Mark Rutte, the prime minister of the Netherlands, chooses to travel into his office by cycling, if the weather allows. While this isn’t far from the famous perception of the Dutch and their love of cycling, there is a lot of context behind their fondness for the mode of transportation. Even when cars and other modes of transportation are available, more than a quarter of all trips in the country are made by bike. From the country’s flat landscape and roads designed to accommodate cycling, to the health benefits of riding a bike, Ecowatch details the reasons why Rutte and the Dutch love using their bikes: 

"I didn't cycle a lot for 10 years. But for the past two years, I've had my own bike again and, when the weather allows, I travel into the office that way," he told the World Economic Forum.

He explains why it's long been such a phenomenon: "The Dutch love cycling because we are a small country. We have to get from A to B. And of course taking a car, yes, is an option, but you have congestion plus the environmental impact. From the old days, almost from the late 19th century, we're used to taking a bicycle."

There are more than 35,000 kilometers (21,750 miles) of cycle lanes and the city of Utrecht is home to the world's biggest underground bike park.

The health benefits of cycling are well-known: it reduces the risk of illnesses such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, and can help boost mental wellbeing.

A 2015 study found more than 6,000 deaths in the Netherlands are prevented each year due to cycling, and it adds six months to the average life expectancy.

image credit: via Mark Rutte on Instagram

A pair of teenage Colorado swimmers came to the rescue of a drowning prairie dog by performing CPR. Teagan Mayer and Grace Keogh spotted the prairie dog at the bottom of the pool when their team was practicing at the Arapahoe YMCA in Lafayette. Mayer and Keogh took turns performing chest compressions on the animal, and when the prairie dog started to move as water came out of its nose and mouth, the coach was surprised to see the dog resuscitated. 

(via UPI)

image credit: via YMCA of Northern Colorado on Facebook

Oyakodon is one of the most common items on Japanese restaurants’ lunch menus. Oyakodon is composed of chicken and egg served over rice, with a savory and sweet sauce that ties the dish altogether. In a hunt to find the first restaurant to offer oyakodon, SoraNews24 found it located in Tokyo, still in business.

Tamahide, a hotpot restaurant, was the first establishment to offer oyakodon in its menu. Located in downtown Tokyo’s Ningyocho neighborhood, the restaurant’s samurai estate aesthetic fits its own history. Founded in the 1760s when Japan was still ruled by the Tokugawa dynasty, the restaurant only began to serve oyakodon a hundred years later, when they noticed that some diners would take the leftovers from their hotpot, pour it over a bowl of rice, and mix it with egg. Taking that into consideration, Tamahide began serving its first oyakodon in 1891.  

image credit: via SoraNews24

The Swedish Embassy in Japan hosted “WikiGap”, an event that aimed to increase articles on women in Wikipedia, to narrow the gender gap on the Internet. Many women who merit entries for their achievements are not featured, the embassy told The Mainichi, as they noted that 90 percent of the content in Wikipedia are made by men. The event was organized under the Swedish government’s advocation of the gender equality policy, with similar events held in 60 countries, as the Mainichi detailed: 

According to the embassy, only 17 percent of individuals given Wikipedia entries were women across all its sites in some 300 languages. The ratio was 22 percent for the Japanese version.

"Becoming aware of the gender gap in information on Wikipedia, which is influential in the present-day digital society, will remind us of the gender gap around ourselves," an embassy official said.

In the event held at the embassy in Tokyo, about 40 people wrote new entries for Japanese female writers and athletes based on reference materials. They also translated English articles about foreign women into Japanese.

image credit: screenshot via the Mainichi

A four-and-a-half month old condor has successfully made its first flight attempt from Utah’s Zion National Park. The condor chick stretched its wings and stumbled out of its nesting cave, located on a red-rock cliff. Being the only condor chick in the national park, the hatchling’s flight was a sign that California condors are coming back from the brink of extinction, as the Los Angeles Times detailed: 

Tim Hauck, who manages the condor reintroduction program for the Peregrine Fund group, described the 4½-month-old condor’s flight attempt as a “controlled fall.”

“The chick soared downward from the nest and landed on a lower cliff ledge,” Hauck said. “We expect it to stay there for a while with its parents.”

Park rangers have nicknamed the surviving chick “1K” because it was the one thousandth condor hatched as part of the lengthy effort to boost the population.

