The Department of Transportation has released proposed changes to the current rules for service animals on planes. One of the proposed changes is to prohibit emotional support pets on the plane. Only specially trained service dogs qualified as service animals will be allowed on the plane, as The Huffington Post detailed: 

The DOT would also prohibit airlines from refusing a service animal solely on the basis of breed. Delta Airlines has a controversial policy of prohibiting “pit bull type dogs” on its flights.

Passengers wanting to ride with Fido would instead have to fill out a federal form attesting that their dog is trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability. The dog would need similar proof of good behavior, good health and having the ability to not relieve itself or do so in a sanitary manner.

“Today’s [Notice of Proposed Rulemaking] is intended to ensure a safe and accessible air transportation system,” the department said in a statement.

The changes follow concerns raised by travelers with disabilities, airlines, flight attendants and airports. These concerns include passengers falsely identifying their pets as service animals, the department said.

Previous incidents involving emotional support animals and planes include people trying to fly with a peacock, a hamster, a pig and a squirrel .

image via wikimedia commons

Keto dieters will no longer have to restrain themselves or find an alternative dessert to a good helping of ice cream. Halo Top announced the introduction of a new series of keto ice cream. The ice cream series comes in seven flavors, Peanut Butter Chocolate, Berry Swirl, Jelly Donut, Chocolate Cheesecake, Caramel Butter Pecan, Banana Pie and White Chocolaty Macadamia Nut. USA Today has more details: 

The dessert company says the Keto Series is lower in calories than regular ice cream without sacrificing flavor. Which is good news for those looking to ditch the extra carbs and calories.

The ice cream includes “ultra-filtered skim milk” and the pints have net carbs ranging from 5 to 10 grams, calories from 410 to 630 and protein from 17 to 22 grams. The serving size of the keto-friendly ice cream is two-thirds of a cup and calories range from 134 to 210 per serving.

“Our brand is focused on making delicious dessert that everyone can feel good about eating, and these new flavors allow us to do that for our fans looking to limit their sugar intake,” Meg Graeff, senior brand manager of Halo Top, said in a news release.

image via USA Today

Supposedly, this stray cat had been trapped inside a wall for two years, while one of the building residents had been feeding her through a small hole. Her rescue is heartwarming story, but I suspect that the cat had another exit somewhere and chose to live in the wall because it's a warm enclosed space with an occasional rodent -and cat food. If she were really trapped, she would have walked out of the hole he was feeding her through. Still, it's good that she has a proper home now. -via Digg

In the beleaguered region of Kashmir, high in the Himalayas, people drink a unique green tea that's a fairly bright pink. Kashmiri chai contains tea, salt, baking soda, spices, and milk, and is often served topped with crushed nuts. There's nothing pink in that ingredient list, but the particular way it is made caused it to turn pink. It's an acquired taste.

Charles von Hügel, an Austrian explorer who wrote an extensive account of his travels in Kashmir during the 1830s, was one of the first westerners to give the world his unvarnished opinion of pink tea. “The taste is like that of a strong soup made out of scorched flour,” he wrote. Even Kashmiris acknowledge that salty tea is an acquired taste. Journalist Scaachi Koul joked that the tea is “one of our worst culinary contributions to the world and we should be ashamed.”

However, the recipe changes at lower altitudes, and the Kashmiri chai offered at your local cafe contains little to no salt. Read about this unique tea and how it gets that pink color at Atlas Obscura.

Sure, you can get a custom license plate that spells out words to show how unique and stylish you are. But only in Vermont will a poop emoji an option for trend-setters.

We may see that someday if the Vermont state government passes a bill which would make that state the first in the nation to permit emojis on its license plates. USA Today reports:

The bill, proposed by state Rep. Rebecca White, says symbols could be added “in addition to the distinctive number assigned by the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles or the numerals and letters selected by the registered owner of a vehicle as a vanity 12 plate." [...]

It’s unclear which emoji are included in the proposition, but the most popular emoji, in general, are the face with tears of joy, the red heart, the smiling face and the rolling on the floor laughing face, according to the Unicode Consortium, which sets the international standards for characters, including emoji.

-via Aaron Starmer | Photo: Dick Mansfield

Never get drunk with friends. But if you do, make sure you never pass out, especially if there are cameras nearby.

An Australian gentleman describes the incident:

My mate had been out in the sun all day decided to have a snooze so the other lads stacked the giant Jenga on his head and he didn't wake up he sat there for at least half an hour with the game perched upon his noggin.

-via Geekologie

The quest for immortality has been a theme in many novels, myths, movies, and TV series. Immortality has been an object of desire for real people from the past, too. Genghis Khan, in his old age, wanted to know how to gain immortality. The Chinese drank mercury, thinking that this would make them live forever.

