With the customization options given to players in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, creating an island to one’s desires is easier to achieve. This player was able to recreate (with the items and features available in the game) the newly-released Airship, called Skeld, from Among Us. Reddit user sillyruckus used props, furniture, floor patterns, and clever landscaping. But what about the vent system from Among Us, where the designated impostor of that round could teleport from one area to another? He used the Warp Pipes from the Super Mario update, so anyone who goes in any pipe would be warped to another area in the island: 

However. You can't murder people in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, as much as you might want to, so a full game of Among Us is... probably not entirely possible. Maybe if you replaced "murder" with "hitting each other with bug nets"? This idea may need some extra workshopping.

Unfortunately, although the creator posted the Dream Address on Reddit (DA-5648-9931-8461), the island has been removed by Nintendo for "inappropriate and/or harmful content", which means that somebody reported it. This is why we can't have nice things!

Image via NintendoLife 

It’s as if these artworks came straight from a fantasy novel (like the golden egg used in the Triwizard Tournament from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire). Australian artist Ben of Ben's Worx creates handmade wood and resin sculptures to hold magnificent and highly-detailed mountainscapes and galaxies within them. My Modern Met has more details: 

Ben starts with dried pieces of burl wood that act as the eggs’ base. The natural contours of the timber look like rocky terrains already, but their surfaces are brought to life with colorful layers of metallic ink and glitter. Next, Ben places the wooden pieces into plastic cups and covers them with clear resin. Once cast and dry, he cuts away the plastic and begins forming the perfect egg shape using a lathe.

When complete, each handmade dragon egg sculpture looks like a prop from a fantasy film. Some pieces even feature tiny trees, flowers, and other elements within the resin, making them appear as if they’re their own little ecosystem. It’s easy to imagine miniature alien life living in the glittering terrain.

Image via My Modern Met 

This civil war is largely forgotten in the West, despite the involvement of officers from multiple western countries. The Taiping Rebellion broke out in 1850, thanks to the evident corruption within the ruling power and the influence of American and European nations on Chinese shores. After decades of social discontent, economic strain, and increasing subjugation, the rebellion lasted for fifteen years and set the Chinese empire of that time on the path to collapse. Check out the Collector’s full piece about this bloody rebellion here. 

Image via The Collector 

Is it made with some percentage of crab meat or artificial flavor? Regardless, imitation crab meat is good, whether eaten as is or added to your sushi or kimbap. Imitation crab is actually made of surimi, a paste that is basically mashed-up fish. Surimi is a combination of different fish such as such as Alaskan pollock or Pacific whiting fish that have been put through a complicated manufacturing process and turned into a gel-like substance, as Mashed details: 

A seafood paste might not exactly sound all that delicious, so in order to create the right taste and texture that you'll find in your California roll, manufacturers add in starches, sugars, artificial flavorings, and sometimes MSG (via SF Gate). All of these additives significantly decrease the nutritional value of imitation crab and it can become a menu item that those who are gluten-free should stay far away from. 

For starters, real crab meat is simply healthier than imitation crab, as it has more Omega-3 fats, less sugar, and more protein, and vitamins such as B12 and zinc (via Healthline). When you dine on imitation crab meat, you will ingest less sodium than if you have a plate of the real thing in front of you, so if that's something you're trying to watch in your diet, then you may want to consider this seafood alternative. 

Image via Mashed 

That was hard-earned loot, and it’s unfair to wipe them out for no reason. If it’s a technical glitch, hopefully the developers sort it out and give out some resources in return for the missing in-game items. Outriders, developed by People Can Fly, was released on April 1 with a lot of bugs. One of the many glitches was a nasty hiccup that, under unclear circumstances, wipes out all the loot players have collected. Ouch. Mashable has more details: 

Worse, the issue seems to be most prevalent among players who have reached the latest stages of the game and who, by extension, have spent the most time playing. 

Outriders is an action-RPG that's a bit like Destiny meets Diablo. Which is to say, loot — namely, the weapons and armor you pick up along the way — is central to the DNA of this experience. You're meant to amass large piles of stuff, all color-coded by rarity, and then sort through everything in search of the stats and capabilities that best suit the character you're playing and the way you've built out their space magic powers.

No one's clear on exactly what causes the "delete your whole inventory" glitch. It may or may not be tied to the online matchmaking that occurs when you try to play with other people online. That's how it came for me. 

Image via Mashable

Yikes. Researcher David Valentine discovered the environmental disaster after working with some rumors and a hunch. Valentine went 3,000 feet below the ocean’s surface (with his underwater camera) and immediately found dozens of decaying barrels of toxic waste in what is otherwise a barren, desert-like sea floor. Valentine estimates that the total barrels on the seafloor is around half a million: 

After 70-plus years of inaction, Valentine's research has finally helped initiate a huge research effort to reveal the extent of the contamination.

But this offshore dump site is only a part of the story of environmental damage from years of DDT discharge along the coast of Southern California — a story which likely won't be closed for decades to come because of its ongoing impact, including a recently discovered alarming and unprecedented rate of cancer in the state's sea lion population, with 1 in every 4 adult sea lions plagued with the disease.

