In a recent study done by LexisNexis, they found a sudden spike in the New York Times' articles which focus on or simply mention words which relate to social justice. This might be a signal of the upcoming zeitgeist, of how people are clamoring for change, and how media is using its influence as a vehicle for said change.

Or it could just be trying to ride the wave of the trends. It's not just the New York Times that has been placing more urgency on pressing concerns but it is nice to see how these are measured in quantifiable terms.

Marginal Revolution presents several graphs, created by LexisNexis and posted by Zach Goldberg on his Twitter page, on word usage and frequency of certain terms which have been mentioned in New York Times articles from 1970 until 2018.

There is a markedly significant increase as you will note in social justice issues, which again could be a possible turning point in various sectors of society.

(Image credit: LexisNexis; Zach Goldberg/Twitter)

Being lonely and being alone are two different things, more or less. And a person experiencing a case of loneliness doesn't necessarily mean that they have depression. But studies and experts are saying that people have experienced loneliness more nowadays.

The hard evidence for a loneliness epidemic admittedly has some issues. Still, the loneliness thesis taps into a widespread intuition of something true and real and grave.

Foundering social trust, collapsing heartland communities, an opioid epidemic, and rising numbers of “deaths of despair” suggest a profound, collective discontent.

It is possible however that this growing malaise may be due to the changing dynamic of family life which have been influenced by the speed at which technology is moving and being developed.

(Image credit: Huy Phan/Unsplash)

There are no limits to the things one can create as shown by this new drone built and designed by Adam Woodworth who drew some inspiration from LEGO. It's a fully functional drone in the style of LEGO which also has a mini figure sitting inside the cockpit.

The drone was shown off at this year’s Makers Fair in San Francisco. This thing looks like a real LEGO copter. It even has a minifig pilot. Tested recently checked it out in action, and it looks pretty cool.

Charming actually, as the rotor moves way too slowly. Of course, if it weren’t a drone, this thing would never fly in a million years since ABS plastic bricks are not very aerodynamic. That’s why he built his jumbo version from foam.

(Image credit: Tested)

Archaeologists have found a hidden room beneath Nero's Golden Palace bearing frescoes and other drawings symbolizing Nero's passion for the arts.

No one knows exactly what the room was used for but it could give some more insight into the one considered as the cruelest Roman emperor.

Nero’s hidden chamber has been named the Sphinx Room for one creature in particular, a solitary sphinx. “The find offers a tantalizing glimpse into the atmosphere of the 60s of the First Century AD in Rome,” said officials from the Colosseum archaeological park.

The discovery of Nero’s hidden chamber, made in May 2019, “was of immense artistic and archaeological value,” said Alfonsina Russo, the director of the Colosseum, in a statement released to the media. “We hope to finish the work by the end of the year. The room is well preserved but it needs cleaning and restoration.”

(Image credit: Ufficio Stampa Parco Archeologico Del Colosseo/Wikimedia Commons)

The first Japanese settlement in the United States was built on the Sierra foothills as a group of refugees sought to start a fresh new life, away from the strife and struggle of a country caught in a civil war.

With nowhere to go, the group of Japanese farmers, carpenters, and samurai decided to take a chance and went with a Prussian merchant who traveled to California's Gold Country.

They came prepared, bringing 50,000 mulberry trees to feed silkworms, and 6 million tea seeds, according to a May 27, 1869 article in The Daily Alta California reporting their arrival in San Francisco.

While initially successful, the farm’s growth was choked by a drought that killed most of the crops, Tanimoto said. After just two years, the colony collapsed and its inhabitants dispersed, he said.

But some remained in the United States, helping carry on Wakamatsu’s legacy of ambition and multicultural roots.

One hundred and fifty years later, the Wakamatsu Farm will be celebrating its founding anniversary with a festival featuring events that show some traditional Japanese culture like a tea ceremony and taiko drum performances.

