Many women have doulas to support and guide them through childbirth. Rachel Friedman is an end-of-life doula, trained to support and guide people through the final part of their lives. She tells us about her training, which not only deals with the prospect of death and making it as easy as possible, she also learned that you don't have to be close death to want to make the most out of the rest of your life. Her training involves three important facets: imagining your own death, engaging people by active, deep listening, and helping with legacy projects that will live on after a person is gone. Imagining your own death helps you to recognize your priorities and figure out what's really important to you. An exercise begins:

Write down your five most-prized possessions, your five favorite activities, your top five values, and the five people you love the most.

Close your eyes. Imagine you’re at a doctor’s office. You’ve just been given a terminal diagnosis and told you have approximately three months to live. Sit with that news. Breathe. Open your eyes. Cross any four items off your list.

Close your eyes. You’re back home with your spouse or friends or children or pet. You have to find a way to tell those you love: “I’m dying.” Breathe. Open your eyes. Cross another four items off your list.

By the time you have crossed off all your favorites, you should have an idea of what's most important to you. Read more advice from an end-of-life doula about living your life (no matter how much is left) and helping others live theirs at Vox.

"Hey, you're doing just great"

Oklahoma little leaguer gets hit in the head and then comforts the pitcher who is shaken up afterward pic.twitter.com/hYYLiy511K

— Jomboy (@Jomboy_) August 9, 2022

Little League Baseball can teach you a lot of life lessons, and it's not always about winning and losing. During the Southwest Regional Championship today, Texas East pitcher Kaiden "Bubs" Shelton accidentally beaned Oklahoma batter Isaiah "Zay" Jarvis.  You know that had to hurt, yet Jarvis was up and on base pretty soon. But Shelton was shaken, guilt-ridden and repentant to the point of tears. Jarvis left first base to give him some consolation and forgiveness. Jarvis assured Shelton that he was okay, and was heard saying, "You're doing just great." Now that's sportsmanship, and just what was needed in the moment. Texas East won the game and will advance to the Little League World Series. Whatever else happens in the Little League World Series this year, this scene is what people will remember.  -via Digg

When a mycologist makes a cake. . . #fungus #cake pic.twitter.com/ydAfqFri5Q

— Ray Van Court (@rcvancourt) December 26, 2021

Remember Dance Your PhD? That contest is still going on every year. But for many science PhD candidates, dancing may be outside their wheelhouse. There are other ways to creatively communicate your research, and one very delicious method is baking. Some universities have a "bake your research" competition for the candidates at their schools, while others just bake a research cake for fun.



You can find plenty of these cakes on social media with the hashtag #BakeYourResearch. You'll find more cakes using #BakeYourPhD or #BakeYourThesis. Read the thinking behind some of these cakes and how the idea took off at Atlas Obscura.

Having a giant rabbit around the house isn't quite like the movie Harvey or Donnie Darko. It's more like having a long-eared dog that eats vegetables. Guus is a Flemish Giant rabbit. He is two years old and lives in Amsterdam, where he goes for walks on a leash and loves hopping around the garden. Guus weighs 10 kilograms (22 pounds), but looks looks even bigger because he is so fluffy. He loves to cuddle with his impossibly gorgeous humans, Danielle and Onno. Guus has identification tattoos in his ears indicating his birthplace and date. He can be quite destructive, but they've learned to work around that. See more of Guus at Instagram. -via Boing Boing

See more adorable pet and animal posts at Supa Fluffy.

Happy Birthday @DeMar_DeRozan! https://t.co/tTjRY1JR1G

— ArtButMakeItSports (@ArtButSports) August 7, 2022

The world has collected and photographed thousands of beautiful works of art going back to antiquity. But that documentation pales beside sports photography, where dozen of professional photographers are catching every minute of every game, race, or other competition. This extreme documentation is what makes a unique Twitter account like ArtButMakeItSports possible. For every classical painting, there will eventually be a sports action photo that accidentally recreates the scene. Sometimes they are spookily close.

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, by Mattia Preti, 1675, 📸 Brad Smith/ISI Photo pic.twitter.com/gMR6YK1JSe

— ArtButMakeItSports (@ArtButSports) July 5, 2022

You have to wonder at the work that goes into finding and recognizing these matchups. The person that runs the Twitter account is taking submissions, so that must be a great help.  

