It’s probably your first time to hear of McKee, a small rural town in Jackson County, Kentucky, and one of the poorest counties in the U.S. But it hopefully won’t be the last. This Appalachian town is home to small business owners with big ambitions, like Peoples Rural Telephone Cooperative CEO Keith Gabbard, who have made leaps and bounds to bring fiber-optic broadband to their humble hometown. Now, PRTC subscribers enjoy internet speeds of up to 1 gigabyte per second!

There’s a sit-down restaurant, Opal’s, that serves the weekday breakfast-and-lunch crowd, one traffic light, a library, a few health clinics, eight churches, a Dairy Queen, a pair of dollar stores, and some of the fastest Internet in the United States. Subscribers to Peoples Rural Telephone Cooperative (P.R.T.C.), which covers all of Jackson County and the adjacent Owsley County, can get speeds of up to one gigabit per second, and the coöperative is planning to upgrade the system to ten gigabits.

But the process to get where they are at was definitely an uphill climb, and the rural town residents had to get creative. 

In the most rugged terrain around McKee, the crews relied on a mule named Old Bub to haul the cable two or three miles a day. “We’ve got mountains and rocks and not the greatest roads, and there were places we couldn’t get a vehicle to,” Gabbard told me. “Farmers here have been using mules for centuries. It just made sense that, if a place was hard to get to, you went with the mules.” Old Bub, he said, was able to do the work of eight to ten men.

The effort took six years, at a cost of fifty thousand dollars per mile. “Someone has to build to the last mile,” he said. “The big telecom companies aren’t going to do it, because it’s not economical and they have shareholders to answer to. We’re a co-op. We’re owned by our members. We answer to each other.”

The introduction of high-speed internet to McKee has provided a ray of hope for those suffering from the harsh consequences of poverty and unemployment. For many, there are now opportunities to get easier access to online educational resources and to engage in work-from-home vocations.

On the other hand, Gabbard and McKee residents are conscious of the fact that broadband is not going to magically make their lives better nor poverty go away. But it can sure help with education, entertainment, the economy, and health care. And that’s more than enough. 

Gabbard says,

And I even think that people’s mind-set—how they feel about themselves—can be improved just by not always saying ‘We don’t have nothing here.’ In this case, we have something to be proud of. We have something everyone else wants.”

Read their incredible journey at The New Yorker.

Photos: P C / Pexels ; Sue Halpern / The New Yorker ; Mika Baumeister / Unsplash

Me *orders our food fluently in Italian to impress my date*

McDonalds drive-thru employee: what

— Jon (@ArfMeasures) November 12, 2018

Classic date trick.

wow huge congrats to toilet pic.twitter.com/nHIpiHBd3i

— becca t @ CALA 🌞 (@beccateeth) July 22, 2016

Watch this 1-minute time lapse of two guys transforming the interior of an old van into a ‘tiny home’ complete with a kitchen sink, multiple storage, computer desk and bed! 

Now that’s tiny living with a big mind. 

It’s unclear whether the van actually moves though. 

Would you ever live in one of these? 

-via Gyfcat

Winter may be coming, but this subreddit’s cold reception to the franchise is icier than the Night King. 

In 2019, the record-breaking HBO fantasy series, Game of Thrones, came to its conclusion after nearly eight years since its first episode aired in the U.S. in 2011. The crowd reactions to the season finale were mixed, to say the least, with fans across the globe generally divided on whether they love or hate season 8, which ran from May to April of 2019. 

Reddit's 2019 Year in Review lists the leading television community platforms on the website, and enthroned at the top 2 are freefolk followed by the GoT community itself. This is not so surprising considering the massive buzz its creators, Dan Weiss and David Benioff, have generated since the very beginning, from the breathtaking panoramic sets to the gruesomely unexpected character deaths. After all, who doesn’t get fired up from their favorite TV show? 

Fans who were keen to lambast the show identified their group as refusing to “bend the knee” to the HBO installment, hence the name “freefolk.”

Did you know that r/freefolk was able to raise over $100k for Emilia Clarke’s (Daenerys Targaryen) SameYou charity? 

Read the full story at The Wrap.

Photo: @iyasirhere / Twitter)

Hooray for wildlife conservation! The Svalbard Reindeer, which populate the Norwegian archipelago, are thriving contrary to the downward trend of endangered reindeer species across the northern hemisphere, says a study published in The Journal of Wildlife Management.

