These small birds might look bright and cheery, but they certainly pack a punch. Watch as TierZoo details on how overpowered this small bird really is. It makes me question my own dominant bird rankings. I might add parrots into the top five. 

The Pure Nacional tree is an ancient cacao tree species that resides in Marañón Canyon in Northern Peru. The ancient cacao tree produces some of the world’s rarest cacao. Due to a disease that spread in the forests of Ecuador, where the tree was cultivated, experts declared the Pure Nacional tree extinct. But it seems that the tree wasn’t lost forever. Dan Pearson and his stepson Brian Horsley discovered a Pure Nacional tree in 2007, as BBC detailed: 

In 2007, two Americans, Dan Pearson and his stepson Brian Horsley, were supplying gear and food to mining companies around the Marañón Canyon in northern Peru near the Ecuador border when they happened upon a strange-looking tree that had football-sized pods growing out of its trunk. Perplexed and unsure what they were looking at, Pearson and Horsley sent several samples to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to get some answers. To everyone’s amazement, the samples were confirmed to belong to the Pure Nacional tree.

image credit: Phil Crean nature / Alamy via BBC

Music and sound are universal methods to relax or find peace. They can be used in all sorts of ways, from podcasts, to songs, to the lo-fi beat music, and to white noise. Music and sound can be therapeutic, as they can modify our psychology and biochemistry, as The Guardian details: 

“Music and sound have the ability to modify our psychology and biochemistry, influence our brainwaves and even synchronise and change physiology such as heart rate [and] breathing,” says sound therapy practitioner Nate Martinez. He works closely with sound and music to promote healing, relaxation and balance in his clients, and believes audio is “intrinsic to our human experience”.

Jennifer Buchanan, music therapist and founder of JB Music Therapy, compares music’s uplifting qualities to those of sex and food. “Humans crave pleasure from listening to music, and the positive feelings they associate with music are inextricably linked to their deepest reward centres,” she says.

And the positive effects run even deeper than dopamine.

“Groundbreaking research found that music creates pleasurable emotions that light up the mesolimbic pathway, the reward centre of the brain that gives us uplifting feelings,” says Buchanan, adding that music has also been proven to produce responses from the amygdala – the part of the brain that modulates our emotional networks. It has the capacity to trigger emotions and even reframe our mindset.

Music-based therapies and treatments, such as sound baths and meditation, have increased in popularity in recent years as people turn to the practice to try to achieve a more relaxed state. But if you’re stuck at home or otherwise unable to access a range of music therapies, how can you achieve the same outcome?

image via The Guardian

Studio Ghibli is famed for its well-crafted animated films. Their releases can take you on a short but cathartic adventure through the worlds they build in movies. My favourite Ghibli film, Spirited Away, is a movie I come back to when I need to cheer myself up. But I know there are more Ghibli films apart from Spirited Away, so this full Ghibli movie guide by The Ringer is a great help in choosing which film I should watch next. Maybe this full roster can help you find your next movie to watch! 

image via Wordpress

Summer is near our doorsteps, and so is the coming wave of new season-themed apparel. Amidst all the thinner clothes in various shapes and forms, a new contender is here to steal the spotlight! Hologram City is selling lace shirts and shorts for men. Is this an atrocity or a unique touch to your wardrobe? 

Image via Design You Trust

Now that’s something to admire. I can’t even work out comfortably in slightly tight clothes! Victorian women did exercises devised to account for the fact that women would be constricted by their clothing and elaborate hairstyles. Instead of burning calories, the Victorian women followed workouts that focused on blood flow. These workouts were also mainly written by men, as Mental Floss details: 

In his 1827 book A Treatise on Calisthenic Exercises, Signor G.P. Voarino detailed dozens of options for women, including skipping, walking in zigzags, marching in place, and bending your arms and legs at specific angles. Some exercises even called for the use of a cane, though they were more geared towards balancing and stretching than weight-lifting.

To Voarino, the light calisthenic exercises were meant for “counteracting every tendency to deformity, and for obviating such defects of figure as are occasioned by confinement within doors, too close an application to sedentary employment, or by those constrained positions which young ladies habitually assume during their hours of study.”

