You may have heard of or even remember one of the earliest viral videos titled Kony 2012. It was a short documentary film created by the non-profit Invisible Children which aimed to bring awareness to Americans about the Ugandan cult of Joseph Kony called Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), and it doubled as a call-to-action for viewers to respond at the end of the video by becoming part of a movement to topple their group. It quickly rose to fame after a few days of uploading the video, but just as quickly as it skyrocketed to the limelight, it imploded on itself and became the subject of mockery for people.

Eleven years later, Emma Madden of Narratively sat down with the co-founder of Invisible Children and the guy who envisioned collective action and change out of Kony 2012, Jason Russell, as he shares what pushed him to make that video, how he and his team coped with the aftermath of its disastrous failure, and what Invisible Children is doing now. To be clear, Jason Russell hasn't been involved with Invisible Children since 2014, and although there were plans to shut down the non-profit, a new CEO took over and now, it is being supported by USAID to help Central African countries at a much smaller scale than the original vision of Russell and his previous team.

(Video credit: Invisible Children/Youtube)

Many dermatologists recommend that we all use sunscreen, especially when we go out of the house. It protects us from the harmful UV-A and UV-B rays to keep our skin from aging and burning. However, despite the growing usage of sunscreen, melanoma and skin cancer rates are increasing as well, which many researchers dub as the "sunscreen paradox". Claire Loewen-McGill of Futurity speaks with dermatologists who have looked into this perplexing phenomenon to gain insight as to why this is the case.

Apparently, just as much as people have been using sunscreen, they have been going out and staying under the sun for far longer than they should, with the unguided notion that their sunscreen would be able to protect their skin from damage. But, for anybody who has ever used sunscreen and understands the meaning behind SPF, they would know that if you will be staying for expended periods of time under the sun, sunscreen must be reapplied after a few hours depending on the SPF level of the product.

Researchers including Ivan Litvinov and Sandra Peláez from McGill University conducted one study to explore the sunscreen paradox in Canada, while another study was conducted by Litvinov and researchers from the UK. These researchers found that sunscreen use was associated with twice the risk of skin cancer. So, apart from sunscreen, Litvinov suggests that people should also use protective clothing and other means such as using an umbrella to protect themselves from UV rays.

(Image credit: BATCH by Wisconsin Hemp Scientific/Unsplash)

I like the color blue for no other reason than it looks the coolest to me. Blue is probably one of the rarest colors that one can find in nature apart from seeing it in the sky or seeing it reflected by the oceans. Peacocks have a bright green and blue plumage, which can be attributed to its structure rather than pigmentation. The blue morpho butterfly has the same situation in which its wing scales have ridges that refract sunlight so that they appear blue in our eyes. The same goes for the blue jay and even plants such as bluebells, hydrangeas, and morning glories, which all use pigments and the reflection of natural light to appear blue.

In the case of bowerbirds, they make their bowers out of sticks and brightly-colored objects, most of which are in a shade of blue, all for the purpose of attracting a potential mate. Why the bowerbirds have chosen this specific color, we cannot say for certain except for that, just like me, and many other people in the world, they simply like it. This phenomenon has also been documented by Charles Darwin in his book The Descent of Man. The Marginalian offers this interesting perspective on the bowerbird and the color blue in this article.

(Image credit: Joseph C Boone/Wikimedia Commons)

The traditional cycle of life in today's modern world is that we go through school for 16 years at least, or 24 years if you pursue post-graduate studies, after which we find jobs and work until we're 65, then retire. For some people, that might not seem appealing, and so they become freelancers, entrepreneurs, or some other career outside the conventional life path. But even so, at some point or another, we're all going to retire and try to enjoy the remaining years of our lives. From Tim Jensen's perspective, there are some common mistakes that people make when it comes to retirement, and as a retirement planner for 17 years, he has graciously shared some of those on Reader's Digest so that we can learn from them.

Reading some of these tips, I think a common thread is the lack of understanding that people have about retirement and how it all works, and the fact that, people generally think about retirement much later than they should. I would understand why people wouldn't want to bother themselves with thinking about what will happen 30 or 40 years later, but it's worth considering as well as being flexible depending on the circumstances we find ourselves in. For me, the most relevant tip relates to health costs and how that affects one's retirement as I am currently surrounded by retirees and retirees-to-be whose main concern at the moment are medical expenses and the like. To see all 18 tips, check it out on Reader's Digest.

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Winners of the Nobel Prize, especially for the sciences, usually are out of reach to the general public. Their ideas and concepts are, in one way or another, revolutionary in theory and for some, in practice as well. Many Nobel Prize winners in the natural sciences gravitate toward advancements in physics, chemistry, and medicine, much of which are too complex for the ordinary people like us who have no training or advance education in those fields. And one way that the Nobel Committee can communicate these ideas in simpler terms to the public is through illustrations, which distill the concepts into readily comprehensible imagery, analogies, or symbolisms. For the past 13 years, that has been the job of Johan Jarnestad.

