Our National Forecast today is hosted by Meteorologist @smartinWX and a special guest. Unfortunately, the assistant was found sleeping on the job. We apologize for the inconvenience. #IBW2018 #babywearing #weather #meteorologist pic.twitter.com/4OviWHGlLV

— Praedictix Weather (@Praedictix) October 5, 2018

Meteorologist Susie Martin brought her napping toddler to help her do the national weather forecast.

From Good Morning America:

 "I wanted to promote this wonderful tool that's helped me as a mom and the bonding experience between mother and son," Martin of Minnesota, told "Good Morning America." "I suppose it's a way for the baby to be comforted. It was nice for me personally because I could multitask while comforting my child."

Buttons, dials and gauges, oh my!

If you love looking at control panels, don't miss this Control Panel group over at Flickr, with over 2,000 photos of things with buttons, switches, gauges and dials - both vintage and modern.

I'd spend hours pushing all those buttons!

The Soviet sanatorium in the Georgian town of Tskaltubo was all the rage during the days of the Soviet Union, as visitors believed that the region's water had healing properties.

But after the Iron Curtain fell, the sanatorium was abandoned and left in ruins ... until 1992 when thousands of people fleeing from war sought shelter there. Today, 25 years and several generations later, hundreds of displaced people still living in the ruins of the Tskaltubo sanatorium.

In his gorgeously haunting series Sanatorium, photographer Ryan Koopmans documented the crumbling buildings and the people who still call them home.

When you find something that works, then it's natural that you'd want to do it again and again. Bank robbery is no different, it appears.

When police arrested Christopher Hatting for robbing a Wells Fargo branch in Anchorage, Alaska, in April 2018, they discovered that he had also robbed the same bank back twice!

Before the robbery on July 7, Hatting reportedly used makeup and put cotton balls in his cheeks in an attempt to disguise himself.

Hatting also reappeared at the same Wells Fargo on April 16, 2018, entering the same branch while wearing a mask and holding what appeared to be a pistol.

To help celebrate WorldPride 2019 in New York City, Virgin Atlantic has scheduled its first Pride Flight, staffed entirely by LGBT pilots and cabin crew.

From CNN:

The one-off flight is as much a celebration of queer culture as it is a mode of transport. Broadway star Tituss Burgess, known for his role in Netflix show "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," will oversee proceedings and the six-hour flight will be packed full of live performances and appearances from special guests.

Once you're on board, it'll be a blast -- entertainment will include a DJ, Judy Garland singalong, on-board speed dating and Drag Queen Bingo.

Photo: Virgin Atlantic

"Rodents, including squirrels, are not allowed on Frontier flights": Police remove woman from plane after she tried to bring a squirrel on board, claiming it was an emotional support animal. https://t.co/R6OsYYuqYW pic.twitter.com/oLCYnz3NlW

— ABC News (@ABC) October 10, 2018

Flying squirrels don't get their names from flying on a plane, I suppose.

A female passenger noted that she was bringing an emotional support animal on a Frontier Airlines flight out of Orlando, Florida, when she reserved the flight but the airplane crew were surprised when they learned that the animal was actually a squirrel!

Apparently, that's a no-no according to Frontier's policy but the woman refused to exit, so they had to deplane everyone and call the police to remove her.

She should've brought a turkey.

Forget tire swings! This is what all the cool kids swing on.

Eric Howeler and Meejin Yoon of the Boston-based Howeler+Yoon Architecture created a set of oval swings that glow when in use.

Titled "Swing Time," the temporary art installation include 20 illuminated ring-shaped swings:

LED lighting within the swing is controlled by a custom micro-controller, signaling the swing's activity level. An internal accelerometer measures the acceleration forces of the swing. When forces are static and the swings are not in use, they emit a soft, white light that illuminates the area. When the swings are in motion, the micro-controller switches the light from white to purple, creating a more colorful glowing effect.

via CollabCubed

Photos: John Horner

Surely you've seen them before: well-trodden paths that cut through the lawn, trampling the grass. Often these paths are actually mere steps away from a paved sidewalk or road.

