Humans, and many other animals, evolved to seek out and enjoy anything sweet, because the sugars those foods contain provided us with much-needed calories and energy. That's a useful adaptation because in the natural world, sugar is relatively rare and comes in fruits and other plants that also provide us with other nutrients. But humans found a way to process sugar into its purest form, and we went wild for it. That's not healthy, but it is lucrative. The money to be made in sugar production led to some shady, deceptive, and downright cruel episodes in history. Even today, when we know that sugar is bad for us, it's hard to get away from it, even by giving up candy, soda, and sweet treats. Food products that aren't even supposed to be sweet contain sugar, and it's difficult to find alternatives without it. That's because those who profit from those products know we are evolutionarily wired to prefer anything with sugar in it.

To call Nims Purja an accomplished mountain climber would be a severe understatement. In 2019, he climbed all 14 of the world's 8,000-meter (26,000 feet) and above peaks in six months and six days- a speedrun never even considered before. In 2021, he led the first successful expedition up K2 in winter- without bottled oxygen. He's been to the top of Everest a half-dozen times. Purja's feats were chronicled in his book Beyond Possible and in the Netflix documentary 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible.  

Purja has been criticized for being a dedicated self-promoter, a social media influencer who relies on simplistic motivational aphorisms to promote his brand. But Purja's most personal business venture is based on a novel but welcome innovation: his Himalayan climbing guide company, Elite Exped, employs and partners with Nepalese Sherpas and pays them at least as much as Western mountain guides are paid, making the most skilled guides into rich men. Read a profile of Nim Purja, known as Nimsdai, and how he turned the sport and business of extreme mountain climbing on its head at GQ. -via Digg

"Your Horoscope for Today" was an song from Weird Al Yankovic's 1999 album Running With Scissors that was never released as a single. You probably remember that album best for the song "The Saga Begins," which told the story of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. Augenblick Studios, who worked with Yankovic on several previous projects, gives "Your Horoscope for Today" a new animated video that Yankovic released this week. The video makes the fast-paced song much easier to follow, even if the predictions under your star sign are pretty dismal. But that's just yours; everyone else's horoscope is pretty darn funny. Honestly, I never imagined Ernest Borgnine ever looked like that naked. But I can relate to playing an endless game of whack-a-mole all day long.  -via Geeks Are Sexy

It's a well-known stereotype: a man going through a midlife crisis often buys a sports car, preferably an expensive one. We've also heard the joke that a fast car (or a big truck, in some circles) means the driver is compensating for something. Those stereotypes must have inspired the design of an experiment by four British scientists. The subjects were 400 men between the ages of 18 and 74, who were told this would be a test about recalling facts and details. They manipulated them into thinking their penis is either larger or smaller than average, by telling the men, among other "facts," a false statistic for the average penis size, which no man can resist comparing to their own. Yes, it's true that there may have been outliers among the subjects, but the false information would still affect their relative ranking of their own size. Afterward, they asked each man how much they would like to own a sports car, among other consumer products.

The study, available as a preprint, found that men rated sports cars as more desirable when they were made to feel like they had a small penis. Furthermore, the effect was more pronounced if the subject was over 30 years old. Other "facts" that were meant to raise or lower the subjects' self-esteem had no effect on the desire for sports cars, or any of the other consumer goods they were asked about. The only significant correlation they found was between perceived penis size and sports cars. Alrighty then.

(Image credit: Ank Kumar)

Imagine The Simpsons if the show was a live-action sitcom starring Tom Selleck as Ned Flanders and Christopher Lee as Mr. Burns. The rest of the cast members are not quite as recognizable, but they fall somewhere in that uncanny valley between the new and the familiar, between the real and the unreal. The Pharaoh Nerd used the artificial intelligence program Midjourney to create an introduction for the animated series with a somewhat human-looking cast. This opening credits scene is designed to look like a typical 1980s sitcom, with the theme from Full House as a soundtrack for some reason. It actually works better than it has any right to. The Pharaoh Nerd titled this video "The Simpsons as an 80's Sitcom." Maybe someone should tell him that The Simpsons was an '80s sitcom, back in the 1980s. -via Digg

Have you always wanted to be an influencer? The Washington State Department of Natural Resources is looking for a few good people. Maybe even more than a few.