Nearly 30 years later, Catharine Beecher (Harriet Beecher Stowe's sister) published her own workout guide, Physiology and Calisthenics for Schools and Families, which encouraged educators especially to incorporate exercise programs for all children into their curricula. Beecher was against corsets, but the illustrations in her book did still depict young ladies in long dresses—it would be some time before students were expected to change into gym clothes at school. Many of Beecher’s calisthenic exercises were similar to Voarino’s, though she included some beginner ballet positions, arm circles, and other faster-paced movements.

image via Mental Floss

The Long Island serial killer, who is believed to have killed twenty, targeted mostly sex workers. One of the possible victims has been identified by the Suffolk County Police Department. Valerie Mack was a former Jane Doe that disappeared in 2000. Mack was working as an escort in Philadelphia at the time of her disappearance, as Rolling Stone details: 

 a website created by the SCPD to track updates in the case, Mack’s partial remains were found in November 2000 in a wooded area in Manorville, New York (it’s believed her remains had been dumped there a few months prior in September). Eleven years later, in April 2011, additional remains belonging to Mack were found much further away on Ocean Parkway, near Oak Beach. That location, however, is not far from Gilgo Beach, where the remains of several other victims had been found.

Mack was identified using genetic genealogy, reportedly a first of its kind for a police investigation in New York State. SCPD Commissioner Geraldine Hart said in a video statement that the process allowed investigators to establish a genealogy profile of the victim, which provided new leads to pursue. Hart said investigators followed the trail to New Jersey, where they spoke with potential relatives who provided additional DNA samples, which were then used to narrow down and confirm Mack’s identity.

image via Rolling Stone

If you’re looking for some good movie recommendations, maybe this one’s right up your alley. Time Magazine has listed their top five 2020 movie releases. Even though we might not see them at the theaters, most of them are available on different streaming platforms. Check out their full list here. Do you agree with their picks? 

image via Variety

It’s a golden necklace, adorned with a golden toilet roll pendant. The necklace, dubbed “the deluxe toilet roll chain,” retails for $75. It was created by German jeweler Jonathan Johnson. The Hamburg-based jeweler wanted to tap into something common yet rare, as Forbes detailed: 

It’s selling on his website for $75, and each necklace is made from gold-plated sterling silver. From each sale, 20% goes to a local homeless nonprofit called Arzt Mobil Hamburg.

“When the coronacrisis hit, you could see on TV how people jumped on toilet paper,” said Johnson.

“The diamond, the most desirable object of desire, and a symbol of wealth, was suddenly replaced by toilet paper.”

The goal is to create an object that will represent our current crisis for future generations looking back on 2020.

“The thought that, in the future, this crisis will be looked back on in a few generations, this could be an enchanting side effect,” he said.

image via Forbes

A bear was roaming around a city in Florida, and the authorities managed to catch it with the help of sweets. No tranquilizers were used in catching the roaming bear. According to Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Officer Adam Brown, drugs don’t usually work with large animals such as bears. The bear was instead lured into a trap sprayed with a blueberry-pie scent, along with Krispy Kreme doughnuts! 

image via AP News

Now that’s a way to celebrate your recovery! I’m not sure if it’s actually recommended, but the nursing home staff let Jennie Stejna celebrate her recovery from COVID-19 with a Bud Light. After all, the 103-year-old went through something so painful and dire, she deserves a cold one after successfully beating the sickness! 

image screenshot via The Huffington Post

Don’t do this at home, kids. Sometimes when life throws unpredictable circumstances at you, you need to do your best to adapt to them. Well, this Miami guy is good at adapting to the situation. With the roads flooded, this man took the carpool quite literally. See how he water skis on the flooded roads over Instagram.

image screenshot via Instagram

If someone told you that you can remove all your leg hair with just a powder, would you believe it? I certainly won’t. Some have difficulty shaving their legs with the necessary tools, so will a powder be effective? The answer is yes, as Buzzfeed’s Krista Torres tested out the Magic Shaving Powder, a product that magically removes leg hair without a razor. See her whole experience with the product at Buzzfeed.

image via Buzzfeed

A social media scuffle has arisen in India. Hashtags were trending, asking users to ban Tiktok in India. The scuffle has affected Tiktok, as its ratings dropped to 1.2 on Google Play Store. It seems that Google came to intervene, as it has removed over five million negative reviews for Tiktok. The intervention has bumped the app’s rating to 1.6 stars.

image via DNA

If you've never watched anime, why not try out one series to see what you may be missing? Anime is not just the cutely-drawn girls you see online, or the overhyped robots. Anime is an entire medium, with different genres and styles. If you’re looking for some recommendations, check out Kotaku’s Chingy Nea’s list!

image via Kotaku