(Image credit: Autumn Payne/Sacbee)

McDonald's in Sweden has put out a really cute idea of making small restaurants and putting them on their rooftops. The concept behind these miniature McDonald's is actually an environmental initiative. They are being used as beehives.

As more franchisees around the country are joining the cause, some have also started replacing the grass around their restaurants with flowers and plants that are important for the wellbeing of wild bees.

(Image credit: McDonald's)

You may have heard of the prestigious genius organization called Mensa and have thought, as everybody has, how highfalutin and egotistic it sounds.

But far from the impression of a condescending snobby society which the general population might perceive it to be, Mensa is actually a chill place for geniuses to hang out. It is open for anyone to join Mensa, as long as you pass the test that is.

While Mensa people may be portrayed as an ego-centric, nerdy, cliquey, sweater wearing eggheads, this simply isn’t the case. Anyone – no matter who they are – can become a member of this brilliant, prestigious world. Mensa includes members who are from ages two years old all the way to people who are 100 years old. There are auto mechanics and scientists, doctors and glassblowers, military people and supermodels.

Apart from that, the organization also does philanthropy by giving scholarships and holding outreach events, and doing research for the betterment of humanity.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The noble gases or inert gases are chemical elements who have complete electrons in their outer valence shells which means that they are the most stable among the elements as they don't need to form bonds with others. But scientists have actually tried forcing these inert gases to react.

Making noble-gas compounds is not for the faint of heart, however. Because the electrons in the noble gases’ outer shells are comfortable where they are, it requires extremes—like reactive reagents, low temperatures, or high pressures—to get them to budge.

When compounds do form, the results are seldom practical: most noble-gas compounds are too fleeting or unstable to be useful. But the few chemists who take on the challenge of coaxing reactivity from these recalcitrant elements say the true rewards are finding new insights into the nature of reactivity and chemical bonding.

-via Real Clear Science

(Image credit: doctor-a/Pixabay)

Tiger sharks can feed on anything, literally. Though it is quite concerning how license plates and chicken coops end up on these sharks' bellies, there are other food sources that show just how resourceful and perhaps, how desperate they might be getting in order to survive.

Marcus Drymon, a marine fisheries ecologist at Mississippi State University who studies tiger sharks, didn’t expect one of his study subjects to stress vomit feathers onto the deck of his boat in 2010. Further inspection revealed that the plumes belonged to a Brown Thrasher, a slender songbird that frequents gardens and thickets in the eastern United States.

Drymon has been looking into the matter ever since—and appears to have solved the mystery in part. His findings, published in Ecology this week, suggest that whenever storms kill migrating birds over the Gulf of Mexico, tiger sharks receive a “windfall of nutrients from the sky,” he says. “It’s an example of how two completely disparate food webs can interact in a way we wouldn’t have predicted.”

Now, it wouldn't be a surprise for tiger sharks to have marine birds as part of their diet. However, much of the data indicate that the birds found in tiger sharks' stomachs were mostly land birds. This suggests that these sharks actively search for birds falling out from the sky.

(Image credit: Jan-Niclas Aberle/Unsplash)

As scientists continue explore other planets, moons, and space objects, we are getting to learn more about the possibilities that outer space holds.

We see evidences of remnants from the beginnings of the universe, how life could potentially develop using these precursors, and how there might be signs of life elsewhere in our solar system and beyond.

Jason Barnes, an associate professor at the University of Idaho, along with one of his students, Rajani Dhingra have written a paper on Titan and how its similarities with the Earth's hydrologic process might signal its potential for life.

"There are so many planets out in the solar system, and then there's Earth. It's special: It has a hydrologic cycle, rain and clouds. And there is nothing like Earth in the solar system," she says, "except Titan."

"We want to send a spacecraft to measure the progression," Barnes says. "When you mix organics and water in an abiotic environment, how close do you get to forming life molecules? Were there molecules that might have been precursors to life on Earth?"