Since 1925, the Norwegian government and scientists have implemented crucial steps to preserve the Svalbard reindeer, the world’s smallest subspecies of caribou and the only living herbivore mammals residing in the northernmost parts of the earth. One successful measure was tighter restrictions on hunting, which almost led to their extinction. 

Mathilde Le Moullec (photo above) and her team at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology were able to document over 22,000 reindeer on Svalbard, twice the original estimate a decade ago!

Still, the recovery process for this once over-hunted species is a slow one, and it would take sustained efforts to protect these animals from new anthropogenic and environmental pressures like industrialization, landscape fragmentation, climate change, predation, and disease. 

Svalbard’s reindeer are resilient, however. They populated the islands long before humans set foot there in the 16th century, the researchers say. And today, they can be found in the harshest corners of Svalbard, Le Moullec says.

Svalbard reindeer are survivors, but this study shows the real impact humans can have on their population. More action on climate change needs to be taken now to secure their future, Le Moullec says.

As the Jurassic Park tagline goes, “Life, uh, finds a way.” But let’s not forget our role, no matter how small, in ensuring the protection of these animal species. 

Claire Cameron gives the full scoop at Inverse. 

Photo: Nancy Bazilchuk / Norwegian SciTech News

New evidence published in the journal Ecology Letters would suggest so. As temperatures start to rise, more researchers are beginning to discover the previously undocumented effects of climate change on species adapting to changes in their environment.

In 1978, the study’s lead author, Brian Weeks, noticed the staggering number of birds fatally colliding with buildings during spring and fall migration. He decided to start a study on such specimens, and the results were quite consistent across the broad range of migratory bird species involved. Over 40 years, Weeks and his team of volunteers and scientists collected and analyzed 70,716 specimens from 52 North American migratory bird species.

The evidence suggests warming temperatures caused the decrease in body size, which in turn caused the increase in wing length.

He says the birds most likely to survive migration were the ones with longer wingspans that compensated for their smaller bodies.

The scientists aren't exactly sure why warmer temperatures cause birds to shrink. One theory is that smaller animals are better at cooling off, losing body heat more quickly due to their larger surface-area-to-volume ratios.

These findings support the theory that climate change causes shrinking in certain species, as other studies since 2014 have shown similar conclusions. 

-via Kelsey Vlamis / BBC News

(Image Credit: Frank Cone / Pexels)

Dog lovers can't help but let out a tiny 'aww' when they watch this video of a dog enjoying a soak in a tub of water. I know I did. The sheer excitement of our furry, black friend cannot be contained as he flails about in the water with enough energy to harness a small town. Such random, internet gems remind me of the simple joys in life.

It's too bad my dog hates baths.

some say that he's still swimming.... from r/animalsdoingstuff

Check out the comments on the original thread. They're hilarious!

-via u/boxin857 / Reddit

The Hapsburgs or House of Austria was a royal dynasty in Europe often associated with having a prominent jawline called “Hapsburg Jaw,” as evident in their surviving portraits. Charles II (see photo above), dubbed the most inbred Hapsburg in history, had a slew of physical disabilities, which researchers suggested was a result of inheriting highly recessive, harmful genes from the then-common practice of marrying and having children between close relatives. 

It’s a popular notion that inbreeding results in physical deformity, however one researcher wanted to point out that inbreeding does not necessarily cause, but it exacerbates certain, already existing family traits. So, 100 years of inbreeding down the line, what was once a trait for a perfectly acceptable but still big chin from uncle Philip manifests in the next generation of royalty as an obviously dysmorphic lower face.

The prominent jawline feature is a complex trait, meaning it is a result of many different genes that are either dominant or recessive. 

You can find more historical Hapsburg portraits at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Prado (Madrid), or Kunsthistorisches Museum (Vienna). 

For the full story, head over to Inverse.

(Image Credit: Juan de Miranda Carreno / Wikimedia Commons)

Sébastien Matos piques our curiosity with a digital exhibit where you can follow nearly four decades of change in the scrollbar design from the classic 1981 Xerox Star to the minimalist Windows 10 in 2015. Matos created it using CSS and Javascript during a course under ECAL, a Swiss university of art and design located in Renens. 

According to his GitHub profile (which is where you can download a copy of the file for free),

Some iconic scrollbars recreated as faithfully as possible.

The interactive aspect has been particularly well looked after.

Which one is your favorite?

Check out the complete Evolution of the Scrollbar here!

