5 minutes into a hike with a 3 year old. And obviously her sister was doing just fine in the pack. pic.twitter.com/BcWjEqGa79

— Rick Crawford (@Rickcrawford63) May 9, 2022

Lucy Huber posted a Tweet musing on the plans of parents-to-be. Really, babies and toddlers are small, and you can just carry them around, right? Experienced parents not only laugh at those plans, they all have stories that illustrate the many ways young children can complicate even the simplest tasks.  

My oldest is 32 and I STILL remember trying to get ready for that first appointment

— Kat H😷 (@katwoman_81) May 10, 2022

You can read the whole thread at Twitter (it's still growing), or read a roundup of the 30 best tales at Bored Panda. The comments there have some great stories, too.

We took our 5-year old on a hike, and she did want to go...complaining and complaining. Then she found a nickle on the trail...and then a dime...another nickle! There was no stopping her. We had a nice 30-minute hike, and it cost me less than $2.50.

Now, that's a story worth passing along!

“I have no idea how to fly the airplane.” Pilot of small plane passes out while flying off the coast of Florida. Passenger, who had never piloted a plane before, successfully lands it after air traffic controller Robert Morgan talks him through the procedure. pic.twitter.com/vDxWSgsPvz

— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) May 11, 2022

An airplane passenger lived through a rare experience, but a common nightmare, and lived to tell about it. A single-engine Cessna 208 was heading to Florida from the Bahamas when the pilot went incoherent, and then went unconscious. None of the passengers had ever flown a plane, but one had seen it done before, so he took to the radio for help. Air Traffic Controller Robert Morgan, who is also a certified flight instructor, pulled up a manual on the Cessna and talked the yet-unnamed passenger through the process of landing the plane at Palm Beach International Airport!



The plane landed successfully, allowing everyone to finally breathe again. We don't yet have word on the condition of the pilot. -via Boing Boing

Update: The pilot had suffered an aortic dissection, a catastrophic cardiac event. He was rushed to a hospital, underwent surgery, and is recovering now!

Various people have been suspicious of coffee ever since its stimulant effects were discovered in Ethiopia. Anything that made you feel this good has to be bad for you, right? But study after study shows that coffee used in moderation is okay, and can even help prevent a second heart attack. In the same paper, we learn about King Gustav III of Sweden. He reigned in the late 18th century, and was convinced that coffee drinking would shorten one's life. In addition to banning the beverage, he ordered a scientific experiment to show coffee's effects on lifespan.

The experiment used two subjects who were identical twins. This was a genius move, as twin studies weren't a thing yet, but it is still a tiny sample and wouldn't really tell us much. These twins had both been convicted of murder, but were offered a life sentence instead of execution in order to carry out the experiment. One was ordered to drink three pots of coffee every day for the rest of his life. The other would drink tea instead.

So how did the experiment turn out? Both men outlived the doctor who was supervising the experiment. They also outlived his assistant, who took over. And they outlived King Gustav. Finally, one of the twins died at age 83, but it was the tea drinker! One has to wonder if the coffee drinker kept drinking three pots a day after everyone else involved in the experiment died, but that's one thing we don't know.   

(Image credit: Julius Schorzman)

Years ago, ZeFrank used to make videos about all kinds of subjects, but he has found his niche in the world as a 21st-century David Attenborough, filling us in on facts about the world's animals that we don't get to see very often. Here he's got a short but rather interesting little video about a platypus that you should watch before you read the spoiler below.

Show spoiler

"Finding things" in this context is not about finding a job, or finding your true love. It's about finding things you have lost, like your car keys or the Scotch tape. You might start your search with a prayer to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things. Or you could start by swearing. Professor Solomon has worked out a system for finding things, based on experience, that starts with neither of those steps. Many of them don't even involve looking, because frantically searching only leads to frustration.  

Each of the 12 principles have their own link. Here's the index, but each principle has a link to the next one. It's important to start with the first one and read in order. By the time you get to the 13th (yes, there are really 13), you should have found your item. -via Metafilter, where you'll find further discussion on lost objects.

