If all you know about Norse mythology is Thor, Loki, and Odin from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you have a lot more to learn. The many gods of old Norse paganism weren't perfect, just powerful. In addition to the powerful gods, there were also giants, dwarves, elves, and other supernatural beings. They did as they pleased, with no regard for mere humans nor for each other. Their stories weren't written, but passed down through generations by storytelling, until the Scandinavian countries were converted to Christianity by the 12th century. These stories varied among communities until the rise of the Vikings, which led to some consolidation of beliefs. But they weren't written down until after the rise of Christianity, so our understanding of what they actually believed is still fairly superficial.

Of the many stories of old Norse gods, Weird History picks out the most violent tales, having to do with power struggles, wars, and betrayal. An amusing bonus is hearing Tom Blank pronouncing all those ancient Norse names.

Lỗ Mạnh Hùng was only eleven years old when he begin to run into dangerous situations instead of away from them. That was in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in 1967. That's how Hùng became the youngest war photographer ever. He came by his skills honestly, as his father was also a photojournalist. But Hùng was small enough to wiggle his way through a crowd to get the best shot of whatever was happening, and he sold his photos to news organizations for more than enough to support the family during wartime. He made a name for himself by getting the images of the Tet Offensive in 1968.

Lỗ Mạnh Hùng managed to board a helicopter and escape Saigon in 1975 when the North Vietnamese triumphantly invaded the city. Read about the life of the world's youngest war photographer and what ultimately happened to him at Rare Historical Photos. -via Damn Interesting

Thieving bastards!!
byu/RogueBromeliad infunny

This gray cat knows exactly what he wants and where to find it. He wasn't all that keen on stopping to pay for his sausage, though. You can imagine him showing off his loot to his friends, and the orange cat doesn't believe him. So for his next caper, he brings his orange buddy along. This time the bin is piled full of sausages, which triggers an orgy of gastronomy right there on the sales floor. Orange cat, being orange, only has one brain cell and really doesn't know what to do with all that bounty.

While you can't really stage a video with cats (they don't take direction well), it's obvious this is not the first time these guys have been in this store. The camera follows them around, and you get the idea that whoever is operating it is enjoying the scene as much as we are. Besides, who puts a bin full of sausages on the floor? Customers are most likely to buy what is at eye level. Which this is, if you are a cat. -via reddit

Americans learn in elementary school that the Continental Army suffered terrible conditions, especially at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777-78. By February, they didn't have enough food nor warm clothing, and influenza swept through the camp. More thorough accounts tell us that the conditions weren't nearly as dire as your fourth grade teacher led you to believe (she was a drama queen), but there were supply line problems, which Washington worked hard to fix.

The truth is that the soldiers of the Continental Army ate pretty good most of the time. The documented rations for troops included a half-pound of beef every day, plus a half-pound of pork. If pork wasn't available, they got a pound and a quarter of beef! They were issued a quart of "good spruce or malt beer or cider." Every day. They were also supplied with bread, vegetables, soup, etc, which you can read about at Cracked, where they compare the revolutionary soldiers' food with the modern barbecues we enjoy today in celebration of their bravery.

Most of what we learned in school about World War II is from this side of the Iron Curtain. What happened in Eastern Bloc countries or Soviet Republics was mostly hidden until the Revolutions of 1989 and the fall of the Soviet Union. By then, plenty of local stories were forgotten or otherwise inaccessible. In 1993, caver Chris Nicola found signs of habitation in some Ukrainian caves, and when he inquired, was told that Jews hid in those caves during the Nazi extermination program. It took ten years, but he found six survivors who told the tale of how their families hid in Verteba Cave and Priest’s Grotto.