We might not be able to achieve immortality in this life, but that doesn’t mean that we’re giving up on looking for ways to improve our physical body, which is called biohacking.

As an umbrella term, biohacking is broad and covers many people and behaviours. At its most simple, biohacking just means do-it-yourself experimental biology to enhance health. In practice, it can mean using an app to track your sleep patterns, or taking supplements, all the way to subjecting yourself to untested operations.

Zoltan Istvan, a 2020 Republican running for the presidency, is an example of a biohacker. He calls himself a “transhumanist”.

“As a transhumanist,” explains Istvan, “I’m someone that wants to merge my body with machine parts. I want to become a cyborg to become a more complete, stronger, and perfect living entity.”

While Istvan can be considered an extreme biohacker, there are people like Geoffrey Woo, the co-founder and CEO of HVMN (health via modern nutrition) who can be considered to be on the other side of the spectrum.

For Woo, biohacking isn’t just a hobby but a value system: “I think it’s worthwhile to encourage people to have self-responsibility and agency over their own health and their own lives.

More about this over at the South China Morning Post.

(Image Credit: EliasSch/ Pixabay)

Do you want to be a content moderator on YouTube? You might as well think over that decision again, because if there was something that that work can guarantee you, it would be a negative effect on your mental health. Content moderators, according to The Verge have received legal warnings which state that the job not only may negatively affect their mental health; it could cause PTSD as well. Yikes!

Social media sites are increasingly informing employees of the negative effects of moderation jobs following several reports on harrowing working conditions, including long hours viewing violent and sexually exploitative content with little mental health support. Before accepting a job with Accenture, a subcontractor that works with several social media companies and manages some YouTube moderators at a Texas facility, employees had to sign a form titled “Acknowledgement”, the Verge reported.

More about this over at The Guardian.

(Image Credit: geralt/ Pixabay)

Social skills are essential to any human being. After all, all of us are social beings, and no one can survive on his own. As the old saying goes, “no man is an island.” With this in mind, it is therefore ideal that we develop social skills at a young age. This skill, however, is entirely different from topics like math and science; it is a skill we learn “on the job.”

When you’re a child, you can learn how to manage conflict, make friends and navigate groups by doing it.

But what if you didn’t get the chance to refine this skill on your childhood? Fortunately, the New York Times gives us some tips on how to socialize with other people. Topics such as constructively confronting someone, and making friends as an adult are discussed.

Check it out over at the site.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

We see a lot of lists of the best horror films. The lists are subjective as to how the authors decided on the standards for a movie to be included in their rankings. This subjectivity and variety of standards makes the lists on the Internet quite different from each other. How about a list created using science? A new study imaged people’s brains as they watched horror movies. Not only were they able to rank the scariest movies through this study, they were also able to discover what makes horror movies so scary, as RT details:

Any list of best movies is sure to be controversial – just ask the people who run the Oscars. But this one is brought to you by science – based on a study by a team of neuroscientists at the University of Turku in Finland, published this month in the scientific journal NeuroImage. 

First, they used Rotten Tomatoes, AllMovie and IMDb to come to a list of 100. They then had hundreds of volunteers, many of them horror movie fans, complete a survey asking them to rate the 100 movies on a scale of 1 to 10 for scariness and quality. (Incidentally, if you would like to take part in the survey, it is still active: Part 1 is here and Part 2 here.)

the survey was only part of this study, mainly a way of selecting the films. The researchers went all out on this study, and had 40 volunteers watch horror movies while hooked up to an MRI to scan their brain activity. They watched trimmed-down versions of The Conjuring 2 and Insidious, selected for their high place in the table, but also because they contained over 20 jump scares (or ‘acute threatening events’) apiece.

What they found rings true for any horror movie fan. Essentially, there are separate brain pathways for two main types of movie-induced fear: ‘sustained fear’, or a slow burning increase in tension, and ‘acute fear’, which is a fright or a jump scare. 

During tension-building scenes, for instance when the soundtrack goes quiet and the protagonist is investigating a sinister place, our visual and auditory centres fire up so as to strain for any faint movement or sound in the darkness. Upon a jump scare, however, the threat evaluation and decision-making centres in the brain light up, similar to the ‘fight-or-flight’ response.

image via wikimedia commons

During the reign of Pharaoh Ramses XI in Ancient Egypt, there was a priest named Nesyamun who sang chants as part of his ritual duties at the temple of Karnak in Thebes. After a time, like all of us mortals, Nesyamun died, and his body was mummified, and can be found in the Leeds City Museum in England.

Subsequent studies determined he had died in his mid-50s with no damage to the bones around his neck.

Nesyamun wished to be able to speak after his death. This dying wish can be seen on the inscriptions on his coffin. Now, after 3,000 long years, his voice can be heard once again: with the help of a 3D-printed vocal tract, scientists were able to recreate the sound of his voice.