The Mocking of Christ, by Carl Bloch, 1880 pic.twitter.com/e2Jj0bpaFm

— ArtButMakeItSports (@ArtButSports) August 5, 2022

Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1618-19, 📸 via @MattMoylansLegs pic.twitter.com/Eudu5ZJ2jz

— ArtButMakeItSports (@ArtButSports) July 30, 2022

You can follow the Twitter account ArtButMakeItSports here, and see an archive of past matchups at Instagram. -via Everlasting Blort

Once upon a time, mail would get to the right town with just a zip code. Once there, it was up to the local office to figure out exactly where the address was. These days, 99% of US mail is sorted successfully by machine with optical readers. But if your handwriting is so bad that the machines can't decipher it, or if the envelope got wet and the ink ran, it will be sent to the Remote Encoding Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. Or rather, a picture of it will be sent there. At this level of sorting, a combination of human and computer power will use a strange but effective system of comparison to figure out where that mail is supposed to go. If they can't do it, the last resort is completely human before the postal service gives up and returns it. Tom Scott give us a look inside the Remote Encoding Center to see how it's done.   

We've been blown away by the images coming in from faraway galaxies taken by the Webb Space Telescope. The vivid colors are lovely, but how real are they? The telescope only collects infrared and near-infrared light, and humans can't see infrared light, so where are all those colors coming from?

Image developers on the Webb team are tasked with turning the telescope’s infrared image data into some of the most vivid views of the cosmos we’ve ever had. They assign various infrared wavelengths to colors on the visible spectrum, the familiar reds, blues, yellows, etc. But while the processed images from the Webb team aren’t literally what the telescope saw, they’re hardly inaccurate.

So while the colors are added, they are not added arbitrarily. You could call it a translation of sorts. And the colors are necessary to detect features of the original image that otherwise couldn't be discerned. It's our own fault, really, for not developing the ability to see light in its full range. Heavenly bodies shine in ultraviolet light, microwaves, and x-rays, as well as infrared light, which would all have to be translated for humans to see them. Read how and why this is done at Gizmodo.


(Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)

In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt visited the Panama Canal while it was under construction. He was photographed wearing a white straw fedora, the kind that the workers wore, and started a fashion trend in the US of wearing Panama hats. A hundred years later, those hats are still fashionable, but they aren't Panama hats. They were made in Ecuador. A hat company in Ecuador was shipping them out through Panama.

But Panama does have a unique hat with a long tradition. It is the sombrero pintando, which means painted hat in English, and it's known as the pinta’o. Despite the name, the pinta’o is not painted. The distinctive stripes are made of dyed natural fiber and are stitched into the hat as it is made. Five kinds of natural fibers are grown, harvested, sun-dried to make them white (or dyed), braided together, and then hand-stitched to make a hat. The tradition goes back 200 years, and the pinta’o is designated on UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. In Panama, men, women, and children all wear a pinta’o, and many people have an everyday hat plus a more expensive one for social occasions. Most are custom made for the wearer and can be quite expensive. Read how pinta’os are hand made in Panama at Smithsonian.

Jazz multi-instrumentalist Jacob Collier always ends his concerts with an audience singalong, but this performance at O2 Academy in Brixton, London, last month is next level. He plays the audience as if it were an instrument itself. How can this crowd possibly sound so good? First off, Collier is known as a musician's musician. His performances draw people who are musicians themselves, or else technically aware of how music works. I wanted to know how he sets this type of thing up. One of the commenters at YouTube explained it.

If you want a more detailed breakdown of the mechanics of the process, he starts off by dividing the audience into 3 sections one at a time just by pointing at them, and giving them a note.  He points up the middle, then to his left, then to his right.  He has perfect pitch, so he can just hear the correct notes in his head.  The starting notes he gives are the root, third and fifth of a major chord, in this case, G major, G B and D.  From there, he then points at a section or sections, and points up or down, and that section goes up or down one step of the major scale from where they were.  Sometimes he controls just a single section, sometimes 2 at once.  Usually both sections go in the same direction, but near the end, one section goes up and the other goes down.  He's literally composing this 3 part harmony in his head as he's waving his hands.  Every show he does this it's similar, but each one is unique.  This one is especially long and complex in comparison to some of the other clips we've seen from his other shows on this tour.  Anyway, hope that helps.

Yeah, I think it helps. I have a fairly extensive history of music education, but I have the complete opposite of perfect pitch, meaning I can't get my voice to do the right thing even when I know what the right thing is. I have the utmost respect for people who can.  -via reddit

To say Arnold Schwarzenegger has led an extreme life would be an understatement. After a difficult childhood in Austria, he made a name for himself as a world champion bodybuilder at a rather young age. Then he landed movie roles even though no one could understand his English. Schwarzenegger became a huge action star in Hollywood, and then served as governor of California from 2003 to 2011. With highlights like that, you know there's a lot of details underneath that we don't already know.