In October of 1942, after the Nazis invaded Ukraine, two families hid in Verteba Cave. They were joined by other families later, for a total of 28 people. They shared the space with foxes and bats, and a select few ventured out at night to find supplies. They melted snow and caught water from dripping stalactites to drink. Nazis discovered the cave in 1943, but only a few were captured, because the cave system was full of dark passages. The remaining people moved to Priest’s Grotto, a bigger cave with its own underground water supply. When the Red Army liberated Ukraine in 1944, they were able to come out, but the children who hadn't seen sunlight in year and a half were frightened by the daylight. Read the story of those who hid in Ukrainian caves to survive Hitler's Final Solution at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: Natalia Parkhomenko)

Have you ever been startled when an electric car snuck up on you while you were walking? That happened to me about ten years ago. I was on a sidewalk, but I immediately thought of what would happen if a cat or a kid were in the road. We are just plain used to loud car engines. So auto manufacturers started adding noises to cars, even though they don't need them to function. But when the sound is superfluous to the vehicle's function, those sounds don't have to mimic a combustion engine. What sounds should a car have to be the safest for pedestrians, cyclists, and animals? Car companies are working with audio engineers and sound designers to perfect the sounds of a quiet car for optimum safety while trying not to annoy everyone who hears them. -via Digg

When someone in this day and age tells you to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps," they almost always mean you should work harder to improve your lot. However, the original quote that gave us the phrase can be traced back to 1834, when it was used to mock someone who claimed to have invented the perpetual motion machine. See, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is literally impossible, so the phrase is supposed to refer to an impossible act. The quote has been around so long that people completely misunderstand what it really means.

Another example is the "one bad apple" that you shouldn't judge the rest of the apples by. But the full phrase is "one bad apple spoils the barrel," which is completely opposite of how the phrase is used today. I blame the 1970 song by The Osmonds, where the lyric is "one bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch." But that's just my opinion. Read up on the origins and transformations of ten common quotes that people completely misinterpret at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: ABigCat)

More than a decade ago, I still remember quite vividly when my parents and I traveled to Singapore, and we happened upon an old Singaporean man on the street selling ice cream. But it wasn't any old ice cream on cones. It was the ice cream sandwiches which, for anyone who has traveled to Singapore, was quite a popular dessert.

The first time I took a bite of that ice cream sandwich, it felt like heaven especially after a couple of hours walking under the heat of the sun on a summer day in Singapore. I immediately loved the dessert, and I asked my parents for another one because I just couldn't get enough of it.

I can only compare it to that time when I first tried McDonald's Oreo Mcflurry, a day that changed my life forever. It was the first time I discovered the cookies and cream flavor for ice cream being a hot fudge sundae or regular vanilla on a cone guy before that. Since then, I never looked back. When I got a taste of that ice cream sandwich, it was etched into my memory.

I've seen ice cream sandwiches elsewhere, but they just couldn't compare to Singapore's ice cream sandwiches. The wafers, or bread, as well as the signature Magnolia ice cream, just have a distinct taste that will leave a lasting impression on you.

I haven't been to Singapore since then, and so, I'm quite surprised to find out that the Singaporean government has been slowly phasing out street hawkers, which included the numerous Singaporean uncles who sold those ice cream sandwiches on Orchard Road. When once there were 30 ice cream hawkers, now there are only seven.

Thankfully, Singapore's ice cream sandwiches have found a new home, 3,000 kilometers away in Vietnam where a couple have established stalls selling the signature ice cream sandwiches of Singapore. The store, Hawker Star, was founded by Thach Van Thang and his wife, Dang Thi Thanh Hoa, in May 2020, and has since grown to more than 20 outlets throughout Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, and some smaller provinces in Vietnam.

When initially they invested US$50,000, they now earn US$50,000 every month in revenues. Although Vietnam has its own version of ice cream sandwiches, the couple just felt that it lacked a certain punch and so turned to the Singapore treat, which they consider an upgrade to the their local dessert.

With the help of some Singaporean entrepreneurs, they were able to get the business idea off the ground, and with their family friend helping them to become the exclusive distributor of Magnolia's ice cream, the business became a success. So much so that many competitors started to popping up trying to replicate their concept. However, for Thang and Hoa, they focused their competitive advantage on the quality of their product and service.

Even Singaporeans who have traveled to Vietnam and come across Hawker Star have given their stamp of approval to the ice cream sandwich. Vietnamese students who studied in Singapore also found it a pleasant surprise to see that Singapore's ice cream sandwich can now be found at home.

