Science fiction stretches our minds and imaginations by presenting the possibility of new worlds full of very different beings and fantastic technology. Some stories are wondrous and hopeful, while others are terrifying and make us glad to be where we are instead. What kinds of these stories do you like best? We often see plots, twists, and tropes used over and over, mainly because they thrill us and make us want to revisit these worlds. Sure, they often require a lot of suspension of disbelief, but we've become accustomed to that in order to be entertained.

Here are the sci-fi tropes that have stuck around because they work, whether it’s making first contact with an alien species, using a food replicator, or hearing a spaceship go “kaboom!” We’ve also included a few tired, often bigoted tropes that should be jettisoned into the farthest reaches of space.

Check out the list at io9 and see if you agree. There are plenty of video examples to keep you entertained.

Why do walks in green spaces boost our mental health, and why do these places in nature calm us down? According to this recent study from researchers at various institutions, these benefits are results of psychological needs being met.

The study found that people’s attachment to the wilderness can be explained by their basic psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence. Additional research links place attachment, specifically to areas where trees are plentiful, to feelings of well-being, suggesting that spending time in natural areas can provide positive mental and physical health outcomes and improve healing.

More details about this study over at Neuroscience News.

(Image Credit: bertvthul/ Pixabay)

One of the essential things that you have to consider when you are traveling is making sure that your phone will not run out of battery power. This is why there are battery packs: they ensure that your phone has power in the time of need. 

There are many power banks available in the market. Some can charge your smartphone into full power once, and then there are others who can do that twice. And then there’s the ToughJuice.

Boasting 30,000mAh of power, you can charge your smartphone up to 10 times, your tablet twice, or even fully juice up your MacBook on a single charge.

Now that’s powerful.

(Image Credit: ZeroLemon/ Boing Boing)

Now this is fascinating to watch. If you’re familiar with the multiplayer game Among Us, then you probably know how much the Internet loves the simple but charismatic game of doing tasks, or betraying all of your friends (or random people you play with). It’s a great game with simple but stylistic art style. But what happens if you render the game in full HD, kind of like the realism you would see in console games? Fat Dino shares what the game could be if rendered in the Unreal Engine. 

You turn to your partner and ask "What are you thinking?" and they say, "Nothing." It's the set up for many a joke, but sometimes it's true, and people who cannot ever stop thinking can't wrap their heads around it. Sadly, there are people who suffer from Auto-Activation Deficit (AAD) who not only go through blank periods, but cannot restart the process of thinking on their own.

One day, a lively and successful businessman was bitten by a wasp, triggering an unexpected encephalopathy of the brain. Afterwards, he was a changed man, doing almost nothing all day and expressing little interest in anyone else. But this apathy could be swiftly reversed with even the tiniest stimulation from another human being – offering a newspaper or challenging him to a game of bridge, for example. It's as if the man could react, but not act.

Cases similar to this one have been documented in the medical literature. There was a patient who at one point laid on his bed for thirty minutes with an unlit cigarette in his mouth. When asked what he was doing, he matter-of-factly responded, "I am waiting for a light". Another person spent 45 minutes standing with his hands on a lawn mower, frozen and unable to move. But when prompted by his son to cut the grass, he immediately sprang into action. A man referred to as Mr. M in a case report required external prodding for all of his daily activities, even eating. On one occasion he almost got burned by staying too long in the shower until he was told to turn the water off.

Read about Auto-Activation Deficit at Real Clear Science. -via Damn Interesting

(Image source: Pixabay)

You don't really have to be a picky eater to fall into the trap of eating the same meals more often than you should. I can tell you from experience that working at a desk job, living alone, and generally being too busy to think about your diet can lead to easy but monotonous meals. The simplest form of nutrition is to eat a variety of different foods, but how bad can a monotonous series of meals really be? That depends on what's in the things you eat every day. Lifehacker offers a short guide to judging the nutritional value of what you eat, and tips for breaking out of the habit of eating the same thing every day.

Someone who has no knowledge of the Dark Souls games might compare it to other action role-playing games, which are fairly easy. Those who have experienced the series, however, know how difficult the games are. Describing the games as “punishing” is an understatement.

If you want to know how difficult the game is, then watch this skit made by Viva la Dirt League.

(Image Credit: Viva la Dirt League/ YouTube)

Ozzy Man treats us yet again to another clip, this time about a couple who came home drunk. As they walked through the door, the couple faced a very difficult opponent — the flight of stairs in their own home. Did this couple walk up successfully to the second floor? We never find out in this video. But what do you think?

(Image Credit: Ozzy Man Reviews/ YouTube)

Writers for long-running comedy shows know that ideas fly so fast and thick that it's hard to keep up with them. Some ideas are a go, while others are rejected, but may come up again much later. These ideas are often modified, leading to many contributors being credited. And you never know which jokes will resonate with the audience or be remembered years later. And so it is with "stupid sexy Flanders," a Simpsons scene in which Flanders wears a form-fitting ski suit that emphasizes the roundness of his butt, a sight that Homer can't get out of his head. "Feels like I’m wearing nothing at all!” Flanders says. Viewers couldn't get it out of their heads, either.   

The scene is from The Simpsons episode “Little Big Mom,” from the show’s 11th season in the year 2000, which is typically considered to be toward the tail end of The Simpsons’ “Golden Age.” While the joke was enormously funny at the time, in the years since it’s enjoyed a healthy afterlife at comedy conventions as well as online, where it’s become one of the most enduring of Simpsons memes of all time. But to get to the bottom of Flanders’ sexy bottom, the story doesn’t start with “Little Big Mom.” Rather, the seeds for Flanders’ sexy ass were planted all the way back in the show’s fourth season.