“We’ve been looking forward to this all summer, and we’re excited to see the chick continue to learn how to fly,” said Eugene Moissa, a park spokesman.

The new chick’s parents are the only identified condor breeding pair in the park and are estimated to have been together two years. 

image credit: National Parks Services / AP via the Los Angeles Times

Apple’s new iPhones will use recycled rare earths in its “Taptic Engine”, a key component that lets iPhones mimic a physical button click, despite having a glass screen only. Rare earths are a group of 17 specialized minerals used in weapons, consumer electronics and other goods. Apple’s use of recycled rare earths from its old devices is for the company to maintain a steady supply of minerals, not because of China’s planned restriction of rare earths sales to the United State, as Reuters detailed: 

“This is one of those happy coincidences where what is good for the planet is really good for business at the same time,” Jackson told Reuters. “One of the things we talk about a lot internally, just in general, is how much more resilient this makes our supply chain.”

In consumer electronics, rare earths reside in tiny speakers and actuators. The parts are so small that collecting them for recycling is difficult and expensive.

Apple said on Wednesday that aluminum from enclosures recovered through its trade-in programs will be melted down and made into new MacBook Air laptop computers. The company previously disclosed that cobalt recovered from iPhone batteries disassembled by robots at its recycling labs in Texas is put into new iPhone batteries.

image credit: via wikimedia commons

A deer stormed into a clothing store in Cortina d’Ampezzo, a Italian mountain resort on the Italian Dolomites. The deer, estimated to be 4 or 5 years old, got trapped inside among the Tirolese outfits the store sold. Cortina’s shopping square was blocked in order to allow veterinarians to catch the animal, anesthetize it, and bring it back to the wild. The deer was brought back to the woods then freed, Cortian mayor Gianpaolo Ghedina reassured AP News. 

image credti: via Time

Nathalie Nguyen, an artist known online as the “3D sorceress” creates the most unique shoe designs in 3d, as if these shoes come out straight from a nerd’s fever dream. Unfortunately, these one-of-a-kind shoe designs are only in 3D rendering, but that doesn’t stop us or the Internet from going crazy over these bad-ass shoes. Nguyen shares to Paper Magazine that the inspiration from her shoe designs come from picking and pulling details from shoes they like and making new designs from them: 

Tricked out with everything from jets to coils, rollerblades, and knobs to molted metals all strapped with buckle closures or suspended on gravity-defying soles, these designs are transcendent, science-fiction imaginings of what footwear can be. "We figured we could start conceptualizing these ideas in a 3D space because our passion wasn't in manufacturing and producing consumer goods, it was showing our work as artists," Nguyen says. As for producing their product in real life, it's still a challenge to create samples with all custom parts that don't completely break the bank for the emerging brand.

image credit: via happy99online on Instagram

Going away from its past unrealistic and hyper-feminine Barbie doll releases, the doll manufacturer is now keen to release toys that break the gender stereotype. After introducing female dolls that come in all shapes and sizes, Mattel has launched Creatable World, a customizable line of dolls that abandons the idea of binary-gendered toys. A “one-of-a-kind play experience,” Creatable World gave new life to the traditional dress-up doll, as My Modern Met detailed: 

Described by Mattel as a “one-of-a-kind play experience,” Creatable World is a refreshing take on the traditional dress-up doll. The line features six different kits that each comprise an androgynous, childlike doll, two interchangeable hairstyles, and “endless styling possibilities.” Together, these components allow children from all walks of life to create the doll of their dreams—whether male, female, neither, or both.

View this post on Instagram

See how we’re making play more inclusive than ever before. Link in bio. #AllWelcome

A post shared by Creatable World (@creatableworld) on Sep 24, 2019 at 3:59pm PDT

image credit: via Creatable World on Instagram

An unsigned 10x8 inch painting by Florentine painter Cenni de Pepo (also known as Cimabue) was discovered hanging above a hot plate in the home of an elderly French woman in Compiegne. Philomene Wolf, an auctioneer, discovered the tempera-on-panel painting when he was hired by the French woman to “give an expert view on the house contents and empty it”. Cimabue is hailed as the first truly great creator of Tuscan painting, and considered to be the forefather of the Italian Renaissance. Wolf referred the painting for confirmation to Eriq Turqain, an Old Master appraiser, as Hyperallergic detailed:

The work is now titled the Mocking of Christ, as Turquin believes it to be part of a small polyptych by Cimabue that also included the Flagellation of Christ and the Madonna and Child Enthroned between Two Angels. Part of the basis for this theory is a constellation of centuries-old tunnels created by a larval infestation of timber that comprises the panels.