We're hiring influencers and by that I mean firefighters who influence the forest to no longer be on fire.

— Washington State Dept. of Natural Resources (@waDNR) January 18, 2023

People are jumping at the opportunity.

Thank you for your service

— Washington State Dept. of Natural Resources (@waDNR) January 18, 2023

And offering some outside-the-box solutions.

Can't believe we haven't tried that tbh

— Washington State Dept. of Natural Resources (@waDNR) January 18, 2023

There might even be some subterfuge going on in the hiring process.

Slip me some cheese curds, and I'll move your application to the top...

— Washington State Dept. of Natural Resources (@waDNR) January 18, 2023

Whether this results in a surge in applications, it sure has made the Washington DNR popular among Twitter users. Other government agencies are jealous.

Um...totally stealing this idea.

— SGVmosquito🦟 (@SGVMosquito) January 18, 2023

The San Gabriel Valley Mosquito & Vector Control District could probably uses all the help they can get to find recruits. Check out all the replies in the viral Twitter thread. -via Fark 

(Image credit: National Agricultural Library)

Akkodha has an answer to everything, and it's "okay." But that's not the only way she's agreeable. She's pretty, affectionate, and an all-around sweet cat. That alone would be enough for her to be a Instagram star, but her command of the English language clinches it. When everything's "okay," what else needs to be said? Maybe just an indication of where Akkodha lives on the internet.  -via Laughing Squid

Comprehensive smart green lighting systems can save a ton of money for large institutions. When Minnechaug Regional High School in Massachusetts built a new high school in 2012, they equipped it with a computerized system to control all 7,000 lights in the 248,000-square foot facility. The lights would automatically dim when less light was needed, and turn off at night. What could possibly go wrong? In this case, everything. In 2021, nine years after the system was installed, the software crashed. And the lights have been on ever since.

1. The company that installed the lights has changed hands several times.
2. No one currently at that company was familiar with the software. But they found someone eventually.
3. The software cannot be fixed.
4. A new system would cost $1.2 million.
5. The system could be patched with hardware, but the parts have been backordered from China for a year. You know, supply chain issues.

Meanwhile, the people of the school district are wondering about the electricity bills, and teachers have to remove classroom light bulbs to show a film. The story of the lights at Minnechaug Regional High School reads like a situation comedy or a snowball rolling downhill. -via Fark 

(Image credit: John Phelan)

Every time we revisit the Voyager spacecraft, we confront statistics that are hard for the human mind to grasp. The intrepid space probe Voyager 1 has been traveling for more than 45 years, and is now more than 23 billion kilometers (14.817 billion miles) away, in interstellar space. It's still communicating with earth with its 1970s technology. That technology might be obsolete, but it was built to last. Sadly, the programming involved is no longer being taught. After taking amazing pictures of our solar system for a decade, Voyager's cameras were turned off in 1990. There's more than one reason why they won't be turned on again, but the ability to do so is a testament to the durability of vintage hardware.

Also, if you recall the launch of the two Voyager probes, this will make you feel old. The video has a one-minute ad starting at the four-minute mark. -via Geeks Are Sexy

A collective refusal to do business with someone is an ancient tactic, but it finally got a name in 1880. Charles Cunningham Boycott owned some land himself in Ireland but also worked as the land agent to the 3rd Earl of Erne, who owned a large amount of land, on which tenant farmers made their living. Boycott was a ruthless landlord, levying fines against the farmers and raising their rent even in years of crop failures. The farmers formed a league for collective action in 1879. In 1880, their pleas for rent relief went unheeded, and several families were evicted from their farms.

The league then organized a personal shunning of Boycott. No one would deliver goods to his home, no one would provide services like laundry, and no one would harvest his crops. People even stopped greeting him on the street. Read how the scheme played out and how Boycott's name became a verb we use to this day at Amusing Planet.