Bob Mortimer is a storytelling legend. In this episode of the British comedy game show Would I Lie to You? he tells how he keeps a toaster by his bed. The panel has to determine whether it's true or not, so they interrogate him as to the exact procedure involved and the reasons why he does this. Yes, there's also a teakettle. Mortimer makes his morning scenario perfectly plausible, as anyone with several children will understand. You don't want to wake them up until you have to! But in explaining his morning routine, he manages to keep us all in stitches. When he refuses to say how many children he has, you get the impression he can't really remember, but doesn't want to admit it. Commenters who are familiar with Mortimer's humor also recommend we check out the episode called Theft and Shubbery. -via reddit

When the movie Soylent Green came out in 1973, it predicted that by the year 2022, we'd be eating super processed food squares made from people. Oops, spoilers. Now that it's 2022, does anyone have an idea of what the food of the future will be? Let's hope it's not soylent green. But somehow we will have to feed the 9.8 billion people the earth may hold by 2050, and that won't be easy as our current agricultural practices are being affected by climate change.

Experts are looking at lab-grown meat produced from stem cells, ovens that resemble 3D printers to make our dishes for us, hydroponic crops, various foods made from insects, coffee made from all kinds of plants, dairy-free cheese, and innovations that allow us to grow locally what we now import. The future may hold a lot more food innovations you can read about at bon appetit. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: NASA/Bill Stafford)

Those who are responsible for archaeological sites, both historic and prehistoric, are faced with a dilemma. How do you balance historic preservation with teaching people that history? It's like folks who live near a tourist attraction trying to balance the money tourists bring in with the damage they cause. But that's something you can't really balance. Even restricted tourism will damage fragile ancient artifacts over enough time. But what good are the artifacts if we can't see them? France came up with a workaround scheme to protect Chauvet cave and its ancient paintings by building Grotte Chauvet 2 Ardèche. Tour guide Benjamin Jutz give us a lovely explanation of the value of the paintings in telling us about the people who first made them 30,000 years ago. Tom Scott went there to show us because we can't afford to go to the south of France. Maybe next year. Or in another 30,000 years, by which time archaeologists will not be able to tell the difference.

The US Patent Office has seen a million gadgets designed to generate power, but this one seems like a stretch. 3M filed a patent for a safety harness that will generate electricity when a worker falls from a dangerous height, like from a scaffolding. Mind you, this is not some crank in his garage, it's 3M, and this wasn't from the distant past. The patent was filed in 2016! It may seem a bit gruesome to reap power from a falling worker, but does it even happen often enough to justify such a device?

The answer is in the fine print. The purpose of the generator is not to produce cheap power, but to produce enough to alert authorities of the fall, which it automatically does. The device is ready to go when disaster strikes, bypassing batteries that may have run down exactly because such falls are rare. The patent also serves as a warning to look beyond the headlines for the real story.  -via Weird Universe

In William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies, a group of young boys were stranded without adult supervision and eventually descended into chaos and murder. In 2007, CBS attempted to duplicate that excitement with a reality TV series based on the same idea. Kid Nation was supposedly an experiment to see if children left to their own devices could form a functioning community. Forty children between the ages of eight and 15 were brought to a movie set that recreated an Old West town and let loose to do their thing.

However, they weren't exactly free to do as they pleased. Kid Nation was actually a game show, in which the kids were sorted into four teams, and rewards were given to those who were the most useful to the group. Parents were banned from the set, but there were adults around: the film crew and a team of child psychologists.

The show was a disaster. The "reality" for the kids was a lot harder than they anticipated. They were free to quit, but felt pressured to stay and collect rewards. Some were injured during the production. The audience saw it as child abuse. The show only lasted one season. But contrary to Lord of the Flies, the best part of the whole experience was how well the children did with what they had to work with. Read what happened on Kid Nation at Messy Nessy Chic.

Physical pain is no fun, but it has a biological purpose. Steven Pete has congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP), which means he hasn't felt pain in his 41 years of life. While he couldn't get a genetic test that pinpointed his condition until 2012, his parents and doctor knew when he was only six months old and chewed the tip of his tongue off. In childhood, he could break bones and not know until things got really bad, because he didn't seek help in the absence of pain. Pete's brother had the same condition, and their parents had to create workarounds to keep the boys from injuring themselves to death. As an adult, he must closely monitor his activities to know when he's had enough, or his body will collapse from exertion. Every bump and fall must be closely examined.  