Now Turquin, who is selling the painting in conjunction with Actéon, estimates that “Mocking of Christ” will to go for between €4 million and €6 million ($4.3–$6.5 million). Wolf, quoted in the Art Newspaper, denies the possibility of a pre-action sale, insisting on the public date in late October: “It will be sold only at auction. It’s going to be the first public result for Cimabue.” 

image credit: Eric Turquin and Acteon via Hyperallergic

With the current pace of life, from school, work, or family work, people might get really burned out after just going through one week. Some just take their weekend as a chance to sleep and get some rest after their stressful week, and some go out of their way to parks and malls to treat themselves and unwind.

But if you’re the type of person who’s really busy, just wants to unwind without going out of the way to a mall or a park, or you don’t want to wait for the weekend to give yourself a break, Buzzfeed lists some simple things you can do for yourself every day, without breaking the bank or travelling far. From calling or talking to your friends or family members, eating a mood-boosting food, petting a furry friend, to reading or watching something for enjoyment, these small tips prove that you can always make time for yourself! 

image credit: via wikimedia commons

Fright-loving couples can now spend 30 hours laying in a coffin, and get paid for it. Six Flags offers couples to join the Fright Fest 30-Hour Coffin Challenge, where they have to lie inside a coffin for 30 hours straight, with provided six-minute bathroom breaks. Contestants are required to leave all their gadgets (such as smartphones and gaming devices), but they can use their gadgets, take a toilet break, eat, or sit up from their coffins during their six-minute breaks. While the prospect of getting paid by lying around in a coffin (with your boo) for 30 hours sounds nice, Oddee details that it isn’t all convenient: 

In 2018, the first 30-hour Coffin Challenge was in St. Louis last year and all the contestants won. It wasn’t easy though as they faced cold weather and had to literally sprint to the bathrooms to make it to and fro in the alloted 6-minute time frame.

Also, the entire top of the coffins were open the first time around. “The open top was brutal,” contestant Brian Johnson said on Facebook. “Lights everywhere, people talking, you could barely sleep.”

image credit: via Six Flags

Annalakshmi is an Indian vegetarian buffet restaurant which lets its customers pay how much they want to, following the Hindu philosophy of “guest is God”. According to this philosophy, if God were to come to your house and have a meal, would you ask God to pay for the meal? Harish R. Menon, a third generation staff at Annalakshmi clarifies to Our Grandfather Story that they simply do not price their food, and that they only want their customers to eat home-styled food without worrying about the price.

The Reykjavik Confessions is an old case where six people testified to being guilty of crimes that the police have no evidence for whatsoever. Buzzfeed Unsolved cracks the details of the case that makes the whole event suspicious. The Icelandic police arrested six different people (with some really guilty of doing other crimes) for the murders of two missing people, making them confess to the crimes by placing them in solitary confinement, with one spending a whopping 741 days in solitary confinement. 

Italian Artist Maurizio Savini creates different sculptures, from a man hanging on a ledge to a crocodile out of bubblegum. That might sound ridiculous or interesting (depending on your take on bubblegum), but the process involved in the creation of these bright pink and white sculptures takes more than chewing the gum he needs, as the Emmanuel Fremin Gallery details: 

With a process as unique as his aesthetic, Maurizio and his two assistants unwrap then apply heat to thousands of half white, half bright pink bubble gum squares without chewing a single piece, so they can easily be manipulated, cut with a knife, and applied to plaster mold like traditional clay. Maurizio notes, “The mold is crucial” – without it, his tacky sculptures would be far too unstable. After molding the chewing gum into his desired shapes, Maurizio fixes and preserves his sculptures with a mixture of formaldehyde and antibiotics, so his works will be in tact for generations of Romans to come. This labor-intensive process at times calls for nearly 3,000 individual pieces of bubble gum per sculpture.

(via The Jealous Curator)

image credit: via the Emmanuel Fremin Gallery