 
Well, that one makes sense. It's impossible to duplicate the most extreme. Read more facts about Arnold Schwarzenegger in a pictofacts list at Cracked.

Misconceptions spread like wildfire on the internet, where you don't know who's an expert and who isn't. But many misconceptions about death go back hundreds or event thousands of years, because it's a subject that we tend to avoid discussing seriously. For example, you've probably been told at one point or another that fingernails and beards can continue growing after death. That's just not true, but there are some reasons people started to think so, and those people managed to tell a lot of other people. However, it is true that dead bodies can fart. That's the straight dope from people who have reason to know that, and not just from that Daniel Radcliffe movie. Mental Floss takes on eight common misconceptions about death to not only set the record straight, but explain why those wrong ideas persist. You can read them it in a list, or listen to a video at the same link.  

(Image credit: T. Bjørnstad)

The US Army has been rolling out a novel idea- getting the input of soldiers in developing new tools and equipment, because who else knows better how they will be used in the field? This part of military modernization is called touch points. One of the new projects grown from this is the Army Tactical Brassiere (ATB) program. Until last year, women in the military were expected to get their own underwear, and plenty of companies targeted them for sales. Now they are developing a military bra with specifications to make a soldier's work safer and easier.

ATB development began with seeking input from female Soldiers on what type of functionality and preferences should be considered during initial prototype design. Given that the ATB is a tactical rather than sportswear item, it will need to integrate well with equipment and body armor, providing enhanced protection and performance in addition to an ideal fit. This means that designers are evaluating options such as the inclusion of flame-retardant fabrics and expertly layered compression, structural and protective materials while also taking into account the importance of accurate sizing, reliable comfort, moisture management and breathability.

Project leader Ashley Cushon stresses the importance of those last four factors because it would "reduce the cognitive burden on the female Soldier." That's no laughing matter, because men in the military never have to think about whether their breasts are chafing under exertion or whether they will be blamed for too much male gaze. If the army can achieve all they want in a bra, they'd better make a ton of them because civilian women will want them, too. There are currently four types of bra in development that may be approved in the fall. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: US Army)

Is corn a conspiracy? 😂 🌽 #recesstherapy pic.twitter.com/S9hcIYJvnn

— Recess Therapy (@recess_therapy) August 4, 2022

I wish I could love anything the way this kid loves corn. Julian Shapiro-Barnum of Recess Therapy interviewed a young man at some festival enjoying a cob of grilled corn on a stick. We don't get the boy's name, but he seems to be around seven years old, judging by his teeth. He is not only adorable, but also quick-witted and has a sense of humor. This video is guaranteed to put a smile on your face. Have a corntastic day! -via reddit

Believe it or not, Stonehenge was private property for an awfully long time. That goes back to British royalty, when a king could take what he wanted and do with it as he pleased. Henry VIII did just that, confiscating Stonehenge from an abbey in 1540 and then giving it to the Earl of Hertford. It was then passed around until an owner died with no heirs in 1915, and it went to auction. A lawyer named Cecil Chubb went to the auction house because his wife wanted either curtains or dining chairs for their house, depending on who is telling the story. But he came home with neither. Instead, he bought Stonehenge.

The ancient monument and 30 acres of land didn't draw all that many bids, and Chubb was afraid that a foreigner would purchase the site, so he outbid a farmer who needed pasture land, and bought the entire lot for £6,600! That was a lot of money in 1915, but imagine what the site would go for today, as both a plum piece of property and a historical treasure. Chubb's wife was not happy, but this impulse buy is the reason people can visit Stonehenge today. Read the story of that fateful purchase at Amusing Planet. -via Strange Company

(Image source: Library of Congress)

Mark Hamill is both Luke Skywalker and a talented voice actor (not to mention an all-around mensch). Doing voices goes way back for him. As a teenager, he worked at a Jack in the Box and thought it would be cool to use a crazy clown voice to take drive-through orders. Management didn't like that, and fired him. Now 50 years later, that same outlet invited him back, and he's still up to his old tricks. This time he can get away with it, though, because he is Luke Skywalker. And the Joker. Sure, it's an ad for Jack in the Box, but the people who drove through for lunch were first confused and then tickled pink. A good time was had by all.  -via Laughing Squid