Despite the dwindling numbers of ice cream hawkers in Singapore, it is quite a relief that the culture is being kept alive thousands of miles away from home. And I too would give anything just to have one more taste of that exquisite ice cream sandwich from all those years ago. One day soon perhaps, when I find myself walking down the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, I might just cross paths with that ice cream sandwich again.

(Image credit: Thach Van Thang)

Rummage through your medicine cabinet in the bathroom and there's a high chance that you'll see one or several of those orange prescription bottles tucked away in there. I only see these things shown on TV since most of our prescription medicine here come in their original opaque bottles or in blister packs.

And because I've been accustomed to seeing these many times in Western shows, it has been embedded in my mind to think that those orange bottles are for pills. However, it never occurred to me to ask why they are colored orange, or amber to be more specific. Reader's Digest asked Jennifer Bourgeois, a pharmacist and health expert, to get down to the real reason why they are orange.

Bourgeois gives three main reasons why the industry standard for prescription pill bottles is the amber color. First, it's to make sure that they remain effective for as long as possible until their written expiration date. We often see storage instructions on the side of pill bottles saying that we should keep the medicine out of direct sunlight. That's why we usually store them in a medicine cabinet, somewhere dry, cool, and dark, to maintain the potency of the medicine. In the same vein, standard pill bottles are colored amber to protect the pills from UV light.

According to Bourgeois, the color orange functions as a barrier to filter out the UV light, so that even if the medicine accidentally sees the light of day, its effectiveness won't be impacted.

Second, it makes sure that the pills are visible. It would be a lot safer to simply store the pills in their original opaque manufacturer bottles, but then, you would have to open the bottle to make sure that you got the right medicines. So, it's much easier to verify the contents of the bottle if it were translucent. Also, it's much faster to know how much you have left if the bottle were translucent.

Finally, they used the amber color as a standard to make medications recognizable. As I mentioned at the beginning, I knew that orange bottles were for pills because that's what I saw on TV. It's a universally recognized symbol that shows something is a prescription medicine. And so, knowing that, anyone would understand that it should be handled with care and not to be trifled with, or not to be left some place where children can easily access them.

Apart from the distinct orange hue, these pill bottles have one other safety feature, and that's their white cap. This was specially designed by a pediatrician, Henri Breault, along with an engineer in order to ensure that children won't accidentally ingest the medicine and get poisoned by them. So, they invented the child-resistant cap, which uses the "palm and turn" technique to open them. Ever since it was created in 1967, the rate of deaths from poisoning by accidental medication ingestion has decreased by more than 80%.

Of course, just because the orange pill bottles are pretty effective in making sure that our medication is safely stored, we shouldn't neglect taking appropriate measures to store it properly away from the sun and from the reach of children. Usually, storing medicine in a cool, dry place is the recommended practice, however, there are certain medication that need to be stored inside the refrigerator, so it's still best to check with your physician, pharmacist, or the indications on the bottle.

(Image credit: Haley Lawrence/Unsplash)

Chile is so long that you can visualize it bending to the curvature of the earth. It's so long that if it were placed in Europe, it would reach from the top of Norway down to the north coast of Africa. The country's climate reflects the same orientation, except backwards. At the bottom, it's very close to Antarctica, and in the north you'll find hot desert. There's also a temperate rainforest in the middle, which is where people actually live. Those people speak a version of Spanish that Spanish-speakers from other places can't understand. What makes Chile so different in so many ways?

The short answer is the Andes mountain range. But those mountains, placed where they are, come with a story behind them and a lot of geographical effects that might surprise you. Chile's climate is affected by both the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic. The mountains left cultural effects of their own. And the main population of Chile is boxed in on four sides by mountains, ocean, desert, and cold. Tomas Pueyo explains why Chile is so different in so many ways because of where it is at Uncharted Territories.  -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Addicted04)

We saw the finalists a couple of months ago, and now the awards are in. The winners of the Comedy Pet Photography Awards have been announced! The overall winner is Sarah Haskell for the image above, titled Not Just For Cats. Or at least that's what Haskell's dog Hector thought, but he didn't make it all the way through. This photo also won in the dog category. The cat category was won by the picture below, titled Cat in a trap like Super Mario by Kenichi Morinaga.