To learn more about the story, check the full piece here. 

Image via CBS News

Studies into art preferences reveal that the artwork people are attracted to can give insight into our personality. A person’s interest in art is strongly correlated to certain personality traits more than to social class, age, or gender. Widely accepted personality theory the Big Five comprises personality traits that hail from art preference research, as Discover magazine details: 

The model asserts that each personality is comprised of a combination of five core traits: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism (known by the acronym OCEAN). Rather than lumping a person into binary categories like introvert or extrovert, the Big Five Model asserts that each trait is a spectrum, and everyone lies somewhere between the two extremes.

Each of these Big Five traits is informed by a host of facets that further describe someone’s personality. For instance, those who exhibit a high level of openness tend to be curious, independent, and imaginative, while those who are more conscientious are often organized, thoughtful and goal-oriented. In addition to art preferences, the Big Five Model is used to predict other human behaviors, like health consciousness, marital satisfaction and job performance.

Not only do personality traits predict whether you might like art in general, but they can also predict the style of artwork you're attracted to. A study in 1973 found that complexity in art was the primary distinction in how different personalities choose their favorite artwork: open personalities are partial to more complex paintings while conservative personalities like more straightforward, traditional pieces.

Image via Discover Magazine 

Listen, face masks are essential. It’s important that we make them more breathable and comfortable to wear. Widely-used masks are harder to breathe through, because they are basically a filter strapped in front of your face. Kylie Smith worked behind the scenes to try fix this current issue, teaming up with Rick Smith to create the Exa Mask, a face mask that factored air-flow into its design: 

To achieve this, the Exa Mask uses a 3-part design. The first part is its unique AirFrame – a band that sits around your nose. The AirFrame comes with ear-hoops that secures the apparatus around your ears (like most masks). It features a medical-grade silicone nose-piece that creates a seal around your nose, ensuring the air you breathe through your nostrils doesn’t travel upwards and fog your glasses, or downwards, making your lips and chin feel sweaty. The air only travels forward and backward, through the Exa Mask’s replaceable PFE 97 filters (the second part of its design) These filters are placed at a calculated distance from your nostrils, ensuring the air you breathe is 97% purified. They never touch your nostrils either, making the mask-wearing experience much more comfortable. The Exa Mask’s third part is its snap-on Mask Shield, which covers your nose and mouth, protecting you with an additional layer of security from particles. Inspired by Apple’s simple and sophisticated MagSafe feature, the Exa Mask’s AirFrame comes with magnetic rings that let you snap the fabric shield on in place. The AirFrame gives the fabric shield its structure, so it never presses against your face as you breathe, and the magnetic feature means you can easily replace shields on a whim, periodically changing them when they need to be washed, or when you want to choose a Mask Shield that matches your outfit.

Image via Yanko Design 

One of my biggest pet peeves about role playing games (RPGs) is the random encounter system employed. The random encounter system forces players to spend hours in dungeons fighting random creatures. While that system helps players to grind levels, there are times when you just move one tile in a dungeon after a battle and another enemy pops out. Seriously, it’s annoying. This new RPG Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi managed to fix the old battle system: 

To keep that from becoming overwhelming, Dimengeon battles feature unique mechanics. Players can grab power-ups during fights that’ll increase their attack power or steal a turn from an enemy. Combine that with the game’s base combat system that involves lining up shots to hit multiple enemies at once and these brawls become a satisfying test of how well players can spatially reason on the battlefield.

The most obvious benefit is that it cuts down on the number of times players are whisked into battle. Going off the beaten path to hunt for treasure feels less obnoxious when it doesn’t mean trudging through another 20 minutes of fights. That keeps the pace of the game surprisingly brisk. The whole adventure is over in 15 hours, and it’s easy to see how traditional random battles could have stretched it way further.

Image via Inverse 

Look closer and you’ll have a treat! These miniature pieces by Sidney-based artist Michael Pederson are inconspicuously scattered in various places. From tiny schedule signs about pigeons, to a small sign about spiders. My favorite out of The Poke’s compilation of Pederson’s creations  is the airport-esque pigeon schedule. Check out more of his work here. 

Image via The Poke 

For an old and underground location, the Wieliczka Salt Mine in Krakow, Poland holds its grace and beauty regardless of the passage of time. Sculpted entirely out of salt, the site now functions as a tourist attraction after mining operations were shut down in 1996: 

Salt in the Middle Ages represented such an important resource. Mines such as Wieliczka were considered nothing short of gold mines, which would explain the sheer enormousness of the place.

If one would take the time to visit all the existent chambers at the Wieliczka salt mine, it would take them approximately two months. There are in total some 2,000 chambers, the deepest of which concealed at approximately 300 meters (1000 feet) below the ground.

Day and night, miners dug the earth to make new shafts and create new caves. They eventually began to create elaborate elements and objects such as sculptures, and later entire chapels. Decorating the dark chambers with something authentically made of materials such as unprocessed salt brightened up the place where they were supposed to spend so much time. One of the earliest salt sculptures inside Wieliczka can be traced back to the 13th-century.

