Paul’s mother was rather dolled up for a rare night out. As this kind of thing happens only rarely, his dad did not waste any time and immediately prepared the camera for his mother. Paul’s younger brother, however, is in the way of her shot, and she didn’t want anyone to ruin her photo op. And so, she tried to put her son away from the frame, resulting in this awkward shot.

Image via Awkward Family Photos

Northampton, England — Police Sergeant Scott Renwick’s day wasn’t off to a great start when he accidentally bound himself with his own handcuffs. Thankfully, the Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service were quick to respond, using metal cutters to break the cuffs and free Renwick.

"Well that wasn't a good start to the day. Thanks to @northantsfire for cutting me out of some broken cuffs. #NotFunny. I would have laughed too!!" Renwick tweeted.

It’s funny and amazing at the same time when two everyday heroes help each other, even in little moments like this one. Though I really wonder how the sergeant got himself into that situation.

(Image Credit: @CoreNorpol/ Twitter)

We’ve all experienced just minding our own business, when suddenly, we get this urge to eat a certain food.

A food craving can be described as an intense desire for a specific food, and this desire can seem uncontrollable at times. The person experiencing the craving may be left feeling unsatisfied until they experience that particular food or taste.

Is there a way to stop this desire? It seems there is, but it involves switching off some connections in our brains.

This could be groundbreaking research in terms of advancing the treatments of certain eating disorders.

More details about this over at Big Think.

(Image Credit: stevepb/ Pixabay)

Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar is one of the best short stories that a child can read. A child reading this doesn’t just learn some numbers and the days of the week. He also learns something that he might benefit from for the rest of his life — the mastery of constructing colorful sentences.

So, here’s the whole point of knowing how to grammar: we can shape it to express precise meaning.

A child with a broad repertoire of grammatical knowledge can skilfully choose how to phrase what they want to say. It is useful to know how adverbial phrases (such as “with its legs”) add specific detail to verbs to show when, where, how, or why (“the caterpillar felt the leaf with its legs”), or how repeated clause structures attract attention to themselves.

Brett Healy gives us tips on how to teach grammar to our children. See his tips over at The Conversation.

(Image Credit: PDPics/ Pixabay)

When it comes to packing for a trip that will last for a few days, it is always better to be safe than sorry. This is why we pack more than what we usually use on a normal day, so that we’ll be prepared when something unexpected happens.

If you’ve overpacked before, then you might find these posts, which Bored Panda collected, to be relatable.

Bored Panda [also] wanted to learn more about overpacking, so we reached out to professional organizer Janine Adams who is the creator of Peace of Mind Organizing.

See the interview, as well as the tweets, over at the site.

Which post relates to you the most?

(Image Credit: Bored Panda)

We’ve always been told that brushing alone is not enough, and that we must floss as well. Perhaps the reason why people promote flossing that much is not because it keeps the mouth healthy, but because it can help remove plagues.

Image via Engrish.com

After getting “a little scrappy” with a man who suddenly mentioned his Asian wife as a way to disagree with her in a conversation, international relations researcher Rui Zhong decided that she’s had enough.

"I was doodling around on my tablet and was like, you know, I'm really sick of people using Asian wives as some kind of credential," Zhong said.

And so, she wrote these words.

"I drew it out, slapped it on one of those T-shirt websites, and I guess people sort of connected with that kind of feeling." By July, Zhong's shirt was real, sold through her store Cancel Couture, and boosts from popular figures in Asian Twitter had earned it a level of viral fame.

Lots of people tweeted about Zhong’s shirt. Those tweets became viral, and this shocked Zhong.

"I made this as a joke—what is happening?"

The "wife guy" is well-known: a man who "defines himself through a kind of overreaction to being married," the New York Times's Amanda Hess wrote last summer, necessitated by the year's establishment of the "cliff wife guy," the "elf wife guy," and the "fake wife guy."…

But as Zhong's shirt and the response to it have articulated, there's a very particular kind of wife guy well-known to people of Asian descent, if not yet the rest of the world: the "Asian wife guy," whose outward identity is formed not on his own culture but on his wife's (or his girlfriend's or his former partner's). Through that relationship, the "Asian wife guy" absorbs elements of his wife's culture, often reimagining himself as an authority on that culture.

For Asians, this isn’t just some joke t-shirt — it’s a statement against the objectification of Asian women.

More about this over at Vice.com.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: @rzhongnotes/ Twitter)

If you’ve ever played with a tape measure before when you were a kid, then you know how fascinating it is to watch the metal ruler go back quickly in its default place. But it’s not just kids who find this mechanism fascinating; scientists do, too. In fact, they were so fascinated and inspired by this that they created this chameleon-like robot that can snatch objects quickly from a distance.

Snatcher, as the robot’s called, wasn’t just inspired by tape measures. If you look closely the tongue part that shoots out and retracts is the metal ruler salvaged from an actual tape measure because of its ability to neatly roll up very quickly. The rest of the robo-chameleon weighs in at less than 120 grams and features a custom wind-up spring-powered mechanism with a special clutch that can quickly alternate between powering a gear that extends the long metal tongue and a gear that retracts it.

The results are analogous to how a chameleon’s tongue works, although Mother Nature’s approach is more refined and far more accurate than this prototype.

These scientists state believe that this device could be useful for people who have physical disabilities. It still has lots of room for improvement, however.

The simple hook on the end of the tongue the prototype uses isn’t necessarily ideal for this purpose as objects can be easily dropped. But the researchers are looking into upgrading it with a gripper that would securely close once making contact with a target, maintaining its grasp until fully retracted.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: IEEE Spectrum/ Gizmodo)

Transform your boring spreadsheets into cool apps with this tool created by a group of former Microsoft employees. With this tool, even those who have no programming knowledge can create apps, as this tool does not require that.