One example is the illustration above, which depicts the research done by Claudia Goldin on the understanding of women's labor market outcomes. It's an incredibly simple illustration showing three generations of women looking back toward their mothers, with the first two having their children in tow, and the last one carrying books and a backpack. A signpost at the right end shows two opposite directions saying "expectations" and "opportunities". It's simple yet powerfully communicates a part of Goldin's research. Jarnestad also made three other illustrations of Goldin's research which you may check out on Fast Company.

(Image credit: Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences)

GreenPower Motor Company has released an announcement about its latest school bus design which boasts a capacity of 90 people, and can go up to 300 miles in range with a 387 kWh battery. They call it the "Mega Beast" as an upgrade of their current "Beast" line which stands for "battery electric automotive school transportation" that can go up to 140 miles with a 197.3 kWh battery.

Although the current Beast design can also pack 90 kids in one ride, the reason why the company built the Mega Beast to go for longer distances was so that the buses can reach more remote areas like rural schools and so that, the bus would not need to recharge its battery in the middle of the day. Furthermore, the Mega Beast is more durable and versatile as it can climb up hills and endure extreme weather conditions. For reference, you may check GreenPower's website for the specifications of their Beast bus design and other details like top speed, motor power, seating configurations, fuel economy, and the like.

(Image credit: GreenPower Motor Company)

You might have come across Roman Fedortsov's X (Twitter) profile where he posts photos of the creatures he finds while deep-sea diving. It truly is quite fascinating what diversity the deep oceans hold. You may have seen some of them depicted in movies like Finding Nemo or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Creatures like the anglerfish seem terrifying but also equally intriguing. They may only look scary but it just goes to show how much we don't know about the deepest parts of the ocean, which have barely been explored.

Here are some photos that show what deep-sea creatures look like:

If you think that the anglerfish in Finding Nemo was creepy, then what about this one which looks like it came straight out of the Alien movies.

This one is a photo of a frilled shark.

This last one is probably the weirdest one of them all. I can't even begin to explain or describe what it is. It looks like a fragment of a skull with a fleshy protrusion coming out of the head.

To check out the rest of the photos, check it out on Science Alert.

(Image credit: Roman Fedortsov)

(Header image: Jong Marshes/Unsplash)

Before Singapore became the bustling economic epicenter of Southeast Asia, it was just like everybody else in the region, until the British came and renovated the whole place, and much later, Lee Kuan Yew turned it into what it is today. However, when Sir Stamford Raffles came in the 1800s, there was a boulder, three meters wide and three meters tall, at the mouth of Singapore river. The mysterious thing about this boulder was that nobody knew how it got there, and there was some inscription on it that no one could decipher. Unfortunately, the East India Company blew up that boulder and only fragments remain today.

Legend has it that the origin of the boulder was when a strongman by the name of Badang threw the boulder in a contest between the strongmen of the kingdoms of Singapore and India. As for the inscription, Sir Stamford Raffles had surmised that the inscription was Hindu, since they had traveled far and wide, reaching even Bali and Java. Others also suggested that the inscription might have been ancient Ceylonese (Sri Lankan), Pali (Middle Indo-Aryan), Tamil, or Kawi.

(Image credit: Choo Yut Shing/Wikimedia Commons)

By some strange coincidence, NASA has taken a photo of remnants of a star explosion which could be interpreted to look like a skeleton hand. In its wake, the explosion left a pulsar, the magnetic fields of which form a pulsar wind nebula. Because of this phenomenon, the charged particles wrap around the base of the nebula creating the resemblance of a ghostly hand.

NASA explains that the unique shape of the nebula was brought about by the high amount of polarization around MSH 15-52, thus projecting the charged particles outward in a linear fashion, which formed the fingers of the hand, meanwhile, the wrist area had more turbulent regions giving particles an energy boost and forming somewhat of a clump at the bottom.

(Image credit: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./R. Romani et al. (Chandra); NASA/MSFC (IXPE); Infared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/DECaPS; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt)

October 31st is All Hallow's Eve, or Halloween. However, did you know that, depending on where you are located, people call the night before Halloween by different names? Why October 30th even has alternative names is a question all in itself, but as Mental Floss lists here, it is subject to varying regionalisms. For example, if you were living in Philadelphia or New Jersey, then you might be familiar with the term "Mischief Night" which is what they called October 30th in those parts. The reason for this is that people would go out and about doing some harmless pranking on the night before the official trick-or-treating begins.

Another very intriguing nickname for October 30th is "Cabbage Night" which is unique to New England. The term is used to refer to delinquency, and alludes to something that happened in the 1800s when people still had cabbage farms. Young hooligans would uproot cabbages and throw them at people's houses. It's a bit similar to what Nebraskans called October 30th, "Corn Night", and as you've guessed, it's because some youth would throw ears of corn at people's porches. For the rest of the regional names of the night before Halloween, check it out on Mental Floss.