I see a theme developing, but not all the award-winning photos were of self-trapped animals. The People's Choice winner is titled Tarzan by Kazutoshi Ono.



There are plenty more winners in the different categories, plus highly commended photos as well, that you can see in a gallery at the contest site. They do this every year, so never pass up an opportunity to take pictures of your pets, lest you'll catch them doing something funny. -via Digg

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F hits theaters this weekend. It is the fourth installment of the Beverly Hills Cop franchise that started in 1984. Eddie Murphy returns as Axel Foley, a Detroit police officer who is transported to a different culture in Los Angeles. So Screen Junkies goes back forty years to the movie that started it all. Warning: revisiting the original may ruin the new movie for you. We won't know until someone actually sees it.

In 1984, Eddie Murphy was already quite popular from Saturday Night Live, his standup act, and a couple of movie roles. Beverly Hills Cop was his first as the solo star, and became the biggest movie of 1984, spending 14 weeks at #1. This video makes us remember why. Beverly Hills Cop made Murphy a superstar. The two sequels, from 1987 and 1994, couldn't hold a candle to the original. While Honest Trailers are usually pretty devastating, the parts they pick on in this one are honestly funny.

Although AI has been very popular over the past decade, and even more within the past five years, it still has its limitations. McDonald's US experimented with using AI to take orders for customers in their drive-thrus since 2021, and they have decided to pull the plug on the test this coming July. They will be removing their AI drive-thrus on July 27.

I have seen how ChatGPT is capable of voice recognition almost with 100% accuracy, if not 100% accuracy, no matter how people pronounce words or whether they have an accent. However, it's different when you're simply dictating a message that you want to send to a family member, a friend, or your spouse, or if you just want to make a note without having to type it. Then, AI will probably suffice. However, for a business like McDonald's, accuracy is the top priority since making a mistake means a lot of disgruntled and dissatisfied customers. It will cost them billions.

So, perhaps that's one of the reasons why they've decided to axe their AI drive-thrus. Initially though, they had considered these as a success with an 85% order accuracy. But 15% is still a lot, given how many people order at McDonald's every single day. Just some examples of order shenanigans include giving a customer cream packet instead of "no caramel" on their sundae.

According to the memo sent out by McDonald's US, they will continue to stay in partnership with IBM from whom they got the AI machines for their drive-thrus. The main challenge according to that memo was that the technology from IBM had trouble interpreting different accents and dialects. And given the massive ramifications that a single mistake would translate in terms of the bottom line, it's no surprise that McDonald's decided to ditch it after just three years of experimenting.

This just goes to show that AI will definitely not replace human beings any time soon, as one of the primary roles or functions that human beings still excel at much more than any computer or AI is communication and interpretation of the messages being given. Despite the great strides that AI technology has had, it still doesn't compare to humans' language ability, creativity, spatial understanding, and deductive reasoning.

(Image credit: Eduardo Soares/Unsplash)

About four years ago, I made a decision that I think has changed my life for the better. As an Asian guy, white rice has been a staple of our diet. We have it in every meal, and whenever we don't get it, we don't feel as though we've had an actual meal.

I'm not really overweight, although at that time, I was teetering on the edge of being overweight, and I felt it too. I felt heavy and almost unable to do any physical exercise. It wasn't helping that I was living abroad, and for my first year, I lived on the side of a mountain. So, whenever I needed to get groceries, I literally had to walk down and climb back up the mountain. Going down was a walk in the park, you just had to be careful not to slip and roll down the slope. It was the way back up that proved to be a challenge.

That's when I decided that perhaps it was time for me to watch my weight and watch what I was eating. So with the help of my friend, with whom I lived for about a year, I changed my diet from eating white rice to brown rice. I heard some of the health benefits of brown rice, so I decided to try it. It wasn't as bad as I thought, with regard to the taste, although the texture took some time to get used to.

Before long, I was exclusively eating brown rice at home, and only having white rice occasionally when eating out with friends. As the years went by, I made the decision to simply have one rice meal a day, and just eat fruits or whole grain bread for breakfast and even dinner. I lost about 18 pounds on the first year. And since then, I have just been maintaining my weight given that I'm not that heavy to begin with.