According to the study, the exact dimensions of an individual's vocal tract produce a sound unique to them. Nesyamun's voice could be synthesized using non-destructive CT scans, 3D printing and an electronic larynx.

An accurate replica can only be created if the soft tissues are well preserved, which scientists found was the case here. However, only a single vowel sound could be created through this technique — not running speech.

More details about this over at CBS News.

(Image Credit: TheDigitalArtist/ Pixabay)

In 1980, 56-year-old coal miner Zigmund Adamski left his home to walk to the store. He never made it there, and police could not find him. There was nothing suspicious in his recent behavior, and he had no known enemies. Five days later, a body was discovered on top of a coal pile in a town 25 miles away. It was identified as Adamski's.   

Unfortunately, that was the only question in this case anyone was able to answer. The more everyone studied the business, the weirder it got. For one thing, how did he get up there? It would have been extremely difficult for anyone to climb up the coal pile, particularly since recent rains had left it greasy and slippery. For someone with Adamski's health issues, it would have been impossible. Although the body was still wearing the jacket Adamski donned before leaving his house, his shirt was missing, along with his watch and wallet. (Those items were never found.) There were strange oval burn marks on the back of his head, neck, and shoulder.

The autopsy established that Adamski died on the day his body was found, sometime between 11:15 am and 1:15 pm. There were no physical injuries found, aside from those odd burns. The pathologist thought they were caused by some sort of corrosive substance, but he could not say what it had been. The burns had been covered with a gel which the doctor was also unable to identify. All he could say was that Adamski probably died of a heart attack. "Natural causes" was the final verdict in this most unnatural case.

Adamski had been missing five days, but his body only had one day's beard growth. The case was closed after the autopsy, yet so many questions remained that locals came up with a scenario that fits all the known facts, but is still unbelievable. Read Adamski's story at Strange Company.

(Image credit: The NeatoShop)

In an episode of Antiques Roadshow, an Air Force veteran learned that his rare Rolex was worth $700,000! The man purchased the Rolex Oyster Cosmograph for $345.97 in 1975, which was a very hefty sum. It came more of a shock to him when he learned that his old $300 watch is now worth more than what he paid for back then. Gizmodo has the details: 

The Rolex Daytona, as this timepiece is also known, is coveted by watch collectors for many reasons, including the fact that Paul Newman wore a similar model in the film Winning. This Rolex Daytona is considered a step up from the model appearing in that movie, however, with improved water resistance as denoted by the word “Oyster” on the face, making this model especially rare.

But because this veteran never actually wore his Rolex, preserving even a foil label on the back of the watch that usually rubs off over time, the watch is essentially in brand new condition even though it was manufactured back in 1971. That, with the original packaging, paperwork, receipts, and warranty documentation that was never filled out, led the Antiques Road appraiser to estimate that it could fetch anywhere from $500,000 to $700,000 at auction, given the recent popularity and demand for this specific Rolex model. That is a significant return on investment, and a good enough reason to rifle through your grandparents’ watch drawer the next time you stop by for a visit.

Seventy-five years ago, the Soviet Army marched into Poland and liberated the Auschwitz death camp, where over a million Jews and other minorities were killed. As they approached, tens of thousands of prisoners were evacuated, while others were shot. Only around 9,000 sick and starving inmates remained to be found by the Red Army. Most of the survivors scattered as soon as they were physically able. Today the site is a museum and memorial, but it's not exactly as it was. Before liberation, the staff destroyed the crematoria and as much evidence of their crimes as they could. After liberation, it was used as a POW camp, which meant alterations. Some of the most distasteful facilities were dismantled by authorities, and locals looted the camp for building supplies and any overlooked valuables.

Over the months that followed the camps’ liberation, many former prisoners returned seeking family members and friends. And a small group of survivors came back to stay.

“The earliest stewards of the site were former prisoners,” explains Huener. In his book Auschwitz, Poland, and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945-1979, Huener tells the story of how the site went from operational death camp to memorial. Most of the cadre of men were Polish political prisoners, and none of them had experience with museums or historic preservation. But even during their imprisonments, they had decided Auschwitz should be preserved.

“We did not know if we would survive, but one did speak of a memorial site,” wrote Kazimierz Smoleń, an Auschwitz survivor who later became the memorial site’s director. “One just did not know what form it would take.”

They had no expertise in historical preservation, but they were determined to keep Auschwitz as a cemetery, evidence repository, and a physical testament to the phrase "never forget." Read what happened to Auschwitz after the war at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Bundesarchiv, B 285 Bild-04413 / Stanislaw Mucha / CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Redditor dadwithtowel recorded a time-lapse video of his daughter, while she was making a time-lapse video herself. What kind of video was she making? A video of LEGO minifigs ...making a movie. Here's her finished product.

-via Twisted Sifter