The mission to send a spacecraft to Titan is called the Dragonfly mission and if it gets approved, they say it would launch in 2025 and hopefully land in 2034. Until that time, we can only wait expectantly of what the rains on Titan could mean for research on extraterrestrial life.

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Wikimedia Commons)

They are calling it the 'Forbidden Planet' because it isn't something that's supposed to be, it defies expectations. Perhaps a more apt name would be the 'Impossible Planet' but let's not get into the nomenclature. 

What makes this planet's existence impossible is that it could be found in a Neptunian desert, a region with intense radiation that nothing should be able to survive. But this one planet does and scientists aren't yet sure why.

(Image credit: University of Warwick)

We have already seen several creatively set wedding ceremonies with certain themes but this one might take the cake when it comes to putting together a couple's dream wedding. For any Pokemon fans out there, you can now have Pokemon weddings in Japan. And this is not something that just anyone put together. This first Pokemon wedding was in collaboration with The Pokemon Company.

ESCRIT, a Japanese company specialising in wedding ceremonies, recently teamed up with The Pokemon Company to start offering officially licensed Pokemon weddings. As you cast your eyes over these images, please remember this is not a wedding simply put together by Pokemon fans; this is professional work, with no corner of the festivities left untouched by the hand of The Pokemon Company’s licensing department.

You may check out the photos from the very first Pokemon wedding here. And for more details on these Pokemon weddings, check out Escrit's page.

(Image credit: Pokemon)

As we have mentioned before, monsters are an essential part of Japanese folklore and culture. There are literally thousands of them with different features and powers. Some are considered slightly more innocuous than others, only causing mischief and annoyance while more sinister ghouls are feared for their malevolence.

Now, through the work and efforts of Japanese ethnologist and yokai researcher Koichi Yumoto, the city of Miyoshi will behold the very first yokai museum which will feature artifacts and items from Yumoto's yokai collection which he donated a few years ago.

Located in Hiroshima Prefecture (also home to the Onomichi Museum of Art and its famous cats Ken-chan and Go-chan), the Miyoshi Mononoke Museum features "about 160 items from Yumoto’s collection, which includes a scroll painting of the famous folktale and crafts," an "interactive digital picture book of yōkai" as well as opportunities to "take photos with the monsters using a special camera set up at the site."

(Image credit: Miyoshi Mononoke Museum)

As far as we were taught, Europe's military technology and intimidation led to many parts of Asia being colonized. Only some of the bigger empires in Asia were able to put up decent resistance against the Europeans until their wily schemes caused China and Japan to acquiesce. 

But a new paradigm shift on the dynamics between Europe and Asia shows that the European colonizers and imperialists weren't able to breach Asia until much later in the 19th century. And even then, Asia wasn't backing down.

The moment that Europe embarked on long-distance trade with Asia in 1498, when the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama landed at Calicut in India, a process started that would ultimately lead to large European colonial empires. More than three centuries later, these empires spanned the globe. 

It is easy to see what happened in Asia before 1800 in the light of what happened later, but conquest depended more on Asian circumstances than on European superiority. However, this can also stand in the way of understanding what might have actually happened in the past.

If we are to change our views on these historical events, then we would need to do a deeper study on the sequence of events or circumstances which led to Europe's being able to get a strong foothold in Asia and build their empires. If Asia had the upper hand all along, then which events caused them to relinquish this advantage?

(Image credit: Edward H. Cree/MIT; Wikimedia Commons)

Modern art expos nowadays are all about celebrating diversity veering away from simply showing a certain school or philosophy and welcoming various genre, types, and media of expression.

That's what Five Points Festival is about. It tries to bring together different indie artists and other niche crafts as a way of building and supporting the community of artists who share the same kind of passion for their work and art.

And passing by the corner of Allen Street and Rivington in New York, you might be able to see a huge mural on the side of an apartment complex. This was done by KaNO, a well-known street artist, who was commissioned by the Allen Hotel in honor of the very first Five Points Fest.

(Image credit: Worley Gig)