the night before battle.

Things began to pick up steam considerably on this front around the 16th century, however. Or, at least, things appear to have. It is entirely possible that such courtesies were widely granted before this to even the poor, with documented evidence of it simply not surviving. On that note, things like the printing press’ invention in the 15th century began making documented history of rather mundane events like the executions of random Joe Citizens more, well, documented. Thus, it may or may not be coincidence that accounts of such courtesies started to pop up more and more around the 16th century and progressing from there.

Whatever the case, by the 18th century, particularly in places like England, such practices were definitely around and relatively common. For example, in London it was common to allow the condemned to enjoy a meal with various guests, generally including the executioner, on the eve of the execution. Further, there is record of Newgate Prison death row inmates being allowed to stop at a pub on their march to their death at the Tyburn Fair gallows. At the pub, they would typically share drinks with their guards and executioner.

A prisoner's last meal before execution was treated differently over time and in different nations -and even in different states in the US. Read what Today I Found Out found out about the last meal before execution.

(Image credit: jeffreyw)

Louis Vuitton's Pre-Fall 2020 Look Book has taken the form of book covers. The fashion firm's creative director Nicolas Ghesquière has created a series of book covers featuring the style of well-known paperback books and set celebrities on the covers in new Louis Vuitton clothing. The books hint at science fiction, YA, horror, fantasy, gothic, and adventure stories inside.

“Fashion is a novel,” the brand claims in the look-book notes. And although the faux covers and posters draw inspiration from the ’70s and ’80s, the fashion is a mash-up of past, present, and future styles. Considering that Virgil Abloh, Louis Vuitton’s artistic director for menswear, predicted that the future of fashion means “expressing your knowledge and personal style with vintage,” it makes sense for the brand’s vision as a whole.

And moon boots. We'll all be wearing moon boots again. See all 24 of the covers at the Cut. -via Metafilter

(Images credit: Louis Vuitton)

In a regular traffic video, you might feel a little guilty gawking at drivers slipping and sliding on ice. These drivers live for this sort of thing. And the photographers recording their antics might have a death wish, too, or maybe just a need for adrenaline. At least they don't encounter drivers coming from the opposite direction. This video was recorded at the 2020 Monte Carlo Rally held in France over the weekend. The course is deliberately designed to cover wet and dry roads, snow, ice, and twisting mountain routes. This video is from just one curve; there are plenty more from the rally at YouTube.  -via Digg