Read how the groundwork for stupid sexy Flanders was laid over the years, and about the afterlife of that particular scene as it became an internet meme, at Mel magazine.

Germany — At some point in our lives, we all dreamed of going into an adventure by ourselves. This dog, perhaps, is at that point of his life. Last weekend, he managed to sneak away from his home in the village of Ziegenbach. As he went on his little adventure, the dog then met a group of cyclists who interacted with him. What he didn’t expect was that these cyclists would be the antagonists in his journey.

Concerned the dog was lost, they called the cops — staying with the pup until officers arrived to "arrest" him.

The dog was loaded into the police cruiser, where officers snapped a photo of themselves smiling in the company of their adorable detainee.

But not everyone was so pleased.

Evidently, as the dog decided to slip away from home to start his exciting adventure, he'd failed to consider that there could be consequences — and that he might end up in police custody.

When reality set in, it seemed to have hit him like a ton of bricks.

"The dog's look is priceless," Middle Franconia Police later wrote.

Hopefully, he will not be sent into prison. He will just be returned to his owner.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Polizei Mittelfranken/ Facebook)

This is the northern common cuscus. It is an herbivorous marsupial native to northern New Guinea and the surrounding islands. For many of us who see this animal for the first time, we would see it as cute and adorable. But for many people in Indonesia, Timor Leste, and Papua New Guinea, the cuscuses are not just cute animals. For them, these animals are good sources of fur and protein. Aside from that, they can also be great companions.

“They like to wrap their tail around you and curl around,” says Shimona Kealy, a researcher at Australia National University who, as a Ph.D. student, once handled young cuscuses. “My supervisor was trying to take a photo, and I was just there being like, ‘Can’t we take it home?’”

Kealy doesn’t endorse capturing baby cuscuses. But, as she explains, “that’s a really common thing throughout Indonesia, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea.” People hunt them, and if they catch a mother, they keep the young. “You’ll see young boys that run around the village, and [the cuscus] will just sit on their shoulder.”

But why do researchers like Kealy seem to be so interested in the relationship between humans and cuscuses? What could we learn from this relationship?

As it turns out, quite a lot. The relationship between humans and cuscuses goes back millennia, preceding the agricultural revolution. And the depth of that relationship challenges some of our most fundamental beliefs about human history.

Learn more about this over at Atlas Obscura.

(Image Credit: Daderot/ Wikimedia Commons)

The next time someone asks you what color is the Moon, tell that person that it depends on the night. Sometimes the moon shines in shades of grey, and other times in shades of red and brown. The color also depends on where you view it.

Outside of the Earth's atmosphere, the dark Moon, which shines by reflected sunlight, appears a magnificently brown-tinged gray. Viewed from inside the Earth's atmosphere, though, the moon can appear quite different. The featured image highlights a collection of apparent colors of the full moon documented by one astrophotographer over 10 years from different locations across Italy.

Learn more about this over at NASA.

(Image Credit: Marcella Giulia Pace/ NASA)

The graves of three infants were unearthed at the Gravettian site of Krems-Wachtberg, Austria, in 2005. Infant burials are a rare find, as their delicate remains tend not to preserve as well as those of adults. New DNA analysis of the 30,000-year-old remains have determined that two are identical twins, making them the oldest known twins on earth (the third infant was their cousin).  

The research team who made the discovery wrote in Nature that the infants were found “embedded in red ochre and they were placed next to each other in flexed positions facing east and with their skulls pointing north.” It is believed that the red ochre earth helped to preserve the remains. The Daily Mail reports that “the grave was not backfilled, but instead was covered with a mammoth’s shoulder blade that was molded to fit the opening.”

Both of them had been buried with grave goods . The youngest had 53 exquisite beads made from Mammoth ivory, placed on his pelvis, that once formed part of a necklace. The older infant was found with shells and a fox’s tooth and these were part of some ornament. These grave goods could have been deposited with the dead for use in the afterlife or they were offerings to the gods. The presence of these artifacts may suggest some form of early religion or a belief in the supernatural.

The reference to the "older twin" means that one died at birth, and the other lived a couple of months and then was added to the first twin's grave. Read the research paper at Nature, or the simpler version here. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Natural History Museum Vienna)

This really really looks like a ridiculous parody ad, but it's real. It was originally scheduled to run during last week's Saturday Night Live but ultimately did not. Arby's really produced a pillow that fits over your head and resembles a deep-fried turkey. Too bad it's already sold out. If you still crave this pillow, you can enter a sweepstakes to win one. Happy napping! -Thanks, WTM!

Even if we spend most of the day staring at our computer screens and our smartphones, where digital clocks are readily available, there’s still something very attractive about clocks of old. And if you’re the type of person who loves retro stuff, then you will surely love this retro-styled flip clock.

Midclock’s TV clock combines two different old school devices in one: a retro flip clock, and a retro television set. Unlike the flip clocks of yore, Midclock says theirs operates silently, so it won’t wake you up ticking away. Plus it’s got a built-in night light which makes reading the time easier, and adds a gentle glow.

Unfortunately, this clock does not have an integrated alarm. Nevertheless, it looks pleasing in the eyes.

What do you think?

(Image Credit: Midclock/ Amazon/ Technabob)