I noticed one major change in my body when I made that change, and that was my appetite. The less I ate, the more my body got used to the amount of food intake I get each day. I was able to control how much I ate in a day, and I also felt full a lot faster.

Now, some people may struggle more in controlling their hunger and satiety, and they might have tried various diets, workout routines, and other solutions to help them lose weight, but one particular solution may have been the "miracle" drug that some people have been looking for.

Ozempic initially is a drug used to treat type 2 diabetes, but now there are studies that have looked into its effects on weight loss. Although effects vary on different people, those who have experienced dramatic changes report that they had experienced something similar to what I had, in terms of the way they viewed food.

Some people reported no longer craving too much or being able to have more control over their cravings. More than helping improve their eating habits, it also reduced anxiety. These drugs are under a category called GLP-1 receptor agonists. And researchers have found that GLP-1 is not only associated with treatment for diabetes and weight loss, but also addiction treatment.

This spate of new studies on GLP-1 and how it affects a variety of physiological and neurological functions has researchers honing in on it and seeing how it's connected with different dysfunctions in the body. Right now, researchers are looking to break down the stigma on obesity and addiction with the help of research on GLP-1.

The more we understand that our cravings, addictions, or appetite may be connected to a mutation or malfunction in our natural GLP-1 receptor, the more we are able to empathize with people who struggle to make certain changes in their lives and maintain them. At the very least, with drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and other GLP-1-based medication, several people have found relief from lifelong struggles.

Hopefully, as further research and development progresses, we are able to unlock the secrets of our neurological pathways and how they are connected to a wide array of pathologies, which we may not even have much control over. For a more detailed explanation as to the mechanism behind GLP-1 and how targeting it helps control excessive behavior related to obesity or addiction, check out the article on Scientific American.

(Image credit: Kimzy Nanney/Unsplash)

Many people in my country probably share something in common with many others in the world: they want to live the American dream. And so, they pursue that dream through whatever means that's available to them. If an opportunity to work in the medical field, for example, opens up, many doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals apply for those jobs because they strongly believe that life in the US would be much better than life here.

Although it is true that the standard of living in the US is miles above our country's standard of living, people forget that there are other factors they need to consider when chasing after their dream or pursuing a career overseas. One of the biggest considerations is a place to live and the monthly rent one needs to pay.

The fact that rent is pretty expensive and getting increasingly unaffordable is not exclusive to the US. Many other major cities all over the world face the same issues. Tokyo, Seoul, London, Singapore, Paris, Amsterdam - these are only some of the major cities in the world where rent is sky high, and we shouldn't be surprised about that. The more densely populated an area is, the higher the rental costs would be as there would be a higher demand for housing.

The same is true for the US, especially if a dreamer is eyeing to live in a major city. Redfin conducted a survey to see in which cities in the US would be the most difficult and most unaffordable for people to rent an apartment. And the results are probably what you would expect if someone were to ask you, "Which city in the US has the most expensive rent?"

Of course, topping the list is New York City which requires one to have at least a $119,120 annual salary, with the median price of apartments being $2,978. Among all 33 major cities that Redfin analyzed, New York came out with the biggest gap (of 43.5% less than what they need) between a renter's median household income ($67,358) and the minimum household income one must receive to be able to afford an apartment in New York.

The following four cities in order are: Miami, Boston, Los Angeles, and Riverside. Although these cities aren't arranged in order of how much the median asking price for an apartment is, they are, however, arranged according to the gap existing between a renter's median household income and the minimum household income required for them to be able to rent an apartment in the respective cities.

In order, these cities came out with these gap figures: 42.2%, 38.7%, 36.1%, and 30.8%. But if we were to look at merely how much the median price of an apartment would be in each of these cities, it would be as follows: $2,486 in Miami, $2,835 in Boston, $2,811 in Los Angeles, and $2,312 in Riverside. The gap figures take into account how much disposable income each person has, which affects the quality of life they can afford.

Despite this disparity, there are plenty of ways for people to find affordable housing and still be able to find a nice job in those cities. Whether it would be practical to take an hour or longer commute is within their discretion. But sometimes, people will just take their chances and hope they're able to make it through.

(Image credit: Sergio Arteaga/Unsplash)