The Norwegian Parliament voted to ban the purchase of biofuels made with palm products that do not demonstrate that they were produced sustainably. This makes Norway the first country to ban the use of palm oil in biofuels to stop deforestation, as Vocal detailed:

In June 2016, Norway became the first country in the world to ban deforestation. To this end, the Norwegians promised that all products in their markets would come from products with “clean” production chains. A first measure was to stop donations, contracts and national investments with companies that had ties to deforestation.

Now, the country takes a new step forward in the fight against deforestation, by approving the ban on the Norwegian biofuel industry from buying palm oil and other products associated with deforestation.

"The Norwegian Parliament decision sets an important precedent for other countries and underscores the need for serious reform to the global oil palm industry, " said Nils Hermann Ranum of the conservation group Rainforest Foundation Norway after the decision.

image via Vocal

Paris-based artist Jean Jullien created a cast of playful and colorful sculptures that are scattered around Nantes’s Jardin des Plantes. Part of a new exhibition called ‘Filili Viridi’, each sculpture spans more than eight meters and they can be found around the park floating in a fountain, raking the grass, or joining hands to hug a tree. 

image via Colossal

“Master Jenga stacker” Tai Star Valianti was able to pile 485 blocks on top of each other! The Arizona master stacker created an inverted-pyramid shaped structure from the huge number of Jenga blocks. His tower was built in two hours and stood for almost nine minutes. 

image screenshot via Guinness World Records

Michelin-starred chef Vikas Khanna has offered his help to poor Indians facing hunger for more than three months. Khanna has served 20 million meals through his campaign called ‘Feed India.’ The campaign provides ready-made meals and dry rations to people in at least 125 Indian cities, as Al Jazeera detailed: 

For more than three months, Michelin-starred chef Vikas Khanna has helped serve 20 million meals to poor Indians facing hunger, from thousands of miles away in the United States.

The Indian-born Khanna, who moved to the US in 2000, started the 'Feed India' campaign in April, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a strict coronavirus lockdown, which forced millions out of work, many of them facing hunger.

"It all began after a spam email with the picture of an old-age home," Khanna says, "where people were left to fend for themselves with little food". The moment "crushed him" and made him realise that India was about to embark on a major hunger crisis.

The campaign has distributed food at leprosy centres, on railway tracks, elderly care homes, highways and orphanages, to name a few.

image via Al Jazeera

The Internet is a scary place. It’s scary to search through the web for medical advice, because the most likely diagnosis that will be given is worse than what you’re actually afflicted with. But even so, a new study found that the majority of the people from the younger generation (Millennials and Gen Z) rely on social media for health information, as Forbes details: 

The information from Healthline.com was gathered in a two-wave, online qualitative study in late April and early June 2020 with people living with chronic health problems. The sources represented mix of genders, ages and ethnicities, and come from 39 different states in the U.S.

The research focused first on people living with chronic health conditions and how they are impacted by the Covid-19 outbreak. Its primary data point makes it clear that health-centric web pages such as its home site and WebMD are the most popular general resource for those living with health conditions as 76% of those surveyed go to them first.

However, amongst those younger adults questioned, social media platforms become the first source of medical information. Millennials (62%) and Generation Z (52%) go to the likes of influencers on Twitter, Facebook and other apps with medical concerns. Generation X ranked third behind its younger peers at 44%.

As for the individual platforms, YouTube and Twitter are most popular for health condition information among Millennials. Instagram tied with Facebook as the top platform among Generation Z.

Other results made it clear that so-called health influencers have an effect on the lives of all age groups with 44% of people with a preexisting health condition valuing their opinion or advice.

image via Forbes

If you’re one of those people who type the same sentences as replies to other people’s emails, you might be getting tired of writing the same combination of sentences over and over again. I know the feeling. Did you know there’s a great way to send out the same email messages without the copy paste trick? Check out FastCompany’s full list of tips and tricks you can do in Gmail to optimize your emails! 

image via FastCompany

Lego is launching a new Lego set based on Nintendo’s gaming console, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The NES Lego set is a collaboration between Nintendo and Lego, along with the interactive Super Mario-themed sets that were previously launched. The new set contains a whopping 2,646 pieces, as The Verge details: 

Designed for adult builders, this new set contains 2,646 pieces that combine to create Nintendo’s first home console as well as an NES controller, a game cartridge that can fit into the console, and a miniature retro TV. The TV displays Mario traversing through a stage from the 1985 classic, and a crank located on the left side of the TV lets you move the mustached plumber up and down between platforms.

Like the earlier Super Mario sets, the Nintendo Entertainment System kit will combine traditional building with digital technology. Placing the Bluetooth-enabled Mario figurine from the Adventures with Mario Starter Course set on top of the TV will produce sounds as if you were actually playing the original 1985 classic.

The Nintendo Entertainment System Lego set will launch on August 1st — the same day as the Super Mario Lego sets — for $230. The Super Mario kits incorporate different characters and obstacles for Mario to tackle, including an expansion that lets him square off against his arch-nemesis, Bowser.

image via The Verge

Buzzfeed Multiplayer’s Kelsey Impicciche is known for her Sims videos, where she does challenges in the game. Impicciche takes the challenge to her kitchen as she tries to cook Baked Alaska featured in the game. Will she succeed? 