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Whenever we stroke a cat, they sometimes respond with a soft purr, and so we think the reason why cats purr is because they feel happy or relaxed, or something of the sort. Many researchers thought that cats' purring was caused by voluntary muscle contractions of the larynx, but new studies have shown that it is much closer to snoring than a voluntary response when they feel comfortable or stressed.

Although the researchers do not rule out the possibility that cats purr because of voluntary muscle contractions, they argue that it wasn't the sole cause for the purring. Instead, their research suggests that it was the flow of air that activated the vibrations causing the purring, much like how we snore when our breathing is obstructed. Despite not having fully understood the reasons behind purring, scientists are in consensus about some aspects of purring such as it is used as a signal by kittens so their mothers can locate them, it produces serotonin in cats, it helps in healing wounds, and purring is not merely a response to positive stimulus, but it is also done when cats are stressed.

To learn more about the biomechanics of cats' purring, check out the article on Wired.

(Image credit: Kasya Shahovskaya/Unsplash)

I love US sitcoms as much as the next guy and I've watched some of the most popular ones over the years. But sometimes, you want something fresh, something not mainstream, something that others may not have heard before, or something that has been buried underneath the rubble and left forgotten. One Redditor asked the r/sitcoms subreddit about some obscure sitcoms that they could recommend, and the sitcom fans obliged with over a thousand comments on the thread. Cracked lists the top five most upvoted suggestions.

One of the top suggestions was Police Squad! which featured Leslie Nielsen, whom you might know from the movie Airplane! and later on, the Naked Gun film series which was based on Police Squad. The show was cancelled after six episodes because ABC thought that the visual gags would be more effective on a larger screen size, and that's why the latter film series based on Police Squad's premise was successful. To see the other four sitcoms, check it out on Cracked.

(Video credit: Rich Fenton/Youtube)

Expensify, a San Francisco fintech startup, thought of a way to attract their employees back to the office after the pandemic has finally subsided in many parts of the world. But as with many other office workers who got a taste of what life felt like working from home or doing remote work, Expensify's employees didn't really find the cocktail lounge alluring enough to trade in the benefits of working from home. The company soon realized that not even a free office bar and lounge was enough and they eventually had to shut it down.

Many other companies have tried to get their employees back to working at the office, even to the point where they had to force them, to which the workers responded by simply quitting. And, although there are merits to employees working at the office especially in terms of creativity and collaboration, the quality of life perks that remote work or working from home gives just outweighs much of that in people's minds.

Of course, this is more prevalent in tech industries as geographical distance doesn't hinder productivity and workers can simply communicate online when they need to collaborate with each other. There are others however, who don't have the luxury of simply quitting their jobs, and so they are forced to go back to the office. But, if companies can reduce the disadvantages of going to the office versus working from home, then perhaps many employees would be okay with going to work again.

(Image credit: Stanislav Ivanitskiy/Unsplash)

Here on Neatorama, we have shared what plant screams sound like, as well as what solar eclipses sound like. In keeping with the season, we will be sharing what the most frightening animal in the world sounds like. The first thing that we have to ask ourselves is, what is the most frightening animal in the world? Depending on the criteria you use, it could be different for different people. Some may be afraid of lions, bears, hyenas, or rattlesnakes.

In this podcast on Scientific American, Karen Hopkin speaks with Liana Zanette, a professor of biology at Western University in Ontario, about this particular subject. Liana's team has been researching the ecology of fear for the past two decades, and the criteria that they use to identify which is the most frightening animal in the world is in terms of the predator-prey interactions. So, she and her team set up an experiment to study how animals responded to audio cues.

This short video clip shows a sample of what their study had found:

Their experiment included three different sounds: one from a lion growling, one with a bird chirping, and one where people were talking. And they discovered that animals were more likely to flee from humans than from lions. We humans fear wild animals because they can kill us. But, human beings have also killed animals, and at far greater rates than even the most terrifying wild beasts in the wilderness.

(Image credit: Iván Díaz/Unsplash)

AI has come a long way. They have become so good that writers have elected to sue OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, over copyright infringement of pirated copies of their works, which were used to, essentially, train ChatGPT. Not only that, but AI can now also write essays, articles, academic papers, dissertations, and even novels in a span of week or less. Of course, what makes a piece of work riveting or encapsulating is the mark or nuances that an author brings into it. It's the personality of the writer that comes out and brings the story to life, which I would say that not all AI can do. However, they do most other things pretty well. If they can capture the human essence of literary works, then that's just about checkmate isn't it?

To that end, The Walrus requested an AI chatbot to write a short story in the style of Margaret Atwood and later on, Margaret Atwood herself looked at it to see how it fared. She wrote this article herself about generative AI and whether we should be worried if they will soon replace us. Her verdict at the end is quite befitting.

(Image credit: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Collision, Wikimedia Commons, CC by 2.0)