But perhaps you don't know that there's a name for this phenomenon: desire path.

Many times, landscapers tried to block the path to prevent people from using it, but there's a growing appreciation that desire path is actually a useful feedback from users in response to paved paths designed in absence of any user input.

So, perhaps the better response is simply to wait for desire paths to be established, then pave those instead.

Photo: u/Dispine51

Archaeologists working at a cave in southern Poland have discovered hominid bones that turned out to the oldest in the country. The source of the bones is a bit surprising, as described by The First News:

The discovery of finger bones from the hand of a Neanderthal child that died roughly 115,000 years ago are more than twice as old as the previous oldest find of hominid bones in the area.

The bones show signs of digestion, apparently by a large bird, archaeologists say.

The Neanderthal child, aged five to seven years old, may have been attacked and killed by a bird of prey or a scavenger may have chewed its hand after death.

Photo: Jacek Bednarczyk

The student union of The University of Manchester in England has just banned clapping. Instead, they will encourage fellow students to use "jazz hands" instead:

According to the student newspaper, Mancunion, they will use the British Sign Language alternative of jazz hands so that clapping is more inclusive.

They wrote: ‘It was argued that the loud noise of traditional clapping and whooping pose an issue to students with anxiety or sensory issues. BSL (British Sign Language) clapping – or, jazz hands – would be a more inclusive form of expression.’ Sara Khan, liberation and access officer, put the motion forward in a bid to ‘encourage student groups and societies to do the same, and to include BSL clapping as part of inclusion training.’

Let's face it, ladies - most guys are just not into shopping.

So why drag your man kicking and screaming to the mall when you can rent an attractive and supportive boyfriend to accompany you while shopping?

That's what one mall in China is doing:

What started as a clever promotion for March 8th, International Women’s Day, has apparently become a year-long strategy to attract female shoppers. Walking through mall galleries in Chinese cities like Hebei or Foshan, you’re likely to spot young, dapper men displayed in giant, doll box-like frames decorated with hearts. They are called ‘shopping boyfriends’ and they can be rented by the hour by lonely female shoppers looking for company. Rates start as low as 1 yuan ($0.15) per hour, up to 2 yuan ($0.30) in some shopping malls.

No, sadly it wasn't UFO.

People near Los Angeles, California, got a neat show in the night's sky, courtesy of SpaceX. The company launched the SAOCOM 1A Earth observation satellite for Argentina from the Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Image: @MayorofLA

Who says that a war has got to be fraught with blood and violence? One of the longest (and strangest) wars in history was between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly. It lasted 335 years (from 1651 to 1986) without a single shot being fired!

Photo: Isles of Scilly as taken by the crew of the International Space Station/NASA

If you're looking for an Indiana Jones-style of adventure, then this cave in Belize is just the place to visit. The Actun Tunichil Muknal (the Cave of the Crystal Sepulchre or also known as the ATM Cave) contains 1000-year-old skeletal remains, thought to be human sacrifices.

The most famous of the remains is "The Crystal Maiden" above, the skeleton of an adolescent girl, whose bones have calcified to a have a sparkling, crystal-like appearance.

It's not easy to reach the Crystal Maiden - to get there, one has to trek through a jungle, swim into the cave, then wade up the cavern river for more than half a mile. The Cave of the Crystal Sepulchre is definitely not for the faint of heart!

Photo: Peter Andersen

This giant sculpture of a baby in a womb, carved on a side of a hill on the side of a road, is located near the town of Santo Domingo in Colombia. It's created in 2012 by South American artist Dubian Monsalve, who titled it "Pregnant Mountain."

From LifeSite News:

The artist, who used rudimentary tools to complete his work, explained that doing so was a way to "tell them [farmers from the area] not to abandon their land and to not abandon their beliefs, not abandon their identity as Christians and as farmers who feed this country."

"Soil has been very important to me as a sculptor," he continued. "It contains many elements and I used it to talk about life, because Earth itself gives life."

(Photo: Madeleine Emerald/Twitter)