It all began with an argument about who should have control over the thermostat in the office. Flignir, the creator of the subreddit "Am I the Asshole?" wanted counsel about an ordinary work issue.

Since he thought that it would be justified for the men at his office to set the temperature as his female co-workers had the option of wearing additional clothing, he wanted to get a second opinion. He posted his question on Reddit but none of the subreddits allowed it. So he created his own.

From then on, the subreddit has gained popularity and has become a go-to place where people can seek advice from others on a certain disagreement or conflict they have.

On June 8, 2013, the Am I The Asshole? (AITA) subreddit sprang into being with a mission to provide a space for people to anonymously share their non-violent conflicts and receive objective arbitration from commenters.

Of course, due to the vulnerability of such a community to attacks and harassment, a team of moderators set the ground rules for the sub which it continues to implement.

AITA may have suffered a similar fate were it not for the forum’s framework, carefully implemented by the sub’s early team of moderators and revised as AITA grew in popularity. Today, participants are asked to abide by a set of 12 rules, the first of which requires that they “Be civil.” It’s an ironic request from a site dedicated to calling out assholes, but a necessary one.

AITA’s goal is to provide users with an honest accounting of their behavior and actionable feedback for how to improve it. The process falls apart when users attack the individual, rather than their choices or ideology.

(Image credit: Bruce Mars/Unsplash)

In his six-minute animated film titled (OO), Seoro Oh explores the nasal passages and shows us different imagery as well as metaphors that describe what it feels like to have a runny nose and a sneezing fit. As someone who has also been plagued by rhinitis, I empathize.

Never before have we seen a story about the nose and its perils so expressively represented. The pain, discomfort, and gross aspects of being sick, the way our nostrils can so wildly change dynamics, all of it is explored through dramatic, colorful, and fascinating motion and sound. Take a look, and see if you can relate to this beautifully made film.

“I’ve suffered from rhinitis since I was a child. Many unpleasant things happen in my nose on a regular basis — especially during the change of seasons. I wanted to animate the feeling so people could empathize.” – Seoro Oh

(Image credit: Seoro Oh)

Teaching is more than just regurgitating information onto students. There are various methods and approaches at a teacher's disposal to make sure that students are able to acquire the knowledge and skills they need for a particular subject.

More than that, teachers aim to instill a love for learning in students, encouraging them to continue learning even after they had finished formal education. But it would be difficult in our educational landscape today without a system.

And that's where instructional design could help instructors and educators develop learning experiences which could stimulate a student's passion for learning.

Although instructional design has been a part of higher education for over 75 years, it is still an emerging field that is influencing and is influenced by the driving forces of the institutional landscape.

A 2016 report on the role, workflow, and experience of instructional designers indicates that the number of instructional designers working in US colleges and universities continues to grow, a phenomenon that is related to the continued expansion of online education programs and course offerings in instructional design.

Educause presents here a few points about instructional design as a field in higher education as well as the impact of learning engineering on the field which is a more quantitative and evidence-based method of designing learning experiences and material.

(Image credit: Helloquence/Unsplash)

Here's another example of wonderful relationships between animals. Equipped with a specially-made saddle to carry newborn lambs, these donkey and mule nannies in the Italian Alps of Lombardy bring these precious babies to the plains.

Newborn lambs are unable to make this journey on their own. Instead they are packed out riding in the pouches of a specially made saddle on the back of a Donkey/Mule Nanny. These beautiful babies are taken down at rest stops and returned to their mothers for a bite to eat and a bit of nuzzling.

-via Messy Nessy Chic

(Image credit: For the Love of Donkeys/Facebook)

The contraptions described in Jules Verne's novels or those which Leonardo da Vinci had sketched in his notebook have that aura of steampunk emanating from them. In the same vein, a couple of enterprising individuals had set up their own workshop to build similar machines.

Headed by Francois Delaroziere and Pierre Orefice, La Machine has brought to life some bizarre attractions which one can only imagine or dream about, akin to those from fantasy worlds.

On their island of machines, we’re invited to ride a herd of fantastical beasts that were born inside a creative madhouse of reverie. The Grand Éléphant is one of their most famous creations. Climbing aboard the walking cathedral of steel is like travelling on the top floor of a travelling house – one that blasts steam out of its trunk.