The hog calling contest is a staple of midwestern county and state fairs, but Iowa puts a different spin on the idea with a husband calling contest! You may have seen a viral TikTok video that's racked up more than a million views in the last six days featuring an edited version of some of the contestants from the 2017 competition. The video above is the original uncut report, which gives some context to the silliness. The winner receives a ribbon, a $5 cash prize, and bragging rights, which is what makes it so competitive. The Iowa State Fair also has a mom calling contest for kids, and of course, the traditional hog calling contest, too. -via Boing Boing

The Lunar New Year, often called Chinese New Year even though it's celebrated in many Asian cultures, is Sunday. Or is it? While the lunar calendar synced with the Gregorian calendar begins on January 22 this year, some cultures in Mongolia and Tibet follow a different calendar, which puts the New Year on February 20th. If that's not confusing enough, the zodiac animal associated with the year varies this year. The twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac are universal every year except when the fourth animal comes around. In China and most countries, this will be the year of the rabbit. But in Vietnam, Tết will usher in the year of the cat. Al Stewart would be proud. 

The reason why the two zodiacs differ is not quite clear. One theory is that the zodiac term for the year in Chinese sounds like the Vietnamese word for cat. Another theory has to do with the differing stories of how all the animals raced across a river to decide who would be represented in the zodiac. You can read those stories and find out more about the Lunar New Year celebrations at the Conversation. Now if we could just figure out how the mousedeer came to represent this year in the Malay zodiac, we'd know a lot more.

(Image source: dandagent)

Ain't modern technology wonderful? Machine translation allows us to read news articles on non-English websites, but if you've done that a few times, you know that certain details have to be taken with a grain of salt. Today I read about a skating rink in South America, but if you look closely at the picture, it's obviously what we would call a skate park. That's a minor detail. But when you are posting a sign in more than one language, it may be rather important to get some feedback on the language you don't know.

(Image source: Gucci1827) 

What was, we assume, supposed to be a "no exit" sign has turned into something way more dramatic and memorable. Sure, a machine translation is cheaper, but you're taking a chance that may result in your sign becoming an internet meme. See 50 examples of poor translations that turned out to be quite funny in a second language at Bored Panda.

Japanese gamer and live streamer Mutekimaru has a great stunt going, but recently found out how wrong it could go. He has a popular series in which his pet fish play Pokémon. Yes, really. He installed a motion-tracking circuit board on the wall of his aquarium, divided into sections corresponding with keyboard commands. When a fish swims across a sensor, it trips a command of some sort. By activating random commands, the fish slowly play the game. Cool, huh? Maybe not so much. There's danger in automating a live stream, no matter how cool it is, and you should never trust a fish.

Sunday, the fish were playing Pokémon Violet (and live streaming) when the game crashed. They kept swimming, got into the eshop (apparently, the computer was set to bypass the password), went into the wallet, and exposed Mutekimaru's credit card information! The fish bought some items, sent Mutekimaru an email, logged back in and selected a different game, joined a chat group, and generally caused chaos along the lines of a six-year-old on his dad's computer. Turn the closed captions on to get an English narration for the video. You have to wonder how long all this took before Mutekimaru caught on to what had happened, but it is hilarious. Mutekimaru has now suspended his fish play videos.  -via Metafilter

It has been estimated that up to 10% of the Union Army was made up of volunteers below the age of 18 in the Civil War. Boys as young as 14 would sign up by lying about their age. Their parents tried to retrieve them, and the law was on their side, but the army dragged its feet in releasing the young soldiers. After all, they were useful. The 16- and 17-year-olds often distinguished themselves in battle, and the younger boys provided badly needed support services. There could have been as many as 200,000 underage boys serving in the Union Army. On the Confederate side, records are spotty, but estimates of underage soldiers range up to 100,000, which was a bigger percentage of their military than the larger Union Army.

Conscription laws, verification procedures, and enforcement varied on both sides over the course of the war. Both armies were considerate of the tender age of these soldiers, but needed every warm body they could get. While families and the general civilian populace objected against such young men serving, expediency in the war effort won out in most cases. Read about the young teenage soldiers of the Civil War and how they got away with serving at Smithsonian.