Their startup, Glide, lets you turn any Google Sheets spreadsheet into a real mobile app with absolutely no coding and shockingly little effort. Saying you don’t need any programming knowledge is almost an understatement. This thing is deliberately designed for anyone—and I do mean anyone—to use.

“We spent six years watching the wealthiest companies in the world fail to make good apps,” says Glide CEO and cofounder David Siegel. “We thought, ‘Can we make a much simpler approach to this whole phenomenon—of making an app, getting data into it, improving it, and sharing it?'”

The answer to that question was a clear yes. With this tool,…

All you do is select an existing spreadsheet from your Google Sheets account—or even easier yet, start a new sheet using one of Glide’s ready-to-roll templates—and then use the website’s visual editing tool to determine where different rows of data should go and how they’ll be presented.

Learn more details about this tool, and how to access it, over at Fast Company.

(Image Credit: Fast Company)

Barbara Ketcham Wheaton always had a passion for cooking, and so when Julia Child and her husband handed Wheaton the keys to their house in the 1960s, she was thrilled. She had just been given the chance to explore Child’s collection of historical cookbooks, and she embraced that opportunity.

Now an honorary curator of Harvard University’s Schlesinger Library Culinary Collection, Wheaton was then in her early 30s, with young children at home. She had left an art history PhD program a few years before to marry historian Bob Wheaton, but she still had a passion for the past. When she discovered her love of cooking, and her neighbor’s trove of unique books, Wheaton wondered: What if she turned the same methodology she had learned in art-history classes to a more humble text—the cookbook?

Now, after 50 years, the public can now enjoy the fruits of Wheaton’s work in the form of The Sifter, an online database made by Wheaton, her children, and a team of scholars.

Part Wikipedia-style crowd-sourced database and part meticulous bibliography, The Sifter is a catalogue of more than a thousand years of European and U.S. cookbooks, from the medieval Latin De Re Culinaria, published in 800, to The Romance of Candy, a 1938 treatise on British sweets.

Know more about this database, as well as the history of food studies, over at Atlas Obscura.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Paying homage to the Volkswagen Beetle Type 1 (also called the “bug”), Aldekas Studio reveals this concept of a retro-styled, custom-framed mini-kart made from the fenders of the aforementioned car.

Featuring an olive green look, the Bugkart Wasowski by Aldekas Studio takes the Volkswagen beetle’s fenders, headlights and turn signals and transforms them into a kart that features the car’s distinctive round shape. The red kart frame contrasts with the green of the fender, adding charm to the kart as well. A round, tall handlebar acts as the steering system while the original chrome side mirrors add to the classic look. Regarding the engine and transmission, there’s not enough info as here we’re only seeing the renderings.

The result is this weird-looking mini-kart.

Would you ride one if given the chance?

(Image Credit: Aldekas Studio/ DesignBoom)

Everyone of us is connected to Mother Nature. Artist Wang Ruilin showcases this statement through his copper-and-paint sculptures of animals in states of repose, with bits of nature, such as polar ice caps and mountainous ridges, imprinted on their bodies. The results are majestic pieces of art.

… the creatures [evoke] Earth’s most sublime features through surreal placements.

See more of the artist’s sculpture over at Colossal, and get some glimpses into his processes over at Behance and Instagram.

(Image Credit: Wang Ruilin/ Colossal)

Couples always look forward to Friday nights and weekends, as they get to rest from work, and they can spend their time together late at night without having to worry about waking up early.

Sleeping in has been in Japan’s culture ever since the ancient times. Back then, however, there weren’t alarm clocks which you can just turn off whenever you like. Instead, there were roosters which crow naturally at dawn. And so, if couples want to sleep in and have fun during the night without being disturbed by the rooster’s crow so early in the morning, they attempt to get the chicken drunk with sake. This scene is depicted in Harunobu Suzuki’s print titled Niwatori to Danjo (“a rooster and a couple”).

And judging by the look on it’s face, the rooster may have caught on the the couple’s plan. This print, along with many others, is part of a large Ukiyo-e exhibition in Tokyo that’s going on now through September 22, 2020.

(Image Credit: Harunobu Suzuki/ Spoon & Tamago)

As we struggle during these trying times, it is no surprise that we experience higher levels of stress. With that being the case, what could help in lowering our stress levels?

Some say that food could help us in lowering our stress levels.

Unfortunately, a lot of these are just puff pieces with little to no scientific basis. Sometimes, however, journalists interview actual scientists about their research. The problem is that researchers often use the word "stress" to mean something very different than what the general population thinks of as stress—and that often leads to confusion.

In this article, Monica Reinagel clarifies that there are two types of stress: physiological and psychological. She also explores the relationship of refined carbs, as well as probiotics, on those two types. In doing so, she separates the facts from fiction.

Learn more about the ways to reduce your stress levels over at QDT.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Myriams-Fotos/ Pixabay)

Sweeping around billions of stars which are highlighted by the brightest and the bluest, this galaxy is truly a magnificent sight to behold, worthy of being designated as a grand design spiral galaxy. Just make sure that you don’t approach the center of the spiral, as what is found there is a supermassive black hole, which devours stars and gas, not to mention the hot plasma that surrounds it.

The central violent activity gives it the designation of a Seyfert galaxy. Together, this beauty and beast are cataloged as NGC 6814 and have been appearing together toward the constellation of the Eagle (Aquila) for roughly the past billion years.

Awesome!

(Image Credit: ESA/ Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt)