Naya Rivera was reported missing after her four-year-old son was found in a rental boat on the lake by himself. Authorities are still looking for the body of the “Glee” actress, who was believed to have drowned, as The Los Angeles Times details: 

Divers, helicopters, drone aircraft and cadaver dogs have been trying to find Rivera for five days. The 33-year-old actress, who gained fame for her role on “Glee,” was reported missing Wednesday after her 4-year-old son was found in a rental boat on the lake by himself.

Sheriff’s officials said the boy was found asleep on the boat, wearing his life vest. They later learned that Rivera and her son were swimming together in the lake and that he was able to get back on the boat, but she had not.

Search teams on Sunday were checking cabins and outbuildings surrounding the lake, as well as the shoreline, officials said. All of those areas were already searched the afternoon Rivera went missing, they said.

“They’re just doubling back and checking those areas one more time to be sure, but there’s no indication that she got out of the water,” said Capt. Eric Buschow of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.

image via The Los Angeles Times

On a new episode in Watcher’s Are You Scared, Ryan reads another tale from the Internet about an incident that made a police dispatcher quit his profession for good. Do you think that the story is real? 

The current pandemic has brought a lot of businesses to a big halt. Some are close to shutting down, while some are still trying to adapt to the current situation. Some small farms send out their products through a new mobile market and are hosting drive-in tours around their farms: 

Mooney began reaching out to other small farmers and food producers in the area, seeing whether they'd like to be a part of the orchard's new Apple Barn Mobile Market, which pulls together products from various local farms and delivers them directly to customers. “In the beginning we had one person selling their farm's sausage, another selling eggs, and a woman who provided us with beautiful microgreens that she usually sold to restaurants,” says Mooney. The Apple Barn Mobile Market has since grown to a few-dozen products, including fresh goat cheese from nearby Goat Lady Dairy, tomatoes from Twin Oaks Produce, and Liberty Kettle Corn from local purveyor Becky Suphin, who says her sales are up 50 percent from what they would be during the pandemic without the market. It's just one of the innovative ways that Mooney has reworked her property's offerings in the age of COVID-19—others include a socially distant farmers' market, pick-your-own fruit that allows adequate space between participants and a reservation-only “behind-the-scenes” farm tour.

In fact, the Visit NC Farms app, which officially launched in January 2020, had 4,630 downloads in May, up from 726 downloads in March. But as farmers adjust to new COVID-19 rules and restrictions, they're having to find new and innovative ways to attract visitors, whether it's curbside produce pickup, socially-distanced farm stays or even a farm experience drive-through, allowing families to view the production of seasonally changing crops and visit with farm animals—all from the safety of their vehicle.

image via The Smithsonian Magazine

It’s the pokedex! Scientists are now planning how to put together a list of all the creatures on Earth. This project seems simple at a glance, but some lists may not cover some species, while some may not follow some principles set by scientists. Currently, there is no agreed-upon list of species available, as ScienceAlert details: 

"Listing all species may sound routine, but is a difficult and complex task," says environmental scientist Stephen Garnett from Charles Darwin University in Australia. "Currently no single, agreed list of species is available."

One factor in the researchers' favour is that the world is connected like never before (as you might have noticed if you've had to take part in more video group calls than normal in recent weeks). Information can be easily shared and assessed across countries and continents in an instant.

image via ScienceAlert

We’ve always entertained the idea of animals being able to think like us. A lot of stories, TV shows, and movies have run on the premise that the animals around us can talk and think like we do. That leaves us with the question: do animals really think like us? Scientists have researched this matter, as Orion magazine detailed: 

Not long ago, a question like this would have seemed foolish, if not crazy. How can an octopus know anything, much less form an opinion? Octopuses are, after all, “only” invertebrates — they don’t even belong with the insects, some of whom, like dragonflies and dung beetles, at least seem to show some smarts. Octopuses are classified within the invertebrates in the mollusk family, and many mollusks, like clams, have no brain.

Only recently have scientists accorded chimpanzees, so closely related to humans we can share blood transfusions, the dignity of having a mind. But now, increasingly, researchers who study octopuses are convinced that these boneless, alien animals — creatures whose ancestors diverged from the lineage that would lead to ours roughly 500 to 700 million years ago — have developed intelligence, emotions, and individual personalities. Their findings are challenging our understanding of consciousness itself.

image via wikimedia commons

An odd incident that occured in Sanford, Maine, started a true-crime mystery. A car went onto a baseball field during a game in 2018. This odd incident was the start of a true-crime mystery that was 50 years in the making. ESPN Senior Writer Tom Junod writes the details surrounding the mystery. Check the full piece here.

image screenshot via ESPN

Today’s generation has been blessed with sanitation technology developed years before them. In addition to the technology that aids us in our hygienic practices, we are also quite meticulous in our personal hygiene. But have you ever wondered how people from past eras maintained their hygiene? Check out this video from Weird History as they discuss the hygienic practices of the Victorians. Spoiler alert: despite their lavish clothing and jewelry, they were apparently gross.

One of the reviews on The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild is that its ending was a bit too anticlimactic and lacking. That point seems understandable, as players spent one hundred plus hours pouring their heart and soul into exploring the vast land of Hyrule, unlocking every story-related quest, and defeating all the required bosses to clear the game only to get a short cutscene for an ending. The trend of gamers being unsatisfied with endings seems to carry over to The Last Of Us 2. The game’s ending has left a lot of gamers disappointed: 

I am perplexed. To me, this seems like the only way TLOU2 could have ended well. Yet, the census from the masses is that the game teases you with a climactic ending, only to fizzle out with a sad, pathetic fight. Which, yes, it does exactly that, yet it’s so fitting – a pathetic scrap between two people worn down to their cores, by years of vainly seeking to heal their trauma. This is a beautifully fitting ending to a cautionary tale of revenge, but many say they would have preferred it if Ellie got her revenge. As if the game hasn’t spent hours showing you that Abby gained nothing from enacting hers.

This is saddening because, like Firewatch, this ending is designed to make the player reflect. I know I, like Ellie, wanted Abby’s head on a pike for most of the story – Especially since the game, despite its best efforts, does a pretty poor job of making me care for Abby – but the ending gave me reason to pause and think. Was it ever really worth all this effort?

image via Medium

Twitter users have been labeling Penn Station as the worst place in New York City. Some called it their “hell on earth,” even. Penn Station is a transit hub that sits below Madison Square Garden, and it has major dungeon vibes, as Time Out details: 

For the uninitiated (if you’ve somehow managed to dodge Penn Station in your time as a New Yorker), the transit hub, which sits just below Madison Square Garden, is home to three different railroads: Amtrak, New Jersey Transit, and Long Island Rail Road. With the entirety of the structure's above ground portion demolished in 1963 to make way for Madison Square Garden, it's pretty much devoid of sunlight. Garishly lit with low-ceilings and pigeons hanging out overhead, some would say it has major dungeon vibes. 

During the daily rush hour, confusing signs have tourists walking in circles, seasoned commuters shove and shoulder each other as their assigned train tracks appear on the big board. Hundreds race down cramped stairs to tunnels even further underground.

image via Time Out

The Sims Spark’d is a reality competition show where players take on challenges as they play the Sims 4. The show is made in partnership with Eleague and Buzzfeed Multiplayer, and will be aired on TBS. The winner of the reality show will receive a whopping $100,000. Would you tune in? 

image via Polygon

Unexpected free time does wonders for people! It’s amazing to see people get their creative juices flowing given the current situation (but absolutely no pressure). One animator decided to share a small clip of their animated characters reacting to them, as if the characters really see what’s happening.

Nobody:
Bored animators during quarantine: pic.twitter.com/uxOsknVIG1

— AmazingArtistYellow (@AAnimatorYellow) July 8, 2020

image screenshot via Twitter

So maybe you’re interested in spending your free time playing games. However there are a lot of consoles out there on the market, each offering different games. So what would be a good first gaming console to invest in? IGN lists the details and specs of each available game console on the market. Check out the full article here. 

image via IGN

The infamous “Nintendo PlayStation” is one of unreleased consoles that a lot of people would pay heaps of money for should it be released. Since releasing that console is quite impossible, one person was able to build a unit composed of the SNES’ Satellaview attachment and some components of a PlayStation 1, as Kotaku details: 

something from the same era that’s even rarer is Nintendo’s repeated efforts to create a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES, which ultimately came to nothing

That add-on was supposed to clip underneath an existing SNES console, just like Sega went and did with its Genesis/Mega CD combo, and while we still haven’t found one (if any prototypes ever existed in the first place), LASTFANTASY (via Attract Mode) has gone and built a pretty good likeness of one using a SNES, its Satellaview attachment and the guts of a PlayStation 1.

image via Kotaku

It’s no surprise that a lot of trends and challenges are rising in TikTok, now that a lot of us are in our homes during the pandemic. But besides the fun, there seems to be some challenges that yield more income than entertainment. A pump-and-dump scheme involving Dogecoin, a joke currency made of memes, has been paying off quite well. Gizmodo has more details: 

The plan is kinda paying off: As of this morning, Dogecoin had risen 27.7% since July 5.

The leader is jamezg97, who started posting about the bid on June 28, and subsequently began the #DogecoinTiktokChallange. The mystery TikToker, whose bio reads “STONKS,” tells users:

Alright here’s a crazy thought. What if everyone watching this video bought some Dogecoin? Could they really stop us? Could they stop us all?

The splitscreen shows that you could increase $1,000 to $426,985 if you held it from a price of $.00234 and tapped out at $1. A second video, posted five days ago and now with nearly half a million views, issues a bolder missive:

Let’s all get rich! Dogecoin is practically worthless. There are 800 million TikTok users. That’s just $25. Once it hits one dollar, you’ll have ten grand. Tell everyone you know.

image via Gizmodo

The Italian Alps are now covered in pink snow! The beautiful but unnatural phenomenon isn't a surprise snow mutation, it’s actually a bad sign. The pink color comes from blooming algae, which speeds up the rate at which snow melts away, as Futurism details: 

It’s not so much that the algae is melting the snow itself, Earther reports. But rather, turning the snow into pink “strawberry snow,” as it’s sometimes called, makes it absorb more heat from sunlight, which causes it to melt sooner.

Blooms like this aren’t unheard of — they’re a relatively common occurrence in glaciers in the spring and summer. It’s not yet clear if rising temperatures linked to climate change will mean more blooms in the future, Earther reports, but there is the distinct possibility that more heat will mean more algae and less snow.

image via Futurism