In order to survive even in the harshest conditions, a soldier must have excellent survival skills. In order to acquire these survival skills, the soldier must rigorously train both his mind and body for countless hours.

Driving can be seen as a common and ordinary skill. But for these Chinese soldiers stationed in Tibet, they take driving to the next level. In order to pass their road tests, they should be able to drift at a speed of around 60 km/hr (which is about 37mph), parallel park at high speeds with amazing precision, and keep their tires on very narrow tracks.

(Video Credit: South China Morning Post/ YouTube)

Octolab acquitted a baby Atlantic white-spotted octopus (Callistoctopus macropus), also known as a grass octopus. They became enamored of him because he's just so cute!

When this little Atlantic White-Spotted Octopus arrived at Octolab, everyone immediately fell in love with him. He was the cutest little octopus we ever laid eyes on. We prepared a little habitat for him and gave him a couple days to get acclimated. When he got used to his surroundings, he was immediately drawn to us as much as we were to him.

There's nothing that will drawn in a marine biologist like an affectionate response from a baby.

Maria had worked at Wendy's for a year, but a new set of managers were being really hard on her. One even called her a "lost cause" in front of customers. So she did what we all wish we could do, at one time or another. She lined up a new job, finished her shift with a cleanup out of respect for her co-workers, announced she was quitting, and then climbed out the drive-through window and ran away! Better yet, she got it all on video, which has gone viral on TikTok. Read the story and see the related videos and responses at The Daily Dot.

(Image credit: Maria Kukulak)

Remember when Luke and Laura got married on General Hospital? That was the peak of the 1980s soap opera craze. People were setting their VCRs, gathering for binge-watching parties, and forming discussion groups. ABC's 1984 Olympics coverage was even interrupted to update viewers on their favorite soaps.   

In the early 1980s, soaps became common cultural currency. The 1981 wedding of Luke and Laura attracted the largest audience for a daytime soap episode in US television history. A surfeit of media attention to the wedding was paired with a boom in the merchandising of ancillary products such as soap-inspired T-shirts and board games, celebrities declaring their soap fandom, and large groups of college students gathering in communal campus spaces to watch the daily installments.

That audiences beyond the housewife had become so invested in soap opera accorded it a new level of respect, but this respect assumed that 80s soaps were “better” than the daytime dramas of the past; the soaps’ greater cultural legitimacy was dependent on a distancing from their feminized history.

The rise and fall of the soap opera craze was due to several trends that collided, from cultural shifts to world news to technology. But it reinforced community television, in which people bonded over their favorite fictional worlds. Read about soaps in the 1980s at LitHub. -via Digg

Yes, you’ve read the title correctly. It’s not the Sony PlayStation. It is the Nintendo PlayStation, and it’s currently in auction and you only have until March 6 “to try and nab… one of the rarest relics in gaming history”. It will surely cost you a fortune, however, as the current high bid is $300,000, not to mention the buyer’s premium of $60,000. But why is it so expensive?

The answer can be found in the drama that happened between Nintendo and Sony.

See the full story over at Engadget.

(Image Credit: Engadget)

This dog does not seem to understand the concept of glass, and so she becomes really puzzled about why she cannot eat the blueberry floating in the air, right on top of her. Nevertheless, she continues trying to reach the fruit that she likes to eat, to no avail.

I hope she has progress soon.

(Video Credit: ViralHog/ YouTube)

This picture shows a woman with her eyes closed, and her mouth open, seemingly reaching for a kiss from what appears to be a person’s nose, lips, and chin. But when you look closer, it turns out that the person isn’t really a person; rather, it is a hamburger. Really creative of McDonald’s Thailand. SoraNews 24 has this to say:

… it’s quite an ingenious marketing tool. The punchline is well hidden and hard to make out right away, inviting viewers to take the time to figure out how it’s an advertisement for McDonald’s, making them spend more time with it than a typical, boring ad. Then, when they get it, they’ll be craving a cheeseburger as much as a kiss from their sweetie’s lips!

Very clever.

(Image Credit: McDonald’s/ Facebook)

As part of its efforts to develop various autonomous robots that could fill military roles, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, launched a robot competition. The said competition simulated a disaster scenario (a gas leak, specifically) in an unfinished underground power plant located in Elma, Washington.

The winning team came from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a 60 person crew that oversaw a group of 12 robots they'd programmed through an initiative called Collaborative SubTerranean Autonomous Robots (CoSTAR).

The robot group included Spot, the famous four-legged product of Boston Dynamics that was loosely modeled after a dog, as well as flying drones and a group of rolling robots in spherical metal frames.

The robots were tasked with tracking down 20 unique targets, including a warm mannequin simulating a disaster survivor, and a lost cell phone, which they located by tracing its Wi-Fi signal.