While Pete feels no physical pain, there has been plenty of psychological pain. Doctors predicting his early death didn't help, and the constant workarounds for possible illness and injury are draining. Pete's brother committed suicide some years ago. Pete tells the story of his life without the warning signal of pain at Mel magazine.

Each person's genome is a complex record of a very long family tree. The genome of one person won't tell the whole story, but those of just a few individuals can reveal ancient secrets. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, there were at least four hominid species that appeared to freely interbreed (which makes us wonder about the very definition of "species"). There were modern humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and an unidentified "archaic human ancestor."  A study of the genomes of two Neanderthals, one Denisovan, and four modern humans reveal that genes flowed between these species, indicating that whenever groups overlapped in location, they had sex with each other.

The "archaic human ancestor" may even have been Homo erectus. That species left Africa earlier than the others, and survived until around 117,000 years ago. Could they have been responsible for the archaic DNA? The hominid species split around a million years ago, but apparently retained their ability to interbreed. The archaic DNA is most prevalent in Denisovans, but also in modern humans. Knowing what we do about the survival and geographic migration of ancient hominids, it is possible that Homo erectus mated with both Denisovans and modern humans. Read more about the latest study in ancient hominid DNA at Inverse. -via Strange Company

Why do Americans eat bacon or sausage and drink orange juice for breakfast? Why do we shave our armpits? Why did we ever buy a tie for Fathers Day? So many of the everyday rituals we take for granted aren't because of tradition, but because someone wanted to sell us something. While some of these schemes are pretty well known, at least to Neatorama readers, others may surprise you. You know how churches want to put up a plaque or a stone monument with the ten commandments at government buildings? You might have wondered why they chose that instead of, say, the Sermon on the Mount, or John 3:16. That started with Cecil B. DeMille.  

People are pretty protective over the monuments to the Ten Commandments that appear on government property across the country considering they didn’t exist until Cecil B. DeMille needed to promote a movie. The Fraternal Order of Eagles had wanted to put them up for some time, but they couldn’t raise the funds until they teamed up with the director, who paid for hundreds of monuments modeled after the tablets in his 1956 movie. He even sent Charlton Heston out to the unveiling ceremonies.

Find out about other "traditions" that started out as marketing stunts in a list at Cracked.

As we slip into Mother's Day on Sunday, let's listen to a soundtrack for the holiday (and if you need one, it's reminder). You might be surprised at how many pop songs mention Mom, Mommy, Mama, or Mother. Or maybe not, since we all had one at one time or another and a mention of your mother makes a song all the more relatable. No, they aren't all rainbows and roses. Science comedian Brian Malow put together clips from 70 songs from more than 50 artists for a medley that will put you in the mood to pay tribute to Mom, as you should. If your mother is not available, I'll be your mother.* There's a list of the songs at the YouTube page.   -via Boing Boing

*Offer good Sunday, May 8 only.     

The Kentucky Derby will take place tomorrow in Louisville, Kentucky. The horses in the lineup have some unusual names, like Epicenter, Cyberknife, Tiz the Bomb, Zozos, and Summer is Tomorrow. Why do racehorses have such odd names? Mainly because there are so many of them. You can't give a racehorse the same name as a previous horse, sometimes for years, sometimes forever. And names have to be approved by the governing body.

There are rules for naming horses. The Jockey Club has a set of rules for thoroughbreds, and the American Quarter Horse Registry has different rules, which are spelled out at Horse Racing Sense. They categorize names that come from the horse's lineage, pop culture references, traditional names, horses named after a person, and humorous names. The humorous names are the ones we recall best. Some have great stories behind them. Some try to push the envelope to see what they can get away with.

There are herds of racehorses with pun names, but I really like those that are designed to be funny when the track announcer uses them. Recall the race between My Wife Knows Everything and The Wife Doesn't Know. Or ARRRRRRRRRR! And of course, the unforgettable Hoof Hearted.

-via Mental Floss

(Image credit: Velo Steve)