(Image credit: La Machine)

Animals are cute. But what makes them cuter is when they make friends with other animals. And it's not just those of their own kind but of other species as well. For example, we've always pit cats and dogs against each other but they can actually get along. And they're not the only ones.

If you want to check out the most wholesome Wikipedia page on the internet, look no further than Interspecies Friendship. Here you’ll come across stories like those of a timber wolf who befriended a pair of goats in San Diego Zoo, and would downright refuse to return to its enclosure after playtime until the goats had been safely herded into theirs.

Besides being overwhelmingly cute, such friendships also have real-world utility, as evidenced by the San Diego Zoo's practice of pairing lone cheetah cubs with dogs. The Wikipedia page for Interspecies Friendship (IF) mentions companionships between cats and dogs, but focuses on the smaller, household feline species as opposed to the fastest land animal in the world.

(Image credit: Free-Photos/Pixabay)

One of the most heinous and brutal crimes committed in history was the Manson Family murders which, in the span of two nights, took the lives of several people including actress Sharon Tate with her unborn child and several of her friends, and business owners Leno and Rosemary Labianca.

Several members of the Manson Family were sentenced to death which was later commuted to life in prison. His other followers abandoned the cult, renounced Manson, and moved on with their lives. Here's a look into the troubled histories of the Manson Family and what led them to commit such terrible crimes.

(Image credit: AP)

The European Space Agency in partnership with Airbus has recently launched their newest communications satellite, EDRS-C which aims to deliver big volumes of data at high speeds to give us updates of what's happening on Earth's atmosphere in near-real time.

EDRS is a globally unique network of geostationary relay satellites that can deliver data volumes of up to 1.8 gigabits per second to Earth with minimal delay using laser communications. The system is a public-private partnership between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Prime Contractor, Airbus.

“In the past, satellites were only linked to one or more ground stations. With the development of EDRS, we are making a paradigm shift towards an optically networked satellite infrastructure. With greater security and much higher bandwidth, EDRS enables the transmission of images and data in near-real time,” says Walther Pelzer, DLR Executive Board Member.

(Image credit: Arianespace)

In 2017, extreme wildfires in British Columbia, Canada caused a giant cloud of smoke to rise up and cover much of the Northern Hemisphere. Now, scientists are trying to use the data from this event to design a model showing what a nuclear war would do to our climate.

The scientists used a state-of-the art climate model from the National Center for Atmospheric Research to model the lofting and movement of the colossal Canadian wildfire smoke cloud. The modeling considered smoke characteristics such as the ratio of soot to other ingredients and the rate at which ozone in the upper atmosphere broke down the smoke.

The next steps, as part of a Rutgers nuclear conflict climate modeling project, are to use refined nuclear war scenarios to determine the potential impact on the climate and food production on land and in the ocean, along with the potential for global famine. What the scientists learned from the wildfire modeling will make their new work more accurate and credible.

(Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory)

In a new study conducted by researchers from Lund University, the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, and Karolinska Institutet, they found that the activation of certain transposons or "jumping genes" in our genome could lead to the development of certain diseases.

Usually these transposons are silenced by a process called DNA methylation. When the process is disrupted, it could activate these transposons which would affect the genes that help in the development of nerve cells. The researchers are also looking into seeing how this disruption would affect cancer cells.

“Sometimes, however, DNA methylation is disrupted and studies have shown that this is significant in certain cancer tumours and in some neuropsychiatric diseases. DNA methylation is used as a target for therapy in certain cancer types, such as leukaemia, but we still lack knowledge about why this is effective and why it only works for certain types of cancer”, says Johan Jakobsson, professor at Lund University and leader of the study, which also included researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics and Karolinska Institutet.

In fact, we know very little about the role of transposons in our DNA. One theory held by the researchers in Lund is that DNA methylation silences the parts of the genome that are not used, but only now has it been possible to study what happens when this process is removed from human cells.

(Image credit: typographyimages/Pixabay)

This map created by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation consolidates the data from each state in the US to show the mortality rates, the causes of death, and other statistics relating to mortality in America from 1980 to 2014.

Creating such a model would be a difficult task considering the data being used to base insights and analyses contain unknown causes of death in which case, they opt to put "garbage codes" or vague and generic causes of death. With the Institute's statistical model, they have sought to remove these.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation designed a statistical model that uses demographic and epidemiological data to assign more specific causes of death to the records containing garbage codes in the National Vital Statistics System, which gathers death records (and other information such as births) from state and local jurisdictions into a national database. 

The institute also age-standardized the data so that places with larger populations of older people, who die at higher rates, do not have inflated numbers. The result is a set of more complete estimates of mortality across the country, one revealing regional and local variations in causes of death.

More of this on Five Thirty Eight.

(Image credit: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation)

China's internet censorship known as The Great Firewall has been cracking down more aggressively by banning various media sites who are not affiliated with or approved by the ruling Communist Party regime. This is nothing new.

However, recently, The Intercept was able to crack the Great Firewall to allow its readers in China to access their site once again through a partnership with Psiphon, an anti-censorship organization in Canada.

The Psiphon app encrypts all data that it carries across networks and uses proxy technology to defeat censorship, transmitting traffic between a network of secure servers. The app does not log any personally identifying information, and the software is open-source.

“Internet users in China face some of the most pervasive and technically sophisticated online censorship in the world,” said a spokesperson for Psiphon. “Psiphon is designed to provide robust, reliable access to the open Internet in the most difficult circumstances..."

(Image credit: China Briefing)

With a tap on your phone, you can now get anywhere you need to go without going through the hassle of hailing a cab or using the subway to get to your destination. 

It's more convenient because it gives you more flexibility with your time and you don't have to walk and stand a lot. But it seems passengers may not be the only ones benefiting from these ridesharing services. 

Research from UPenn doctoral students Caitlin Gorback and Xiaoxia Summer Dong looks at how they are influencing consumer habits, public transport usage, and business opportunities.

Gorback is looking at whether previously inaccessible regions—for example, those a far walk from the nearest subway or bus station—have seen an uptick in businesses and restaurants moving in to coincide with the ride-sharing boom.

And according to Dong’s project, after Uber arrived in Philadelphia, ridership on the city’s public transit options decreased significantly, in some cases to the lowest levels since the 2008 recession.

These are some examples of how technology is shaping the way we live our lives from how we do business to our daily habits and decision making. How has Uber and Lyft changed your life?

(Image credit: Thought Catalog/Unsplash)

As someone with a fascination for languages, the new project that Google Earth launched, called Celebrating Indigenous Languages, is a treat. It allows one to listen to various indigenous languages being spoken in different parts of the world.

The project, called Celebrating Indigenous Languages, is designed to honour the United Nations International Year of Indigenous Languages. For Indigenous people, language is a lifeline to culture.

"It's my identity. It's who I am as a person," said Dolores Greyeyes Sand, a Plains Cree language teacher from Saskatchewan who contributed to the project.

There are thousands of languages in the world but most of them are on the verge of extinction. As globalization continues to pervade, we will see dwindling numbers of speakers of these indigenous languages until such point that there will be nobody left who can speak the language and it will be lost.

Being able to document a language and teach it to others is one way of preserving, not only the language, but also the culture and identity of its people. Hopefully, with various projects like Celebrating Indigenous Languages, we might keep these languages alive for generations to come.

(Image credit: Google)

Every day, we encounter fine particles that graze and stick to our skin, our eyes, nose, and other parts of the body into which these foreign objects squeeze themselves until such time that we wash them off and get rid of them. An eye surgeon in the 19th century, Augustin Prichard had been fascinated with the different objects that get caught in the eyes and did research on them.

In one particular case, he notes that there was a piece of vegetable stuck in a man's eye causing it to secrete pus. Upon investigating a bit further, Prichard found out the interesting backstory of how the vegetable got into the man's eye.

A few days before, he met and entered into conversation with a friend (a butcher’s boy), carrying a bullock’s paunch in his hand. From words they came to blows, and my patient was brought down by a heavy flap in the face from his adversary’s disagreeable weapon. His eye was painful, and intolerant of light, from that time until the substance was removed, when it speedily recovered.

(Image credit: Thomas Morris)