It’s not a big surprise that companies take inspiration from their rivals, but to realize that most features in Apple and Android smartphones are similar is a slight surprise! Both smartphones advertise their operating systems as different from one another in terms of features and functionality, but it’s actually the opposite. Check out the list of similarities by Popular Science here. 

image via Popular Science

Are you a big fan of the Harry Potter franchise? Time to test your inner Potterhead by taking the Harry Potter screenshot test! Guess the movie where the screenshots came from here. Did you get a perfect score? 

image via Buzzfeed

A 31-year-old fugitive fled from the authorities and hid in the Black Forest, a vast and forested mountain range in Germany. The German police launched a huge manhunt to catch Yves Etienne Rausch who disarmed four officers in broad daylight, as RT News detailed: 

The suspect is “violent and armed with several firearms,” police in the southwestern German state of Baden Wuertemberg were warning, urging people in the town of Oppenau, not far from the border with France, to stay at home. People were also being urged to avoid forest areas as well as not to take any hitchhikers in the area, under any circumstances.

All their efforts during more than 24 hours have, however, been in vain. The fugitive, quickly dubbed ‘forest Rambo’ by some media, has vanished without a trace in the Black Forest – a large, forested mountain range stretching along Germany’s border with France.

Rausch had “no permanent” residence in the area, according to police. The German media reported he’d been evicted from an apartment for not paying his rent about a year ago and was actually homeless ever since. He also reportedly lived in a hut on the forest edge for weeks and, apparently, had enough time to study the terrain.

image via RT News

Humpback whales are a fascinating species. These winged whales are massive and majestic, but much of their lives, mannerisms, and habits are a mystery. Hakai Magazine takes a ride with humpback researcher Jackie Hildering to dive deeper on these majestic animals: 

There it is. Or he, or she; gender indeterminate. Hildering, a humpback whale researcher, angles the boat toward the humpback and throttles the engine way back. She’s just close enough to try—with a telephoto lens—to identify this individual by its unique tail flukes. Humpbacks are fairly slow swimmers, but this one’s moving quickly enough to make her job hard. A mobbing is going down. A half-dozen or so Pacific white-sided dolphins are swarming the whale Hildering will later identify from photographs as an adult named Squall.

“Dolphins can be mystical and complete jerks—both things are true,” says Hildering, cofounder and director of education and communication at the Marine Education and Research Society (MERS), a Port McNeill–based nonprofit studying humpback and minke whales. These dolphins are potentially “learning by provocation,” as Hildering puts it. They’re clearly having a ball. Not so the humpback. This “most gamesome and light-hearted of all the whales,” as Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick, described the humpback, must be feeling mighty put upon. The whale flexes its body, trying to shake off the harassers, and rolls, exposing one of those great pectoral fins, which can be as long as one-third of its body length, and which gives the humpback its scientific genus, Megaptera, or “large-winged.” Squall slaps it down, apparently in self-defense, like a sweet-natured grandmother whacking a mugger with her umbrella.

image via Hakai Magazine

If we can’t attend big music festivals due to the pandemic, there’s always another option: doing the festivals online. A virtual EDM festival takes the online festival to another level by hosting it entirely in Minecraft. Paper Magazine has more details: 

"What if we can build Electric Forest in Minecraft?" recalled Jackie McGuire, CEO of Rave Family. "What if we could build the forest in Minecraft and invite some of our friends?"

What began as visions of McGuire's favorite festival spots transformed into vivid recreations of the locations built with blocks in Minecraft, and the vibrant atmosphere of outdoor festivals came to life.

The in-game festival contains all of the elements that attendees are missing from their usual summer outings: camping (attendees can set up on empty plots with friends to showcase their building skills and compete for a private DJ session), games and live music are all key in the Rave Family Block Fest experience.

Some of the top EDM artists made their way onto the lineup: Steve Aoki, Rudimental, Diplo and Deadmau5 are all set to take the virtual stage over the course of the festival. Additionally, McGuire explained that Paris Hilton will host parties for ravers in her digitally recreated nightclub.

image via Paper Magazine

Casa OchoQuebras is a weekend home perched near the Chilean coast and the Pacific Ocean. A project of a Chile-based developer Ochoalcubo, the structure is a convention-defying dwelling composed of three geometric volumes, one of which tips at a seemingly precarious angle between the two others, as Plain magazine detailed: 

The retreat was inspired by the primitiveness of its location, and this is manifested in the studio’s choice of materials – wood and concrete – and in its bulky, unembellished silhouette. “We chose to move backwards towards the archaic, not as a nostalgic escape but as a natural filter against clichés,” the studio says. “In an era where the hunger for novelty is threatening architecture to become immediately obsolete, we looked for timelessness.”

The horizontal volume houses a self-sufficient living area, with a staircase leading to the vertical part of the home appointed with additional bedrooms and an access to the rooftop terrace. Rounding it up is a basic fire pit enclosed by the leaning, hollowed-out form that acts as a chimney stack. Stripped to the mere essentials, the home seamlessly blends into the brutal landscape. “We expect these pieces to age as a stone, acquiring some of the brutality of the place but still being gentle for people to enjoy nature and life in general.”

image via Plain magazine

This photograph taken by Sarosh Lodhi has bewildered a lot of people on the Internet after it was shared. Two zebras are in the photograph, but can you tell which one is facing the camera? I couldn’t. Lodhi took the photograph in the Maasai Mara national game reserve, one of the most famous and important conservation and wilderness areas in all of Africa. 

image via BoredPanda