Image via This City Knows 

There’s a way to decrease the amount of methane on our planet! For the first time ever, researchers have discovered a unique bacteria that can eat methane. The study, published in Nature Communications, found microbial, methane-eating communities thriving within the bark of a paperbark (Melaleuca quinquenervia), a common Australian tree species. The Conservation  has more details: 

We discovered the bark of paperbark trees provide a unique home for methane-oxidizing bacteria — bacteria that “consumes” methane and turns it into carbon dioxide, a far less potent greenhouse gas.

Remarkably, these bacteria made up to 25% of total microbial communities living in the bark, and were consuming around 36% of the tree’s methane. It appears these microbes make an easy living in the dark, moist and methane-rich environments.

This discovery will revolutionise the way in which we view methane emitting trees and the novel microbes living within them.

Only through understanding why, how, which, when and where trees emit the most methane, may we more effectively plant forests that effectively draw down carbon dioxide while avoiding unwanted methane emissions.

Image via the Conservation 

Intel has released a presentation on its newest tool to combat hate speech. The software, called Bleep, was developed in partnership with Spirit AI. Bleep uses AI to censor hate speech in real time during gameplay. True to its name, the tool ‘bleeps’ out offending language, much to the Internet’s amusement, mostly thanks to how users can toggle on and off specific ‘hate speech categories’, as Polygon details: 

 The screenshot depicts the user settings for the software and shows a sliding scale where people can choose between “none, some, most, or all” of categories of hate speech like “racism and xenophobia” or “misogyny.” There’s also a toggle for the N-word.

“The intent of this has always been to put that that nuanced control in the hands in the users,” Marcus Kennedy, general manager of Intel’s gaming division, told Polygon over video chat. As Kennedy explained it to Polygon, Intel intended for those sliders to give players options, depending on the situation. Certain kinds of shit talk might be acceptable, even playful, when shared between friends, but might not be acceptable when it’s a stranger shouting at you.

Intel also clarified that the technology was not final, and could change between now and release. Still, the idea that people would be OK with some, but not a lot of hate speech came off as absurd to people online. So, as a result, people are now making a ton of memes and jokes that belittle the menu settings. One tweet jokes, “computer, today i feel like being a little bit misogynistic.”

Honestly, it’s certainly a step in the right direction, regardless whether the toggle options are kinda funny. 

image via Twitter

Dmanisi, located in Tbilisi, Georgia is a site that helps researchers in understanding a lot of aspects about our past. From using ancient proteins extracted from a rhinoceros tooth found in Dmanisi that let researchers build family trees and determine the relationships between different species, to the site assisting anthropologists in analyzing the brain organization of   the Dmanisi hominins, disproving that many quintessentially human behaviors require big, complex brains, the site is regarded as one of the most important sites in the story of human evolution: 

“The Dmanisi hominins had surprisingly primitive, ape-like brains,” says Ponce de Leon. “However, (they) ventured out of Africa, produced a variety of tools, exploited animal resources, and cared for elderly people. These people with their small, ape-like brains were able to master cognitively demanding tasks. This is really astounding. They provide a completely new perspective on what these behaviors mean in terms of brain evolution.”

In addition to making tools and caregiving—one of the five partial skulls found at the site belonged to an elderly, toothless individual who would have been unable to eat on their own—the Dmanisi hominins, early members of the genus Homo, managed to survive in the middle of what appears to be an extraordinary concentration of big carnivores.

Image via Atlas Obscura 

Luxor, a long-lost city hailed as the ‘Egyptian Pompeii,’ has finally been discovered by archaeologists. The city was discovered last year, and researchers were impressed with the level of preservation in the site. But what was the mystery behind the golden city? Archaeologists believe that the pharaoh Akhenaten left Thebes for more than 150 years to settle in a industrial royal metropolis within Thebes, which is now dubbed as the “lost golden city of Luxor:" 

“There’s no doubt about it; it really is a phenomenal find,” says Salima Ikram, an archaeologist who leads the American University in Cairo’s Egyptology unit. “It’s very much a snapshot in time—an Egyptian version of Pompeii.”

The site dates from the era of 18th-dynasty pharaoh Amenhotep III, who ruled between around 1386 and 1353 B.C. and presided over an era of extraordinary wealth, power and luxury. In Amenhotep III’s final years, he is thought to have briefly reigned alongside his son, Akhenaten.

But a few years after his father’s death, Akhenaten, who ruled from around 1353–1336, broke with everything the late ruler stood for. During his 17-year reign, he upended Egyptian culture, abandoning all of the traditional Egyptian pantheon but one, the sun god Aten. He even changed his name from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten, which means “devoted to Aten.”  

Structures are packed with everyday items, many of which relate to the artistic and industrial production that supported the pharaoh’s capital city. There are homes where workers might have lived, a bakery and kitchen, items related to metal and glass production, buildings that appear related to administration, and even a cemetery filled with rock-cut tombs.

Image via National Geographic