(Image Credit: Anna Selezniova and Andy Barnov / Martian Chronicles)

An industrial dairy company in Victoria, Australia, has started selling glass milk bottles, with some predicting a return to the practice of friendly neighborhood milkmen making door-to-door deliveries --a business that was once replaced (at least in south-west Victoria) by local supermarkets and stores as a more viable option for milk-consumers. 

Local parliament has likewise raised environmental concerns in response to an alarming recycling crisis by suggesting a reintroduction to washable and reusable milk bottles to reduce one-time plastic usage. 

Still, others, like Ian Olmstead from Daily Australia, believe that more research is needed to assess the impact and costs of reusing glass bottles to the environmental, manufacturing, and economic operations involved. 

Olmstead comments,

"reusable milk bottle systems certainly have a place in the market, particularly for smaller boutique processors."

But he said shifting the mass milk market to reusable bottles is "a very different proposition."

-via ABC News

Image Credit: Pixabay / Pexels

For one-night only, Three Shining Swords took the stage at the Meguro Persimmon Hall in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward on November 28 for an unforgettable night of cultural storytelling. A unique adaptation of George Lucas’s 1977 brainchild, this Star Wars kabuki play focused on the franchise’s latest episodes, The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, and stars one of Japan’s most renowned kabuki actors, Ichikawa Ebizo, as Kylo Ren. 

While it caters to Japanese audiences by employing the traditional good-vs-evil theme and kabuki instrumental accompaniment, this play also assigns Japanese variants to the original character names, such as Kairennosuke 魁連之助 (Kylo Ren), Ruku 琉空 (Luke), Reian 澪殷 (Leia), Hanzo 半蔵 (Han Solo), Reina 麗那 (Rey), and Sunokaku 敷能角 (Snoke). 

You can watch the full video of the play below:

Image Credit: Casey Baseel / SoraNews24

View the full story over at SoraNews24

A woman who was briefly arrested and fined a total of $420 for civil offenses back in 2009 has been granted $20,000 by the Supreme Court of Canada. According to reports, Bela Kosoian was at the Montmorency Metro station when a police officer instructed her to “hold the [escalator] handrail” to which she then “refused to comply and declined to identify herself when asked.”

Several years after being acquitted, filing a $45,000 lawsuit, and having her appeals rejected twice, Kosoian was served the Court verdict that she was not at fault because it was her right to refuse to comply to an unlawful order. 

Half of the cost is to be shouldered each by The Société de transport de Montréal, which operates the Metro station, and by the police officer, according to the Court order. 

For the full story, read the full article over at CBC.

 Image Credit: Nikolas Kysela / Pexels

Ah, nature’s call... it happens to the best of us, even the blue whale, the world’s largest animal! From an aerial view, a blue whale can be seen leaving a trail of green-tinged defecation across the stark blue ocean. Such unique documentation can help researchers better understand what little is known about these magnificent mammals, including their migratory behavior and food supply, as well as the health of the marine habitat.

Ian Weisse and Rodney Peterson used drones to capture different instances of defecating blue whales migrating southward along the West Australian coastline.

“A blue whale can excrete up to 200 litres of poo in one bowel movement,” according to West Australian Centre for Whale Research researcher Curt Jenner. As for the poo itself, its smell is compared to that of a dog, with the texture of bread crumbs and the appearance of ping pong balls.

Original link

Image Credit: Ian Weisse / ABC News

Fans of “Finding Nemo” might be anticipating yet another sequel, but a recent study by an international team of researchers revealed the real-life drama surrounding the future of anemones and their resident clownfishes. The French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and colleagues published their study in the journal Ecology Letters on Nov. 27, 2019, suggesting that anemone fish “don’t have the genetic capacity to adapt to rapid changes in their environment.”

More than a decade ago, the researchers began studying clownfish in the biodiversity-rich Kimbe Bay lagoons in Papua New Guinea, and through a genetic analysis of the population’s DNA, they were able to measure the fishes’ potential to adapt and reproduce in the midst of a changing habitat. What they found was a link between high-quality habits and the longevity of large clownfish families, instead of shared genes. 

According to WHOI biologist Simon Thorrold, a coauthor of the paper,

The biggest surprise to us was also the most troubling: conservation efforts cannot rely on genetic adaptation to protect clownfish from the effects of climate change. It seems that Nemo won't be able to save himself.

Read the full story at Eureka Alert.

Image credit: George Becker / Pexels