More details about the competition over at Daily Mail.

(Image Credit: DARPAtv/ Daily Mail)

(Image Credit: NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ Daily Mail)

Fire is the most revolutionary technology that our ancestors discovered in the ancient past. For thousands of years, fire has served as our light in the night, our means to cook food, and as a weapon of war.

Perhaps the most essential skill that we need to learn, outside of the modern life that we have right now, is creating fire with our bare hands. Learning this skill might take some time, but it would surely pay off.

In this video, Bill Schindler, a professor of archaeology and anthropology in Washington College, teaches us how to make fire using two methods.

(Video Credit: WIRED/ YouTube)

The Robert Peary expedition in 1908 is what most people know as the first to reach the North pole, although that itself is in some dispute. It turns out that Peary wasn't even the first to reach the North pole in his own party! Peary recruited Matthew Henson, a young Black man with years of experience in seafaring and wilderness survival, to head the crews of his various adventures, including the 1908 North Pole expedition.   

Henson was promoted to “first man” and field assistant. He was a skilled craftsman, often coming up with life-saving solutions for the team in the harshest of Arctic conditions. On the final stage of the journey toward the North Pole, it was just himself, Peary and four native Inuit assistants, Ootah, Egigingwah, Seegloo, and Ooqueah.

As they approached the “Farthest North” point of any Arctic expedition until 1909, Robert grew more and more weary, suffering from exhaustion and frozen toes, unable to leave their camp, set up five miles from the pole. Henson scouted ahead on Peary’s orders. “I was in the lead that had overshot the mark a couple of miles,” Henson later recalled, “We went back then and I could see that my footprints were the first at the spot.”

Read the story of Matthew Henson, including his famous descendant you may be surprised to learn about, at Messy Messy Chic.

(Image credit: Library of Congress)

Never judge a book by its cover - but see why it's best to hire a professional artist rather than try to roll your own.

Gaming desks and chairs are well-refined and engineered marvels. But among serious esports athletes, there's a need for the focus that only a bed can provide. After all, if the gamer has to move between his bed and his desk on a daily basis, he's wasting energy that could be more productively used elsewhere.

Bauhutte, a Japanese furniture manufacturer, offers a truly amazing catalog of gaming furniture that place video games at the center of human activity. The bed appears to represent the most complete experience. But I think that even it could be improved upon if it came with some sort of built-in toilet so that it was not necessary to pause a game while attending to biological needs.

-via Ian Miles Cheong

Give Takehiro Kishimoto a squash and an X-Acto knife and he will compose a gloriously precise and intricate sculpture. No matter how small the fruit or vegetable is, he can work into its form delicate, ephemeral designs that make it look like they grew naturally.

A Japanese company has invented a way to let us drink potato chips. Forget the tedious (and greasy) way of eating a bag of potato chips, because Zyplus’ Poterapper will let you gulp your chips with ease. The Poterapper doesn’t turn potato chips into an actual liquid form. It gives the user a way to shove potato chips into their mouth with ease, as SoraNews24 detailed: 

At first glance, the Poterapper looks sort of like an adapter for hookng up your washing machine. It’s composed of three parts, top, middle, and bottom pieces, as shown above. Those three parts, though, plus a pair of scissors, are all you need to make the magic happen.

First, cut off a corner of the bag and slide the bottom piece. Then place the middle piece over the bottom piece, with the bag’s material sandwiched between their contact patch, and screw the two pieces together. Finally, screw the top piece, which is a cap, onto the middle piece.

Now that you’ve got your equipment set up, the final step is to turn your chips into drinkable form by pressing and squeezing the bag to break them into smaller pieces that can easily flow through the spout. We suppose you could also toss the bag around the room or dropkick it, but you’ll want to be gentle enough that it doesn’t rip.

image via SoraNews24

Three people snatched a shark from San Antonio Aquarium and wheeled it out in a baby stroller. Police officers initially refused to believe the initial 911 call concerning the ‘sharknapping’, but was convinced that the incident was real later on. The shark is alive and on its way back to aquarium, and one suspect is in custody, as NBC News detailed: 

Security video released Monday shows the sharknappers strolling through the aquarium's hallway pushing the baby carriage along on Saturday before they drove off with the 16-inch shark in a red pickup truck.

The aquarium said the thieves brought their own net with them to snag the shark from an interactive "touch pool" at the tide pool exhibit while an attendant was assisting other visitors.

They then ducked into a filter room and emptied out a bleach bucket, into which they deposited the shark, the aquarium said. They used the bucket to transfer the shark into the stroller and "hurried up the stairs and out to the parking lot," it said.

The aquarium said managers raced to the parking lot and caught up with the suspects — who denied access to both the vehicle and the stroller.

image via NBC News